TheChek News Flow

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Macro :

- Druckenmiller Tells CNBC Fed Giving False Sense of Security

- U.K.’s Johnson Likely to Delay Final Stage of Covid Reopening

- Southern Europe Telcos Have Lines Open for $1 Trillion EU Fund

Keep an eye on :

- ALV GY : AllianzGI Names Virginie Maisonneuve New Global CIO for Equity

- AAPL US : Apple Hires Former BMW Executive for Its Rebooted Car Project

- BALDB SS : Managers at Property Firm Balder Charged With Insider Trading

- BETSB SS : Betsson Enters B2B Deal With Masterpiece Gaming

- BOSN SW : Bossard Expects 1H Sales to Rise by More Than 20% Y/y

- IAG LN : British Airways Places Thousands of Staff Back on Furlough

- BT/A LN : BT’s Activist Holder to Push for Openreach Spinoff: Telegraph

- EZJ LN : EasyJet CEO Says U.K. Is Isolating Itself from Rest of World

- ELOSB SS : TA Associates Offers to Buy Elos Medtech for SEK215/Share Cash

- EL FP : Grandvision Gets Regulatory Approvals for El-Hal Deal Closing

- EUCAR FP : Soaring Hire-Car Prices Risk Spoiling the Summer Getaway: Chart

- ENX FP : No Change to France’s CAC 40 Index, Euronext Says

- RF FP : Private equity firms Eurazeo and Infravia are launching an auction for Reden in a deal that

- FCT IM : Fincantieri Wins Contract to Supply 8 Frigates to Indonesia

- IRRAS SS : IRRAS Offering of 13.2m Shares Prices at SEK5/Share via Carnegie

- JDT SS : Jondetech Sensors Offers Up to SEK30 m Shares, Offering of Shares Prices at SEK9.5/Share

- KNOW SS : Knowit Stockholm Offering of Shares Prices at SEK280/Share

- LDO IM : Leonardo Seeks Partner for Automation Unit Among Options

- NOKIA FH : Biden Prods UAE to Dump Huawei, Sowing Doubts on Key F-35 Sale

- NYXH BB : Nyxoah, Maker of Sleep-Apnea Treatment, Files for U.S. IPO

- NXFIL NA : NX Filtration IPO Priced at EU11/sh; Sees Gross Proceeds EU165m

- ORPHA DC : Orphazyme Surges Over 100% Ahead Of Arimoclomol Pdufa

- PEAN SW : Peach Property Starts CHF120M Mandatory Convertible Bonds Issue

- Primafrio IPO : Primafrio Shares to be Marketed EU9.30 to EU12.10 in Spanish IPO

- PRX NA : Prosus Works to Win Over Investors After Share Exchange Concerns

- QLINEA SS : Q-Linea Registers 2m Shares for Directed Issue

- RIB GY : Tom Wolf, Michael Sauer Sell Remaining Stake in Rib Software SE

- ROG SW : Roche Evrysdi Data Show Improved Motor Function in Babies

- RUI FP : Rubis Sets Issue Price Optional Stock Dividend at EU36.20

- SAN FP : FDA Says Aubagio Data Insufficient for Ages 10-17: Sanofi

- SCR FP : Scor to pay EU20M to Covea in Settlement Pact

- DG FP : Eiffage Enters Pact With Vinci Subsidiary for The Link Project

- VIV FP : Ackman’s Universal Music Deal Spurs Pushback From Vivendi Holder

- ZAL NO : Zalaris Offering of 2.32m Shares Prices at NOK60/Share

- FHZN SW : Zurich Airport May Passengers 450,500 Vs. 43,852 Y/y

Comment le Top Chef Jean Imbert a été choisi pour succéder à Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée

EXCLUSIF - Après d'intenses réflexions et consultations, le palace parisien du groupe Dorchester a décidé de confier son grand restaurant à un chef de la jeune génération, jusqu'à présent peu distingué par le très influent guide Michelin.

Cet établissement, propriété du groupe d'hôtels de luxe Dorchester, propriété du Sultan de Brunei, a surpris tout le monde en annonçant à la mi-mai, qu'il ne renouvelait pas le contrat du chef Alain Ducasse, le cuisinier le plus étoilé du monde, après plus de 20 ans de bons et loyaux services. Les amis de cette vénérable maison et ceux du chef multi-étoilé se sont efforcés de présenter la séparation comme un événement anodin. Les esprits indépendants y ont vu au contraire, une rupture brutale, preuve que les palaces n'ont plus le goût aujourd'hui d'entretenir des restaurants gastronomiques à la française, avec débauche d'assiettes, de couverts, de grands vins et de personnel.

Les codes du luxe ont changé. Leurs clients fortunés n'ont pas plus que d'autres, le goût de passer deux heures à table, dans la contemplation d'une cuisine de créateur. La haute cuisine n'étant pas un métier très rentable, en raison d'un personnel nombreux et de matières très onéreuses, les palaces sont tous en train de faire leurs comptes et plusieurs d'entre eux donnent congé à leurs grands chefs.

Difficile succession

Mais une fois la page Ducasse tournée, il fallait bien trouver un nouveau chef et un nouveau concept pour le Plaza Athénée. Bien conscient de sa grande responsabilité au regard de l’histoire de la grande cuisine mais aussi évidemment au regard de la bonne marche de son entreprise, le directeur général de cet hôtel de luxe, François Delahaye n’a pas ménagé ses efforts ces derniers temps pour être sûr de faire le bon choix. Pas facile de succéder à un cuisinier aussi respecté, détenteur actuel du plus grand nombre d’étoiles Michelin.

Dès le début de sa quête, le directeur du Plaza a penché pour le chef parisien Jean Imbert (40 ans le mois prochain), vainqueur de la Saison 3 de Top Chef, le talent show culinaire de M6, en 2012. Ce cuisinier très médiatique a su faire entrer plusieurs stars de la mode, de la musique et du cinéma, françaises et américaines dans son restaurant du 16e arrondissement et, dans son carnet d'adresses. Son établissement L'Acajou a été renommé Mamie Restaurant en 2019. On y sert une cuisine de qualité dans une ambiance jeune et branchée.

Annonce officielle le 14 juin à 14h

Selon les informations de Challenges, c'est ce premier choix qui est maintenant devenu définitif et qui doit être officialisé le 14 juin à 14 heures par un communiqué du groupe Dorchester. D'autres hypothèses ont toutefois été envisagées. Le chef Mathieu Pacaud (Apicius, Divellec et Murtoli) a lui aussi fait un tour de piste, proposant un projet de gastronomie de palace, moderne, rentable et luxueux. Tout comme le roi des pâtissiers Pierre Hermé, un vieil ami de François Delahaye, qui a présenté lui aussi un concept de restauration pour le palace. D'autres grands cuisiniers, moins célèbres ont aussi été consultés : Alain Verseroli et Jocelyn Herland.

Avec Jean Imbert, le palace parisien fait le choix d'une cuisine moins prestigieuse mais peut-être plus branchée, et surtout mieux identifiée par le monde des artistes et des médias. Un expert des grandes tables française commente : "Dans cette magnifique cuisine, capable d'accueillir une brigade de haut vol, l'arrivée de Jean Imbert n'est pas un choix cohérent, c'est comme demander à un rocker de faire un concert à l'Opéra de Paris". On attend de voir. Le décalage pourrait bien s'avérer intéressant.

The speed and convenience of supersonic flight will come at an environmental price

I flew on Concorde once. I remember its rocket-like climb out of Heathrow, the stillness of cruising at 60,000 feet above the Atlantic, and the dark blue sky out of the window. Then the cabin monitor showing Mach 2, and the thrill of joining an elite flying club, before the nose-elevated descent into New York three and a half hours after take-off. 

So, it was with a tingle of nostalgia that I read news of United Airlines placing an order for 15 Overture aircraft being developed by Boom Supersonic in Denver, Colorado. They are intended to enter passenger service as early as 2029: if I wait a few more years, I may be able to relive the excitement of travelling faster than sound.

“We believe in a world where more people can go more places, more often,” Blake Scholl, Boom’s founder and chief executive, told a Congressional committee in April, and put like that, it sounds good. Having been marooned at home or inside national borders by the pandemic, some might fancy a high-speed jaunt from San Francisco to Tokyo in six hours, instead of 11.

Despite the temptation, I wonder whether supersonic commercial flight will really return, and if it should. Technology has advanced since Concorde’s final commercial passenger flight in 2003, following a fatal accident in Paris in 2000, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and waning demand, but some things are hard to change.

One is that supersonic jets make a lot of noise. I also experienced Concorde from the outside, growing up on the Heathrow flight path in west London and coming to know the deafening roar of its engine afterburners. The Overture will be much quieter than Concorde at subsonic speeds and around airports, but will create a similar sonic boom when in full flight.

Those with military privileges or great wealth can break the sound barrier now. Fighter jets are very loud, as are the rocket craft that are due to take the billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson to suborbital space. But making such a racket is out of bounds to most: supersonic flights across the US were barred in 1973.

Boom says the Overture will only fly at supersonic speed over oceans, which rather cramps its style. Concorde’s London and Paris to New York routes suit it well, although even those had issues. A morning flight from Europe that arrived in the US early in the day appealed to go-getting executives, but chopping three hours off an overnight return flight held distinctly less appeal.

Crossing the Pacific presents a second challenge for supersonic jets — their limited reach compared with long-range subsonic aircraft. The Overture would have to land for half an hour in Alaska to refuel on its way from San Francisco to Tokyo, and in Tahiti en route from Los Angeles to Sydney. Passengers might be tempted to get off and refuel in Tahiti too.

Supersonic pioneers pin some hope on the US eventually relaxing its ban, at least along some air corridors (Kansas is to test the idea). But it is unthinkable that Europeans would tolerate up to 200 sonic booms per day from air traffic, including jets flying into and out of Heathrow, one scenario for 2035 projected by the International Council on Clean Transportation.

Then there is the broader environmental impact. Supersonic jets tend to be thirsty, and the ICCT estimates that flying on conventional jet fuel, they would emit five to seven times as much carbon dioxide per passenger as comparable subsonic jets. As the airline industry tries to become more ecologically responsible, it risks being carried in the reverse direction.

Scholl assures me that the Overture will burn far less fuel than this, only equivalent to a business class passenger in a conventional jet. It will also be able to fly solely on sustainable aviation fuel, as made by companies such as BP from cooking and waste oil. But all this remains to be proved: Boom’s first test flight of its demonstrator jet will only take place later this year or next.

Aerospace projects of such ambition tend to get delayed, or not to be completed at all. Boeing never made its concept high-speed Sonic Cruiser and Aerion, a US company developing a supersonic business jet, collapsed in May when it ran out of funding. The longest journey is reaching take-off.

Meanwhile, the convenience formerly offered by Concorde to the most elite class of traveller has been partly replicated by long-range business and private jets. For those who can afford it, hopping across the Atlantic on a Gulfstream from a private terminal saves as much time as going supersonic from Heathrow, and is sleeker.

People flying around on many small jets rather than fewer large ones is not very good for the environment, either. But the crisis has encouraged it: the research group WingX expects business jet travel to regain pre-pandemic levels later this year, while airline schedules remain disrupted.

One day, a successor to Concorde might take off again, offering the same speed and excitement, but this time more quietly and sustainably. If that happens, I will take a trip; until then, I have memories.

In 1999, Hamid Moghadam bet that the internet would revolutionise the way people bought goods. 

So the Iranian immigrant and property investor sold all of his retail holdings and poured the money into warehouses. 

These days, Prologis, the real estate investment trust that Moghadam leads, controls nearly 1bn square feet of the warehouse space around the world. Its facilities are the vital nodes of ecommerce for tenants like Amazon, Walmart and many others.

Moghadam’s is a great immigrant success story. Now 64, he moved to the US to study at the age of 16 with plans to return to his native Tehran to take over the family business — until the Iranian revolution intervened. He stuck around, and eventually started his own property business.

Covid-19 has cast clouds over other big real estate categories, like office towers and shopping malls, but it has proven a boon to ecommerce and so to warehouses.

“A whole generation of people that were not consumers of ecommerce — older people — have now seen the convenience and the magic . . . and are not going to go back,” Moghadam told the FT’s Joshua Chaffin. 

Now the question is whether he can find new properties with large markets built up, and new entrants crowding the market. 

Private equity group Blackstone, which has bought up $100bn of warehouses, is already making a big play on online retail. Jonathan Gray, its president, recently said ecommerce was the “number one theme at the firm”.

Private equity discovers patience is a virtue for European telecom bets

Plus, meet the man who can claim to be Amazon’s landlord and the end of a €9.3bn Italian toll road saga

Drahi dials up BT Group

It is no wonder that European telecoms companies have started reporting better revenue growth. The number of inbound calls from private equity companies looking for a deal has been booming. 

On Wednesday afternoon it was UK telecoms group BT that rediscovered it’s good to talk. 

Billionaire Patrick Drahi was on the blower to tell them that his telecoms acquisition vehicle Altice had built a 12.1 per cent stake in the company.

Longtime DD followers should know Altice well. They were the private equity-style magicians who promised to work over unloved European telecoms assets by swiftly cutting costs and improving operations.

It was a choppy ride as the debt, which fuelled its dealmaking, consumed its promise. Last year Drahi took Altice private and argued that shareholders were undervaluing the business he had built. 

Altice says it has no intention of making a full bid. A yawning pension deficit and a nationalistic government do make a buyout look unlikely and Deutsche Telekom, which also has a 12 per cent stake in BT that was once seen as an acquisition foothold, long gave up those ambitions. 

Time will tell if Altice has an ulterior motive but the BT move — building a minority stake in a national champion — is a change in style for Drahi. Either way, BT needs a strong chair to handle its new shareholders, writes the FT’s Helen Thomas. 

Perhaps it’s a sign of the times: for all the private equity potential in European telecoms, patience is a virtue. 

Private equity stalkers EQT/Stonepeak and KKR failed to tempt KPN, the Dutch telecoms company, into meaningful talks despite months of teasing their interest. 

KKR had more success in Spain where it was one of the funds that bought out MasMovil, but a move to get involved in a Telecom Italia network merger plan has dragged on and has now become overly complicated. 

TDC — seen as the first domino in European telecoms when it was bought by Macquarie and some pension funds in 2018 — only on Thursday said that it expected to have finally split the network and service arms of the Danish telco, a key move in creating value, by the end of the year. 

Whatever Drahi’s long-term plan, it seems that holding on the line may be the best option.

Developing a full-on runway collection is more complicated than selling red polo shirts, but the Italian carmaker thinks its fashion bet will pay off. Meanwhile, speculation swirls on a tie-up between owner Exor and Giorgio Armani.

Ferrari will stage an elaborate “fashion experience” this weekend, inviting journalists and guests to a multi-day event culminating in the carmaker’s first-ever runway show at its Maranello, Italy factory.

The move is part of a multi-year plot to upscale the brand’s offering outside its iconic sports cars. In addition to revamping its fashion line (which used to be dominated by red polyester polo shirts), the group has been discontinuing mass-market licenses like perfume and stationery, while transferring others to top-end partners like Swiss watchmaker Richard Mille.

While ready-to-wear collections are hardly a profit driver for most brands, Ferrari hopes the show will lend a halo of legitimacy to its branded products: elevating the items from the status of souvenirs for “brand admirers” to become actual expressions of the house and its ideals.

“Our brand is our most precious asset,” Nicola Boari, Ferrari’s chief brand diversification officer said. “Fashion is a great way to reach a bigger audience and make the brand relevant to people’s lifestyle. But the quality of the products has to align with our values.”

To spearhead the runway revamp, Ferrari tapped Rocco Iannone, a designer who previously worked in the menswear studio for Giorgio Armani and as creative director of Pal Zileri. His first collection — a line-up of dressy-casual leather overcoats, relaxed trousers, high heels and sporty sneakers — will be released for sale Monday online, as well as at a renovated flagship boutique in Ferrari’s historic Maranello hub (where the brand is also opening a restaurant by star chef Massimo Bottura).

Other flagships set to be renovated with the new, more luxurious store concept this year include locations in Milan, Rome and Dubai. The fashion shows are set to become annual events, with “see now, buy now” main collections followed by “drops” throughout the year.

Exor’s Fashion Moves

The move to reposition and relaunch Ferrari’s fashion business comes as its owner Exor, the investment vehicle of Italy’s billionaire Agnelli family, attempts to make in-roads in fashion on other fronts. Last December, the group acquired a majority stake in Shang Xia, the Chinese luxury start-up previously backed by Hermès. It has also purchased a 24 percent stake in shoemaker Christian Louboutin.

Those could be preambles to a bigger move: speculation that Exor and the fashion giant Armani are weighing a tie-up have swirled ever since the brand’s 84-year-old founder said he was open to taking on an Italian partner after years of fiercely maintained independence. Armani rejected a pitch by bankers to merge his company with Ferrari, Il Sole 24 reported Wednesday.

Exor has said it isn’t targeting fashion as a sector, but rather specific companies it sees as aligned with its expertise in managing brands. But the recent forays into fashion do seem like a pivot: the group’s previous investments outside of the automotive sector included the Juventus football team, The Economist magazine, and a press group that owns Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

At Ferrari, revenues from licensed products like fashion and sponsorships for its racing team made up 11 percent of its €3.5 billion ($4.26 billion) in annual sales last year. The company has said it aims to decrease the overall volume of licensed products sold (in order to protect its brand image) while targeting higher profitability in the division: “branded products” are meant to account for 10 percent of operating profit within 7 to 10 years, the company said in November 2019. Earlier this week, Ferrari named an electronics executive, Benedetto Vigna, as CEO to lead the brand under Exor chairman John Elkann as the carmaker tries to bounce back from a 9 percent drop in revenues during the pandemic last year.

From ‘Merch’ to Fashion

Ferrari’s engineers have historically drawn inspiration from the ratios and curves of the human form. In his first collection, Iannone wanted to reverse that process — taking the curves and colours of the brand’s gorgeous automobiles and making those signatures wearable on the body. The brand’s codes ended up being expressed with curved panels, vents, and bright patches that invoke the design of the cars as well as winking at the aesthetic of racing garb.

Items still feature the prancing horse logo but placed more subtly than in the past. “It’s about moving from a merchandising approach to a design one,” Iannone said.

Boari hopes that adding more refined products to the mix could help boost the line’s performance among fashion-conscious fans of its cars, who are often curious enough to walk into Ferrari’s stores but end up leaving empty-handed.

Pursuing a more elevated image for Ferrari’s apparel could also unlock marketing opportunities: Boari hopes that offering more fashionable looks will enable famous fans like Drake to rep the brand publicly in more contexts.

Of course, Ferrari will still sell logo t-shirts (starting at $130). And there’s the risk that even the most luxe items in its new collection, like $3,000 leather jackets, will still feel like “merch” compared to its automobiles, whose prices start above $200,000. Many motorheads (fans and actual buyers of Ferrari alike) may not be sensitive to the added fashion legitimacy that comes from showing ready-to-wear on the runway. And the new fashion will have to drown out lower-priced swag for its racing team (still mass-produced by Puma). Turning Ferrari’s “fashion experience” from a publicity coup into a business driver will likely be a long and winding road.

Becoming a legitimate fashion brand “won’t be simple,” according to Delphine Dion, a professor of luxury business at France’s ESSEC school. But pushing for more legitimacy — notably with a runway show — is necessary if the brand wants to avoid the “Pierre Cardin trap” of offering too many and too disparate licensed products.

“A conspicuous brand like Ferrari has to perform for a large audience,” Dion said. “But how they do it is very important.”

China Passes Law to Counter Foreign Sanctions

Beijing sets mechanisms to retaliate against Western pressure and mitigate sanctions’ impact after an expedited process without public consultation

HONG KONG—China enacted a new law aimed at countering foreign sanctions, in response to U.S. and European efforts to pressure Beijing on issues spanning human rights, trade and technology.

Senior members of China’s legislature approved the “anti-foreign-sanctions law” on Thursday, state media said, following an expedited process that skipped public consultation and involved lawmakers reviewing the bill twice instead of the usual three times.

Chinese academics and state media have described the law as a timely addition to Beijing’s legal tool kit for resisting Western coercion, by establishing mechanisms for retaliating against foreign sanctions and mitigating their impact on Chinese entities and individuals.

The law mandates the Chinese government to apply countermeasures against foreign individuals and entities deemed to be pressuring China with “discriminatory restrictions.” The countermeasures include denying and revoking visas or expulsion, seizing and freezing assets within China, blocking transactions and cooperation with Chinese individuals and entities, as well as “other necessary measures” that weren’t specified.

Under the law, which took effect Thursday, Chinese entities and individuals can file lawsuits in Chinese courts to seek compensation for harm caused by foreign sanctions.

The U.S. and other Western governments have ramped up the use of economic and political sanctions against China in the past year or so over what they say are Beijing’s unfair industrial practices, its forced-assimilation campaign targeting Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang and the suppression of civil liberties in Hong Kong, among other issues.

Observers say the rapid passage of the new law was the culmination of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s demands, issued in November, calling for speedier improvements to China’s legal framework for safeguarding its sovereignty, security and interests in dealings with foreign parties.

While the law had been months in the making, state media only disclosed the existence of a draft on Monday, saying the bill was ready for its second reading and final passage this week by the standing committee of the National People’s Congress. Senior lawmakers had reviewed the bill for the first time in April, but this reading wasn’t announced at the time.

Foreign business executives voiced concern over what they see as unusual secrecy. “European companies in China are alarmed by the lack of transparency in this process—the first reading was never announced, and there is no draft to examine,” Joerg Wuttke, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, said before the law was passed.

“Such action is not conducive to attracting foreign investment or reassuring companies that increasingly feel that they will be used as sacrificial pawns in a game of political chess,” Mr. Wuttke said.

The new law empowers Beijing to apply its retaliatory measures beyond the specific individuals and entities deemed to be pressuring China. For instance, countermeasures can be used against a targeted individual’s spouse and direct family members, as well as organizations that the individual controls or manages. Senior personnel at targeted entities can also be subjected to Chinese measures.

Under the law, any individual or entity that fails to implement or conform with China’s counter-sanction measures would face unspecified legal repercussions.

The passage of the new law follows a rash of tit-for-tat sanctions between China and Western governments over the past year or so.

The Trump and Biden administrations have imposed sanctions targeting senior Chinese officials, including members of the Communist Party’s 25-strong Politburo, vice chairpersons of the Chinese legislature’s standing committee and a number of officials involved in Hong Kong policy. The U.K., Canada, and the European Union have also announced similar measures.

Washington has also in the past applied punitive measures against Chinese companies and individuals it accuses of violating U.S. sanctions against North Korea and Iran.

Beijing has denounced such sanctions as interference in China’s internal affairs, and increasingly responded with measures of their own.

For instance, China has banned a number of Trump administration officials from doing business with or entering the country. China’s Foreign Ministry has also announced plans—without providing details—to punish some American defense contractors that participated in U.S. arms sales to the island democracy of Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory.

In January, China’s Commerce Ministry published new rules for countering what it called unjustified foreign laws and sanctions that target Chinese companies and citizens, which would, among other steps, allow Chinese businesses to sue in Chinese courts for compensation over losses that result from foreign measures.

Then in March, the National People’s Congress approved plans to improve China’s legal tool kit for countering sanctions, intervention, and “long-arm jurisdiction” from foreign countries, state media said.

Alan Howard invests in brace of digital start-ups

Hedge fund manager backs custody and trading technology group Copper.co and crypto trading app Kikitrade

Billionaire hedge fund manager Alan Howard has continued his crypto shopping spree despite the slump in digital currency prices, with new investments in two digital-asset start-ups.

Howard has put money behind Copper.co, a London-based provider of digital-asset custody and trading technology, as part of a $75m fundraising. The deal comes after the British billionaire on Thursday announced a $4m investment in Kikitrade, an Asia-based crypto trading app.

The co-founder of macro hedge fund Brevan Howard has emerged as one of the highest-profile European fund managers to throw his weight behind digital currencies like bitcoin. The volatile digital coins have gained followers among financial institutions and retail traders as prices surged this year, before giving up much of those price gains in recent weeks. 

“We’re very grateful for Alan’s backing. His early commitment to the space sets him out from other traditional players,” said Dmitry Tokarev, Copper’s chief executive. 

Howard led a $25m extension of Copper’s Series B fundraising, which secured $50m in May. Sources with knowledge of the deal said that Howard contributed at least $12.5m, with the remainder coming from existing investors. His investment in Kikitrade also came shortly after the company closed a round of fundraising.

While many asset managers have expressed concern over digital currencies’ extreme volatility, the twin deals show that Howard’s enthusiasm for crypto has not waned as the fizz has drained out of crypto markets. 

A longtime backer of digital currencies, Howard owns Elwood Asset Management, which manages his personal cryptocurrency assets and has raised funds from external investors. Howard gave up the day-to-day running of Brevan Howard in 2019, although the firm has since shifted a small portion of its funds into crypto. 

Howard joined fellow moguls including Peter Thiel and Louis Bacon in May to put $10bn behind a new cryptocurrency asset exchange, Block.one. He is also an investor in the Sweden-listed digital asset manager Coinshares, and crypto custodian Komainu, which is backed by Japan’s Nomura bank. 

Allen Ng, co-founder of Kikitrade, which raised a total of $12m, said the backing from Howard “gives us a great deal of confidence to continuously innovate and drive the mass adoption of digital assets”. 

Founded in 2018, Copper offers crypto custody and trading technology to traditional asset managers and companies looking to deal in digital assets. The start-up will work with Howard’s Elwood following the fundraising to work on “crypto trading technology and prime services serving institutional investors”, said James Stickland, Elwood chief executive.

Didi IPO prospectus sets stage for $65bn-plus listing

Chinese ride-hailing pioneer’s filings reveal financial recovery after pandemic hit

Didi Chuxing, the Chinese ride-hailing company, unveiled filings for a public share offering in the US, disclosing the financial damage of the pandemic to its business last year and the strength of its rebound — and setting the stage for one of the largest international listings of 2021.

Didi operates the dominant ride-hailing app in China and has recently expanded across the globe while also ploughing money into electric vehicles and autonomous driving research.

Private investors previously valued Didi at $65bn in a 2018 fundraising round, according to one person briefed on the matter. The company is likely to seek a higher valuation during the public offering.

Depending on investor reception, Didi’s listing could rival Korean ecommerce company Coupang’s market debut earlier this year, which was the largest US public offering for an international company since Alibaba’s in 2014.

Didi’s revenues declined by 8.5 per cent to Rmb141.7bn ($22bn) in 2020, according to filings, as the coronavirus pandemic dented its core ride-hailing business. Losses swelled to Rmb10.6bn during the same period.

Business rebounded in the first quarter of this year, however, allowing Didi to book Rmb42.2bn in revenues and net income of Rmb5.5bn. The company lost money from operations during the quarter but made a profit when including gains from investments.

The Beijing-based company said its core ride-hailing business in China has been profitable on an adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation basis since 2019.

Xiaoju Kuaizhi, Didi’s holding company, filed to offer American depositary shares on US exchanges in a listing expected next month. The public debut will be a milestone for the company, which raised billions of dollars from Japan’s SoftBank while fighting off early competition from Uber in its home market. 

SoftBank, which has invested more than $10bn in Didi, owned a 21.5 per cent stake in the company through its Vision Funds, while Chinese internet giant Tencent held a 6.8 per cent stake. 

Uber owned 12.8 per cent of the company after selling its Chinese business to Didi in 2016 in a largely stock-based deal.

Didi will enter a hot market for initial public offerings, as well as a tense geopolitical environment for large Chinese technology companies at home and in the US.

Last month, regulators summoned executives from Didi and nine other ride-hailing and freight delivery companies to issue warnings about their data and pricing practices. In filings, Didi said it faced multiple risks related to its Chinese corporate structure and governmental relations.

US electric vehicle maker suffered spate of bad publicity in one of its most important markets

Chinese bloggers claim they have been threatened with legal action by Tesla for posting negative content about the US carmaker, as it battles a wave of bad publicity in the world’s largest car market.

The electric vehicle company this month established an account on popular Chinese microblog Weibo for its legal department in China. Some users claimed the account was used to send them private messages warning of defamation lawsuits.

Public sentiment in China, one of Tesla’s biggest markets, has appeared to turn against the California-based automaker in recent months after a spate of controversies involving customer complaints about alleged vehicle malfunctions.

At least two accounts on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, have published letters in recent days apologising for videos that referenced non-existent Tesla quality issues after they claimed they received legal warnings from the car company.

By threatening to use legal means against critics, Tesla would follow an example set by Chinese technology companies including Tencent, which has sued bloggers under the country’s defamation law.

Such lawsuits often request a retraction, apology and compensation.

“Ruifeng Auto”, one of the accounts, said it would “reflect deeply” after posting a video at the end of May that suggested a new Tesla vehicle’s brakes had failed before it left the showroom. The account admitted the claims had “no factual basis”.

On Wednesday, a woman whose protest at the Shanghai Auto Show in April over an alleged brake failure helped escalate anger online towards Tesla acknowledged on Jinri Toutiao, a news aggregation app made by TikTok-owner ByteDance, that she had been “extreme” in pushing the company for compensation.

She had previously called on Tesla to hand over data from her vehicle to regulators and threatened to sue the company if it did not.

The same day, “five-thousand-year-old rabbit”, a blogger who had posted screenshots of messages he claimed were from Tesla threatening a lawsuit on Jinri Toutiao, apologised to the carmaker for causing any offence. The blogger had called Tesla a “rubbish company” and accused it of acting like a “hooligan”. 

The blogger, who also insisted he had not fabricated any Tesla-related content, added: “I also hope that everyone won’t create hostility [towards Tesla] because of quality problems and especially hope the issue will not be elevated to the level [of] discussion between China and the US.”

He told the Financial Times that the alleged warning from Tesla had caused “inconvenience to my normal work and life” but declined to speak further about the matter.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment on the activities of its Chinese legal department.

Xia Hailong, a lawyer at law firm Shanghai Shenlun, said that Tesla’s warning messages suggested that litigation was not the carmaker’s first choice. 

But if it sued, the company was very likely to win, Xia said, adding that the bloggers’ apologies indicated that they believed they had little chance of winning in court.

The US group, led by billionaire Elon Musk, has in recent months faced a publicity nightmare in China at a juncture when it is facing increasing competition from local rivals.

Chinese state media criticised Tesla for initially saying it would not negotiate with people who make unreasonable requests, claiming it was not taking customer complaints seriously following the incident at the Shanghai Auto Show. That prompted the carmaker to publicly apologise.

Tesla leads sales of high-end passenger vehicles in China’s electric car market. Its sales in the country rose 29 per cent month on month in May to 33,463 vehicles, according to data from the China Passenger Car Association.