TheChek News Flow

>>> Stoxx 600 Pre-Market Indications

Just Eat Takeaway (T5W TH) +2.6%
- Just Eat Takeaway FY Adjusted Ebitda Beats Estimates
Carnival Plc (POH1 TH) +2.2%
Varta (VAR1 TH) +1.8%
Delivery Hero (DHER TH) +1.7%
BAT (BMT TH) +1.7%
Norsk Hydro (NOH1 TH) +1.6%
- Hydro Raised to Overweight on Upside Potential at Barclays
CD Projekt (7CD TH) +1.5%
Glaxo (GS7 TH) +1.4%
- GSK Unit ViiV’s HIV Drug Shows Antiviral Activity in Proof-Of
BNP Paribas (BNP TH) -1%
Aegon (AEND TH) -1.3%
Thyssenkrupp (TKA TH) -1.4%
Kion (KGX TH) -1.5%
Nokia (NOA3 TH) -1.6%
Adidas (ADS TH) -1.6%
- Adidas Sees 2021 Gross Margin About 52%, Est. 51.5%
BP (BPE5 TH) -1.8%
- Europe Energy Shares May Slip as Oil Falls on Dollar, Stockpiles
Schneider Electric (SND TH) -1.8%
Repsol (REP TH) -2.5%
- Europe Energy Shares May Slip as Oil Falls on Dollar, Stockpiles
ABN Amro (AB2 TH) -7.1%
- Euronext Adds BE Semiconductor Industries, Signify to AEX
  - NOTE: ABN Amro dropped from AEX

FT : UAE: the VIP vaccination destination

UAE: the VIP vaccination destination

A coronavirus jab is just a private jet away

In February, Mark Machin, head of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, took a break from running the country’s largest pension fund and the blistering Ontario winter to enjoy a holiday in the United Arab Emirates.

The country provides an oceanside oasis to tourists that can prove they’re Covid-free, after all. But as it turns out, Machin arrived for more than just some rest and relaxation — he was chasing the elusive Covid-19 jab, which has hit extensive delays in his home country.

The UAE has enough supplies to vaccinate its entire population © FT montage; Getty Images

And he succeeded, though it’s unclear how Machin, a British citizen, obtained a vaccine meant only for Emirati residents. His resignation came shortly afterwards.

Machin is not alone. Earlier this year, tycoons, politicians and royalty descended upon the UAE, where well-connected friends can secure them access to the vaccine.

As of now, only senior officials and royals can secure exemptions for non-residents, insiders told the Financial Times. Locally this is referred to as “vaccine wasta”, aka using one’s clout to procure a jab.

Acquirers of such wasta include British financier Ben Goldsmith, SoftBank executives — including Vision Fund head Rajeev Misra — and Claudio Descalzi, the chief of Italian energy company Eni.

FT : Hakluyt doesn’t want to be the 007 of advisory groups any more

Hakluyt doesn’t want to be the 007 of advisory groups any more

Secrecy is practically built into Hakluyt’s DNA.

The London-based private intelligence group, founded by a band of MI6 officers, has spent the past 25 years cultivating an enigmatic air of “what exactly is it that they do?”, which seemed to be the point.

Stroll by its discreet Mayfair townhouse, and nothing appears too out of the ordinary. Except perhaps the Gurkha security guards that have been reported to linger outside.

Hakluyt is typical of a “this-tape-will-self-destruct-in-five-seconds” approach that clients “lap up”, an investigator at a rival company once told the FT’s Tom Burgis.

At 34, Chandra entered the top job as one of the few minorities at the group. “I’m brown, I didn’t go to one of those schools . . . so even me being in this role is indicative that this place doesn’t care [about candidates’ background],” he told the FT.

The group, which is 85 per cent male, doesn’t currently have any specific targets for ethnic diversity but says it aims to interview as many women as men for open roles. (Although DD has heard these efforts haven’t extended very far past the C-suite.)

Hakluyt’s ranks include ex-lawyers, ex-bankers, and even some ex-FT journalists. Former UK Treasury official Dan Rosenfield was a Hakluyt consultant before becoming Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s chief of staff last year. And, naturally, there are still a few former intelligence officials in the mix. But only seven.

Lord Paul Deighton, the former Goldman Sachs banker who headed the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games in 2012 and now chairs Hakluyt © LEE_MAWDSLEY

Under Chandra, Hakluyt has updated its single-page website to something slightly more robust, and, he says he can’t think of any clients the company should’ve been “embarrassed” to work with in the seven years that he has been there.

And things like snooping on an NGO are no longer characteristic of the new Hakluyt, for example. (In 2001 The Sunday Times reported it had used a German-born agent to spy on Greenpeace.)

And the cyber security assignments that have recently landed other private intelligence groups in hot water simply aren’t a “Hakluyt-shaped problem”, says Chandra. But what is?

Hakluyt’s international advisory board provides some clues into its enigmatic client list — counting veterans of Unilever, Coca-Cola, Rolls-Royce, Tata and UK Intelligence hub GCHQ.

And now that the advisory has opened its Silicon Valley office, there’s no doubt it is looking to shake hands in Big Tech.

FT : Is Tiger Global buying the Valley?

Is Tiger Global buying the Valley?

DD readers might not be able to pick out Tiger Global Management founder Chase Coleman from a crowd of financial titans.

But Silicon Valley insiders have certainly taken note of the $50bn group’s torrid pace of investment this year.

In January and February, the fund invested in one start-up about every two days, nearly doubling its pace of investment from the same period last year.

Coatue Management, a frequent co-investor with Tiger Global, has also upped its pace by about half.

Venture capitalists told DD’s Miles Kruppa that both companies are leading a flurry of dealmaking that has helped push already toppy Silicon Valley valuations even higher.

Download attachment-1

Investors were on track through to the end of February to plough more than $460bn into start-ups this year, according to PitchBook data. That would easily set a new high in PitchBook’s record books, though the data doesn’t go as far back as the 2000 dotcom bubble.

“There’s a tremendous amount of competition,” Arun Mathew, a partner at the venture capital group Accel, told DD. “There’s just so much capital in the market at all stages.”

One venture capitalist said that more active groups had resorted to preparing short slide decks, rather than fully-fledged investment memos, to underwrite their positions.

Investors don’t seem ready to call a bubble in venture capital, at least compared to the scepticism brewing over blank-cheque companies, which have given billion-dollar valuations to moonshot ideas that had been rejected by more traditional backers.

But it seems fair to say that, these days, the “fear of missing out” is driving venture dealmaking just as much as risk-return calculations.

FT : Apollo’s Greensill bid close to collapse

Apollo’s Greensill bid close to collapse

US private equity firm halts talks to buy parts of stricken finance company

Apollo Global Management’s plan to buy parts of stricken finance firm Greensill Capital out of administration is on the verge of collapse, according to people familiar with the matter.

The US private equity firm has halted talks to buy parts of Greensill due to an escalating stand off with a key technology provider to the once high-flying supply chain finance group, the people added.

US technology company Taulia, which provides the digital platform most of Greensill’s customers use to manage their working capital, is now looking to move its users to other providers, primarily the US bank JPMorgan, the people added.

Taulia told the Financial Times that its clients wanted “flexibility in the source of funding”.

“Following the recent, well-documented challenges faced by Greensill we have been working to ensure that our clients have continued choice over their funding sources and continuation of funding,” the company added.

Apollo and JPMorgan declined to comment. Greensill declined to comment.

Apollo was only interested in acquiring those parts of Greensill that would give it access to financing lines with large companies such as telecoms group Vodafone. The group had no interest in taking on any financing for Greensill’s largest customer, industrialist Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance, people familiar with the matter have said.

If the talks with Apollo, which this week struck a $29bn deal to merge with insurance affiliate Athene, cannot be revived, Greensill appears to have few options.

Greensill disclosed in its administration filing earlier this week that Apollo had offered $59.5m for its intellectual property and IT systems, which would have involved it taking on “the majority” of the more than 500 employees of its UK business. The US group was “the only credible bidder”, court documents said.

A failure by Apollo to strike a deal would highlight Greensill’s heavy reliance on other companies’ technology platforms, even though founder Lex Greensill frequently touted his company’s prowess in “artificial intelligence” and “machine learning”.

Taulia for years had an exclusivity agreement with Greensill, but that expired at the end of 2019. In April last year, the San Francisco-based company announced what it termed a “strategic alliance” with JPMorgan, to match up its technology platform with the bank’s funding.

High profile technology investors such as SoftBank’s $100bn Vision Fund poured money into Greensill, cementing its status as one of the world’s most valuable fintechs.

General Atlantic, known for its early backing of financial technology success stories, lauded Greensill’s technological savvy, when the US venture capital firm invested $250m into the company in 2018.

At the time, General Atlantic’s co-president Gabriel Caillaux praised Greensill’s “fully integrated technology and funding solutions”, as well the company’s “competitive advantage” in the supply chain finance market, where companies effectively borrow money to pay their suppliers.

Despite the reliance of Greensill on another company’s technology, Apollo still believed the deal was likely to proceed until recently.

The US private equity firm’s lawyer said in court on Monday that while there were a “few issues to resolve”, it’s negotiations were in the “final stages” and should have been “completed shortly”.

Bloomberg first reported that Apollo’s talks with Greensill could collapse.

>>> TradeGate Pre-Market Indications

DAX:

Deutsche Telekom (DTE TH) +0.8%
- Deutsche Telekom Raised to Buy at Citi; PT 18.50 euros
Infineon (IFX TH) +0.7%
Adidas (ADS TH) -1.2%
- Adidas Sees 2021 Gross Margin About 52%, Est. 51.5%

MDAX:

Shop Apotheke (SAE TH) +3.1%
Varta (VAR1 TH) +1.6%
Fraport (FRA TH) +0.9%
Freenet (FNTN TH) +0.8%
Brenntag SE (BNR TH) +0.7%
- Brenntag SE 2021 Oper Ebitda Forecast Beats Estimates
K+S (SDF TH) -0.9%

SDAX:

Home24 (H24 TH) +5.3%
VERBIO Vereinigte (VBK TH) +3.8%
Global Fashion Group (GFG TH) +3.5%
Borussia Dortmund (BVB TH) +3.3%
Kloeckner (KCO TH) +2.5%
- Kloeckner FY Adjusted Ebitda EU111M Vs. EU124M Y/y

WSJ : Texas Governor, State Senate Call for Reversal of $16 Billion Power Overch

Texas Governor, State Senate Call for Reversal of $16 Billion Power Overcharges

Gov. Greg Abbott asked the state legislature to consider as an emergency item correcting the overcharges, while the state’s senate urged the Texas utility commission to take action

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and most of the state senate raised political pressure Tuesday evening in a push to reverse $16 billion in power overcharges from last month’s blackouts.

Mr. Abbott directed state lawmakers to consider as an emergency item whether to correct all overcharges identified by an independent market monitor. The Texas Senate meanwhile sent a letter to the Public Utility Commission of Texas, urging it to correct the error.

The moves heighten the pressure on the utility commission, which said last week that it wasn’t inclined to reverse the potential overcharges and reprice electricity sold at sky-high prices during a severe winter storm that swept the state.

Amid the freeze, the three-member commission, appointed by Mr. Abbott, ordered the state’s grid operator to raise wholesale power prices to the peak price of $9,000 per megawatt hour. The independent market monitor, who reports to the utility commission, said in a report last week that Texas kept wholesale prices artificially high for more than 30 hours longer than necessary, creating at least $16 billion in overcharges.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid, and the utility commission didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The utility commission currently has only one sitting member, Arthur C. D’Andrea. Former commissioner Shelly Botkin resigned Monday. Former chairwoman DeAnn Walker stepped down earlier this month after state lawmakers called for her ouster.

A number of lawmakers have expressed support for attempting to claw back the $16 billion. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on Monday called on Ercot to reverse the charges.

On Tuesday night, 28 Texas senators, including Republicans and Democrats, signed a letter to the utility commission urging it to correct the charges.

“These corrections are squarely within your authority, whether by your own action or an order to ERCOT,” the letter read.

Sen. John Whitmire, a Democrat from Houston, said he considered the commission’s decision last week to be a mistake, and that it could bring in experts to help unwind the overcharges.

“The PUC needs to get to the bottom of it,” he said.

Download Texas_Governor__State_Senate_Call_for_Reversal_of__16_Billion_Power_Overcharges_-_WSJ.pdf