>>> Ageas likely to be interested in taking over Vivat

Ageas likely to be interested in taking over Vivat (translated)
23 SEP 2018
Belgium-based insurer Ageas [EURONEXT: AGS] is interested in buying Netherlands-based peer Vivat, De Tijd reported.
The business daily cited remarks Ageas CEO Bart de Smet made at a recent investors' meeting in London.
Chinese insurance company Anbang is selling Vivat. This news service reported earlier that JPMorgan has been appointed to guide the sales process, which will probably start this year.
Ageas wants to grow outside of its current markets, the report said. De Tijd cited CEO De Smet as saying Ageas could also be interested in acquiring Belgian insurer Ethias, but that company will not be on the market before the end of 2019.
Ageas has almost EUR 2bn available for takeovers, the report noted.
Earlier Dutch press reports stated that Netherlands-based insurance companies ASR [AMS:ASRNL] and Aegon [AMS:AGN], as well as German insurance company Allianz Benelux, were also eying Vivat.
Analysts have valued Vivat at EUR 1.25 - EUR 1.75bn.

>>> What to look at today - 22nd & 23rd of September 2018

Wall Street rallied this week with investors shrugging off another tranche of U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods. The S&P 500 and the Dow touched new records -- the first time that's happened for the Dow since January 26 -- and finished the week with respective gains of 0.9% and 2.3%. The Nasdaq lagged though, slipping 0.3%.
The heavily-weighted financial sector was among the top-performing groups this week with a gain of 2.3%, benefiting from a steepening of the yield curve. The yield on the benchmark 10-yr Treasury note climbed seven basis points to end Friday at 3.07%, while the Fed-sensitive 2-yr yield jumped two basis points to 2.81%.
Conversely, the top-weighted information technology sector (-0.1%) underperformed this week, getting surpassed by consumer discretionary (+0.4%) for the top spot in the 2018 sector standings. The two groups hold year-to-date gains of 18.5% and 18.7%, respectively. For comparison, the S&P 500 is up 9.6%.
In total, eight of the eleven S&P sectors finished in the green, with cyclical sectors showing relative strength. A new sector, communication services, will be born after Friday's close, and it will involve reclassifying several widely-held technology, telecom, and media stocks into the new sector -- including Facebook (FB), Alphabet (GOOG), Verizon (VZ), Netflix (NFLX), and Walt Disney (DIS).
In individual stocks, cannabis names were in focus this week, with Tilray (TLRY) going on a wild ride after its CEO suggested that his business would be a "smart hedge" for major pharmaceutical companies. TLRY shares traded as high as $299.46/share -- 175% above last Friday's close -- before ending the week at $123.00/share (+13%).
Looking ahead, the Federal Reserve will release its latest policy directive on Wednesday. The market is all but certain that the central bank will hike rates -- with the CME FedWatch Tool placing the chances at 100% -- so investors will be more focused on the Fed's rate forecast, especially for 2019.

Macro :
- Amadeus IT, Kering to Join Euro Stoxx 50; Deutsche Bank Dropped
- Puma, Hikma, PZU, PKO to Join Stoxx Europe 600
- OPEC Gives Tepid Response to Trump’s Demand for Lower Oil Prices

Keep an eye on :
- AMS SM : Amadeus IT, Kering to Join Euro Stoxx 50; Deutsche Bank Dropped
- BEKB BB : Bekaert may sell Italian wire pipe operations to industrial bidders
- BMW GY : German Carmakers, Merkel Discussed Diesel Car Fixes: VDA
- BT/A LN : BT Is Said in Talks to Name Worldpay’s Jansen as CEO, Sky Says
- CNHI IM : *CNH INDUSTRIAL GAINS AS MARIO GABELLI PITCHES ON CNBC
- 1COV GY : Covestro Said to See Weak Industry Demand in Summer: Euro am S.
- DAI GY : German Carmakers, Merkel Discussed Diesel Car Fixes: VDA
- AM FP : Dassault Says Partnership With Reliance Group Is Co.’s Choice
- DRX LN : Drax Group in Talks to buy Iberdrola Assets: Business Telegraph
- ENGI FP : Engie Regulated Gas Tariffs May Rise About 3% on Oct. 1: Figaro
- EI FP : Luxottica, Essilor Seen Reaching Merger Deal by Early Oct.: Sole
- HEN3 GY : Henkel to Offset Weak Growth in Cosmetics W/Brand Offensive: BZ
- HIK LN : Hikma to Join Stoxx Europe 600
- IBE SM : Drax Group in Talks to buy Iberdrola Assets: Business Telegraph
- ILD FP : Italy 5G Auction Bids Reach EU4.42b: Ministry
- KER FP : Kering to Join Euro Stoxx 50; Deutsche Bank Dropped
- PUM GY : Puma, to Join Stoxx Europe 600
- RRS LN : Barrick, Randgold in Late-Stage Merger Talks, Mining Blog Says
- SIE GY : Siemens Likely to Reach Union Deal on Job Cuts by End-Sept: FAS
- LNSX GY : Sixt Sees Year-End Contract Portfolio at Prior Year’s Level
- SRE US : California Governor Vetoes Bill on Utility Rates for Penalties
- TIT IM : Italy 5G Auction Bids Reach EU4.42b: Ministry
- TIT IM : Telecom Italia CEO backed by Vivendi amid resignation rumours
- VIV FP : Telecom Italia CEO backed by Vivendi amid resignation rumours

ZH : UK Begged Trump Not To Declassify Russia Docs; Cited "Grave Concerns" Over

UK Begged Trump Not To Declassify Russia Docs; Cited "Grave Concerns" Over Steele Involvement

The British government "expressed grave concerns" to the US government over the declassification and release of material related to the Trump-Russia investigation, according to the New York Times. President Trump ordered a wide swath of materials "immediately" declassified "without redaction" on Monday, only to change his mind later in the week by allowing the DOJ Inspector General to review the materials first.
The Times reports that the UK's concern was over material which "includes direct references to conversations between American law enforcement officials and Christopher Steele," the former MI6 agent who compiled the infamous "Steele Dossier." The UK's objection, according to former US and British officials, was over revealing Steele's identity in an official document, "regardless of whether he had been named in press reports."
We would note, however, that Steele's name was contained within the Nunes Memo - the House Intelligence Committee's majority opinion in the Trump-Russia case.
Steele also had extensive contacts with DOJ official Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie, who - along with Steele - was paid by opposition research firm Fusion GPS in the anti-Trump campaign. Trump called for the declassification of FBI notes of interviews with Ohr, which would ostensibly reveal more about his relationship with Steele. Ohr was demoted twice within the Department of Justice for lying about his contacts with Fusion GPS.
Perhaps the Brits are also concerned since much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016. Recall that Trump aid George Papadopoulos was lured to London in March, 2016, where Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud fed him the rumor that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton. It was later at a London bar that Papadopoulos would drunkenly pass the rumor to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer (who Strzok flew to London to meet with).
Also recall that CIA/FBI "informant" (spy) Stefan Halper met with both Carter Page and Papadopoulos in London.
Halper, a veteran of four Republican administrations, reached out to Trump aide George Papadopoulos in September 2016 with an offer to fly to London to write an academic paper on energy exploration in the Mediterranean Sea.
Papadopoulos accepted a flight to London and a $3,000 honorarium. He claims that during a meeting in London, Halper asked him whether he knew anything about Russian hacking of Democrats’ emails.
Papadopoulos had other contacts on British soil that he now believes were part of a government-sanctioned surveillance operation. -Daily Caller
In total, Halper received over $1 million from the Obama Pentagon for "research," over $400,000 of which was granted before and during the 2016 election season.
In short, it's understandable that the UK would prefer to hide their involvement in the "witch hunt" of Donald Trump since much of the counterintelligence investigation was conducted on UK soil. And if the Brits had knowledge of the operation, it will bolster claims that they meddled in the 2016 US election by assisting what appears to have been a set-up from the start.
Steele's ham-handed dossier is a mere embarrassment, as virtually none of the claims asserted by the former MI6 agent have been proven true.
Steele, a former MI6 agent, is the author of the infamous and unverified anti-Trump dossier. He worked as a confidential human source for the FBI for years before the relationship was severed just before the election because of Steele’s unauthorized contacts with the press.
He shared results of his investigation into Trump’s links to Russia with the FBI beginning in early July 2016.
The FBI relied heavily on the unverified Steele dossier to fill out applications for four FISA warrants against Page. Page has denied the dossier’s claims, which include that he was the Trump campaign’s back channel to the Kremlin. -Daily Caller
That said, Steele hasn't worked for the British government since 2009, so for their excuse focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which occurred on UK soil, is curious.

FT : Round Three of Washington versus Big Tech

Round Three of Washington versus Big Tech
A plea for dumb cities, Uber eats London, Daydream VR headset

Following Mark Zuckerberg's grilling on Capitol Hill earlier in the year and the probing of social media companies over election interference, some of Silicon Valley's most powerful companies will be under the microscope again next week.

This time, executives from companies including Apple, Google and Twitter will appear before the Senate commerce committee for a hearing on online privacy. It follows a change of stance by the tech industry, which earlier this month decided national privacy regulation in the US was a good thing after all (no doubt prompted by the dawning realisation that some sort of action is starting to look inevitable).

There will be plenty to discuss. Among the latest revelations senators might want to dive into: how third party developers can sometimes peer into users' Gmail (though this only happens when users have granted permission, not because Google gives the data away), and Friday's disclosure by Twitter of a bug that may have let developers read users' private messages for more than a year. 


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Let's hear it for dumb cities. The FT's Janan Ganesh worries that smart cities – those planned urban environments where chaos gives way to order and all the self-driving cars behave nicely – will be boring, uncreative places to live.

Taking a bite out of food delivery. Does this sound like a negotiation through the media? Deliveroo investors insist their company isn't for sale, and anyway they would want more than $4bn for it. Someone close to Uber, which has been circling the London-based company, insists $4bn is the ceiling. It's unclear whether a full sale or a significant investment is the most likely outcome – or no deal at all.

Forwarded
VC exit. Former Facebook executive and outspoken investor Chamath Palihapitiya has a jaundiced view of how the venture capital business works: "Raise a fund, collect fees, manage limited partners, deploy the capital in obvious things, rinse, repeat." He says he's had enough of it. After seven years the fund he led, Social Capital, has reached the end of the road, though he says he will continue to invest from a new tech holding company.

Augmented warfare. Augmented reality company Magic Leap hopes to sell its headsets to the US military, reports Bloomberg.

Tech tools you can use – Daydream VR headset

Next week's Oculus Connect event could see Facebook's VR company unveil a new, high-end headset that isn't tied to a computer. In the meantime, Google's Daydream is also racing to improve the experience of untethered VR.

Google has just announced some experimental new capabilities for developers to tap into. These include support for handheld controllers that give "six degrees of freedom", matching the experience of a more expensive, PC-based tracking system.

FT : US to set up $60bn agency to counter China in developing world

US to set up $60bn agency to counter China in developing world
Reboot of commercial lending to emerging nations in face of Beijing ‘economic warfare’

The US is preparing to create an agency that can invest up to $60bn in the developing world in an effort to counter what some in Washington describe as China’s use of debt to wage “economic warfare”.

In what observers say is the biggest shake-up of US commercial lending to developing countries in 50 years, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation will be folded into the new agency and allowed to invest in equity. At present Opic can invest only in debt, putting it at a disadvantage to European development finance institutions (DFIs).

Ray Washburne, president and chief executive of Opic, told the FT that China – by using what he called “loan-to-own programmes” – was “creating countries that have the shackles of debt around them”. That amounted to “economic warfare”, he said.

By more than doubling Opic’s lending ceiling to $60bn and allowing it to invest in equity, he said, it would be put on “an equal footing with other DFIs”.

Riva Levinson, president of KRL, a Washington-based emerging markets consultancy, said she hoped legislation could be passed by the Senate before midterm elections in November. “This is the first real attempt to recognise that the US needs to support its companies in the commercial battlefield in the developing world,” she said. “Because China is taking it all.”

The Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development act (Build Act), which passed the House in August, has bipartisan support, including from close allies of President Donald Trump such as Wilbur Ross, secretary of commerce.

Opic will be folded into the new agency, called the International Development Finance Corporation. The arrangement has been sold to the president, as spearheading private-sector investment and countering China’s so-called debt diplomacy, while making a profit for the US taxpayer, according to those involved in talks.

“Opic started out being viewed as corporate welfare and within a year the office of management and budget was giving it an extra $30bn,” said Ms Levinson. “It’s a blueprint of how to get things done in Trump’s Washington.”

In August, 16 senators wrote to Steven Mnuchin, US Treasury secretary, complaining that the International Monetary Fund was bailing out countries that had got into trouble because of what they called “predatory Chinese infrastructure financing”.

The letter expressed concern that Chinese lending to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa could enable Beijing to take control of the country’s container port. Last year, Beijing opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti on the Red Sea.

“The Chinese are all state-owned enterprises and it’s part of their foreign policy to go in and control things for the benefit of the Chinese state,” said Mr Washburne.

Some recipient countries have also begun to question Chinese lending practices. In June, Malaysia suspended $22bn of China-backed projects while it reviewed financing terms.

In Africa, some citizens’ groups have said Chinese deals favour corrupt officials more than the state.

“The Chinese have an edge with the African political elites, but not so much with the people,” said Kwasi Prempeh, executive director of the Center for Democratic Development in Ghana. “African elites are doing business with them because there’s not a lot of transparency. But at the popular level, the Chinese cannot muster the soft power of the west.”

FT : Merkel battles to avert crisis over spy-chief affair

Merkel battles to avert crisis over spy-chief affair
Feud among coalition leaders intensifies after Hans-Georg Maassen promoted not dismissed

Angela Merkel was struggling to avert a full-blown crisis inside her governing coalition over the weekend, as party leaders continued to feud over the fate of the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service.

The chancellor and leader of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union was later on Sunday expected to hold emergency talks with the heads of the Social Democratic SPD and the Christian Social Union, the CDU’s Bavarian sister party. 

Speaking ahead of the possible meeting, SPD leader Andrea Nahles told the Bild newspaper that she did not expect the government to collapse over the removal of spy chief Hans-Georg Maassen from his post last Tuesday. The affair has dominated political debate in Berlin for the past two weeks and exposed the fragility of the coalition. But she added: “The basis for our co-operation must be mutual trust and reliability. If that is no longer the case, the government will fail.” 

Mr Maassen, the president of the office for the protection of the constitution (BfV), was removed from his job after making a series of remarks that were criticised as meddling in politics and downplaying the threat of rightwing extremism. 

The decision to oust him came in response to demands from the SPD, the junior partner in the coalition, but was signed off by both Ms Merkel and by Horst Seehofer, the interior minister and CSU leader. Mr Seehofer, who has clashed repeatedly with the chancellor in recent months over asylum and refugee policy, had been the main hold-out, arguing that the spy chief had done nothing wrong. 

As part of the deal, and in a bid to appease Mr Seehofer, Mr Maassen was supposed to move to the top civil service job in the interior ministry — a less exposed but formally more senior position than the one he has now. As the details of the arrangement, which included a significant pay rise, became clear, the government faced an angry backlash from voters and rank-and-file party members.

Ms Nahles in particular has come under severe pressure from fellow Social Democrats, many of whom expressed concern that ordinary voters would not understand why a problematic civil servant was not being sacked but promoted.

On Friday, the SPD leader sent a letter to her coalition counterparts asking for a renegotiation. “The uniformly negative reaction from the people has shown that we made a mistake. Instead of rebuilding trust, we lost it.”

Both Ms Merkel and Mr Seehofer said they were ready for a new round of talks, though the interior minister made clear he would not agree to any deal that would leave the spy chief without a job. “I do not understand why the SPD has launched a campaign against Mr Maassen. That is why I will not sack him,” Mr Seehofer told Bild on Sunday. 

The coalition spat was triggered by remarks the intelligence chief made in the wake of the recent far-right demonstrations in the city of Chemnitz in eastern Germany. The protests had been intended to mark the killing of a young German, allegedly by two asylum seekers from Iraq and Syria, but escalated into mob violence and overt displays of neo-Nazi sentiment. 

German politicians condemned the killing and the subsequent violence but Mr Maassen made clear that he viewed the political and media response to the latter as exaggerated. There had been no “hounding” of foreigners in Chemnitz, he said in an interview, directly contradicting Ms Merkel, who has used that expression earlier. Mr Maassen also disputed the veracity of a widely shared video showing a group of local protesters running after and attacking two foreigners. He later admitted the video was genuine. 

The remarks by Mr Maassen — a well-known critic of the chancellor’s refugee policy — were seized by critics as further evidence that the BfV was neglecting the fight against rightwing extremism. Leftwing politicians, in particular, have long made that accusation and have pointed to Mr Maassen’s refusal to place the far-right Alternative for Germany party under surveillance. 

Recent polls suggest that the CDU/CSU and the SPD are all losing support among voters. One survey released on Friday showed Ms Merkel’s conservative alliance at just 28 per cent — down from 33 per cent at last year’s election — and the SPD at 17 per cent, compared to 21 per cent last year.

WSJ : Your Browser Is the Most Important App You Have—Make Sure You Use the Righ

Your Browser Is the Most Important App You Have—Make Sure You Use the Right One
You probably haven’t switched web browsers in years, but the best new options make it worth considering

The most important thing your computer does is run a web browser. Whether you use Chrome or Firefox or some hopelessly outdated version of Internet Explorer, it’s probably the most-used app on your machine. Heck, Google made a whole operating system out of a browser, because it’s really all you need.

So why don’t we think about browsers more? We upgrade our phones regularly, frequently perform maintenance on our computers, but rarely consider the app we use most. It’s kind of like regularly cleaning the outside of your house … but never scrubbing the toilets or doing the dishes.

Years ago, Chrome was practically the only good browser available, and it’s still the dominant force on the market. I’ve been using it for years, largely because it seemed unnecessary and annoying to switch. Recently, though, Firefox and Apple ’s AAPL -1.08% Safari have seen huge upgrades, and Microsoft MSFT 0.61% replaced Internet Explorer with Edge, a much better way to use the web. There’s even a cottage industry of hyperspecific browsers for the power user or the privacy conscious.

All these new options presented the perfect reason to make sure—for the first time in too long—that I was really using the best possible browser. And to test what a modern browser can do.

Keeping tabs
For most people, there are five browsers worth considering: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge and Opera. (Remember Opera?!)

It’s easy to assume every browser is the same—it’s just a box for getting to the internet, right? All are free to download and easy to use. They can actually be hard to tell apart, each with similar rows of tabs, bookmarks and search boxes.

In my testing, I found surprising differences. To test how much each browser taxes my system, I loaded the same 10 sites on each browser and watched them gorge on my MacBook’s RAM. Chrome, a notorious resource hog, took up the most memory, with Safari and Opera close behind. Firefox, though, required 30% less RAM than Chrome to run the same stuff.

When it came to performance testing, both industry benchmarks and playing web-based games like Slither, the built-in browsers—Edge on Windows 10 and Safari on MacOS—outperformed all others, but Chrome was always close behind. Firefox and Opera performed worse, especially in more graphics-heavy tests.

Among mobile browsers (which I tested on an iPhone XS and a Google Pixel 2 XL), the differences were smaller. Surprisingly, in every single case, mobile browsers outperformed their desktop counterparts. They’re faster to load pages, able to crunch through more intense web apps and generally just better browsers.

If you’re only using a single device, you’re best off using the built-in browser. On the Mac, I’m particularly impressed with the latest version of Safari, which offers an eye-saving dark mode and finally, at long last (seriously, what was Apple waiting for?), uses favicons—those little square pictures denoting what site you’re on—to help you sort through tabs more quickly. The catch: To upgrade Safari, you must upgrade your whole MacOS to the new Mojave when it comes out on Sept. 24.

But in this massively mobile world, you’re probably not using a single device. That’s why your browser should follow you around, syncing your bookmarks, settings and history so you can always pick up where you left off. There’s no Edge for Mac or Safari for Windows or Android, so unless you’re all in on Microsoft or Apple products, I recommend casting your lot elsewhere.

Window shopping
Choosing between Chrome, Opera and Firefox is largely a matter of personal taste.

Chrome is a delightfully simple app, especially after a recent update: It has a space for tabs and the big box into which you type URLs and searches, and that’s pretty much the whole interface.

Firefox, on the other hand, is a fountain of features. Virtually every pixel can be customized, and even the layout can be changed. With Firefox I can send a page from my computer to my phone with two clicks; I can save something to read later in the Pocket app with one. You can search 10 sites with one query, and easily take full-page screenshots. Firefox even has a night mode. Other browsers require extensions to do these things, which don’t work on mobile and often request access to a huge amount of your data. It’s better built into the browser.

As a result of all these features, though, I found Firefox messy. It took 10 minutes of customizing the toolbar and picking a theme to get it looking like, well, Chrome. Only way more functional.

Opera’s appeal centers on two talents: saving your battery and data cap (especially if you’re on a mobile connection), and automatically protecting your privacy. It will block ads and trackers that nab your personal data. Opera even has a VPN built in, so you can browse in more secrecy. Unfortunately, it has only a small library of extensions. And I got tired of the endless website pop-ups telling me I wasn’t using an officially supported browser.

Firefox has some of Opera’s privacy and security features, but not all. Same with the updated Safari. You can’t easily use Chrome without at least Google knowing what you’re up to, though. (Google says its privacy settings give you control over your data, but most sharing options are on by default.) I’m not sure I’m comfortable with any company knowing about the entirety of my web activity, which at this point amounts to huge chunks of every single day.

I thought I’d end my experiment all-in on a single browser, but I’ve instead begun to split my time. I use Firefox most, because even though it’s a bit slower at least it doesn’t slow down my computer, and it’s so useful to quickly send stuff back and forth between my devices. Chrome I use for Google apps, both because they seem to run better there and because it’s helpful to have my mail and calendar out of the morass of other tabs.

Whichever you pick, I recommend downloading it on all your devices and creating an account so you can sync data between them. You should take a few minutes to tweak the look and add extensions. Websites might look the same in all browsers—trust me, I checked—but your web-browsing experience can be tailored to you.

You should think of browsers not as interchangeable widgets, but as tools every bit as important as your phone or keyboard. With the right one in place, the whole system works better. Just don’t open too many tabs.

FT : Italy’s populists press finance minister to increase public spending

Italy’s populists press finance minister to increase public spending
League and Five Star want to increase deficit to pay for election pledges

Italy’s technocratic finance minister Giovanni Tria is coming under renewed pressure to increase the country’s budget deficit to accommodate the expensive election promises of Rome’s populist coalition government.

This Thursday Mr Tria will present formal targets for the country’s borrowing and growth in an announcement that will be closely scrutinised by Brussels and financial markets.

In the run-up to the statement, politicians from the ruling League and Five Star parties have urged Mr Tria to make fiscal room for a string of costly policies.

However the technocrat — who has affiliations to neither of the ruling parties — has steadfastly stuck to keeping Italy’s budget deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product at around 1.6 per cent. He does acknowledge that the government’s programme — which includes calls for tax cuts from the League and a universal basic income from Five Star — will be implemented over time.

The behind-the-scenes pressure confronting Mr Tria and his staff at the Ministry of Economy was illustrated by a leaked recording of the Italian prime minister’s spokesman, a senior Five Star figure, warning that he would hunt down recalcitrant bureaucrats in a “mega vendetta” if they blocked spending plans.

“If in the end they say to us ‘We couldn’t find the money’ then we’ll devote the whole of 2019 to getting rid of all these pieces of shit [at the finance ministry],” said Rocco Casalino, chief spokesman for Guiseppe Conte, in an off-the-record recording leaked to Italian media.

Mr Casalino, a former contestant on the Italian version of Big Brother who later became the head of communications for the Five Star Movement, released a statement saying the leaked comments represented a breach of his privacy and that he had no intention of following through with the threats he made. Mr Conte said he retained full confidence in his spokesman.

The Italian government has to set its borrowing and growth targets this week and provide a draft budget to the European Commission by the middle of October. Italy has the second largest public debt-to-GDP ratio in the eurozone, making its public finances acutely sensitive to any increase in its borrowing costs triggered by financial markets losing confidence in Rome’s ability to grow and cut debt.

Mr Tria has publicly retained the support of Matteo Salvini, leader of the hard-right League, and Luigi Di Maio, leader of the anti-establishment Five Star.

Mr Salvini said a meeting about the budget at the end of last week “was useful and positive”. Mr Di Maio last week denied he had pushed for Mr Tria’s resignation, and appeared to make a symbolic compromise with the League’s anti-migration stance by conceding the “citizenship wage” policy his party wants will only be available to Italian citizens, “given the flows of illegal migration”.

On Sunday Mr Conte, a law professor who was virtually unknown before being installed as a figurehead prime minister when Mr Salvini and Mr Di Maio formed their coalition, said Mr Tria retained his confidence. “I trust all ministers,” he said.

Mr Conte said the forthcoming budget “should not be miraculous, but useful for the country, courageous, serious, rational and well constructed”.

Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister and media magnate whose Forza Italia party has fallen significantly behind Mr Salvini’s League as the reference point for the Italian right, launched an attack on Five Star on Sunday, declaring its rule was “proving to be worse than we imagined”.

“The response of [Di Maio] is characteristic of their amateurism: ask the treasury for more money, and when faced with the resistance of Minister Tria, who does not want to wreck the public accounts, threaten to throw him out,” said Mr Berlusconi.

“They treat the Ministry of Economy as a cash machine from which to take the money they need to finance their electoral promises.”

FT : City veterans plan ‘merchant bank for mega-rich millennials’

City veterans plan ‘merchant bank for mega-rich millennials’
Ex-UBS and Lazard banker Ken Costa and Jonnie Goodwin join forces

Just two months into his new role as co-chairman of family office Alvarium, Ken Costa, the City grandee and former UBS and Lazard banker, has done what he does best: made a deal.

Rather than advising on client mergers and acquisitions, though, Mr Costa has persuaded another veteran dealmaker, media and internet specialist Jonnie Goodwin, to join forces as part of his attempt to build a “merchant bank for mega-rich millennials”.

Mr Costa joined Alvarium in July as the investment manager, which advises on about £11bn in assets for funds and was formerly known as LJ Partnership, relaunched with a promise to help private family wealth get more opportunities to invest in corporate finance deals.

Now the group, which has 200 staff across eight offices worldwide, has announced it has bought a 49 per cent stake in Mr Goodwin’s technology-focused merchant bank Lepe for an undisclosed price. Under the terms of the deal, Mr Costa is to become chairman of Lepe, while Mr Goodwin will remain chief executive of the boutique.

It is another line on the CV of the seasoned dealmaker, who was last year appointed by Prime Minister Theresa May to advise Saudi Arabia on its economic strategy as the UK sought to lure a potential Saudi Aramco float to London.

Mr Costa argues that rich millennials prefer to take a more active role in managing their money. This includes seeding smaller growth companies — many of which come from the technology sector — as well as co-investing with asset managers in bigger deals.

“Big banks have become discredited for their lack of ability [to cater] to the next generation,” said Mr Costa. “This generation wants to be more exposed and more involved . . . A flexible, more skilful and light-footed investment bank is going to emerge.”

Through the partnership, Alvarium and Lepe hope to work on such deals together and also deploy capital into deals involving each other’s clients. Set up in 2012, Lepe offers corporate advisory services focused on the media, technology and consumer sector. It also runs its own principal investment fund that has invested in nine venture growth investments and had two exits, Treatwell and Chemist Direct.

Mr Costa, 67, seems an unlikely champion of millennials and technology. Still, the new venture will provide “good old-fashioned corporate advice in the old-fashioned way”, he said. As Lazard chairman, he brokered the £1.5bn sale of Harrods to the Qataris in 2010.

This hands-on, “multi-boutique asset manager” model strikes a stark contrast to the move by others in the private banking industry towards offering cheaper, fast services online and areas such as “robo” management advice.

But it also comes as Europe’s tech sector, once dwarfed by Silicon Valley juggernauts, matures— prompting a wave of initial public offerings.

Data from Dealogic show the number of IPOs of European-headquartered tech companies outpaced those from the US in each of the past four years, and rose 34 per cent last year to 59. Notable flotations in 2018 include Dutch payment processor Adyen and Czech cyber security firm Avast, with UK peer-to-peer lender Funding Circle in the pipeline.

For Mr Goodwin, the Alvarium collaboration is a bet that London will continue to provide a steady flow of tech exits — despite the prospect of Brexit.

“These businesses want the skills, they want the backbone of the English language, they want the relationship with America and the rest of the world,” Mr Goodwin said. “London remains the number one hub [in Europe] by a long way and will continue to be so.”

The move into tech represents a change in direction for Alvarium, which was originally set up in 2009 after the financial crisis to take advantage of the shift by the wealthy towards real assets such as real estate. “We are . . . pivoting our core disciplines in financial and real estate assets to encompass new sectors and strategies,” Alexander de Meyer, Alvarium’s chief executive, said.

As part of the shake-up, Ali Bouzarif, the former head of investment execution at the Qatar Investment Authority, joined the group as a partner. New York-based family office Dilmun group, which was originally from the Gulf, took a 40 per cent stake in the company. Both Mr Bouzarif and Alvarium’s co-founder Edward Lawson Johnston will also join the board of Lepe.

To date, Alvarium has invested £2.2bn of equity, primarily in property, and says its net internal rate of return, a closely watched measure of performance, stands at 25 per cent. Revenues in 2018 will be more than £50m, Mr Costa said.

Lepe, by contrast, is petite. The 14-strong firm booked £1.8m in operating profit in 2016, according to its latest Companies House filing, on £6.3m in revenues. Mr Goodwin said the company reached double-digit revenues last year.

But teaming up will give Alvarium access to the Mr Goodwin’s bulging contact book. The 45-year-old has worked on about 150 transactions over the past 15 years, including for the BBC and the Telegraph. He built investment boutique Longacre Partners before it was sold to Jefferies in 2007, and set up the Founders Forum, a private network for tech entrepreneurs.

For inspiration, Mr Goodwin looks to Allen & Company, the US merchant bank that was among the 10 underwriters of the Google IPO in 2004, and advised Facebook on the WhatsApp acquisition and Time Warner on AT&T. “I like that it’s never sold and it’s a brilliant advisory practice that’s continued to help families and entrepreneurs,” he said.

But finding the right talent is one of the biggest challenges ahead. “Some banking is now more product driven. We are not looking for a big brand bank sort of person,” he said.

FT : Oil producers decide against further rise in output

Oil producers decide against further rise in output
Trump had called for Opec to take action to cool prices near $80 a barrel

The world’s biggest oil producers led by Saudi Arabia and Russia have decided against an additional rise in output, despite calls from US President Donald Trump for further action to cool prices near $80 a barrel.

“The OPEC monopoly must get prices down!” Mr Trump wrote on Twitter on Thursday.

Opec countries and their allies are meeting in Algeria to discuss output policy to offset the impact of a drop in Iranian oil exports. US sanctions on Tehran’s energy industry, which are due to come into effect in November, are beginning to restrict supplies.

“I do not influence prices,” Saudi Arabia’s energy minister Khalid Al Falih told reporters in Algiers ahead of a meeting of energy officials, which is separate from the twice-yearly formal ministerial gatherings.

A fall in Iranian barrels, as buyers cut purchases for fear of US financial penalties, has boosted the price of international oil benchmark Brent crude. It has also prompted Mr Trump to blast the cartel, with US officials anxious about the potential effect on domestic fuel prices ahead of midterm elections in November.

Mr Falih added on Sunday that he believed the oil market was “adequately supplied”.

Global oil producers including Opec, Russia and other allies outside the cartel agreed in late 2016 to cut supplies by 1.8m barrels a day to bring the market back into balance after a multiyear downturn.

But supply was cut by more than intended, after unexpected falls in Venezuelan output and disruptions elsewhere, so in June producers agreed to an increase to make up for the cuts that went beyond what was agreed in 2016.

Oman’s oil minister Mohammed Al-Rumhy and his Kuwaiti counterpart Bakhit Al-Rashidi told reporters on Sunday that further action beyond what was agreed in June was not required.

Oil traders and energy sector analysts have raised questions about how big the drop in Iranian supply will be and how much big producer nations will be able to raise supply to compensate.

Although Saudi Arabia said after the ministerial meeting in June that the global oil market should expect a 1m barrel a day increase in the coming weeks and months, increases have fallen short of this level.

“We can produce significantly more than we are producing today if there is demand,” Mr Falih said, adding that the kingdom had sufficient spare output capacity. “The biggest issue is not with the producing countries, it’s with the refiners, it’s with the demand.”

Iran’s oil minister Bijan Zanganeh, who did not attend the meeting on Sunday, has criticised Opec rivals who have boosted their supply to take advantage of Iran’s situation.

“I hope [Mr Trump’s] threats will not scare my Opec colleagues and encourage them to carry out America’s orders,” Mr Zanganeh told state news organisation SHANA.