Iranian Ships Swarmed U.S. Coast Guard Vessels in Persian Gulf, Navy Says
Revolutionary Guard Corps fast boats, twin-hulled vessel came within 70 yards in ‘unsafe and unprofessional’ maneuvers
WASHINGTON—A group of boats from Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps harassed two U.S. Coast Guard ships earlier this month in the Persian Gulf, Navy officials said, the first such incident in a year.
The incident occurred April 2, just as the U.S. and Iran announced they would conduct negotiations toward renewing the 2015 multilateral nuclear accord. Those talks began earlier this month in Vienna. The episode hasn’t been previously disclosed.
U.S. Navy officials confirmed that three fast attack crafts and one ship known as Harth 55, a 180-foot, twin-hulled support vessel, swarmed the two Coast Guard ships while they were patrolling international waters in the southern portion of the Persian Gulf.
The larger vessel repeatedly crossed in front of the bows of the two U.S. vessels, the Monomoy and the Wrangell, coming as close as 70 yards away, officials said. That forced the Wrangell to have to make defensive maneuvers to avoid collision, Navy officials said.
The American crews issued multiple warnings over a three-hour period as the Iranian ships continued to buzz them. The crew of the Harth 55 responded to the bridge-to-bridge radio queries but the ship continued the unsafe maneuvers, said Cmdr. Rebecca Rebarich, a spokeswoman for the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which oversees the region. It was unclear what the Iranian crews communicated by radio.
There was no immediate response from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s Navy.
“After approximately three hours of the U.S. issuing warnings and conducting defensive maneuvers, the IRGCN vessels maneuvered away from the U.S. ships and opened distance between them,” Cmdr. Rebarich said in a statement.
The incident on April 2 was considered “unsafe and unprofessional,” a term used by the military to describe situations in which, typically, another country’s ships or aircraft fly dangerously close. This incident was different from most other ones: In the past, only Iranian fast attack boats were used to swarm American warships, not one as large as the Harth 55.
The Iranians had routinely conducted such maneuvers using small fast boats for at least two years, then in 2018 stopped conducting such operations and U.S. officials were at a loss to explain why.
Since then, they have resumed occasional harassment. The last incident in which an Iranian boat conducted an unsafe and unprofessional maneuver against an American ship was in April 2020, Cmdr. Rebarich said.
American officials are typically unsure to what degree such incidents are directed by Tehran or are the result of rogue ship commanders working for the IRGC and taking their own initiative.
Over the weekend, a leaked tape surfaced in which Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, was heard explaining that the IRGC often sabotaged Tehran’s efforts, taking matters into their own hands over the concerns of the country’s foreign ministry or government.
Such actions “increase the risk of miscalculation and collision,” officials said, and aren’t in accordance with the rules of the internationally-recognized conventions, the rules of road for seamanship, officials said.
“U.S. naval forces continue to remain vigilant and are trained to act in a professional manner, while our commanding officers retain the inherent right to act in self-defense,” Cmdr. Rebarich said.
The Coast Guard ships are part of a Coast Guard unit that operates outside of the U.S. and are assigned to U.S. Naval Forces Central Command’s Task Force 55.
Greensill worked within UK government without contract
Simon Case, head of civil service, tells MPs he was ‘alarmed’ financier had been given advisory role
Greensill, the financier who secured a place at the heart of the British government, acquired his privileged role without any contract or explanation of his job, two senior Whitehall officials revealed on Monday.
Simon Case, head of the UK civil service, told MPs he was “alarmed” that Greensill, who led the recently collapsed finance company Greensill Capital, was handed an advisory role and a desk in the Cabinet Office.
Case was giving evidence to the Commons public administration committee alongside Darren Tierney, head of propriety and ethics for the civil service.
Tierney said the appointment of Bill Crothers, a former chief procurement officer, to a role at Greensill while still in government had been authorised by the late Jeremy Heywood, then the cabinet secretary, and John Manzoni, the former chief executive of the civil service. Heywood, who died in 2018, was also instrumental in bringing Greensill into government.
Following the Crothers’ revelation, the Cabinet Office has investigated so-called “double hatting” of civil servants working in the public and private sectors. Case said approximately a hundred officials had outside roles but no conflict of interests had been identified.
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An internal probe into Greensill’s role as an adviser in David Cameron’s administration did not explain how his conflicts of interest had been avoided, Case added. Cameron, who became an employee of the company, subsequently actively lobbied ministers in Johnson’s government on behalf of Greensill.
Case said there were scant details about why Greensill was appointed as a government adviser in 2012. The financier is known to have worked with Heywood at Morgan Stanley before Heywood was appointed cabinet secretary.
“We cannot explain how these decisions were taken or why . . . it looks like there were conflicts and we are not clear on how they were managed. From our cursory look, we can’t see the evidence.” Case added that Greensill’s appointment “doesn’t look right” or “appropriate”.
Greensill carried a business card describing himself as a “senior adviser” to the prime minister’s office. Case confirmed he was given security clearance for access to Downing Street and the Cabinet Office, but could not state what he was doing.
The evidence from Case and Tierney came amid a swirl of accusations — labelled “sleaze” by the opposition Labour party — into the conduct of successive Conservative governments, including new claims about Boris Johnson’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.
Johnson denied multiple press reports claiming he had said he would rather let “bodies pile high in their thousands” than order a third Covid-19 lockdown in England. Labour’s Rachel Reeves accused the prime minister of “corrupting standards in public life”.
Asked if he had used those words, Johnson said: “No, but again, I think the important thing, I think, [is] that people want us to get on and do as a government is to make sure that the lockdowns work, and they have.”
Sir Keir Starmer, Labour leader, said he was astonished to read accounts of the prime minister’s words. “If he did say those things he has got to explain it.”
But Michael Gove, Cabinet Office minister, told MPs he it was “incredible” to think Johnson had made those comments. “I was in that room, I never heard of language of that kind,” he said.
The explosive allegations come amid an increasingly toxic briefing war between Downing Street and Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s former chief adviser, who believes the prime minister has mishandled the Covid-19 crisis.
Cummings will give evidence to MPs next month on the pandemic and his allies have suggested he has damning evidence to support his claims about Johnson’s prevarication.
Johnson believes Cummings is responsible for a series of damaging leaks about him and his partner Carrie Symonds, who oversaw a controversial refurbishment of the Downing Street flat.
In a blog post, Cummings denied he had been responsible for leaking information of November’s coronavirus lockdown, instead pinning the blame on Henry Newman, a senior aide to the prime minister.
Case, who is investigating the leak, told MPs that the “chatty rat”, as the leaker has been dubbed, may never be found and the conclusion of his inquiry will be released in the coming weeks. He also said it had not broken national security laws.
Electric vehicle battery group raises $2bn in Korea’s biggest IPO in 4 years
SK IE Technology to use proceeds to expand manufacturing capacity in Poland and China
SK IE Technology, a unit of South Korean electric vehicle battery maker SK Innovation, raised Won2.25tn ($2bn) in the country’s biggest initial public offering in four years.
The company priced the offering at Won105,000 per share or the top of a marketed range, according to a stock exchange statement on Monday. Demand for shares outweighed the number on offer by 1,883 times as institutional investors bet on growth in the global electric vehicle market.
The IPO will be South Korea’s largest since mobile games maker Netmarble raised $2.4bn in 2017. The shares are expected to start trading on May 11.
The offering comes after SK Innovation agreed to pay $1.8bn in a settlement with LG Energy Solution in the US earlier this month over the former’s illegal acquisition of sensitive technology from the world’s largest electric vehicle battery maker.
SK IE Technology plans to use the IPO proceeds to expand its manufacturing capacity in Poland and China as demand for electric vehicle batteries rises. The company last month announced a Won1.1tn plan to build factories in Poland as it seeks to more than double its capacity by 2024.
SK Innovation, a latecomer to the electric vehicle battery market, spun off SK IE Technology in April 2019. The unit makes battery separators that improve the stability of lithium-ion batteries. It is the biggest producer of so-called wet-type separators, controlling more than a quarter of the global market, according to SNE Research. The company reported Won125bn in operating profit last year on sales of Won468bn.
South Korea is on track for a record year for IPOs this year as retail investors flock to first-time share sales with the benchmark Kospi index trading near record highs, buoyed by ultra-low interest rates. Analysts predict that proceeds from IPOs in the Asian country could more than quadruple to Won20tn in 2021.
Coupang, the South Korean ecommerce group backed by SoftBank, raised $3.5bn in its New York stock debut in March. Among those looking to go public include digital lender Kakao Bank and its payments platform Kakao Pay, which is valued at up to Won18tn. Krafton, the gaming company behind global hit PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and LG Energy Solution, which was spun off from LG Chem, are also planning to list later this year.
Sanofi to Help Make Moderna Covid-19 Vaccine for U.S.
The French drug maker intends to fill vials and finish packaging of as many as 200 million doses
Drugmaker Sanofi SA SNY -0.73% has signed an agreement to help manufacture as many as 200 million doses of Moderna Inc.’s MRNA 3.29% Covid-19 vaccine in the U.S. starting in September, Sanofi said Monday.
France-based Sanofi said it would fill vials and finish packaging for Moderna’s vaccine at Sanofi’s plant in Ridgefield, N.J. A spokesman for Sanofi said the finished doses of Moderna’s vaccine would be for the U.S. supply in an agreement that runs through April 2022.
The agreement is the latest adding manufacturing capacity to increase supply. It is also a fresh example of industry collaboration in the effort to quickly scale up global production of Covid-19 vaccines.
Novartis AG NVS 0.05% and Merck MRK -0.10% & Co. are among those that have formed agreements to help make other companies’ Covid-19 shots.
Moderna, of Cambridge, Mass., plans to deliver a cumulative total of 300 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine for use in the U.S. by the end of July, which is expected to help meet President Biden’s goal of vaccinating the majority of American adults by summer.
Pfizer Inc. PFE 0.05% with partner BioNTech SE and Johnson & Johnson JNJ 0.21% also are supplying vaccine doses to help meet that goal. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are given as two doses a few weeks apart, while J&J’s is a single shot.
Because Sanofi’s contribution isn’t due to start until September, the Moderna vaccine doses it helps make might be directed toward vaccinating children under 18 years old, assuming the vaccine becomes authorized for them, or for booster shots if they are needed to sustain immunity among adults.
It is also possible the Sanofi capacity could be used for Moderna’s modified Covid-19 vaccines that are targeting newer variants of the coronavirus. Moderna is testing one such vaccine in a clinical trial, and has said it might be able to file for regulatory authorization of the shot in the third quarter.
A spokesman for Moderna said the company can’t specify which products Sanofi will handle or in which proportions.
For the U.S. supply, Moderna manufactures the drug substance—the main component of the vaccine—at its plant outside Boston and at contract manufacturer Lonza Ltd. ’s plant in New Hampshire.
The company has previously lined up other manufacturing partners to help with fill-finish of doses, including Catalent Inc. and Baxter International Inc. BAX -0.16%
Moderna has a separate supply chain for its Covid-19 vaccine outside the U.S., including a Lonza plant in Switzerland. This supply chain has recently experienced problems that caused Moderna to reduce the doses it expects to deliver to Canada, the U.K. and a number of other countries in the second quarter.
For Sanofi, Moderna’s shot is the third Covid-19 vaccine the French company will help manufacture. It previously agreed to help make more than 125 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Europe. And it will help make about 12 million doses a month of J&J’s Covid shot in Europe.
Sanofi also is developing its own potential Covid-19 vaccines, one in collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline GSK 0.16% PLC and another with Translate Bio Inc.
Gapping down
In reaction to earnings/guidance:
- PHG -3.9%, ACI -3.4%, VST -1.1%
Other news:
- HARP -5% (provides litigation updates)
- FSM -4.5% (Fortuna Silver Mines and Roxgold agree to business combination creating a low-cost intermediate global precious metals producer)
- MBIO -2.9% (files for $200 mln mixed securities shelf offering)
Analyst comments:
- ETSY -1.9% (downgraded to Sector Weight from Overweight at KeyBanc Capital Markets)
- HCA -0.8% (downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Citigroup)
- BXMT -0.6% (downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at JP Morgan)
- PII -0.5% (downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Citigroup)
Gapping up
In reaction to earnings/guidance:
- LII +4.9%, PSO +3.1%, OTIS +2.4%, CBU +2%, CHKP +1.2%
Select airline related names showing strength:
- AAL +2.3%, DAL +2.1%, UAL +1.8%, JETS +1%, LUV +0.8%, SAVE +0.8%, .
Other news:
- QURE +12.8% (announces FDA removes clinical hold on hemophilia B gene therapy program)
- BWAY +12.1% (FDA granted 501(k) clearance for its Theta Burst three-minute protocol utilizing its proprietary Deep Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (Deep TMS) system for the treatment of major depressive disorder)
- AXSM +12% (announces FDA acceptance and priority review of new drug application for AXS-05 for treatment of major depressive disorder)
- IMNM +11.7% (SARS-CoV-2 antibody cocktail neutralizes UK, South Africa, Brazil and California variants in preclinical testing; progressing towards IND filing; also enters $27 mln private placement)
- SEAH +7.1% (Super Group to combine with Sports Entertainment Acquisition Corp to create NYSE-listed global gaming company)
- CAN +5.2% (files mixed securities shelf offering)
- FBC +4.1% (New York Community Bancorp (NYCB) to acquire FBC)
- TALO +3.5% (files for 10,655,012 share common stock offering by selling shareholders)
- IMAB +2% (announced topline results from its phase 2 study evaluating olamkicept in patients with active ulcerative colitis)
- BRKS +1.8% (to acquire Precise Automation)
Analyst comments:
- BC +1.8% (upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Citigroup)
- DFS +1.8% (upgraded to Buy from Neutral at BofA Securities)
- SPG +1.5% (upgraded to Outperform from In-line at Evercore ISI)
- PFPT +0.9% (upgraded to Buy from Hold at Summit Insights)
Early premarket gappers
- Gapping up:
- AXSM +13.2%, SEAH +12.9%, IMNM +4.9%, CAN +3.9%, STPK +3.6%, PSO +3.3%, AAL +2%, OTIS +2%, CHKP +1.6%, DAL +1.5%, UAL +1.2%, JETS +0.8%, KBR +0.8%, JNJ +0.7%, LUV +0.6%
- Gapping down:
- HARP -5%, PHG -3.3%, MBIO -2.9%, WATT -2.7%, VST -1.7%