TheChek News Flow

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Macro :

- Sluggish Tourism Shows Inflation May Be Transitory: China Today

- Italy Vaccinated More Than 50% Population With at Least 1 Dose

- Banks Risk Losing ‘Cash Cow’ With $970 Billion EU Bond Sale Ban

Spacs :

- Four SPACs Fall as Deal Completion, Listing Debuts Draw Closer

- Caitucoli, Maris and Eiffel to List SPAC in Paris in Coming Days

Keep an eye on :

- AIR FP : U.S., U.K. Aim to Reach Boeing-Airbus Truce Following EU Deal

- ALO FP : GM Eyes the Electric Locomotive Market: Industrials Wrap

- ATL IM : Atlantia Seeks Tech Expansion With $10 Billion Autostrade Check

- BMPS IM : Monte Paschi to Study Strengthening Partnership With Anima

- COLR BB : Colruyt FY Adjusted Net Misses Estimates

- DBK GY : Citi Sinks as CFO Warns of Second Quarter Trading Revenue Slump

- EDF FP : China Nuclear Drama Is Less Alarming Than Politics Behind It (1)

- EZJ LN : EasyJet Has Redirected Routes From U.K. to European Markets: CEO

- Eiffel Inv. Spac : Caitucoli, Maris and Eiffel to List SPAC in Paris in Coming Days

- HPHA GY : Heidelberg Pharma Offering Prices at EU6.44/Share

- HTWS LN : Helios Towers Seeks $150m in Share Sale, Convertible Bond Issue

- IIA AV : Austrian Watchdog Scolds Landlords for Statements in Merger War

- IIA AV : Activist Investor Petrus Advisers Challenges CA Immo Resolutions

- IKG IM : Intek, Paragon Accord on KME Specials Business Control Transfer

- INTEGB SS : Integrum Offers SEK120 m Shares to Trade June 16 via Carnegie

- JDEP NA : JDE Peet's to Buy Campos Coffee QLD

- MC FP : Google Wins LVMH Cloud Deal Amid Luxury Shopping Boom

- MBTN SW : Meyer Burger Secures EU185M Debt, Raises 2023 Sales Guidance

- ALODC FP : Food Distributor Omer-Decugis Raises EU18.3M in Paris IPO

- ORPHA DC : After Meme-Stock Rally, Key Orphazyme Shareholder Cuts Stake

- QIA GY : Qiagen Holder DKP Writes Letter to Board Urging New Chairman

- SAN FP : *SANTANDER IN TALKS ON EU1.5B NON-PERFORMING ASSETS:CONFIDENCIAL

- SAP GY : Oracle 4Q Adjusted Revenue Beats Estimates --> -2,4% in after hours

- SSABA SS : SSAB, Volvo Cars to Explore Fossil-Free Steel for Making Cars

- ENR GY : Siemens Energy Swarmed by Countries Wanting Wind-Turbine Plants

- SMIN LN : Smiths Group Rises on Betaville Alert on Medical Unit Interest

- GLE FP : Citi Sinks as CFO Warns of Second Quarter Trading Revenue Slump

- GLE FP : Societe Generale to Expand Into Sustainable Finance In India

- STLA US : Stellantis Is Said to Restructure Melfi Plant for Electric Cars

- SQN SW : Swissquote Prelim 1H Pretax Profit Above CHF130M

- VIE FP : Camus Says He Won’t Lead New Suez After Veolia Deal: Figaro

- VOW3 GY : VW to Partially Halt Work at Wolfsburg on Chip Shortage: DPA

- WBD IM : Italy’s Webuild Says Biden Blessing Texas Deal Will Boost Orders

* Aareal Bank Raised to Buy at HSBC; PT 28 euros

* BBVA Raised to Buy at SocGen; PT 6 euros

* Beiersdorf Raised to Buy at Jefferies; PT 120 euros

* Intrum Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan; PT 330 kronor

* Wartsila Raised to Outperform at RBC; PT 15 euros

>>> Downgrade

* doValue SpA Cut to Neutral at JPMorgan; PT 11.80 euros

* Italgas Cut to Hold at Stifel; PT 5.95 euros

* Jumbo Cut to Hold at HSBC; PT 17 euros

* MorphoSys Cut to Hold at LBBW; PT 70 euros

* Nokia Cut to Hold at LBBW; PT 4.50 euros

* Sparebank 1 Ostfold Akershus Cut to Hold at Arctic Securities

>>> Initiation

* Andfjord Salmon Rated New Buy at Norne Securities; PT 65 kroner

* Atlantic Sapphire ASA Rated New Hold at Norne Securities

* DNB Reinstated Hold at Arctic Securities; PT 187 kroner

* Endeavour Mining Rated New Overweight at Barclays

* Hemnet Rated New Equal-Weight at Barclays; PT 190 kronor

* Hemnet Rated New Neutral at Citi; PT 195 kronor

* Nordic Aqua Partners Rated New Hold at Norne Securities

* Proximar Seafood Rated New Hold at Norne Securities

* Prysmian Rated New Buy at Stifel; PT 36.80 euros

* Salmon Evolution Rated New Buy at Norne Securities; PT 9 kroner

>>> Call

* 15 Stocks to Watch Under Biden's $1.7 Trillion Climate Plan

* 15 U.S. Green Recovery Companies With Underappreciated Prospects

* Beiersdorf Raised at Jefferies, Scope for Positive FY21 Surprise

* Hemnet Unique, But Fairly Valued, Gets New Neutral at Citi

* HSBC Upgraded to Buy at Citi on ‘Underappreciated’ Wealth Unit

* Wartsila Double-Upgraded at RBC on Sharp Marine Recovery

A shortage of newer-model business jets is driving up prices of second-hand aircraft, a trend that is expected to deliver a windfall for luxury planemakers as new affluent buyers enter the market.

After a turbulent 2020 due to COVID-19, the rush toward private transport is so marked that some buyers are snapping up second-hand planes before fully inspecting the wares as the market shifts toward sellers, lawyers and brokers said.

That is expected to push up demand for new jets from planemakers like General Dynamics Corp’s Gulfstream, Textron and Bombardier since buyers have fewer pre-owned options, and the price gap between old and new narrows.

“There are virtually no young pre-owned aircraft available — good news for would-be sellers and for [planemakers],” said aviation analyst Rolland Vincent.

He recalled one trucking company’s recent search for a pre-owned Gulfstream jet: “There was one aircraft in the world that fit their requirements.”

Traffic from business jets, which carry roughly a handful to 19 travelers, has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels in the United States, the world’s largest market for private aviation, according to FlightAware data.

“On the pre-owned side, inventory appears to be fairly low, and that’s always a benefit to new aircraft sales,” said Scott Neal, senior vice president worldwide sales, Gulfstream.

“We are seeing strong interest across the board from first-time buyers and high net worth individuals as well as corporate customers with a desire to grow their fleets.”

Textron in April raised its full-year profit forecast, propelled by a rebound in business jet demand.

But since COVID-19, buyers have been shifting to private aviation to avoid airport crowds and coronavirus variants. Applegate said some deals are so competitive she’s seen buyers give up pre-purchase inspections to win them.

Don Dwyer, managing partner at Guardian Jet, which does aircraft brokerage, appraisals, and consulting, recalled one case where a client didn’t undertake a pre-purchase inspection, which can take more than a month to complete.

The trend could encourage some planemakers to increase production rates, although any ramp-up would hinge on supply chain capabilities, Vincent said.

Planemakers do not disclose total number of orders.

Preowned aircraft for sale in May accounted for 6.6 percent of the worldwide fleet, the lowest level recorded in 25 years by JETNET data, Vincent said.

He said 864 pre-owned business jets sold during the first four months of 2021, up 36 percent from the same period last year.

“There are multiple offers on planes,” said Florida-based aviation attorney Stewart Lapayowker, founder of Lapayowker Jet Counsel PA.

Amanda Applegate, a partner at Aerlex Law Group, said she handled more deals for new jets than usual in May, as buyers fail to secure popular pre-owned planes like the G650, raising prices.

Applegate said it’s a case of pent-up demand as some wealthy travelers previously avoided private jets due to concerns like “flight shaming” over the environment. Corporate planes burn more fuel per passenger than commercial.

It was a particular case since the plane was highly coveted, in good shape based on a visual inspection, and the seller was reputable, Dwyer said.

“I don’t recommend it, but in certain situations it can work.”

Six face criminal and civil charges over trading in shares of Infinera and Fortinet

Authorities on Tuesday charged a group of six friends in Silicon Valley with insider trading, alleging they shared unlawful stock tips and traded on the information to earn about $1.7 million.

The San Francisco U.S. attorney’s office charged three of the individuals in federal criminal court, including Nathaniel A. Brown, a former senior revenue manager at computer-networking company Infinera Corp. INFN -2.11% Mr. Brown allegedly tipped off a friend, Benjamin Wylam, about Infinera’s undisclosed quarterly results from April 2016 through November 2017, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which said it uncovered the scheme and separately alleged the six defendants committed civil fraud.

The SEC said Mr. Wylam is a Santa Clara, Calif., high-school teacher who worked as a bookmaker on the side. He communicated about stocks with Mr. Brown using WhatsApp, an encrypted text-messaging application, the SEC said. Mr. Wylam made over $1 million in illicit profit, according to the SEC’s lawsuit, which said he wrote on an internet message board that “insider trading is part of my investment strategy.”

Mr. Wylam has agreed to plead guilty to criminal securities fraud, according to court records. He also agreed to resolve the SEC’s civil allegations and pay a fine that a court will set later. Mr. Brown is litigating with the SEC, the agency said, without providing more information.

The tipping chain involved other individuals, authorities said. Mr. Wylam passed his illicit scoops about Infinera to Naveen Sood, who owed him a gambling debt of more than $100,000, according to the SEC. Mr. Sood then shared the information with three other friends—Naresh Ramaiya, Marcus Bannon and Matthew Rauch—who also traded on the material nonpublic information, according to the SEC.

Mr. Sood, 49 years old, pleaded guilty to one count of criminal securities fraud, according to court records. He faces a maximum prison term of 25 years and a fine of as much as $250,000 or twice the gains from his illegal trading, whichever is greater, according to his plea agreement.

The SEC said it discovered the alleged trading ring using sophisticated data analysis. Regulators have developed data-mining tools in recent years that allow them to hunt for evidence of trader groups making suspiciously well-timed trades.

The alleged scheme also involved illicit trading in shares of another company, cybersecurity vendor Fortinet Inc. FTNT -0.60% Mr. Bannon worked at Fortinet in sales and told Mr. Sood in October 2016 about a negative announcement his employer planned to make in the coming days, authorities said. Mr. Sood used the information to buy options that would pay off if Fortinet’s stock price fell, and shared the tip with Messrs. Wylam and Ramaiya, the SEC’s lawsuit alleges.

Lawyers for Messrs. Bannon and Rauch declined to comment. Spokespeople for Infinera and Fortinet and lawyers for the other defendants didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Messrs. Bannon and Rauch were college roommates in the 1990s and were also friends with Mr. Sood, according to the SEC. Mr. Bannon invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when the SEC subpoenaed him for testimony, the agency said in its lawsuit.

Messrs. Bannon, Rauch and Ramaiya agreed to settle the SEC’s claims and pay fines totaling $476,000, according to court records. They don’t face criminal charges.

Mr. Brown, 49 years old, was charged under a document that prosecutors typically use when a defendant is prepared to plead guilty. He faces the same maximum statutory penalties as Mr. Sood. He is due to be arraigned on June 16, according to prosecutors.

The roiling depths of the sculptor’s psyche are explored alongside powerful works in a show at New York’s Jewish Museum

Maybe it’s spring, or a surge of pandemic-suppressed Eros — whatever the stimulus, New York’s museums are erupting with genitalia and erogenous zones. Niki de Saint Phalle’s fleshy Nanas and Yayoi Kusama’s hot flora have nicely set up Louise Bourgeois’s outsized harbingers of fertility.

At the Jewish Museum, an erect penis dangles from a hook in the ceiling. Its pair of pendulum-like spheres morphs into breasts, merging masculine and feminine forms. Down at ground level, a marble bulge begins to stir from its wooden plinth, looking both hard and soft, phallic and mammary.

These and other concupiscent works appear elegantly arrayed and tastefully lit, so that they swell into the space and visitors can admire them from multiple angles and distances. And yet Freud’s Daughter, a psycho-literary-artistic exploration curated by Bourgeois’s former archivist Philip Larratt-Smith, is less about her sculpture than her explorations of the mind. The vitrines are crammed with handwritten fragments and stream-of-consciousness texts, presented as an oeuvre equal to her creations in metal and stone.

“In literary quality and historical importance, the psychoanalytic writings bear comparison with the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, the journals of Eugène Delacroix, and the letters of Vincent van Gogh,” Larratt-Smith writes. “Along with her diaries, they establish Bourgeois’s status as an artist-writer of the first rank.” That’s a big claim and not the only one the show has trouble supporting. The other is that all those pages offer a key to her sculpture’s true meanings. 

Bourgeois spent decades in therapy. Having trained as a mathematician at the Sorbonne, she always retained a craving for structure. When she switched fields, her new calling helped her resolve the contradiction between order and instinct, rationality and feeling. Later, psychoanalysis supplied the concept of sublimation, which for Bourgeois meant moulding shapeless wrath into meaning and harmony. Rancour and revenge would give way to forgiveness. That was the theory, anyway. 

In practice, forgiveness was a long shot, especially when it came to her own shortcomings and mental afflictions. “I’ve schlepped Louise Bourgeois around with me for more than 40 years,” she wrote in the early 1950s. “Every day brought its wound, and I carried my wounds ceaselessly, without remission, like a hide perforated beyond hope of repair. I am a collection of wooden pearls never threaded — and perfectly idiotic.”

Her father died in 1951, a loss that propelled her to the couch of Dr Henry Lowenfeld, a Freud disciple who had emigrated from Berlin to New York in 1938 (the same year Bourgeois arrived from Paris). She saw him, on and off, for 30 years, until he died. 

They mostly worked on her rage — at her father over his infidelities and her mother for tolerating them, at her husband and children, women she saw as rivals, domestic obligations that prevented her from focusing on work, and the lethargy that descended when she was finally free to spend hours in her studio. So many forms of fury left their mark on paper, on marble, and on the people in her life. “When I do not ‘attack’ I do not feel myself alive,” she scrawled across a sheet of loose-leaf paper. 

Pain was a powerful motivator, she explained. Art served as therapy, as a way to exorcise family dysfunction, abuse, and violent impulses

The curator’s task is to organise those scalding emotions into a cool exhibition, to display them so that viewers can skim the roiling depths of Bourgeois’s psyche and come away having peered with a little more clarity into her art.

He does this first by printing and framing her utterances, like the sayings of some deranged prophet: “A germ of rage cohabits like the germ of TB, it lives in you: small sometimes large other times, provoking infection aggression elation courage energy — your rage is your P you force it on people you control it you used to control it it became so much stronger that it is now like a wolfhound like a infected sleeping bitch, it can wake up — is rage feminine or masculine think about it — In everything like any live agent it functions independently from any other organism. it has a constant connection to me, good or bad; I could use an easier but flatter term — my aggression — I don’t like this name although I don’t know why —” 

Larratt-Smith also channels Bourgeois’s cataracts of prose into tidy explanations of her sculpture. In this, he has help from the subject herself. After decades of discretion, she finally began to talk about her creative impulse at 70, prompted by MoMA’s 1982 retrospective and the unaccustomed celebrity it brought.

Pain was a powerful motivator, she explained. Art served as therapy, as a way to exorcise family dysfunction, abuse and violent impulses. She offered critics predigested interpretations, which seemed reductive rather than revelatory. 

The show picks up where she left off. Her sometimes fascinating ramblings are offered up as the equivalent of 3D glasses, the key to making the picture cohere. Take the 1997 installation “Passage Dangereux”, a cramped, even frightening set of cages crammed with the bric-a-brac of a complicated life.

The curator provides a handy guide to its symbols: the pile of shirt cuffs is good old Dad, the little flask of Shalimar perfume “represents sexuality and the desire to seduce; the dead fly in the horse-shaped bottle, which got stuck and then died in the liqueur that attracted it, concretizes the equation of sex and death”. You could practically type each clue on a Post-it and stick it on the relevant object.

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But Bourgeois’s self-analysis and the show’s Freudian deconstructions wind up thinning out a rich clangour of associations and suggestions that will resonate with each viewer on a different frequency. Bourgeois’s power is that she confronted the world with incompatible demands: for sympathy and distance, hostility, fear and approval. With similarly contradictory impulses, Larratt-Smith wants the shards of writing to stand on their own as a feat of modern literature and at the same time to serve as glosses on the stuff that everyone’s really come to see.

Those tensions are authentic to Bourgeois. She never really wanted psychoanalysis to heal her, or to alleviate the discomfort she felt in her own skin. “Freud did nothing for . . . the artist’s torment,” she wrote in a 1990 essay. “To be an artist involves some suffering. That’s why artists repeat themselves — because they have no access to a cure.” Misery was her muse.

A quiet corner of financial markets that had worried regulators before the pandemic for sharply increasing issuance of risky corporate debt is back in vogue. And one of Wall Street’s hottest hedge funds of the past few years is hoping to capitalise on the new found enthusiasm. 

Scott Goodwin and Jon Lewinsohn have had a good run since launching Diameter Capital in 2017 and posted returns north of 20 per cent in their main hedge fund last year, writes the FT’s Joe Rennison.

Now, they’re hoping a $250m seed financing from backers including Apollo Global Management and Corbin Capital will help them take collateralised loan obligations mainstream.

CLOs bundle up loans made to lower-rated companies and use them to back interest payments on a stack of new debt with cascading exposure to the default of the underlying loans. 

It means risky debt typically bought by specialist investors is re-crafted into higher-rated securities bought by more traditional asset managers (typically at a lower risk). 

These managers get comfortable investing in the CLO because they are insulated by a smaller group of investors willing to bear the brunt of the losses should companies renege on their loans (in exchange for the potential of much higher returns).

Regulators had become concerned before the pandemic that CLO managers hungry for new loans to package up had spurred a degradation in underwriting standards in the leveraged loan market that could exacerbate a credit crisis if the economy faltered. 

But over a year on from the worst of the coronavirus induced sell-off, CLO managers feel vindicated after the market survived largely intact, even if it was helped along the way by record intervention in credit markets by the Federal Reserve. 

The Fed had provided a new lease of life to the market, with investors drawn to the potential for higher returns in an otherwise low-yielding world.

Managers are responding by seeking out funding sources for a number of new deals, rather than raising new capital for each new CLO, as was once more common. 

Diameter intends to use the money it has raised to issue six CLOs, building on a partnership made after Apollo supported Diameter’s move into the similar market for collateralised debt obligations. 

It will also look to build on Goodwin’s long-held relationship with his first boss when he worked at Citigroup, and now Apollo co-president Jim Zelter.

Activists face the music in the battle against Vincent Bolloré

French media conglomerate Vivendi’s proposed spin off of Universal Music Group is set to be the event of the season.

The deal features a crème de la crème cast of characters from Vivendi’s billionaire controlling shareholder Vincent Bolloré to the hedge fund tycoon Bill Ackman, whose blank-cheque company Pershing Square Tontine Holdings is in talks to buy a 10 per cent stake in the record label behind artists such as Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift. (It’s a complicated deal — DD breaks it down in detail here.)

But there will be some uninvited guests, too.

Third Point, the New York activist investor run by Dan Loeb, has built a “significant” stake in Vivendi, as reported by the FT’s Leila Abboud and DD’s Ortenca Aliaj. The fund declined to comment on how it planned to use its holding, as the June 22 Vivendi shareholders’ vote looms.

Meanwhile, shareholders including little-known hedge funds Bluebell Capital and Artisan Partners have come out against the Ackman deal. If Loeb opts to side with his fellow activists, it could turn into a face-off between two titans of the investing world.

But as Lex points out, the odds aren’t in Bluebell and Artisan’s favour. Vivendi only needs a 50 per cent majority to approve the spin-off, and Bolloré’s holding company already owns nearly 30 per cent of the vote. 

Rebellious minority shareholders would need more than just Loeb in their corner. And even that is uncertain.

Hindenburg launches yet another Spac attack

While most short sellers are reeling from a painful decade of soaring stock prices and the recently formed Reddit trading army, Hindenburg Research has carved out its own niche. 

The swashbuckling short seller led by Nate Anderson has laid waste to the Spac industry by targeting some of its most celebrated companies. Its latest report takes aim at DraftKings, the golden goose of the blank-cheque boom.

Hindenburg released a report on Tuesday claiming the bookmaker’s technology subsidiary SBTech gleans as much as half of its revenues from illegal gambling markets. Shares of DraftKings fell by more than 7 per cent following the report’s publication.

The New York-based firm also pointed to the fact that company insiders had benefited from the huge increase in DraftKings’ share price — which peaked at $74, more than seven times the $10 price at which Spacs commonly list — by selling a combined $1.4bn worth of stock.

The sports betting platform, whose board includes A-list celebrity advisers like basketball legend Michael Jordan and supermodel Gisele Bündchen, went public in a highly lucrative three-way Spac deal last April. 

Its success is widely considered to have helped spawn a surge in the popularity of Spacs that has only recently begun to lose steam.

Whether or not Hindenburg’s accusations hold any weight is unclear. The firm holds a short position in DraftKings, meaning it stands to profit if the gambling group’s stock price takes a dive. 

In its response to the allegations made by the short seller, DraftKings said that Hindenburg had “an incentive to drive down the share price”, adding that it “conducted a thorough review of [SBTech’s] business practices and we were comfortable with the findings”.

The sports betting company joins other high-profile start-ups targeted by Hindenburg, including electric truckmaker Nikola and rival Lordstown Motors, both of which listed through Spac deals.

Anderson’s scepticism is shared by regulators who have started to keep a close eye on Spacs. 

Whatever the motives of Anderson and his team, Wall Street’s dwindling excitement for Spac deals means there’s never been a better time to strike.

Report claims it is easier for men to succeed in the City despite making mistakes

Careers for some women in finance are being held back by “mediocre” male middle managers adept at playing internal politics, according to a report backed by some of the City of London’s largest financial institutions.

Research by Women In Banking and Finance and the London School of Economics — which has been supported by groups such as Goldman Sachs, Barclays and Citi, as well as the Financial Conduct Authority — also found a tendency among such managers to fake empathy when managing women, recognising that the trait was now seen as valuable.

The authors of the report said this tendency was a particular worry given the need for greater management skills during the pandemic. Women in finance perceived they had to show sustained excellence to progress, the research found, with more room for men to make mistakes or be average performers.

Various reasons were given for this, from male-dominated social scenes, disrupted careers owing to maternity leave and a bigger reluctance to manage out men regardless of ability as they were still viewed as breadwinners.

The study — which uses qualitative research based on interviews with 79 women in the City carried out by the London School of Economics — covers businesses in banking, asset management, professional services, fintech and insurance. Women in Banking and Finance is a non-profit organisation founded in 1980 and staffed mainly by volunteers.

Grace Lordan, an associate professor at the LSE and founding director of The Inclusion Initiative, said there was a perception among women interviewed that it was “much more likely to be average men who ended up being the gatekeepers for the younger women who were coming through”.

She said there had been progress made in the City but “it’s nowhere near equality . . . we’re still very, very far away from equality”.

The research highlighted the problems many women still face in their careers in the City, even as boardroom data suggest improvements among the numbers of female non executives.

The numbers of female chairs, chief executive or finance chiefs are much lower, and campaigners have warned there are problems bringing through women to top managerial positions to feed this talent pool.

In front office roles specifically, women viewed themselves as more visible given they were a clear minority, and so scrutinised more. Of the interviewees, 11 were black women, several of whom said their performance level had to exceed both men and white women to receive the same recognition.

Lordan said more subtle discrimination was harder to fight. “In the 80s, you would know if somebody was being negative towards you within financial professional services. [Now] it’s much more subtle and being able to fight back against that is really, really difficult.”

Lordon said often women were not specifically being held back, but that men were more likely to go out of their way to enhance the career of somebody who was more like them.

“So tending to be excluded for things, not necessarily being given opportunities [or] being in front of the senior leaders, having their ideas misrepresented as being from someone else rather than themselves.”

The report identified ten areas where companies could take action, aiming to help improve the culture around advancement prospects. 

These included audits of the allocation of “stretch” assignments, pay increases and promotions, encouraging flexible work styles, and redesigning bonuses to reflect the performance of team members and working collaboratively.