TheChek News Flow

A Starbucks-Chipotle merger offers the wrong kind of synergy

The overlap between the two brands is unlikely to be enough to justify a takeover premium

Putting the band back together is surely a great feeling, but a dubious corporate strategy. Starbucks chief Brian Niccol has considered a merger with Chipotle, his $41bn rival — and former employer — the FT reported on Thursday. However neat the match might seem from Starbucks’ corner office, it makes little sense for shareholders.

Niccol knows Chipotle very well indeed. He ran the Mexican-themed restaurant chain for six years before decamping in 2024 to the world’s biggest coffee chain, which was then in a state of considerable disarray. Seen from afar, the two do faintly similar things, serving comestibles to customers who are in a hurry. Both have large, sometimes restive workforces.

Moreover, the ways in which they differ might seem from a distance like opportunities. Chipotle’s balance sheet is free of debt; gearing it up a little could provide low-hanging fruit. And while Starbucks has a sprawling global network, Chipotle has yet to venture outside the US, apart from a smattering of international stores.

But do these companies really belong together? Not really. For one, the overlap is unlikely to be enough to justify a takeover premium. Imagine Niccol could shave 10 per cent off Chipotle’s food, drink and packaging costs and halve its general overheads. That would save $770mn a year, Lex reckons using Royal Bank of Canada forecasts, giving an after-tax return on investment of just 6 per cent. Anything below 10 per cent should make investors nervous.

More importantly, Niccol hasn’t finished fixing up his present employer, making this a poor time to take on his old one. Starbucks shares have gone sideways since the day his appointment was announced. Profitability isn’t yet where it used to be. Same-store sales growth of 8 per cent in the latest quarter suggests the company has turned a corner, but recent numbers are still flattered by the previous year’s decline.

Chipotle has fared much worse, as has most of the US restaurant sector. But for Niccol to argue he can do a better job than its current leadership might be somewhat problematic, since Chipotle chief Scott Boatwright was his direct report for six years. Conversely, keeping the brand separate and its leaders in place — the Starbucks boss spent more than a decade at multi-brand restaurant group Yum Brands — would further trim the potential cost savings.

Perhaps it’s just that Niccol could use some more motivation. After all, the generous $100mn-plus package he received in 2024, linked to the company’s share price, has mostly failed to pay out. Worse, having started his role in sunny California, he now spends significant time in rainy Seattle. Starbucks should want to keep Niccol engaged, but buying Chipotle is too high a price.

F1 is shifting away from Europe. Can Britain keep what’s left?

Fans mourn the loss of historic races, but they are looking at the wrong map. The one that matters shows a strip of English countryside that Britain takes dangerously for granted

Over the past decade, Formula 1’s race map has been quietly redrawn, with its European heartland shrinking as owner Liberty Media globalises the sport and pursues higher revenues.

Europe has gained Madrid in September — with the Spanish capital returning to the F1 calendar after 45 years — and, next season, Portugal’s Portimão. But it has lost Italy’s Imola and will lose Zandvoort in the Netherlands from 2027; while Belgium’s Spa-Francorchamps, one of the sport’s iconic circuits, will alternate annually with Barcelona in Spain.

The return of the Turkish Grand Prix in 2027 — held on the Asian side of Istanbul — means Asia will host nine races next season, overtaking Europe with eight, for the first time.

While F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali has reassured fans that the German Grand Prix will return, many traditionalists see a clear trend: Europe is losing its primacy as F1 embraces higher-bidding hosts.

But they are grieving over the wrong map.

F1 has always had two geographies. The first is where the show takes place: the races. That geography is globalising fast, and understandably so: Gulf hosts pay Liberty Media roughly $50mn a year for their races, according to analyst estimates, double that of most European promoters.

The second is where the cars are made: the industry. That geography is historically clustered. Since the second world war the design and manufacturing of F1 cars has concentrated in a strip of English countryside between Oxford and Northampton.

Although Italy’s Motor Valley, in Emilia-Romagna, remains home to Ferrari, Racing Bulls and Dallara in F1, the British cluster remains the sport’s main centre of gravity for now.

Motorsport Valley, as the strip is known, is home to the headquarters of six of the 11 teams: Mercedes in Brackley, Red Bull in Milton Keynes, Aston Martin at Silverstone, Williams in Grove, Alpine in Enstone and McLaren in Woking. Even teams headquartered outside the UK keep a foot in the Valley: Haas runs key operations from Banbury; Racing Bulls has a technical centre in Milton Keynes; while newcomers Cadillac and Audi have established a UK base at Silverstone and a technology centre in Bicester, respectively. The Motorsport Industry Association values the wider UK motorsport and engineering services sector at £16bn a year and estimates that it supports 50,000 jobs.

None of this was planned. The cluster’s origins can be traced back to amateur enthusiasts racing home-built cars on disused wartime airfields, Silverstone among them. Charles Cooper and his son John built tiny rear-engined racers in a garage in Surbiton, winning back-to-back F1 world championships in 1959 and 1960. Colin Chapman assembled his first Lotus in a north London lock-up and went on to claim seven constructors’ titles.

Two mechanisms still power the Valley today. Talent rises vertically, from karting paddocks and club racing into professional teams; and it moves horizontally, as engineers circulate between rivals, spreading knowledge that no patent can capture. Passion anchors people to place. That is what makes clusters sticky, and why this one has survived every change of regulation, ownership and fashion since the 1950s.

It is also why the anguish over the calendar misses the point. Hosting races and building cars are different markets: one sells spectacle to a global audience; the other drives economic value through advanced engineering with benefits and knowledge transfer beyond F1 and motorsport.

Italy proves the point. It lost Imola, yet its production base thrives: Ferrari in Maranello, Racing Bulls in Faenza and Dallara in Varano de’ Melegari, which designs Haas’s F1 chassis, builds Cadillac’s endurance prototypes and supplies every F2, F3 and IndyCar.

A country can lose the show and keep the factory. Italy still has both, and England more so: most of the teams and suppliers, F1’s London headquarters, and the British Grand Prix at Silverstone until 2034. The question is whether its engineering cluster can remain world-leading.

History can change, leaving no room or time for complacency. Motorsport Valley’s grip is already loosening: from 2029, General Motors will build Cadillac’s engines in North Carolina; Audi has based its works programme in continental Europe; and Dallara keeps winning outsourced work that teams choose not to do in-house — Haas and Cadillac being two points in case.

Meanwhile, UK frictions are growing, with higher living costs than elsewhere deterring international talent from moving to the country, along with rising costs of energy, manufacturing and the visas for the foreign engineers that are a key part of any F1 team. Clusters rarely collapse loudly. They erode quietly, one outsourced contract at a time. Ask Detroit.

The solution for British policymakers is to treat Motorsport Valley as strategic infrastructure rather than a heritage curiosity. The government already offers fast-track visas for digital technology and the arts, and it waves through elite drivers as international sportspeople. However, particularly after Brexit, the engineers who make those drivers and their teams champions must queue with everyone else. Extending endorsement to motorsport engineering would be a powerful move.

Moreover, F1 research and development should enjoy similar levels of state support as the aerospace industry, and the government should support the amateur layer of the pyramid, such as karting. My research suggests governments cannot legislate a cluster into existence; passion does that. But policy determines whether the next Cooper garage starts in Surbiton, Concord or Varano.

US 10-year Treasury yields risk hitting 6% for first time since 2000, Pimco says

Bond giant’s investment chief warns that further sharp rise in borrowing costs is ‘feasible’ as market participants are forced to unwind losing bets

US benchmark borrowing costs risk hitting 6 per cent for the first time in 26 years as fears over high oil prices, inflation and America’s towering public debt roil the world’s most important bond market, Pimco has warned.

Dan Ivascyn, chief investment officer at bond giant Pimco, said that a further sharp rise in 10-year Treasury yields — from the current level of 5.29 per cent — is “feasible” as investors like hedge funds are forced to ditch their losing bets on bonds following weeks of heavy selling in the $32tn market.

“It is certainly possible, even from a short-term trading perspective, given that some of the activity we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks is tied to some negative technicals, some stop-out activity from the platform hedge funds and other levered investors. You can certainly get there,” Ivascyn told the FT.

Ivascyn’s remarks echo those of investors who have warned in recent weeks that a “vicious loop” is taking hold in the Treasury market as waves of selling bring yields to levels that prompt other market participants such as real estate investment trusts to sell bonds.

US 10-year yields, a benchmark for trillions of dollars in assets globally, are already trading at levels last seen at the turn of the millennium as investors worry about the inflation fuelled by Donald Trump’s Iran war, a vast borrowing binge by AI companies and expectations for strong economic growth. Inflation is toxic for bonds, which provide investors with fixed revenue streams.

The rise in yields has heaped pressure on American households just weeks ahead of critical midterm elections that will decide which party controls Congress. Data on Thursday showed that US mortgage rates had hit their highest level since 2023, with the 30-year fixed rate averaging 7.4 per cent as of October 8, up 0.12 percentage points from the prior week.

Ivascyn said that a further rise in Treasury yields could also deal a blow to riskier assets such as stocks and corporate bonds.

If 10-year Treasury yields rise to 5.5 per cent or above, “you’re going to see some decent weakness in risk markets, both credit and equity”, he said.

While US share indices are near record highs, there are already signs that high yields are weighing on some US companies. Borrowing costs on the bonds of companies with the lowest credit ratings hit their highest level since May 2020 this month at 17 per cent, driven by rising Treasury yields and by investors demanding more compensation for lending to such businesses.

In addition to stress in risky segments of public markets, Ivascyn predicted that higher Treasury yields would spark problems “in slow motion” for parts of private markets, including commercial real estate, where there are “a lot of still fragile capital structures, fundamental weakness”.

Ivascyn noted that elevated yields would eventually prompt investors to shift more of their portfolios into Treasuries as they seek to lock in high returns. He said that would present a “limiting factor on how high yields can go from here”.

There were some signs of this trend during Treasury auctions this week, with both 10-and-30 year deals each drawing robust investor demand.

Beyond the US, Ivascyn highlighted the appeal of overseas debt markets. While Pimco is “less concerned than some [about] the US’s ability to maintain these deficits for a while,” he said, “what’s great is you don’t have to just own US debt” — pointing to the examples of Australian “very high quality credit,” and the UK’s yield premium to the US despite “its own challenges”.

Other markets, including Canada and Germany, — especially in US dollar terms — offered “very attractive yields and a better starting fiscal position,” he added.

A Starbucks-Chipotle merger offers the wrong kind of synergy

The overlap between the two brands is unlikely to be enough to justify a takeover premium

Putting the band back together is surely a great feeling, but a dubious corporate strategy. Starbucks chief Brian Niccol has considered a merger with Chipotle, his $41bn rival — and former employer — the FT reported on Thursday. However neat the match might seem from Starbucks’ corner office, it makes little sense for shareholders.

Niccol knows Chipotle very well indeed. He ran the Mexican-themed restaurant chain for six years before decamping in 2024 to the world’s biggest coffee chain, which was then in a state of considerable disarray. Seen from afar, the two do faintly similar things, serving comestibles to customers who are in a hurry. Both have large, sometimes restive workforces.

Moreover, the ways in which they differ might seem from a distance like opportunities. Chipotle’s balance sheet is free of debt; gearing it up a little could provide low-hanging fruit. And while Starbucks has a sprawling global network, Chipotle has yet to venture outside the US, apart from a smattering of international stores.

But do these companies really belong together? Not really. For one, the overlap is unlikely to be enough to justify a takeover premium. Imagine Niccol could shave 10 per cent off Chipotle’s food, drink and packaging costs and halve its general overheads. That would save $770mn a year, Lex reckons using Royal Bank of Canada forecasts, giving an after-tax return on investment of just 6 per cent. Anything below 10 per cent should make investors nervous.

More importantly, Niccol hasn’t finished fixing up his present employer, making this a poor time to take on his old one. Starbucks shares have gone sideways since the day his appointment was announced. Profitability isn’t yet where it used to be. Same-store sales growth of 8 per cent in the latest quarter suggests the company has turned a corner, but recent numbers are still flattered by the previous year’s decline.

Chipotle has fared much worse, as has most of the US restaurant sector. But for Niccol to argue he can do a better job than its current leadership might be somewhat problematic, since Chipotle chief Scott Boatwright was his direct report for six years. Conversely, keeping the brand separate and its leaders in place — the Starbucks boss spent more than a decade at multi-brand restaurant group Yum Brands — would further trim the potential cost savings.

Perhaps it’s just that Niccol could use some more motivation. After all, the generous $100mn-plus package he received in 2024, linked to the company’s share price, has mostly failed to pay out. Worse, having started his role in sunny California, he now spends significant time in rainy Seattle. Starbucks should want to keep Niccol engaged, but buying Chipotle is too high a price.

Institutional investors challenge PE fund model with direct deals

Investments alongside asset managers rather than through traditional vehicles doubled to a record $198bn in the first half of the year

Institutional investors are increasingly investing directly in companies alongside private equity firms, rather than committing capital to funds that leave investment decisions up to asset managers.

The shift towards so-called co-investments, which come with lower fees and greater flexibility, has accelerated as investors seek more control over their private-market portfolios amid a prolonged dearth of realised returns from portfolio company sales.

The value of private equity co-investments more than doubled year on year to a record $198bn in the first half of 2026, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Overall private equity fundraising rose 5 per cent over the same period to $312bn but remained below its 2021 peak.

“This is increasingly a part of the institutional playbook,” said Roger Vincent, founder of Summation Capital, a New York-based private equity fund that has made about a dozen co-investments.

Some investors have generated outsized returns from co-investments that gave them additional exposure to fast-growing start-ups. The North Carolina Investment Authority invested $200mn in Anthropic alongside Baillie Gifford earlier this year, a deal that could return five times if the AI start-up goes public at a $2tn valuation.

The fund has also twice co-invested in continuation vehicles involving Ascent Resources, a US natural gas producer. The latest investment in March had been marked up by about 20 per cent in six months.

“Our share of co-investments is going up dramatically,” said Brad Briner, North Carolina state treasurer and chair of the North Carolina Investment Authority, which manages the state’s $150bn retirement system, adding that about half of its planned private equity deployment would in the future go towards co-investments. 

Unlike traditional private equity funds, where investors typically pay a 2 per cent management fee and 20 per cent of investment profits as carried interest, co-investments come with little or no management fee and carry. 

The lower fee burden could translate into higher returns. The $86bn Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System estimates its co-investments have outperformed its overall private equity portfolio by about five to six percentage points, thanks largely to savings on management fees and carried interest.

“The advantage goes right to the bottom line,” said Benjamin Cotton, chief investment officer at PSERS.

Co-investments also give investors greater control over when and where to deploy their capital than traditional private equity funds, where managers make investment and capital call decisions. 

Allen Waldrop, deputy chief investment officer at the $89bn Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation, said co-investments accounted for up to a third of its annual private equity deployment and were used “opportunistically” to increase exposure to specific sectors, such as energy and financial services, or geographies, as well as to control the pace of investment.

“If we think there are a lot of interesting opportunities, it’s an easier way to get capital invested than waiting for the right fund to commit money to,” said Waldrop.

The private equity fundraising slump has also boosted co-investment, as managers, particularly at smaller firms, offer investors more opportunities to strengthen relationships or raise capital for deals that exceed their funds’ capacity.

“There are more co-investments coming out of a lower number of deals in the market,” said Jennifer Fox Bensimon, head of co-investments at Partners Capital.

Still, co-investments do not guarantee outperformance over traditional private equity funds. Anton Orlich, deputy chief investment officer at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, told a board meeting in January that its co-investments had underperformed private equity portfolios “in most periods” over the three decades to 2022 before the trend had reversed in the past three years.

A main concern over the strategy is that private equity managers may offer institutional investors lower-quality deals for co-investment. Nat Fraser, a partner at Cerity Partners, an investment firm that manages capital for endowments and family offices, said the risk of adverse selection was “paramount”. When presented with a co-investment opportunity, one of the first questions he asks is: “why are we so fortunate to be seeing this deal?”

Monte Tarbox, chief investment officer at the New York City Retirement System, said many public pension plans lacked the dealmaking expertise to participate in co-investments on an equal footing with private equity managers.

“By the time a co-investment comes to an organisation like mine, the details are already baked,” said Tarbox. “The manager dresses it up in a nice wrapper, puts a pretty bow on top of it, and says, ‘Here you go, take it or leave it’.” 

Timing is another challenge facing co-investments, which often require investors to make decisions within weeks or even days, rather than the several months they may spend selecting a private equity manager.

Fraser said Cerity Partners had recently taken 92.5 hours from learning of a co-investment opportunity in an artificial intelligence company to holding a final investment committee vote. 

“If we hadn’t moved that quickly on this particular deal,” he said, “we probably wouldn’t have been able to participate.”

Capacity constraints have set a limit on how much co-investments can grow. Investors said private equity managers would continue to play a central role in sourcing and managing deals, with co-investors taking up additional capacity beyond what their funds invest.

“The market will probably find an equilibrium in terms of fund dollars versus co-investment dollars that are made available,” said Fraser.

Syria funnels assets from Assad cronies into secretive $50bn fund

The Syrian Sovereign Fund has taken control of a sprawling web of holdings and is seeking to entice Gulf investors

Syria’s leaders have funnelled assets seized from Assad-era cronies into an opaque state-owned fund that is at the heart of the new government’s efforts to reshape the country’s tattered economy and attract foreign investment.

Created by President Ahmed al-Sharaa last year, the Syrian Sovereign Fund has taken control of a sprawling web of assets in every economic sector. Its holdings span state-owned property and companies confiscated from people linked to the ousted Assad regime, according to businesspeople and officials familiar with the matter.

The fund’s assets were valued at $50bn last year by the finance minister but it has not disclosed its holdings, finances or the identity of its director. Its interests range from factories and malls to real estate and stakes in banks — businesses that it says employ more than 40,000 workers.

A central player in Sharaa’s drive to bring in funds from the Gulf, the fund has quickly become a powerful tool for control over Syria’s economy, according to analysts and businesspeople. Its vast holdings give it leverage in every sector, while its officials decide who governs and invests in crucial areas.

The fund was the “most impactful” economically and “wealthiest entity in Syria for now”, said Thaer Laham, managing director of the Syrian Business Council.

One person doing business with the fund said: “What’s the state today? It’s the ministries and the fund.”

The tourism minister chairs the fund, which reports directly to the president, and its director is Lebanese-Australian citizen Ibrahim Succarieh, according to three people who have met with him. Succarieh, who does not appear on the fund’s website, is under Australian sanctions for allegedly joining the al-Qaeda affiliate that preceded Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham militant group, which ultimately overthrew the Assad regime.

The fund, which says it has more than 270 employees, declined to answer questions about its assets, revenues, management and transparency. But it said that “as a new institution in its establishment phase, the Fund is building its governance step by step” and “working towards alignment” with a set of international practices for sovereign wealth funds.

Its goal was “to protect and grow assets that belong to the Syrian state” and to develop “strategic partnerships that bring capital, technology and expertise into Syria”, the fund said.

It has positioned itself as a major real estate actor, with a property arm headed by Mohamad al-Khayyat of the billionaire Syrian-Qatari al-Khayyat family, which has worked closely with the Trump family and White House, and signed major infrastructure and energy deals with Syria’s government.

Foreign deals have been coming in, including a $7bn real estate project with Emirati developer Arada and agreements with international companies such as Turkish supply chain business Tiryaki Agro and Saudi wire manufacturer Riyadh Cables Group to upgrade and manage its assets. It took a 25 per cent stake in a Syrian entity set up by Kuwaiti technology company Zain that had won a $747mn licence to operate a mobile network.

The fund has also established new businesses, including the payment company working with Visa in Syria and a domestic car manufacturer.

Arada, Zain and Riyadh Cables did not respond to requests for comment. Khayyat did not reply to a request for comment via his company and the FT was unable to reach Succarieh, who did not respond to questions sent via the fund.

The lack of transparency would not help build trust “between citizen and state”, but for Gulf investors the calculations were different, said Jihad Yazigi, editor of the Syria Report.

“Typically this type of entity, which is non-transparent, which manages such a huge amount of money, whose CEO has not been officially named — all of these raise a lot of question marks,” said Yazigi. However, he added, the Gulf investors being courted by the government “do not necessarily care about transparency” and might find it convenient “to deal with an institution that bypasses all the red tape”.

There is little public information about the assets seized from allies of former dictator Bashar al-Assad.

A state committee tasked with reclaiming illegally obtained assets has said the fund has been involved in managing 32 entities spanning trade, services and banking that had belonged to major Assad-era player Samer Foz, and a Damascus mall seized from businessmen Mohammad and Wassim Qattan. Foz and Wassim Qattan were placed under sanctions by the US and Europe for supporting Assad.

After such takeovers, the companies’ top managers were usually replaced while lower-level employees kept their jobs, people familiar with the matter said.

But the fund has run up against various complications surrounding the ownership of confiscated assets. It has struggled to change the registered owners of some companies, while former owners who lost assets under Assad have sought to reclaim stakes and some former proprietors have contested the seizures, according to people familiar with the matter.

In one case, the original developer of the Qattans’ Damascus mall, which was taken from him under Assad and transferred to Wassim Qattan, petitioned for redress, according to the Damascus governorate. It said the fund had settled a deal with him.

The fund told the FT “all returns belong to the Syrian state”.

Foz and Wassim Qattan did not respond to requests for comment sent via social media and to Foz’s publicly listed email.

The fund has announced public-private partnerships for investors to operate and in some cases upgrade its assets, which remain under the fund’s control.

The fund holds real estate directly and also manages public land that belongs to government departments, according to a person with direct knowledge of its real estate deals. In some cases, it acted as a broker between public bodies and private developers or represented the state, taking a cut of project revenues, the person said. Many are for high-end developments, which have been a focus of the new government.

Its mega-project with Arada envisions 11,000 housing units in an area dubbed “New Damascus”, on the edge of the ageing capital. Plans include a hospital and school, with computer renderings showing glass malls, a bubbling fountain and luxurious sitting rooms.

Kremlin-backed money launderer used London fintech to make payments

Forged invoice suggested FCA-registered company was supplying A7 network with ‘cashmere sewing fabric’

A British fintech company was listed as a payment vehicle by A7, the Kremlin-backed money laundering network, while also holding a registration from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.

One document drawn from a vast leak seen by the FT shows that A7 tried to create a cover story for its relationship with Wooshpay by forging an invoice suggesting the company was supplying it with “cashmere sewing fabric”.

A7 was designated as a “transnational criminal organisation” by the US Treasury last week, shortly after the FT had revealed it had moved $6.9bn through conventional banks using hundreds of front companies and a huge document forgery operation.

The core purpose of the network is to allow Russian importers to make payments abroad in the wake of the financial sanctions imposed on Moscow after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Further documents from the leak show that A7 named Wooshpay, which holds FCA authorisation as a small payment institution, on a list of entities that it could use to make payments.

Registration with the UK watchdog requires the company, which is incorporated as Swooshtransfer, not only to identify and verify customers and their beneficial owners but also to understand the purpose of the relationship and monitor transactions.

An internal note prepared by A7 for staff referred to Wooshpay as holding an “extensive licence”. It was listed as acting as a possible “payment route to PRC and Hong Kong” in both renminbi and dollars.

Wooshpay’s own website advertises it as “offering a range of payment products and subscription billing tools, helping AI companies quickly launch and scale their businesses”.

While many of the front companies used by A7 were controlled by the network, the A7 note referred to Wooshpay as a “rented” treasury, implying it was an independent business that did work for the network alongside other things.

The A7 document noted conditions on payments that could go via Wooshpay. “There are limits on payments of no more than 50 thousand USD per day. A customs declaration (with no Russian language) is required to agree on conducting payments,” it said.

The one payment on this route found by the FT — a transfer of 189,000 Rmb ($26,000) — was recorded by A7 with a reference number that indicated Wooshpay was making onward payments for the network and was not merely a recipient.

While Wooshpay is registered in the UK, it is listed as ultimately controlled by a Chinese national living in China, while another director is listed on Companies House as resident in the UK.

Neither of these people responded to requests for comment, nor to telephone calls at the number given in their FCA listing.

The A7 payment record shows that the money was sent to an account at Zhejiang Chouzhou Commercial Bank, a small lender to which A7 made a large number of payments despite its size.

According to BankCheck, a banking payments counterparty intelligence company, Zhejiang Chouzhou is the 98th largest bank in China by balance sheet. Yet it is the fourth-largest Chinese bank by volume in the A7 cache. Its customers received about $170mn of payments from A7 between late 2024 and August 2025.

In total, 268 entities mentioned in the leaks held accounts at the bank. Of these, 120 were non-resident accounts, indicating that — like WooshPay — they were not local companies.

Wooshpay was one of four UK-domiciled entities in the leaks with Zhejiang Chouzhou accounts. One of the others, Albi International, was also offered to a customer as a potential paying front.

The company, which is registered at a mailbox rental service in central London, reported a turnover of more than £100mn in 2024-25 — and a tax bill of £274,000.

The FCA declined to comment. Zhejiang Chouzhou, Wooshpay, Albi and A7 did not respond to requests for comment.

US 10-year Treasury yields risk hitting 6% for first time since 2000, Pimco says

Bond giant’s investment chief warns that further sharp rise in borrowing costs is ‘feasible’ as market participants are forced to unwind losing bets

US benchmark borrowing costs risk hitting 6 per cent for the first time in 26 years as fears over high oil prices, inflation and America’s towering public debt roil the world’s most important bond market, Pimco has warned.

Dan Ivascyn, chief investment officer at bond giant Pimco, said that a further sharp rise in 10-year Treasury yields — from the current level of 5.29 per cent — is “feasible” as investors like hedge funds are forced to ditch their losing bets on bonds following weeks of heavy selling in the $32tn market.

“It is certainly possible, even from a short-term trading perspective, given that some of the activity we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks is tied to some negative technicals, some stop-out activity from the platform hedge funds and other levered investors. You can certainly get there,” Ivascyn told the FT.

Ivascyn’s remarks echo those of investors who have warned in recent weeks that a “vicious loop” is taking hold in the Treasury market as waves of selling bring yields to levels that prompt other market participants such as real estate investment trusts to sell bonds.

US 10-year yields, a benchmark for trillions of dollars in assets globally, are already trading at levels last seen at the turn of the millennium as investors worry about the inflation fuelled by Donald Trump’s Iran war, a vast borrowing binge by AI companies and expectations for strong economic growth. Inflation is toxic for bonds, which provide investors with fixed revenue streams.

The rise in yields has heaped pressure on American households just weeks ahead of critical midterm elections that will decide which party controls Congress. Data on Thursday showed that US mortgage rates had hit their highest level since 2023, with the 30-year fixed rate averaging 7.4 per cent as of October 8, up 0.12 percentage points from the prior week.

Ivascyn said that a further rise in Treasury yields could also deal a blow to riskier assets such as stocks and corporate bonds.

If 10-year Treasury yields rise to 5.5 per cent or above, “you’re going to see some decent weakness in risk markets, both credit and equity”, he said.

While US share indices are near record highs, there are already signs that high yields are weighing on some US companies. Borrowing costs on the bonds of companies with the lowest credit ratings hit their highest level since May 2020 this month at 17 per cent, driven by rising Treasury yields and by investors demanding more compensation for lending to such businesses.

In addition to stress in risky segments of public markets, Ivascyn predicted that higher Treasury yields would spark problems “in slow motion” for parts of private markets, including commercial real estate, where there are “a lot of still fragile capital structures, fundamental weakness”.

Ivascyn noted that elevated yields would eventually prompt investors to shift more of their portfolios into Treasuries as they seek to lock in high returns. He said that would present a “limiting factor on how high yields can go from here”.

There were some signs of this trend during Treasury auctions this week, with both 10-and-30 year deals each drawing robust investor demand.

Beyond the US, Ivascyn highlighted the appeal of overseas debt markets. While Pimco is “less concerned than some [about] the US’s ability to maintain these deficits for a while,” he said, “what’s great is you don’t have to just own US debt” — pointing to the examples of Australian “very high quality credit,” and the UK’s yield premium to the US despite “its own challenges”.

Other markets, including Canada and Germany, — especially in US dollar terms — offered “very attractive yields and a better starting fiscal position,” he added.

Antinori says it hopes to ‘protect the market’ by alerting potential buyers

Italy’s biggest family-owned winery, Marchesi Antinori, says professional thieves stole 30,000 bottles of wine worth about €5mn from its storage facility in Tuscany in what it believes to be one of the largest wine thefts in recent history.

It is the latest in a series of wine heists in Italy, carried out by criminals whose careful selection of bottles reflected wine connoisseurship and inside knowledge of their targets.

Florence-based Antinori, which traces its origins back to 1385, told the FT the thieves last weekend targeted its warehouse in Cortona, Tuscany, just as the winery was preparing to ship a large consignment of some its most valuable bottles to customers abroad.

Seven masked men disabled the alarm system and hauled off their booty — thousands of cases of the winery’s famous Tignanello, Solaia and Guado al Tasso Tuscan reds — in two massive trucks on Saturday night. The stolen bottles typically retail for between €150-€500 each.

The theft was not discovered until Monday morning, when employees arrived to find the wine was gone. The winery has extensive surveillance camera footage of the theft. Police are investigating but have yet to make any arrests.

Renzo Cotarella, Antinori’s chief executive, said the company, which had revenues of about €263mn last year and exports to 170 countries, was sounding the alarm in the hope that oenophiles in Italy may help them track down the missing bottles.

“We still hope we are able to find the wine . . . two trucks cannot just disappear,” Cotarella said. “These wines have a great value and I don’t know how they can sell all this wine around the world without being seen.”

He said Antinori also wanted to “protect the market” by alerting potential buyers that bottles offered to them from unusual sources at tempting prices may be stolen property.

Wine theft is not unusual in Italy, but thieves have typically targeted Michelin-starred restaurants with well-stocked wine cellars and made off with a handful of highly valuable bottles worth tens of thousands of euros each.

This summer, for example, two men dressed as workers wearing hard hats and high-visibility vests managed to open holes in shatterproof glass at Milan’s famed Affinatore restaurant to seize several bottles of prized Romanée-Conti wine worth a total of €280,000.

Bottles are also occasionally stolen from trucks while in transit.

Professional thieves this summer targeted wineries where thousands of bottles have been carted away from their climate-controlled storage facilities over a period of hours.

This summer, the historic Banfi di Montalcino winery in Piedmont reported 3,000 bottles of its best wines had been stolen by thieves who “carefully selected the bottles” and whose choices suggested “they knew exactly what they were doing”.

Last month, four thieves seized 3,000 bottles of popular Barolo wines at the Conterno Fantino winery, also in Piedmont, in just under three hours with the aid of a forklift in the warehouse.

But the theft at Antinori is thought to be the biggest in Italy — and internationally — both in terms of the volume and value of the bottles taken.

“People at the winery were crying,” Cotarella said. “It’s not just the value of the wine — it’s something more. We can survive without this wine, but what makes me so sad is the fact that this could happen to us.”