TheChek News Flow

Investments would finance projects to extract materials crucial for defence and high-tech manufacturing

The US government is in talks to set up a multibillion-dollar fund for overseas mining projects with investment firm Orion Resource Partners, as Washington seeks to counter Chinese dominance of critical minerals.

The US International Development Finance Corporation and New York-based Orion would each invest $600mn or more in the new fund — potentially alongside other sovereign investors and US agencies, said people familiar with the talks.

The fund would invest in projects to extract critical minerals such as copper and rare earths, which are crucial for defence and high-tech manufacturing.

“These talks really show that the [Donald] Trump administration is trying to align its financial tools with its broader mineral ambitions,” said Gracelin Baskaran, director of the critical minerals security programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “This public-private partnership stands to catalyse a significant amount of capital.”

Talks between Orion and DFC, which started last year, were held up by questions from commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, who sits on its board, although those have largely been addressed.

The US has discussed investing $600mn, of which $100mn would be for equity stakes in mining projects and $500mn for debt. The DFC, which is only authorised to invest outside the US, is constrained in how much equity it can take in projects because of the rules governing its mandate.

The DFC declined to comment on the deal but said the agency “actively pursues investments that are aligned with administration priorities, including diversifying critical mineral supply chains”. But one person familiar with the situation said the deal was going ahead.

The White House has made securing critical minerals supplies a top priority and has rapidly expanded government investments into mining and supply chains.

The DFC is expected to work more closely with the private sector under the leadership of Ben Black, who is awaiting Senate confirmation.

It has made a range of mining investments, including providing $105mn for mining start-up TechMet and investing $50mn in a rare earths project in South Africa. The deal with Orion, if finalised, would be its largest. 

The DFC has also committed to lend about $550mn to the Lobito Atlantic Railway, a joint venture between Trafigura and Mota-Engil.

Earlier this year Orion set up a $1.2bn joint venture with ADQ, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, into which each side contributed $600mn — a potential model for how the US fund could operate, said people familiar with Orion’s thinking.

Orion declined to comment.

Led by chief executive Oskar Lewnowski, Orion is a specialist investor in mining and commodities with $8bn under management. It has a private capital arm, through which it provides equity and debt funding to mining projects, and a hedge fund arm specialising in commodities.

The company will ring the bell on the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday and roll out its new strategic plan.

Ralph Lauren has always cultivated a certain timelessness with his preppy take on Americana.

Patrice Louvet, chief executive officer of Ralph Lauren Corp., is looking to do the same with the company’s business model.

Louvet will launch Ralph Lauren’s next strategic plan during an investor meeting at the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday, bringing the company into the “Next Great Chapter: Drive” and introducing new financial targets.

After executives ring the opening bell to start the trading day, investors will get the skinny on the new three-year plan, which has more than just the name in common with the former strategy, “Next Great Chapter: Accelerate.”

Ralph Lauren’s three strategic growth drivers are staying the same, with the company continuing to focus on:

• Elevating and energizing its lifestyle brand.
• Driving core product categories, like polos, and expanding for more business in other areas.
• Winning in key cities by scaling in the brand’s 30 top-10 urban areas, while also starting to develop the next 20 top cities.

In a preview for WWD, Louvet said the three strategic pillars are “evergreen” to some extent.

“It’s really about how do you bring it to life? How do you execute?” the CEO said. “The strategy is wonderful on paper, but ultimately it’s about excellence and execution at every touch point. I think our teams have done that well around the world, and now we’re going to focus on doing that.”

And the company — which has already seen its stock rise 74 percent over the past year and has a market capitalization of $19.1 billion — is planning on seeing some results.

While Ralph Lauren continues to take a cautious stance on the back half of this fiscal year, it expects to see revenues increase at a midsingle-digit compounded annual rate over the next three years, through fiscal 2028.

Operating margins are expected to expand 100 to 150 basis points by Fiscal 2028 in constant currency and capital expenditures are expected to equal 4 percent to 5 percent of the top line annually.

All together the company plans to shell out $2 billion in cash dividends and share repurchases over the three years.

To get there, Ralph Lauren has the same strategic goals, but Louvet said the company will be tweaking just how it pursues those ambitions.

“On the brand side, you’re going to hear us talk about how we’re going to build our desirability in the future,” Louvet said. “On the product front, you’re going to hear more about how we’re going to tap into the women’s opportunity. Then on the key city front, we’re going to talk about how we’re going to deepen our penetration of the top 30 cities.”

Ralph Lauren, for instance, is opening new stores in the already established markets of London and Paris, while looking to expand in new target cities, including Austin, Zurich and Vienna.

As the company continues to grow, it will make changes here and there to meet the moment.

“I had a boss a long time ago who actually said that the organizational structure that has actually survived the longest over history is the amoeba,” Louvet said. “And so we believe in the amoeba concept, which is you have to constantly evolve to make sure that you are set up to bring your strategy to life.

“This characterizes our philosophy and this company looks different than it did three years ago, and I suspect three years from now it’ll look different than it does today, but it’ll stay true to our philosophy as a brand, our core values as a company and the culture that we’ve established,” he said.

Notably, the preview had no mention of the supply chain or tariffs or anything even vaguely trade war-y.

When asked, Justin Picicci, chief financial officer, said the company was prepared.

“We have a range of proven tools in our toolkit to mitigate cost inflation tariffs and other pressures,” Picicci said. “It starts with our supply chain, but we’re diversified so that we don’t have any one country of origin responsible for more than 20 percent of our sourcing, and most are in the single-digit percentage range.

“We also have really strong supplier relationships that we’ve sort of forged over the past decades, and they’re working with us on this process,” he said.

Louvet suggested the company was taking the challenge in stride.

“We don’t feel like we need a major overhaul,” the CEO said. “It’s going to be volatile, but I think we’re well positioned. There’s a dynamic element to our operations in a way that we can adjust to the terrain, even if the terrain is a little bumpy, that has proven to be a real competitive advantage for us, and that will continue to be, and we work really hard to avoid surprises.”

And all the while there’s Lauren himself, who is executive chairman and chief creative officer, pointing the way forward.

“For nearly 60 years, we have stayed true to our vision of timeless style, authenticity, optimism and a life well-lived,” the designer said. “As our teams carry this vision into the future, I am so proud of how they are working together with passion and commitment to who we are as we inspire more and more people all over the world to step into their dreams.”

Swiss National Bank has more than $42bn invested in Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia and Meta

Switzerland’s conservative central bank has quietly become one of the world’s biggest tech investors, amassing a stock portfolio that is equivalent in value to nearly a fifth of the national economy’s annual output.

The Swiss National Bank has US equity holdings amounting to $167bn, spread across more than 2,300 positions, according to SEC filings from June.

More than $42bn is invested in just five companies — Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and Nvidia — making it a major Silicon Valley investor. Its stake in Apple alone is worth nearly $10bn and its stake in Nvidia is more than $11bn.

Though not a sovereign wealth fund, the SNB’s $855bn balance sheet of assets, including its tech holdings, put it in a similar league as some of the world’s largest state investment vehicles, including those of Singapore and Qatar.

“Switzerland doesn’t need a sovereign wealth fund when we have the SNB,” said Arturo Bris, professor of finance at IMD Business School. “But they don’t want to take any role in these companies — it is purely a tool to manage the currency.”

The SNB is a conservative institution but it is highly unconventional in how it operates. No other central bank holds such large equity positions as the SNB. The Bank of Japan, which also has a large known equity exposure, has its holdings mostly in domestic stocks via equity index exchange traded funds, according to IMD.

But the SNB’s vast holdings have sparked increasing calls for the portfolio to be managed more actively to drive returns. Its high exposure to US tech stocks comes as others, such as the European Central Bank, have warned of a bubble in the sector.

The Swiss franc is seen globally as a safe haven due to the country’s political and economic stability. During crises — from the global financial meltdown to the Eurozone debt crisis — investors have parked money in Switzerland.

But the franc’s strength poses a persistent challenge. It is the top-performing currency over the past 50, 25, 10 and five years, and has already appreciated more than 13 per cent against the dollar this year amid US President Donald Trump’s tariffs shock. That strength risks causing a deflationary slump, which the SNB would have to react to. It also more broadly affects the country’s export competitiveness.

To counter this, the SNB regularly sells francs and buys foreign currencies, mostly US dollars and euros, to weaken the franc.

This approach is a fundamental departure from how other central banks operate, said Karsten Junius, chief economist at Safra Sarasin, the Swiss private bank.

While the US Federal Reserve and ECB use newly created money to buy their own government bonds — reducing interest rates and weakening their currencies — the SNB cannot do the same, he said. Switzerland’s bond market is too small for its huge balance sheet.

Instead, by buying foreign currency to weaken the franc, then investing that money in overseas bonds and equities, the SNB is conducting what some analysts call “foreign” quantitative easing. Over the past decade, that strategy has led it towards one of the world’s biggest and best-performing asset classes: US tech stocks.

Today, about 87 per cent of the SNB’s balance sheet is held in foreign currency assets, according to its own data. Roughly two-thirds of that is in government bonds, 10 per cent in corporate bonds, and 25 per cent in equities. Its US stock holdings are publicly disclosed through SEC filings.

Unlike most central banks, the SNB is not owned by the national government. About half of its shares are held by Swiss cantons and cantonal banks, while the rest are owned by private individuals. It is also listed on the Swiss stock exchange.

“You can see why the SNB gets compared to a sovereign wealth fund — it owns so much and has such a large balance sheet,” said Stefan Gerlach, chief economist at EFG Bank in Zurich. “But unlike a sovereign fund, which seeks returns through active investment, the SNB has a different mindset.”

The SNB does not exercise its voting rights in the US. Though passive in philosophy, however, it is not a static holder. IMD data from SEC filings show that in 2023, the bank held no Berkshire Hathaway stock. By 2025, it had built a position worth more than $2bn.

It also significantly increased its exposure to Nvidia, multiplying its shareholding more than sixfold over the same period. The value of its stake rose by more than 175 per cent, reflecting both buying and a surge in the chipmaker’s stock price.

It has reduced its positions in Meta and Netflix over the past two years — although those smaller holdings have gained sharply in value. Similarly, even though it now holds fewer shares in Palantir Technologies, the data analytics company’s surging price boosted the value of its stake eightfold.

But the SNB avoids some sectors entirely. One is banking and some financial stocks, said Christel Rendu de Lint, co-chief executive of investment firm Vontobel.

“The SNB does not invest in systemically important banks globally to avoid any conflict of interest it could be seen as favouring them,” she said.

The bank also avoids investments in companies involved in internationally condemned weapons, according to its sustainability report.

There are risks to its investment approach. A sharp downturn in equity and currency markets can quickly erase the SNB’s earnings. In 2022 and 2023, the bank posted billions in losses in part due to falling asset values and currency volatility.

The bank reported a loss of SFr15.3bn in the first half of 2025, as the slumping US dollar hit its foreign currency portfolio.

US tech stocks have also sold off this year as warnings that the hype surrounding artificial intelligence could be overdone.

Such losses have triggered periodic calls by analysts and politicians for the SNB to rethink how it invests its reserves, says Gerlach. Some have proposed outsourcing a portion to external managers to generate higher returns. The SNB’s bank council, whose members include people with business, government and academic backgrounds, oversees the investment strategy.

But for now, there are no plans to change the system, economists say.

The SNB declined to comment. Its website says the “assets in a sovereign wealth fund would be exposed to the same exchange rate risk as the SNB’s currency reserves; even a much higher proportion of ‘real’ investments such as equities would offer no protection against value fluctuations”.

Safra Sarasin’s Junius warned that doing so could undermine the bank’s flexibility.

“Outsourcing would reduce liquidity. The assets wouldn’t be available for monetary policy use as quickly or discreetly,” he said.

For example, after the coronavirus pandemic, the SNB was able to quickly sell foreign currencies and buy back francs to help ease inflationary pressure.

“It simply isn’t a good idea [to change that],” Junius said.