FT : Lakshmi Mittal’s energy venture bought Russian oil transported on blacklist

Lakshmi Mittal’s energy venture bought Russian oil transported on blacklisted ships
Indian refinery received at least four crude shipments this year worth almost $280mn on sanctions-listed vessels

Steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal’s energy joint venture in India has bought Russian oil transported on sanctions-listed vessels, according to an analysis of satellite imagery, shipping data and customs records by the Financial Times.

The Guru Gobind Singh Refinery in Punjab, a major oil refinery co-owned by the long-term UK resident’s Mittal Energy, received at least four crude shipments worth almost $280mn this year which had been transported most of the way from Russia on sanctions-listed ships.

The oil was transported on the US-blacklisted vessels between July and September from the Arctic port of Murmansk to as far as the Gulf of Oman. The final leg of the journey into India was undertaken on the Samadha, a tanker that is not on US sanctions lists, though it was blacklisted by the EU.

All of the ships involved in the process sought to conceal their behaviour with a combination of deceptive practices, either shutting off their transponders or using them to broadcast false positions.

It is not known who arranged for the oil to be transported on the sanctioned tankers, nor if HPCL-Mittal Energy Limited (HMEL) — the entity that owns the refinery — was aware of the use of the vessels.

Emily Kilcrease, a director at the Centre for a New American Security and a former US trade and security official, said: “If I were advising the buyer, I would want to make sure that you had enough visibility in the full transport chain to make sure that you’re not one hop or two hops from a sanctioned activity.”


Best known as the executive chair of ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest integrated steel and mining group, Mittal has built a globe-spanning business empire. The billionaire, who has sat on the board of Goldman Sachs since 2008, told associates earlier this year that he intends to leave the UK over changes to its taxation rules.

The revelations about the shipments come as the US is seeking to raise the pressure on Indian companies not to buy Russian oil. Washington last week imposed sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, Moscow’s two leading oil producers, in an effort to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to engage in negotiations with Ukraine.

HMEL is a joint venture between part of the Mittal group and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, an Indian state company, with each holding a 49 per cent stake. The remaining 2 per cent is in the hands of financial institutions, according to the company.

HMEL and Mittal did not respond to requests for comment.

Before last week’s US sanctions, western allies of Ukraine had already imposed a price cap aimed at limiting the profits Russia was able to reap from the trade. Oil tankers that did not comply or used various deceptive shipping practices have also been sanctioned by the EU, UK and US.

India has become one of the biggest importers of Russian crude after Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, profiting from discounted prices as western buyers turned away.

Russia has exported an average of 5mn barrels a day of seaborne crude this year, with 1.7mn b/d of the total being purchased by India, according to data analytics group Kpler. The next largest share headed to China.

Kilcrease said: “The major consumers of this oil really want [it]. They’ve been willing to take a certain amount of risk of coming into the US Treasury’s sights.”

The four deliveries identified by the FT all followed a similar pattern, with the Samadha repeatedly heading in and out of the port of Mundra in Gujarat, western India, to pick up the oil brought to the area on the sanctioned ships.

According to its transponder signals, the Samadha was simply travelling back and forth from Oman, where it would moor and load. After a pause, it would then broadcast that it was sailing back to India.

The vessel, however, was often not where it claimed to be. Satellite images analysed by the FT throughout this period and compared with transponder data show that, once the Samadha left port, it often sent a falsified position that disguised its true location.

While it claimed to be on these shuttle runs to Oman, the Samadha was actually meeting the other ships further offshore. Each of the four journeys included a meeting with another ship caught on satellite images.

Each image shows a large, grey vessel, consistent with the Samadha, at anchor in the Gulf of Oman, lined up side-by-side with another tanker. This position suggests a ship-to-ship transfer of goods.

The vessels appear to be the Belgorod, Danshui, Dignity and Primorye — all of which had been added earlier to sanctions lists by the US. The images of the vessels match other images of these ships obtained by the FT.

TankerTrackers, a maritime intelligence company, confirmed the identity of the ships during their monitoring of the Gulf of Oman — an area that they usually surveil for ship-to-ship transfers involving Iranian oil.

In each case, the sanctions-listed ships sailing from Murmansk went “dark” as they approached the Gulf of Oman, switching off their transponders for between three and six days, the exact window during which each photographed transfer took place. They turned them back on again shortly after.

The dates of the Samadha’s journeys also match customs records filings, seen by the FT, made by refinery owner HMEL to Indian authorities for purchases from Varda LLC, a St Petersburg oil supplier. Three of the forms explicitly name the Samadha as the carrier.

The filings also report that the four shipments had a total value of $277mn.

The records also indicate that all of the shipments were for two grades of Arctic oil — Novy Port and Arco. In January, the US targeted Russia’s Arctic oil business with sanctions, announcing curbs on tankers and other infrastructure affecting Arco and other grades.

Guru Gobind Singh refinery, located in the Bathinda area of Punjab, is the 10th largest in India, able to process 11.3mn tonnes a year. At Mundra, the crude shipments were deposited into a 1,000km-long pipeline to the inland refinery.

The FT was unable to contact the Samadha’s registered owner and manager, Erika Freight Limited, a company about which almost nothing is known beyond its relationship with the vessel.

The Samadha has since been placed under sanctions by the UK. Its owner shares a registered address in the Seychelles with 13 other so-called shadow fleet vessels — ships against whom it is difficult to enforce sanctions because their ownership is opaque.

The FT was not able to reach Varda LLC in St Petersburg, which does not have any online presence and does not list any contact details in Russian corporate records.

>>> US After Hours Summary: TER +21.8%, BE +19.1%, NBR +10.6%, ZWS +5.8%, STX +4

After Hours Summary: TER +21.8%, BE +19.1%, NBR +10.6%, ZWS +5.8%, STX +4.3% higher on earnings; LRN -37.6%, VRNS -32.1%, ENPH -9.6%, MOD -8.8% lower on earnings

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: TER +21.8% (also names new CFO), BE +19.1%, BBNX +14.9%, NBR +10.6%, ZWS +5.8% (also increases dividend, increases share repurchase authorization to $500 mln), HRZN +4.8%, CGAU +4.5%, STX +4.3%, FLS +4.2% (also to divest BW/IP - New Mexico), ORN +4.2%, KIDS +4.1% (also FDA approves its 3P Pediatric Plating Platform Small-Mini System), MSA +3.9%, LOGI +3.8%, ST +3.8%, BKNG +3.5%, RNR +3.5%, EXE +3.3%, MIR +3.3%, NGD +3.1%, AMRZ +2.1%, WPC +1.3%, AROC +1.3% (also increases share repurchase authorization by $100 mln), APAM +1%, EIX +1%, AUR +1%, RRC +0.9%, FER +0.8%, OKE +0.7%, V +0.6% (also increases dividend), RCUS +0.6%, VLTO +0.4%, FYBR +0.3%, KAI +0.3%, EQR +0.2%, FCPT +0.2%, HIW +0.1%, NTB +0.1%

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: ZEUS +13.9% (RYI and ZEUS to merge; also reports earnings), JOBY +7.4% (collaboration with NVIDIA), RGTI +3.7% (supporting NVIDIA NVQLink), TTRX +3% (supply and license agreement with Medline), BFST +3% (authorizes new $30 mln share repurchase program), TCMD +1.6% (study demonstrates benefits of Flexitouch Plus), AISP +1.6% (stock offering by selling shareholder), OII +1.4% (wins contract by bp Exploration), EL +0.9% (EL and SHOP form partnership), CE +0.8% (ESI to acquire Micromax from Celanese for $500 mln), COHR +0.6% (launches next generation optical fiber), MORN +0.3% (new regional hub in Australia), OSUR +0.3% (names new Chair of the Board), MPTI +0.2% (forms sales and manufacturing partnership with Indiana Microelectronics), MFIN +0.1% (names new CEO)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: LRN -37.6%, VRNS -32.1% (also authorizes new $150 mln share repurchase program), TYGO -11.9%, GIC -11.8%, ENPH -9.6%, MOD -8.8%, MTH -7.4%, GBX -7.2%, CZR -6.2%, MDLZ -5.6%, TX -5.2%, UCTT -4.9%, NBIX -4.3%, CSGP -4.1%, RRR -2.9% (also authorizes new $300 mln share repurchase program), BTSG -2.9%, CAKE -2.8%, CWH -2.6%, CHE -2.5%, ESI -1.5% (also to acquire Micromax from Celanese for $500 mln), LSTR -1.1%, PPG -0.8%, EXLS -0.3%, AKR -0.1%, EA -0.1%, IVT -0.1%

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: AKBA -22% (provides update on Vafseo for non-dialysis patients), RYI -2.2% (RYI and ZEUS to merge; also reports earnings), KLIC -1.4% (CEO to retire), ARMN -1.3% (positive pea results for the TOROPARU Gold project), BRX -1.2% (files mixed securities shelf offering), LFUS -1% (to acquire Basler Electric), PPTA -0.9% ($70 mln stock offering), DKL -0.3% (increases dividend), PSKY -0.3% (10-year lease agreement), AAPL -0.2% (planning display upgrades across MacBook Air, iPad Air, and iPad mini lines, according to Bloomberg), SHOP -0.2% (EL and SHOP form partnership), HRL -0.1% (partnership with Forward Consumer), UNF -0.1% (increases dividend)

>>> NVIDIA and Oracle to Build US Department of Energy’s Largest AI Supercompute

NVIDIA and Oracle to Build US Department of Energy’s Largest AI Supercomputer for Scientific DiscoveryBold US Investment of 100,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs Kickstarts Era of Agentic AI-Powered Science at Argonne National Laboratory for Public Researchers

- NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang and U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announce a landmark collaboration with Oracle to build the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s largest AI supercomputer to boost scientific discovery.
- Solstice system will feature a record-breaking 100,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs to accelerate the DOE’s mission of driving technological leadership across U.S. security, science and energy applications, plus an Equinox system to feature 10,000 Blackwell GPUs.
- The new DOE systems at Argonne National Laboratory will revolutionize scientific discovery and dramatically accelerate productivity for research and development in America.
- Announced a landmark collaboration with Oracle to build the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s largest AI supercomputer to dramatically accelerate scientific discovery.
- The Solstice system will feature a record-breaking 100,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs and support the DOE’s mission of developing AI capabilities to drive technological leadership across U.S. security, science and energy applications. Another system, Equinox, will include 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs and is expected to be available in the first half of 2026. Both systems will be interconnected by NVIDIA networking and deliver a combined 2,200 exaflops of AI performance.
- The Solstice and Equinox supercomputers will be located at Argonne National Laboratory. They will enable scientists and researchers to develop and train new frontier models and AI reasoning models for open science using the NVIDIA Megatron-Core library and scale them using the NVIDIA TensorRT™ inference software stack. These models will form the backbone of agentic AI workflows for scientific discovery.
- Both AI supercomputers will support NVIDIA, Argonne and the DOE’s research collaborations to develop agentic scientists, boosting R&D productivity and accelerating discovery enabled by public research dollars within a decade. Solstice will be built with the DOE’s new public-private partnership model, including industry investments and use cases. This reflects the Trump Administration’s commitment to securing America’s leadership in AI and science.
- The AI supercomputers will serve as the foundation for a larger-scale collaboration across science, energy and national security to deploy next-generation infrastructure and further secure U.S. leadership in AI for decades to come.

WSJ : How Are Companies Using AI? A New Survey Has Answers

How Are Companies Using AI? A New Survey Has Answers
The short answer: a lot. And at least the top executives say it is paying off.

  • Eighty-two percent of executives use generative AI weekly, with 46% using it daily, a significant increase from 37% in 2023.
  • Seventy-two percent of executives measure ROI from generative AI, and three-quarters report positive returns.
  • Forty-nine percent of leaders expect to hire more interns and 40% more entry-level positions due to generative AI.

It’s one of the fundamental questions about generative AI: Can companies put it to good use? One answer comes from a new survey by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, which found that business leaders went all in on generative AI in the past year, and they say it is paying off.

If there was any doubt about corporate leaders’ comfort with AI, the report indicates that doubt is no longer a factor; 82% of the executives say they personally use generative AI once a week, and 46% now use it daily. In 2023, the first year of the survey, fewer than 37% said they used it once a week.

The annual survey, conducted this summer by Wharton and marketing consulting firm GBK Collective, covers 800 business leaders at companies with more than 1,000 employees and $50 million in revenue.

The survey also finds 72% of executives say their companies formally measure their return on investment from generative AI, and roughly 3 in 4 say they see positive returns.

The report also provides an optimistic signal that generative AI may not wipe out the entry-level job. Senior leaders expect generative AI to have its biggest impact on interns and entry-level workers, but substantially more senior leaders expect AI to create more hiring at these levels. For instance, 17% say they expect to hire fewer interns, but 49% expect to hire more interns; 18% expect fewer hires for entry-level or junior positions, while 40% expect more.

That said, senior leaders are at times more enthusiastic about generative AI than the middle managers below them. Almost half of the top leaders—those with titles of “vice president” or higher—say they are seeing significantly positive ROI, while only 27% of middle managers do; middle managers are twice as likely to say it is too early to tell. Senior leaders are also twice as likely as middle managers to believe their own organizations are adopting generative AI much faster than other organizations.

To dive more deeply into what the survey found—and what it means—we talked to Stefano Puntoni, a Wharton professor of marketing who co-authored the report along with Jeremy Korst, partner at GBK Collective, and Prasanna Tambe, a professor of operations, information and decisions at Wharton. Here are edited excerpts of the conversation:

An enthusiasm gap
WSJ: Why do senior leaders seem more enthusiastic about implementing AI than middle managers?

STEFANO PUNTONI: Leaders probably have the bigger overview of what is going on in the organization. On the other hand, people who are a little bit below that level, they might feel a bit squished between bottom-up and top-down pressure. They might feel more threatened by the technology than the VP level. The VP, on the other hand, may be overoptimistic, because they are the ones making these decisions about big deployment, and therefore they might try very hard to see the positive.

WSJ: Could it also be that sometimes the senior leaders are more about the vision but it’s up to the lower-level managers to carry out the mission?

PUNTONI: It could be that the people who are at the top tend to be thinking about longer term. They may report a greater level of optimism because they’re projecting two, three, five years out. People who are a bit further down, they have more of a concrete mindset about the thing they need to do next week.

There is also probably the pressure of people who’ve been tasked with implementing a technology feeling like this is actually more creating friction for me right now than giving me benefits. This might make it better later on, but right now, it’s just more work.

WSJ: So much of the conversation around AI revolves around whether it will replace jobs or enhance existing jobs. What was the prevailing sentiment on that in your study?

PUNTONI: We tapped into that kind of question in a bunch of different sections of the report. One question was, to what extent do you believe that this technology is going to complement employee skills or replace employee skills? What we saw in 2023, people reported very high levels of both beliefs about replacement and enhancement. By 2024, we saw that shifting to significantly more people endorsed beliefs about human enhancement. This year we see no change: About 90% believe AI will complement employee skills.

A surprising jobs picture
WSJ: What about the concerns that AI will eliminate the need for lots of entry-level jobs?

PUNTONI: Senior people tell us that Gen AI will have more of a net-positive impact on junior positions than on senior people [helping them do their jobs better or create new jobs]. So it seems, looking at our data, like the picture for entry-level positions might not be that bad. That surprised me.

WSJ: Why were you surprised by that?

PUNTONI: The conversations in the media about entry-level positions have been very negative. My son is in high school, and last week, he had a bit of existential anxiety about his job prospects. He was saying, why should I study for the test? I’m never going to get a job anyway. I was trying to explain to him that I don’t think that there will be no opportunities for junior people. It’s just that these opportunities are going to change. So what you need to be able to show an organization is that you can work with this technology. I think he feels better now.

WSJ: How much of leaders’ enthusiasm for, and investments in, AI is looking over your shoulder at competitors and FOMO?

PUNTONI: There is some of that. There is a sense that for some companies, they’re adopting AI faster with a lack of vision or strategy.

One issue that I have with a lot of the conversations in business about generative AI is that we’ve been focusing so much on productivity. And when you talk about productivity, it’s almost like a code word for cost-cutting.

Companies ought to be as efficient as possible. But I think in the long run, even in the medium run, actually, this technology is only going to give results where we are imagining new things to do. I’m a marketing professor, and I get excited about productivity, but I get more excited about what kind of new customer experiences we can create. What kind of new products and services can we generate? What kind of better, stronger customer relationships can we forge using this technology? To me, that is the kind of thing that, in the end, is going to lead to sustained growth, rather than simply throwing money at AI because everyone else is doing it and they don’t want to get left behind.

WSJ: What did you learn about general usage?

PUNTONI: We switched to tracking daily use from weekly use because basically so many people are using it. A large amount of people are building comfort, familiarity and certainly a degree of expertise. This technology is permeating a workplace to a very high degree.

The top-rated use cases tend to be general productivity tools, like data analysis, meeting summation and writing. That’s the bread and butter of knowledge work. The fact that those are the top three tells you this is not a technology that is going to have a narrow impact on a particular function of a particular industry, but it’s going to have a wide impact across the economy.

The Information : The Creative Dealmaking Behind Meta’s $30 Billion Data Center

The Creative Dealmaking Behind Meta’s $30 Billion Data Center Financing
The company satisfied regulators, accountants and investors in its quest to raise billions but keep its financials unscathed.

The Takeaway
  • Meta secured $30 billion for its Hyperion AI data center.
  • Special purpose vehicle keeps $30 billion debt off Meta’s balance sheet.
  • Complex financing structure gained approval from SEC and rating agencies.

It took a year and some financial acrobatics, but Meta Platforms and a small army of bankers and lawyers were able to secure funding for a $27 billion data center project without doing any immediate damage to the company’s finances. A private letter from the Securities and Exchange Commission helped seal the deal.

How Meta and Morgan Stanley pulled off the fundraising, and whether other companies racing for dominance in artificial intelligence will be able to match their feat, will potentially shape one of the biggest investment booms in history. Meta’s deal is one of several expected in the coming months to raise tens of billions of dollars for giant data center projects.

Investors this month snapped up the bonds used to fund Meta’s massive Louisiana data center project, Hyperion, which is a big part of the company’s AI ambitions. Bond giant Pimco and BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, were among the buyers of the $27.3 billion debt offering, issued by an entity called Beignet Investor. Investment firm Blue Owl is putting up $2.5 billion in equity.

To make the deal work, Meta placed the Hyperion project into a special purpose vehicle. Blue Owl will own an 80% stake in the SPV and control its board, allowing Meta to keep the debt off its balance sheet. Meta further limited the financial impact by breaking up its leases into four-year chunks so rating agencies wouldn’t consider them debt.

To get the deal done the way it wanted, Meta walked a tightrope through accounting rules, bond rating agencies and financial regulators. Its goal was to limit its long-term liabilities, a key measure of a company’s financial health, said analysts and people with knowledge of the process. Meta obtained a letter from the SEC effectively approving its proposed accounting treatment for the project, the people said.

A Meta spokesperson declined to comment. The company previously said the deal “was designed to support the speed and flexibility required for Meta’s data center projects and long-term AI ambitions.” An SEC spokesperson said the agency was unable to respond to many press inquiries during the government shutdown.

Meta also reached out to credit rating agencies Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s to ensure the deal wouldn’t harm its strong investment grade rating, one of the people said. Both agencies said last week the transaction shouldn’t have any immediate impact on Meta’s credit rating, though both also highlighted risks with the deal.

The result is that Meta will get to develop its biggest-ever data center project without taking on any debt, while also freeing up cash as CEO Mark Zuckerberg embarks on an expensive bid to become a major player in AI. Meta has dramatically ramped up its capital expenditures on data centers, spending as much as $72 billion this year and about $100 billion in 2026, according to analysts. It has historically funded the spending with cash but is now turning to outside investors while trying to maintain its strong balance sheet.

To give Meta further flexibility, the deal will give it the option to walk away from the project sooner than it would under similar data center leasing agreements, providing an exit route if it no longer needs the facilities.

“As long as the capital markets are willing to do this, why not?” said Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson.

Bankers were closely watching the Meta deal as a test of whether traditional bond investors would embrace an unconventional structure for funding massive data centers. Elon Musk’s xAI is using a similar arrangement to fund the chips going into its Colossus 2 data center, through a deal arranged by investment firm Valor Equity Partners.

Meta shareholders are expecting to learn more about the exact financial impact of the Hyperion deal when the company reports earnings Wednesday. It cut about 600 employees from its AI organization last week, a further sign it’s trying to balance the costs of competing to build powerful AI.

Zuckerberg in July said Hyperion could eventually use up to 5 gigawatts of power after its completion four years from now, making it one of the largest data center projects on record. Meta expects the project to cost $27 billion to construct.

Meta’s partner in the project, Blue Owl, brought big debt investors on board by offering a rich yield for a relatively low-risk bond.

The bonds for the Hyperion data center priced with a coupon of almost 6.6%, roughly a percentage point higher than Meta’s outstanding corporate bonds and in line with the average junk bond. That’s a higher yield than investors would expect given that S&P rated the Hyperion bonds A+, safely within the investment-grade spectrum.

That made the bonds attractive to risk-averse investors such as insurance companies that usually stick to investment-grade bonds. Investors bid up the price of the bonds following the offering, pushing down their yield.

Pimco purchased about $18 billion of the bonds, and BlackRock also made a multibillion-dollar purchase, said people familiar with the offering. Another large chunk went to funds managing money for insurers, said one person with knowledge of the deal.


The bonds come due in 2049, a relatively long maturity for corporate debt. That made them even more attractive to buyers such as insurance companies and pension funds that need to fund long-term liabilities.

Before it approached investors, Meta spent months working with Morgan Stanley bankers to devise a financial structure that would allow it to quickly build the massive campus without harming its financial strength. Meta hired Latham & Watkins to advise on issues ranging from corporate finance to energy regulation, tapping 14 partners in total, according to the law firm.

Though SPVs aren’t a new invention, Meta is the first tech giant to use the financial structure to fund AI data centers for its own use. Companies including Google and Microsoft have turned to other methods for offloading the costs of the AI data center buildout, such as working with upstart cloud and data center providers and having them raise funding.

Meta also appeared to find a way around accounting rules that would normally treat its lease as a long-term liability, similar to debt. Instead of signing a 20-year lease for the data centers, Meta agreed to a series of renewable four-year leases at the 11 individual buildings. That could allow the company to treat them as operating leases instead of financial leases, which must be reported as long-term liabilities.

The company is promising a payout to investors, known as a residual value guarantee, if it decides to walk away from the campus before 2049. That potential payment won’t immediately count against Meta’s debt levels, according to S&P.

“At the end of the day, they were willing to pay up for the flexibility to walk away from this,” said Naveen Sarma, managing director at S&P.

FT : Iran takes over major private bank to prevent collapse

Iran takes over major private bank to prevent collapse
State-owned lender absorbs Ayandeh Bank, owned by one of country’s richest families

Iran has mounted one of the largest interventions in the country’s financial system in decades after taking over a major privately owned lender that had been pushed to the brink of collapse by years of spiralling debt and alleged mismanagement.

The central bank has reassured the 7.6mn depositors with Ayandeh Bank that their funds remain safe, seeking to calm a financial system already under severe strain. Ayandeh has been folded into state-owned Bank Melli Iran (BMI), whose white banners now cover its branches.

Founded in 2012 by one of Iran’s richest families, Ayandeh offered the highest interest rates on the market. The rates attracted vast deposits that it could service only by borrowing heavily from the central bank, which printed money to prevent the collapse of an institution deemed too big to fail, analysts say.

The central bank’s approach stoked Iran’s chronic inflation and ultimately failed to keep Ayandeh afloat, analysts say. It took over Ayandeh using a mechanism designed to manage a bank failure without disrupting the wider financial system.

Ayandeh owed the central bank an estimated 5,000tn rials ($4.6bn), while customers have missed payments on more than 97 per cent of Ayandeh’s total loans, according to the semi-official Tasnim News Agency.

The central bank, BMI and Ayandeh did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

BMI is taking on Ayandeh’s liquid assets and liabilities. Ayandeh’s deposits were worth 2,500tn rials ($2.3bn) and its registered capital was only 16tn rials ($14.8mn). BMI has pledged to keep employees in their jobs and pay depositors’ existing interest rates until their contracts mature.

“The central bank’s intervention is a good move in principle,” said a Tehran-based banking analyst, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss the sensitive issue. But the analyst said balance sheet issues and mismanagement were a major concern elsewhere in the sector.

Ayandeh and its founders, the influential Ansari family, have long been accused by politicians and analysts of channelling depositors’ money into speculative ventures and affiliated companies. Between 40 and 44 per cent of Ayandeh’s loans went to the bank’s own subsidiaries, according to Tasnim.

Ayandeh founder Ali Ansari disputed the allegations on Friday, saying “the truth will eventually come out” but that he did not want to raise any “hue and cry” at present. He insisted that the bank had “shone” but was impeded by outside actors, saying Ayandeh was “a symbol of smart efforts manifested in huge projects”.

The bank’s largest project was the construction of Iran Mall in Tehran, one of the Middle East’s biggest shopping complexes.

Its non-performing loans, according to the central bank, amount to at least 1,400tn rials ($1.3bn). Analysts say many of these loans were issued either without collateral or against overvalued assets.

Iran’s financial sector has long had low capital requirements and light regulation, which analysts say have led to banks holding bad debts and balance sheet mismatches. Iran’s isolation from the global banking network under US sanctions has compounded the problem.

Both hardline and reformist politicians had been lobbying for Ayandeh’s closure for years, arguing that the central bank’s support for the bank was fanning inflation and weakening the rial. 

In a bid to stay alive, Ayandeh’s board changed its management team on October 18 and offered the central bank a 2,000tn rial ($1.8bn) capital increase.

The next day, President Masoud Pezeshkian met Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei and parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who rejected proposals to recapitalise or restructure the bank, according to Iranian bankers.

Mohseni-Ejei then publicly warned last Tuesday that the judiciary would intervene if the central bank failed to act. On Thursday, central bank governor Mohammad-Reza Farzin announced the takeover.

“The announcement came as a shock,” said one of the newly-hired managers at Ayandeh. “We all expected our capital increase offer to be accepted by the central bank.”

Ayandeh’s non-liquid assets, including large real estate holdings, have been handed to a government body that insures bank deposits, to be sold over the next two to three years. The proceeds will be used to settle Ayandeh’s debts with the central bank and other creditors.

The central bank has previously intervened in similar cases. State-owned Bank Sepah, which was compelled several years ago to absorb three failing banks, is still struggling with their debt, analysts say. 

Authorities insist this time will be different, as the economy contracts and a public wearied by eight years of average inflation at 40 per cent bristles at paying another private company’s debts.

Farshad Mohammadpour, the central bank’s deputy for supervision, explained to local media that “our red line is that not even a single rial of Bank Ayandeh’s financial imbalance will be transferred to BMI”. He acknowledged it would be a challenge to repay Ayandeh’s liabilities: “If selling assets like Iran Mall were easy, the bank would not have reached this point.”

The bank’s depositors are nervous. “We put all our savings in Ayandeh because of its higher interest rates,” said Shirin, a 55-year-old in Tehran who earned 28 to 30 per cent annually, compared with the 23 to 26 per cent offered by other banks. “They tell us our money is safe, but we’ll see when our contract ends in five months.”

FT : Silicon Valley chip start-up raises $100mn to take on TSMC and ASML

Silicon Valley chip start-up raises $100mn to take on TSMC and ASML
Substrate plans to use particle accelerators to lower cost of chip manufacturing

Silicon Valley investors, including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, have invested more than $100mn in a secretive US start-up with an ambitious plan to challenge the dominance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and ASML in cutting-edge chipmaking.

San Francisco-based Substrate, founded in 2022 by James Proud and his younger brother Oliver, plans to use particle accelerators to make chips much more cheaply than today’s state-of-the-art equipment. The pair has no previous experience in semiconductor manufacturing.

The start-up has attracted funding from big-name investors including Founders Fund, General Catalyst and Valor Equity Partners, despite the huge logistical and financial challenges Substrate faces to succeed in one of the most technically complex industries in the world.

Its fundraising of more than $100mn, completed last year but not previously disclosed, valued the company at more than $1bn, Substrate said.

Proud told the Financial Times he wanted to boost homegrown US chip manufacturing capabilities at a time when American tech groups, including Apple and Nvidia, had become overwhelmingly reliant on foreign companies for cutting-edge semiconductor production.

Proud said he planned to build alternatives to Netherlands-based ASML’s advanced lithography machines, needed to etch minuscule transistors on to silicon wafers, and TSMC’s giant fabrication plants — ambitions that he said would cost “many billions” of dollars to fulfil.

He added that his previous lack of semiconductor experience was “definitely a positive, because if I had, I would have thought this is impossible”.

Semiconductor foundries cost tens of billions of dollars to build, with ASML’s most advanced machines costing hundreds of millions each. Proud claims his approach can reduce the cost of producing a leading-edge wafer from a projected $100,000 to “closer to $10,000” by the end of this decade. He hopes to have production up and running by 2028.

Proud, who was born in London but is now an American citizen, said he was driven by a desire to help the US beat China in the race for global technological dominance.

“The company itself is very ideological,” Proud said. “The US needs to have advanced semiconductor production and we need to do it at high volume.”

Proud said “foreign monopolies” holding “the two main choke points” on chip production was a “glaringly scary dependence”. Substrate is aiming to produce chips “with a cost structure that enables [the US] to compete against China”, he added.

Substrate’s emergence from three years developing its technology in secret comes as the US government is working to secure the future of struggling chipmaker Intel, including taking a stake in the Silicon Valley group, and China threatening to throttle exports of the rare earth minerals that are vital to the global tech supply chain.

“These are points in history that are really important to get right,” said Trae Stephens, a Founders Fund partner who led the firm’s investment in Substrate. “There’s a lot of pressure right now for the [US] government to figure out how to ensure that we have a semiconductor supply chain that is reliable and resilient . . . That is the moment that James is capturing right now.”

Substrate’s technology involves using particle accelerators as the light source for an X-ray based lithography system, using even shorter wavelengths of light than ASML’s latest “extreme ultraviolet” machines to imprint circuits on to silicon.

The system, which Substrate has demonstrated at US National Laboratories, has created complex patterns on a wafer at a resolution Proud claims is comparable to ASML’s latest “High NA” EUV tools. That would make it suitable for producing chips at the 2nm process node, he said, which is the semiconductor industry’s current state-of-the-art technology. Substrate also plans to use existing chipmaking tools.

Proud said building a “much more vertically integrated” foundry would require raising “many billions — at some point tens, maybe even hundreds of billions of dollars” — as the business scales to multiple facilities.

“The ambition to go and build the fabs themselves is huge and will require a lot of capital,” Stephens said, requiring a mix of strategic investment, debt and government funding. “This will be an all-hands-on-deck moment.”

Proud moved to Silicon Valley aged 19 after becoming an early recipient of Thiel’s $100,000 fellowship, which pays youngsters to become entrepreneurs instead of going to college. The best known of Proud’s previous ventures, health tech start-up Hello, raised $40mn in 2015 but shut down two years later.

Stephens said Proud had assembled an “incredibly impressive” team at Substrate, including scientists and engineers from US National Laboratories, TSMC, Applied Materials, AMD, Google and Qualcomm.

“[Substrate] is obviously a much bigger bite of the apple” than other chip start-ups, Stephens said. “But if they win, they win really, really big.”

>>> Europe : Brokers Upgrades & Downgrades - 28th of October 2025 V3(++)

>>> Up
* Bakkafrost Raised to Hold at Norne Securities; PT 500 kroner
* Banco BBVA Argentina SA ADRs Raised to Outperform at Itau BBA
* Bechtle Raised to Overweight at Cantor; PT 43 euros
* Carrefour Raised to Buy at DZ Bank; PT 15 euros (++)
* Diagnostyka Raised to Outperform at Santander Biuro Maklerskie (+)
* Fresenius SE Raised to Outperform at Oddo BHF; PT 59 euros
* Kalmar Raised to Accumulate at Inderes; PT 39 euros
* Lloyds PT Raised to 110 pence from 100 pence at RBC
* Metso Raised to Buy at Kepler Cheuvreux; PT 15.50 euros (++)
* Nokia Raised to Buy at Jefferies; PT 6.60 euros
* Norse Atlantic Raised NOK113.7m in Private Placement
* Spirax Raised to Buy at UBS; PT 10,500 pence (++)

>>> Down
* Atlas Copco Cut to Sell at UBS; PT 140 kronor (++)
* Austevoll Seafood Cut to Hold at Norne Securities; PT 110 kroner
* Big Yellow Group Cut to Hold at Jefferies; PT 1,191 pence
* Dassault Systemes Cut to Add at AlphaValue/Baader
* EDP SA Cut to Hold at Bestinver; PT 4.60 euros
* EDP Renovaveis Cut to Hold at Bestinver; PT 12.95 euros
* Eni Cut to Hold at HSBC; PT 16.50 euros
* Galp Cut to Neutral at Grupo Santander; PT 19 euros
* Genmab Cut to Hold at Jyske Bank; PT 2,000 kroner (+)
* Kemira Cut to Reduce at Inderes; PT 21.50 euros
* Leroy Cut to Hold at Norne Securities; PT 55 kroner (+)
* Lundbeck Cut to Hold at SEB Equities; PT 48 kroner
* Sagax Cut to Hold at Pareto Securities; PT 233 kronor
* SAP Cut to Reduce at AlphaValue/Baader
* Sika Cut to Underweight at JPMorgan; PT 160 Swiss francs
* Solvay Cut to Sell at Berenberg; PT 24 euros
* TietoEVRY Cut to Reduce at OP Corporate Bank; PT 18 euros (++)
* Vossloh Cut to Hold at Kepler Cheuvreux; PT 85 euros (++)

>>> Initiation
* Ayvens Rated New Hold at Jefferies; PT 11.10 euros
* Constellation Energy Rated New Overweight at Wells Fargo
* DTE Energy Rated New Overweight at Wells Fargo; PT $157
* Duke Energy Rated New Equal-Weight at Wells Fargo; PT $126
* EQT Rated New Neutral at Oddo BHF; PT 350 kronor
* Partners Group Rated New Outperform at Oddo BHF
* R&S Group Holding Rated New Buy at Berenberg; PT 40 Swiss francs
* Stif Rated New Buy at Kepler Cheuvreux; PT 80 euros (++)
* SynAct Pharma Rated New Corporate at Edison Investment Research
* Tkms AG Rated New Buy at Bankhaus Metzler; PT 96 euros (+)

>>> Call
* Fresenius SE Upgraded at Oddo BHF on Growth in Helios Unit