TheChek News Flow

Poland in talks for stake in satellite company that helped Ukraine resist Russia

Chief executive of Polish-Finnish start-up Iceye says company’s valuation has risen ‘significantly’ above $1bn

Poland plans to buy a stake in a satellite company that came to prominence by tracking Russian troop movements towards Ukraine, as geopolitical tensions boost demand for military imagery.

Warsaw is in the final stages of talks to acquire equity in Iceye, said the company’s chief executive Rafał Modrzewski, without disclosing the size of the investment. The cash injection would add to $550mn raised from investors so far, he said.

Founded in 2014 by Modrzewski and Finnish partner Pekka Laurila as a provider of radar imagery of moving ice blocks to Arctic shipping companies, Iceye has become a supplier of military applications since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Its valuation has grown “significantly higher” than $1bn, Modrzewski said.

It is among a host of companies that are seeking to capitalise on European governments expected surge in defence spending after US President Donald Trump put pressure on the region to take more responsibility for its own security.

Modrzewski told the Financial Times that privately held Iceye — which he and Laurila set up with backing from Aalto University’s Center for Entrepreneurship when they were students — wants to expand its production capacity at least fourfold to meet surging demand for its satellites.

Poland’s investment will be channelled through the nation’s development bank and follows the defence ministry’s $230mn purchase in May of as many as six Iceye satellites. They use synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology to capture images at night and through cloud cover — a capability that conventional and larger optical satellites lack.

Poland’s development bank declined to comment on the talks.

Iceye supplied Ukraine with images of Russian troop movements ahead of Moscow’s full-scale assault in February 2022, and last year signed a memorandum of co-operation to strengthen collaboration with Kyiv.

The company has launched 54 satellites — each costing about $20mn to produce — with about half run by national defence forces, including those of the Netherlands, Finland, Brazil and Portugal.

It also has a partnership to integrate its spacecraft into BAE Systems’ cluster of satellites and a joint venture with Space42 to manufacture in the United Arab Emirates.

The Arctic market “disappeared” after western nations imposed sanctions on Russia, Modrzewski said. Iceye turned to defence because demand for its satellites would persist even after the conflict in Ukraine ended, he added.

“Would defence markets stop existing if the war in Ukraine ends? No . . . Growth in the [European defence] spending is so huge that it will take a while before that market gets overtaken by anything else.”

The company manufactures about 25 satellites annually and it wants to raise this to between 100 and 150, meaning it will need “substantial additional capital” beyond the Polish investment, Modrzewski said.

In previous funding rounds, Iceye received backing from investors including BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, venture capital firm OTB Ventures and Seraphim Space Investment Trust.

It has also received funding from public entities such as the European Investment Bank and Solidium Oy, a Finnish state-owned investor.

“Europe doesn’t have the time now for us to just grow organically,” Modrzewski said. “We’re going to source more financing in order to supercharge the growth of the manufacturing capability so that we can manufacture more, faster and ultimately fulfil the demand.”

Most of the company’s satellites have been launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral in Florida, but also from countries including India and New Zealand. Iceye has production facilities in Finland, Spain, Greece and the US.

In May, Iceye created a joint venture with Rheinmetall to build satellites in Germany, a tie-up that Modrzewski said would give his company access to the country’s rising defence budget and connect it to weapons systems developed by Rheinmetall.

Modrzewski said he was not concerned about growing competition as Airbus and others enter the SAR satellite sector, arguing Iceye had a head start and a superior product.

“They aren’t building as good satellites, nor do they have as many,” he said. “It’s not that straightforward for a company like Airbus, which is used to a certain style of product development, to suddenly entirely switch the ways of doing business.”

Iceye’s business model prioritises speed and affordability, using cheaper components and lighter testing regimes. Modrzewski admitted this had led to failures in some units before their expected three-year lifespan, but said the company minimised the problem by having spare products in space.

“Our satellites fail more often than the big ones, yes,” he said. “But because we have a large constellation, we can immediately replace a failed satellite with another. From the customer’s perspective, that translates to 100 per cent reliability.”

Greek companies tour Europe to lure back skilled nationals

More than a decade after an economic crisis triggered an exodus, government wants skilled workers to return

Greece’s labour minister is touring Europe to persuade her compatriots to return and rebuild the country’s workforce, more than a decade after thousands emigrated to find better prospects during the country’s debt crisis.

Niki Kerameus is leading delegations of Greek employers across European cities — from London to Amsterdam — pitching a bold message: Greece is no longer the same country as the one they fled.

“At the beginning, the atmosphere is negative,” Kerameus told the Financial Times. “They see in us the representatives of the state that pushed them away. And the challenge is even greater: to show them that today’s Greece has nothing to do with the Greece of 2010 or 2012.”

Greece has suffered from a shrinking labour force and a loss of critical skills across the economy. More than 600,000 mostly young, highly educated Greeks left between 2010 and 2021, after the country sank into the most severe recession of any developed economy during peacetime.

Low pay and limited career prospects, as well as a perceived lack of meritocracy, remain key reasons many are reluctant to return, a survey last year by BrainRegain showed.

There are early signs that the outflow of people could be starting to reverse. In 2023, the latest year for which figures are available, more people arrived than left for the first time since 2009. It’s unclear how many of those are skilled workers.

Sixty per cent of people who returned to the country in 2023 are between 20 and 44 years old, the most dynamic working years, according to Tassos Anastasatos, chief economist at Greece’s Eurobank.

The Greek government has a range of incentives to encourage returnees, including a 50 per cent income tax reduction for seven years for those who worked abroad for five years or more. About 6,000 have taken advantage of it since 2020. But officials say the effort is as much about perception as policy.

Kerameus is bringing her roadshow to New York later this year. The events have run since 2024. Greek companies such as Aegean and Piraeus Port Authority, along with foreign firms such as Deloitte and Lidl, headhunt new employees and sometimes offer them jobs on the spot. But it’s tricky to lure back high-paid staff when wages are among the lowest in the EU.

Average wages have risen 28 per cent since 2016, but earnings for professionals making more than €1,600 a month have barely kept pace with inflation.

“You can’t build a sustainable recovery if you’re not paying professionals competitively,” Bank of Greece economic adviser Dimitris Malliaropulos told the FT. “There’s no growth without human capital. And without serious investment in life-long learning — still well below the EU average — we risk falling further behind.”

Among those persuaded to return was Avgousta Stanitsa, an architect and AI researcher who moved back to Athens after nearly a decade in the UK. She landed a role in data and AI at EY through a ministry job fair — while five months pregnant. “I was impressed that my pregnancy wasn’t seen as a barrier,” she said. “It felt like attitudes in Greece were shifting — around work, motherhood, and culture.”

’’I knew I could bring back what I’d learned abroad,” she said. But she acknowledged the trade-off. “Salaries don’t compare to the UK or elsewhere in Europe. But with the tax benefits, I’ve been able to maintain a decent quality of life.”

Emotional ties remain the strongest pull. More than half of Greeks would be motivated to return by personal and family bonds, according to the survey by BrainRegain, an NGO focused on reversing brain drain. 32 per cent missed the warm weather.

“They start thinking about the language their children are going to learn in school,” said Kerameus. “And they realise they miss home.”

For others, returning is more about opportunity. Panagiotis Kantiotos, an electrical engineer, returned after 11 years in France to work on the Crete—Attica interconnection, a landmark infrastructure project. “You don’t turn down something like that in your own country,” he said.

Most of his peers remain abroad. ‘‘If Greece wants to bring back more of its talent, it needs more than sentiment,’’ he said. ‘‘It needs structure.”

Flexjet raises $800mn from LVMH-backed private equity firm

World’s second-biggest private jet company valued at $4bn in one of biggest investments in private aviation history

Flexjet, the world’s second-largest private jet company, has raised $800mn in a funding round led by LVMH-backed private equity firm L Catterton in a bid to tap into a boom in demand from young super-rich flyers.

The fundraising values Flexjet at roughly $4bn, according to people familiar with the matter, as the company seeks to expand its fleet in response to demand from technology and crypto entrepreneurs.

“We have a tremendous amount of different types of entrepreneurs this year . . . in the tech space but also bitcoin, they become so speculative and so there is rapid wealth in that industry,” Flexjet chair Kenn Ricci told the Financial Times.

The investment in Flexjet is the largest ever fundraising in the private aviation sector, according to US investment bank Jefferies. Flexjet is the world’s second-biggest private jet company by fleet size and market share, behind Warren Buffett-backed market leader NetJets.

The business, whose exclusive network of aircraft were featured in the hit HBO show Succession, has started to explore how L Catterton’s ties to LVMH can expand its luxurious offerings such as designs of cabin interiors.

KSL Capital Partners, LLC and the J Safra Group took part in the deal.

The company, which operates a fleet of more than 300 business jets including Gulfstreams and offers fractional ownership of its aircraft, previously walked away from plans announced in late 2022 to go public in a Spac deal that valued the group at $3.1bn.

The patchy return of scheduled flights in the years after pandemic lockdowns diverted record numbers of wealthy travellers to private jets.

The global super-prime jet market was worth $22.7bn last year, according to consultants AeroDynamic Advisory, a 7 per cent rise on 2023. Worldwide, 764 private jets were delivered last year, according to data provider IBA, with projections of a 7.3 per cent increase this year.

But as the global super-rich population skews younger — the average age of Flexjet’s customers is now 58, down from 62 in 2019 — catering for their needs has become a priority for jet providers.

“It’s kind of funny because in one sense, we talk about Generation X as being more frugal, right? The ride sharing, the Ubers, the Airbnbs. But it doesn’t relate to aircraft,” Ricci said, adding that younger people wanted to travel “further” to destinations such as London and Dubai with “bigger aircraft”.

The Cleveland, Ohio-based company brought in $2.6bn in revenue last year, a rise of more than 50 per cent on fiscal 2021, according to a person familiar with the company. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation were $390mn in 2024, and are projected to reach $425mn this year.

Flexjet has benefited from a surge in demand for luxury travel to the Middle East in recent years, and now has 10 times more flights to destinations in the region such as Dubai and Jeddah than in 2021.

L Catterton, a consumer-focused investment firm, was set up in 2016 by Catterton, LVMH and Bernard Arnault’s family holding company.

As part of the deal, 25 per cent of the investment will be given out in dividends to existing Flexjet shareholders, according to people familiar with the discussions. One person said the private jet company had not been “out shopping for deals” but that it had been approached by L Catterton, which wanted to “make an investment in the space”.

EQT boss urges US Congress to cut permit times for natural gas projects

Toby Rice says labyrinthine approval processes are holding back Trump’s ambitions for energy dominance

The head of the biggest US natural gas company has warned Congress it needs to cut project approval times to better compete with Russian gas exports and win the artificial intelligence race against China.

The comments by EQT chief executive Toby Rice add to growing concerns that America’s byzantine permitting process is driving up costs and project times for building infrastructure such as wells, pipelines and power plants — preventing the US from delivering the energy it needs to compete with its adversaries.

“Congress [needs] to step up and act,” said Rice in an interview with the Financial Times.

“The threat of not getting infrastructure built has only gotten larger — not only from bad actors getting rich by selling energy that could be replaced with American energy — it’s also the threat of China winning the AI race.”

Oil and gas companies have long bemoaned the pace of project approvals under US local, state and federal governments.

Of particular concern, Rice noted, is judicial review, which allows individuals and groups to legally challenge permit decisions for up to six years after an agency makes a decision. Previous attempts at permitting reform have suggested reducing that time window.

“We need to make sure we have judicial reform,” he said. “That would be incredibly impactful.”

Rice also blamed the fast-tracking of renewable sources, such as wind and solar, for driving up energy costs.

“When we spent the last 10 years ripping out coal, shutting down nuclear and making it more challenging to get natural gas infrastructure built, nobody should be questioning why prices are up and grid reliability is a major concern.

“[Congress should] get away from picking winners and losers,” he said.

President Donald Trump has made “unleashing American energy dominance” a priority for his second stint in the White House. In January, Trump lifted a Joe Biden-era ban on new liquefied natural gas export terminals along the US coastline and directed the Maritime Administration to expedite permits.

These actions come as the US races to meet growing domestic and global power demand caused by the data centres used to build and develop Ai. The International Energy Agency predicts that electricity demand from data centres worldwide is set to double to 945TWh by 2030.

On Tuesday EQT signed an agreement in principle to provide gas to a 4.4GW plant that will power the Homer City Energy Campus, a 3,200 acre data centre in Pennsylvania.

Markets such as Europe have also been working to wean themselves off Russian gas since the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, as well as turning to American imports to avoid tariffs.

On Wednesday one of Europe’s largest energy companies, ENI, signed a 20-year agreement to buy 2mn metric tonnes of LNG from Venture Global.

Trump’s flagship “big, beautiful bill” contained provisions capping the length of permit reviews, while the Department of Energy recently rolled back some environmental rules that it said were slowing down approvals.

Trump is believed to have revived the Constitution Pipeline, a 124-mile project that was cancelled five years ago after pressure from environmental activists, in exchange for lifting a stop work order on Equinor’s Empire Wind.

However, federal attempts at reform may still brush up against state-level restrictions.

“States that have been opposed to pipeline development, such as New York and California, can still use state level regulations to block projects,” said Eugene Kim, a research director on Wood Mackenzie’s Americas gas research team. “Despite all the Trump administration-led reform, we still need a lot more.”

The sector has also been hit by weak natural gas prices since the surge caused by Russia’s invasion in 2022. 

While acknowledging that “prices are always going to be an issue and one of the bigger factors on our activity levels”, EQT says it has cut its unlevered cost structure from $3 to $2 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) by increasing rig efficiency and the acquisition of Equitrans Midstream. Rice predicts that prices will reach $4 per MMBtu in 2026.

“Just for perspective, $4 natural gas is the equivalent of $24 oil, so we’re still providing an amazingly affordable energy solution,” he said. “This will catalyse a lot of demand and growth prospects.”

Transactions fall to lowest level since 2011 in smaller cities that rely on deals for revenue

Land sales across smaller and less wealthy Chinese cities have fallen to their lowest levels since at least 2011, highlighting the bleak prospects for a full recovery across a national real estate market mired in a slowdown.

Data from financial information provider Wind shows the total value of all land transactions in third-tier mainland Chinese cities, as ranked by population and economic development, fell 4 per cent to Rmb362bn ($50bn) in the first half of this year on the same period last year, despite a slight rise in sales for residential use.

The value of land transactions, including for residential, commercial and other uses, slipped to Rmb87bn in fourth-tier cities and Rmb51bn in fifth-tier cities — both also the lowest since Wind began compiling the data series in 2011.

The data showed that across 337 cities in China, sales rose 8 per cent to Rmb1.2tn in the first half, fuelled by increased activity in first- and second-tier urban areas. But after a collapse in volumes that began in 2021, the total was still the fourth-lowest recorded by Wind.

The worsening picture outside the largest and wealthiest cities points to the challenge for policymakers in Beijing as they try to revive a real estate market that for years anchored economic growth and provided local authorities with vital revenue.

“I think the issues will be persistent,” said Jeff Zhang, an analyst at investment research company Morningstar, pointing to “suppressed demand” in lower-tier cities, where developers were unwilling to use their land banks while still offloading existing properties. “There is a huge inventory of homes that is already there”.

China’s property market has struggled to rebound from a slump now well into its fourth year. New home prices across 70 cities dropped 0.3 per cent month on month in June, despite a host of government measures aimed to restore confidence and recent signs of a slower pace of decline in richer urban areas.

Lower-tier cities, where governments often rely on land sales for revenue, are seen as particularly vulnerable to excessive housing supply following a construction boom that spectacularly imploded in 2021.

Beijing has launched a series of measures targeting mortgage rates to boost demand, as well as pushing for the completion of unfinished projects and pledging to convert unused properties into social housing. Last year, Goldman Sachs estimated that China had Rmb30tn of unsold housing inventory, including land and completed apartments.

Ting Lu, chief China economist at Nomura, said in a report this month that despite government efforts to support the market last September, “the downward spiral in low-tier cities [is] almost unchanged”. A high proportion of land sales now took place in just 10 cities, he added.

State-owned developers have focused heavily on the first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, where the Wind data showed land sales rising 30 per cent year on year by value in the first half of the year. Analysts at HSBC have said “high-end markets are thriving”.

But in lower-tier cities, the contrast is sharp.

“I don’t think any major developers will go into those cities,” said Lulu Shi, an analyst at Fitch ratings, of weaker third- and fourth-tier areas. “The only remaining developers that do business in those cities are local ones, and most of them are constructing existing projects,” she added.

In a report on China’s property slowdown, Goldman Sachs analysts said they expected “substantial regional divergences”. The US bank forecasts “broad property price stabilisation” in higher-tier cities by the end of next year.

Land sales are an important source of income for local governments. Official data shows that Chinese local governments’ income from land sales fell 12 per cent year on year to Rmb1.1tn to the end of May, the lowest level since 2016.

“The actual slump could be much worse than the reported data suggest,” said Nomura’s Lu, who estimated that the “lion’s share” of land purchases was by local government financing vehicles — state-owned companies that borrow to invest in real estate.

“Essentially, local governments have been selling land to themselves to stabilise local land markets, especially in low-tier cities that are unable to attract real bidders other than their own LGFVs,” he said.

A former Jeffrey Epstein employee said that she told the F.B.I. in 1996 and 2006 about what she considered a troubling encounter with Donald J. Trump.

It was the summer of 1996 when Maria Farmer went to law enforcement to complain about Jeffrey Epstein.

At the time, she said, she had been sexually assaulted by Mr. Epstein and his longtime partner, Ghislaine Maxwell. Ms. Farmer, then in her mid-20s, had also learned about a troubling encounter that her younger sister — then a teenager — had endured at Mr. Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico. And she described facing threats from Mr. Epstein.

Ms. Farmer said that when she discussed her concerns with the New York Police Department, then with the F.B.I., she also urged them to take a broader look at the people in Mr. Epstein’s orbit, including Donald J. Trump, then still two decades from being elected president. She repeated that message, she said, when the F.B.I. interviewed her again about Mr. Epstein in 2006.

Her account is among the clearest indications yet of how Mr. Trump might have come to be named in the unreleased investigative files in the Epstein case, a matter that has generated another political uproar in recent weeks.

In interviews over the past week about what she told the authorities, Ms. Farmer said she had no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Mr. Epstein’s associates. But she said she was alarmed by what she saw as Mr. Epstein’s pattern of pursuing girls and young women while building friendships with prominent people, including Mr. Trump and President Bill Clinton.

Investigations like the ones that targeted Mr. Epstein often explore a wide range of tips, evidence, recollections and relationships, little of which ends up being used in court records or as the basis for criminal prosecution. Mr. Epstein’s voluminous investigative file contains many records that have not been made public, but that became the focus of claims, long stoked by Mr. Trump’s allies, that authorities might have covered up the involvement of other rich and powerful men.

Now, after his attorney general and F.B.I. director abruptly abandoned their earlier promises to reveal everything about the Epstein files and said, in effect, that there was nothing to see, Mr. Trump’s ties to Mr. Epstein are under renewed scrutiny, leading to questions about what so-far-undisclosed appearances he might have in the investigative record.

The story of Ms. Farmer’s efforts to call law enforcement attention to Mr. Epstein and his circle shows how the case files could contain material that is embarrassing or politically problematic to Mr. Trump, even if it is largely extraneous to Mr. Epstein’s crimes and was never fully investigated or corroborated.

And it underscores the complexities of opening up to scrutiny all the leads that investigators pursued, the evidence they gathered and the interviews they conducted, little of which ever went before a judge or jury.

Law enforcement agencies have not accused Mr. Trump of any wrongdoing related to Mr. Epstein, and he has never been identified as a target of any associated investigation. Mr. Trump last week called for relevant grand jury testimony in the prosecution of Mr. Epstein to be publicly released, and has repeatedly dismissed any notion that he has something to hide. Even if that testimony is released, it is unlikely to shed much light on the relationship between the two men, which did not figure prominently in Mr. Epstein’s criminal cases.

Ms. Farmer said she has long wondered how law enforcement agencies handled her complaints in 1996 and 2006.

And she said she has been wondering in particular whether federal authorities did anything with her concerns about Mr. Trump. She said that she raised his name both times, not only because he seemed so close to Mr. Epstein but because of an encounter, which she has previously described publicly, that she said she had with Mr. Trump in Mr. Epstein’s New York office.

‘She’s Not Here for You’

The encounter with Mr. Trump, Ms. Farmer said, occurred in 1995 as she was preparing to work for Mr. Epstein. She said she told the authorities that late one night, Mr. Epstein unexpectedly called her to his offices in a luxury building in Manhattan, and she arrived in running shorts.

Mr. Trump then arrived, wearing a business suit, and started to hover over her, she said she told the authorities.

Ms. Farmer said she recalled feeling scared as Mr. Trump stared at her bare legs. Then Mr. Epstein entered the room, and she recalled him saying to Mr. Trump: “No, no. She’s not here for you.”

The two men left the room, and Ms. Farmer said she could hear Mr. Trump commenting that he thought Ms. Farmer was 16 years old.

After her encounter with Mr. Trump, Ms. Farmer said, she had no other alarming interactions with him, and did not see him engage in inappropriate conduct with girls or women.

The White House on Friday night contested Ms. Farmer’s account and cited Mr. Trump’s long-ago decision to end his friendship with Mr. Epstein.

“The president was never in his office,” said Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, referring to Mr. Epstein. “The fact is that the president kicked him out of his club for being a creep.”

Reports to Law Enforcement

Ms. Farmer, an artist, worked for Mr. Epstein in 1995 and 1996, initially to acquire art on his behalf but then later to oversee the comings and goings of girls, young women and celebrities at the front entrance of his Upper East Side townhouse.

In 1996, Ms. Farmer said she went to stay at Mr. Epstein’s estate in Ohio in a complex developed by Leslie H. Wexner, the chief executive of the company that owned Victoria’s Secret. Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell came that summer.

Ms. Farmer said that after she was asked to give Mr. Epstein a foot massage, he and Ms. Maxwell violently groped her until she fled the room and barricaded herself in another part of the building. Ms. Farmer was an artist who did work on nude figures, and she also reported that partially nude photos she had of her two younger sisters were missing from a storage lockbox.

Over the years, Ms. Farmer has been attacked by people who questioned whether she could be trusted. She was not called to testify when Ms. Maxwell was prosecuted and convicted in 2021 of conspiring with Mr. Epstein to sexually exploit and abuse girls. (Her sister Annie did testify in the case about how Ms. Maxwell had massaged her bare chest after she had been invited to Mr. Epstein’s estate in New Mexico.)

But Ms. Farmer’s mother said she remembered hearing about the Trump encounter around the time it occurred in 1996, and that Ms. Farmer had first gone to the F.B.I. that year. Annie Farmer also said she remembered Maria sharing that she had told the F.B.I. about Mr. Epstein and powerful people like Mr. Trump and Mr. Clinton.

In her first interviews with The Times in 2019, Maria Farmer said that before she talked to the F.B.I., she first spoke to the Sixth Precinct of the New York Police Department. Police records show that she had done that in August 1996.

Law enforcement agencies have not released records of any F.B.I. report Ms. Farmer made in 1996, but handwritten notes from the interview agents did with her a decade later match her account, including that “6th precinct told MF to call FBI.”

The portions of those F.B.I. records that have been released do not mention Mr. Trump, but much of the account remains redacted.

The F.B.I. did not respond to a request for comment.

Unclear Follow-Up

Mr. Epstein was indicted in 2006 and later pleaded guilty to two felony charges, including soliciting a minor, in a deal that avoided federal charges. In 2019, he was charged again, accused of trafficking dozens of girls, some as young as 14, and engaging in sex acts with them. He was later found dead in a jail cell, and officials have said he hanged himself.

It is unclear whether federal investigators pursued a deeper examination of Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Epstein or whether the authorities documented what Ms. Farmer said she told them about Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump’s friendship with Mr. Epstein has been captured in videos of them partying together and comments the men have made, and his name appears in some previously released case records, including Mr. Epstein’s flight logs. Mr. Trump was quoted in 2002 as calling Mr. Epstein a “terrific guy.” He has since said that he is “not a fan” of Mr. Epstein, and has emphasized that he broke with him two decades ago.

In recent years, Mr. Trump’s allies have pressed for further release of federal files related to Mr. Epstein. But after initially promising full disclosure, Attorney General Pam Bondi suddenly backtracked this month, saying that a review of the case found nothing to indicate that anyone else should be charged.

Amid a backlash from his supporters in recent days, Mr. Trump has assailed those still calling for more disclosure. After The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Mr. Epstein had received a sexually suggestive birthday greeting from Mr. Trump in 2003, Mr. Trump called the report a hoax and sued the news organization.

Where has all the M&A gone?

In the mythology of Silicon Valley, the initial public offering is the gold-standard exit for a start-up. But the number of I.P.O.s has dwindled over the last 25 years, replaced almost completely by acquisitions.

And now, even that exit has exited. In the last five years, the number of acquisitions has gone off a cliff.

Why the drop-off? In a new paper titled “No Exit,” a Vanderbilt law professor, Brian Broughman, and Cardozo law professors Matthew Wansley and Samuel Weinstein argue that the answer is fear of antitrust scrutiny — and the proof is in stealthy new deal-making, so-called reverse acquihires like Google’s recent hollowing-out of the A.I. company Windsurf, and Big Tech’s A.I. sugar-daddy relationships with companies like OpenAI. Wansley talked with DealBook about the deals that ate M&A.

The dot-com bust and regulatory changes ended the era of the I.P.O. So what happened to acquisitions?

In the 2000s and the 2010s, while I.P.O.s were in decline, acquisitions were on the rise — tracking the amount of money going into venture capital. The last few years, that starts to drop off, too. Our argument is that it’s out of fear that they’d get scrutiny from the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission.

In the years before 2020, there were, like, three start-up acquisitions that got scrutinized and challenged by the D.O.J. and F.T.C. After that, it’s 14.

How do you know Big Tech got scared? That could be a statistical blip.

The compelling evidence is deal structures that we haven’t seen before. To me, the reverse acquihire is the smoking gun, because there is no reason to do a reverse acquihire unless you’re trying to evade antitrust enforcement.

Acquihires are common enough. What makes it an antitrust dodge?

We think reverse acquihires are something new. A Big Tech company wants to acquire a start-up, but it’s worried that the D.O.J. or F.T.C. is going to challenge the deal. So instead, they get the founders and the core engineering team to leave the start-up and come work for them. But the V.C.s are not going to be happy about that, because they don’t want to see their investment walk out the door. So the Big Tech company says, OK, we’re going to pay the start-up to license their intellectual property.

That seems fine. People change jobs. IP gets licensed.

You have to understand, the license is fake. I mean, it’s real in the sense that it’s legally enforceable, but it is fake in the sense that they’re making the payment because they want to pay off the venture capitalists.

But the license fee doesn’t go to the V.C.s, does it?

The clearest evidence that this is what’s going on is that right after the license deal goes through, the start-up, or the shell of the start-up that’s left, pays a dividend to its shareholders. Dividends are common in big public corporations, but they are vanishingly rare in start-ups. The dividends are proof that what big tech is trying to do is pay off the V.C.s. It’s an acquisition in substance, but not form.

OK. Then what’s up with, say, Microsoft and OpenAI? That’s not a reverse acquihire.

That’s a more complex phenomenon. It used to be that corporate venture capital would be one of many investors in a company, including traditional V.C.s. What happened with OpenAI and Anthropic is different. The checks that Microsoft has written to OpenAI and that Google and Amazon are writing to Anthropic are in the billions. We call that a “centaur,” half public and half private. Public corporations are dominating the capital structure of a private company. So, if you’re OpenAI or Anthropic, you are much more beholden to these large public companies.

It is hard to think of an A.I. company that is truly independent from all of the incumbent big tech players.

And we’ll know you’re right about antitrust fears if the acquisitions start again under the new, more merger-friendly F.T.C. and D.O.J., right?

The Trump administration has been sending mixed signals on antitrust. There is some evidence that players in the market think that antitrust scrutiny is going to relax. Google is trying to do the Wiz deal again, right? But the persistence of the reverse acquihire structure suggests that they are still worried.

As much as I would love it if the real world would cleanly test our thesis, I don’t think the Trump administration is going to give us that opportunity.

Lawyer Sarah Krissoff said the DoJ request was a ‘distraction’ and Trump was ‘trying to present himself as if he’s doing something’

A Justice Department request to unseal grand jury transcripts in the prosecution of chronic sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein and his former girlfriend is unlikely to produce much, if anything, to satisfy the public’s appetite for new revelations about the financier’s crimes, former federal prosecutors say.

Lawyer Sarah Krissoff, an assistant US attorney in Manhattan from from 2008 to 2021, called the request in the prosecutions of Epstein and imprisoned British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell “a distraction”.

“The president [Donald Trump] is trying to present himself as if he’s doing something here and it really is nothing,” Krissoff told Associated Press in a weekend interview.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche made the request on Friday, asking judges to unseal transcripts from grand jury proceedings that resulted in indictments against Epstein and Maxwell, saying “transparency to the American public is of the utmost importance to this Administration”.

The request came as the administration sought to contain the firestorm that followed its announcement that it would not be releasing additional files from the Epstein investigation, despite previously promising that it would.

Epstein killed himself at age 66 in his prison cell in August 2019, a month after his arrest on sex trafficking charges. Maxwell, 63, is serving a 20-year prison sentence imposed after her December 2021 sex trafficking conviction for luring girls to be sexually abused by Epstein.

Krissoff and Joshua Naftalis, a Manhattan federal prosecutor for 11 years before entering private practice in 2023, said grand jury presentations are purposely brief.

Naftalis said Southern District prosecutors present just enough to a grand jury to get an indictment but “it’s not going to be everything the FBI and investigators have figured out about Maxwell and Epstein”.

“People want the entire file from however long. That’s just not what this is,” he said, estimating that the transcripts, at most, probably amount to a few hundred pages.

“It’s not going to be much,” Krissoff said, estimating the length at as little as 60 pages “because the Southern District of New York’s practice is to put as little information as possible into the grand jury.”

“They basically spoon-feed the indictment to the grand jury. That’s what we’re going to see,” she said. “I just think it’s not going to be that interesting. I don’t think it’s going to be anything new.”

Both ex-prosecutors said grand jury witnesses in Manhattan are usually federal agents summarising their witness interviews.

That practice might conflict with the public perception of some state and federal grand jury proceedings, where witnesses likely to testify at a trial are brought before grand juries during lengthy proceedings before indictments or when grand juries are used as an investigatory tool.

In Manhattan, federal prosecutors “are trying to get a particular result so they present the case very narrowly and inform the grand jury what they want them to do”, Krissoff said.

Krissoff predicted that judges who presided over the Epstein and Maxwell cases will reject the government’s request.

With Maxwell, a petition is before the US Supreme Court so appeals have not been exhausted. With Epstein, the charges are related to the Maxwell case and the anonymity of scores of victims who have not gone public is at stake, although Blanche requested that victim identities be protected.

“This is not a 50-, 60-, 80-year-old case,” Krissoff noted. “There’s still someone in custody.”

She said citing “public intrigue, interest and excitement” about a case was probably not enough to convince a judge to release the transcripts despite a 1997 ruling by the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals that said judges have wide discretion and that public interest alone can justify releasing grand jury information.

Krissoff called it “mind-blowingly strange” that Washington Justice Department officials are increasingly directly filing requests and arguments in the Southern District of New York, where the prosecutor’s office has long been labelled the “Sovereign District of New York” for its independence from outside influence.

“To have the attorney general and deputy attorney general meddling in an SDNY case is unheard of,” she said.

Cheryl Bader, a former federal prosecutor and Fordham Law School criminal law professor, said judges who presided over the Epstein and Maxwell cases may take weeks or months to rule.

“Especially here where the case involved witnesses or victims of sexual abuse, many of which are underage, the judge is going to be very cautious about what the judge releases,” she said.

Bader said she did not see the government’s quest aimed at satisfying the public’s desire to explore conspiracy theories “trumping – pardon the pun – the well-established notions of protecting the secrecy of the grand jury process”.

“I’m sure that all the line prosecutors who really sort of appreciate the secrecy and special relationship they have with the grand jury are not happy that DOJ is asking the court to release these transcripts,” she said.

Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, called US President Donald Trump’s comments and influence in the Epstein matter “unprecedented” and “extraordinarily unusual” because he is a sitting president.

He said it was not surprising that some former prosecutors are alarmed that the request to unseal the grand jury materials came two days after the firing of Manhattan Assistant US Attorney Maurene Comey, who worked on the Epstein and Maxwell cases.

“If federal prosecutors have to worry about the professional consequences of refusing to go along with the political or personal agenda of powerful people, then we are in a very different place than I’ve understood the federal Department of Justice to be in over the last 30 years of my career,” he said.

Krissoff said the uncertain environment that has current prosecutors feeling unsettled is shared by government employees she speaks with at other agencies as part of her work in private practice.

“The thing I hear most often is this is a strange time. Things aren’t working the way we’re used to them working,” she said.

Tesla opened the doors to its first showroom in India this week, and among the first visitors was Vishal Gondal — a longtime Tesla and Elon Musk loyalist who pre-booked a Model 3 in April 2016, just hours after reservations went live. But despite showing up on day one, Gondal says he has no plans to buy a Tesla now.

“I felt a little bit underwhelmed,” said Gondal, founder and CEO of fitness-tech startup GOQii, after visiting the maiden Tesla showroom in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex.

Over the better part of a decade, Gondal held out hope for Tesla’s debut in India. But his excitement soured when he had to chase the company for a refund in 2023 — sending multiple emails just to get his $1,000 reservation fee.

“Trying to get the money back was a problem,” he told TechCrunch. “And the joke was, had we invested that money in Tesla IPO stock, we would have made more money.”

Gondal is among the earliest backers of Tesla in India — someone who pre-booked a vehicle long before there were any guarantees. But nine years on, it seems many of those early believers are not celebrating the launch and have instead made up their mind not to go with Tesla, at least on its debut.

Those backers never got their Model 3s, for which they paid the reservation fee soon after Musk promised to launch the car in the country. And some, like Gondal, even waited and tried hard for years to get the refund, while some got it in May, just a couple of months before Tesla’s formal debut.

“It is frustrating to see Tesla take so long. I mean, our government and processes and red carpet are hard, but it’s hilarious that even Starlink has gotten approval in a shorter period,” said Varun Krishnan, who runs tech blog FoneArena from Chennai and is also one of Tesla’s early backers in India.

Tesla did not invite these loyalists to visit its Mumbai showroom, nor did it give them an update on the launch.

The 6,000-square-foot Tesla showroom is located in Maker Maxity Mall, near Apple’s first store in the country. Nonetheless, Gondal said Tesla’s store was nowhere near similar to that of the Apple store launch.

“When Apple launched their showroom in the same place, the buzz that Apple was able to create versus the buzz that Tesla was able to create, there is a world of difference,” he said.

Gondal went to the Tesla showroom in his Audi e-Tron, which he had bought the previous year, after waiting a long time for the Model 3.

“This felt like the coldest launch,” said Amit Bhawani, founder of tech blog Phoneradar, who also pre-reserved the Model 3 in 2016.

Bhawani eventually got the $1,000 refund after criticizing Tesla in a video released on YouTube in 2020.

The video received comments from dozens of people who had also reserved the Model 3 in India and were waiting for a refund, he said.

“That’s when I felt that the whole love for Tesla became a real hatred for Tesla,” he told TechCrunch.

“The least Tesla could have done was email all the people who reserved the car earlier and said, ‘Guys, we are going to have a special event for you’,” Gondal said. “Those people really went out of their way, and even though let’s say it’s not a big amount, it was saying that we support Tesla.”

Some others, like Kawaljit Singh Bedi, said they have no regrets about supporting Tesla, although they received the refund just before the launch this year. Nevertheless, they are also not looking to buy a Tesla soon.

“After all these years I have waited, I’m in no hurry to buy it now and become the first one to have it, because what’s the point? I waited nine years? I can wait nine years and six months more,” said Bedi, co-founder and CTO of Frammer AI.

“Most of them who had put in their early vote of confidence are disappointed, including, I know, Vishal and Vijay [Shekhar Sharma of Paytm],” said Krishnan. “People like Vishal or Vijay, they are taken with a lot of authority. So, if they are buying something, there would be 100 people going by their word.”

Sharma, founder and CEO of Indian fintech giant Paytm, echoed comments from other early backers, telling TechCrunch that he would not go with Tesla and would rather wait for a larger portfolio of cars.

“It may be a bit too late,” he said. “There are so many other options with price-value math more suited for India.”

The years-long delay in Tesla’s launch — along with not being invited to the showroom opening — has left some of the brand’s earliest Indian loyalists feeling let down, said Arun Bhatt, founder of Tesla Club India, who also pre-booked a Model 3 in 2016

“You paid something and you ardently waited for 10 years, and then out of the blue, they just tell you, we’ll cancel it and we’ll refund, then what happens — 10 years having waited for something, will we be given preferential treatment?” he questioned. “There’s zero communication regarding that. So, eight out of 10 reservation holders are frustrated.”

Bhatt started the club with another Tesla enthusiast and Delhi University student, Nikhil Chaudhary, in 2019 as an informal group for people having an interest in the EV carmaker. However, he told TechCrunch that due to the delay in Tesla’s launch in the country, the club has slowly changed from a Tesla awareness club to an EV and clean energy awareness club.

One of the concerns that many Tesla early backers have is the lack of clarity on how Tesla will set up the Supercharger network in the country and handle after-sales care. The company announced that it would establish eight charging stations, equally distributed across Delhi and Mumbai, before starting its deliveries in Q3. However, it is unclear whether these will be sufficient to provide enough backing to Tesla drivers in these two cities. Additionally, there are no announcements regarding how Tesla plans to handle after-sales service of its cars in India.

“Having gotten older in nine years, I’ve also gotten more prudent in my vehicle purchase process. I’m more worried about practical things than just the Tesla brand tag, which I fell in love with 10 years ago,” said Krishnan of FoneArena.

“There is no real excitement to own the first car, knowing that there is no Supercharger network also,” Bedi of Frammer AI said.

In recent months, Musk’s public persona has undergone a shift — from a visionary entrepreneur running multiple companies to a polarizing political figure in the U.S. This transformation has impacted Tesla’s stock and business not only in America but also in key international markets. India appears to be no exception.

“After the whole elections and the politics, and whatever is happening, I don’t see Elon with the same colors as what I used to,” FoneArena’s Krishnan said.

Kunal Khattar, an EV-focused investor in India and founder of VC firm AdvantEdge Founders, echoed Krishnan’s sentiment, saying Tesla has lost “a little bit of its shine” due to several factors — including Musk’s political involvement, his alignment with Trump, and the public fallout that followed.

“People used to think Tesla is saving the world, it’s saving the climate, and this and that, it’s no longer there,” he said.

Khattar was invited to the Tesla launch in Mumbai. Just like Gondal of GOQii and others, he also described it as “underwhelming” and “not like a typical vehicle launch.”

Tesla has launched the Model Y in India, starting at ₹59,89,000 (approximately $68,000). Some compare the India pricing with that of the Model Y in the U.S., which begins at $44,990 (₹38,71,000). However, the carmaker is importing the car from China — rather than manufacturing it locally in the country — something that the industry commonly refers to as a Completely Built-Up (CBU). This adds up to tariffs that Tesla is set to pay for some time, until it decides to set up a local factory, and thus, customers will have to pay an exorbitant price.

In India, the premium segment, which starts from ₹35,00,000 (approximately $40,700) and goes up to ₹1,00,00,000 (approximately $116,200), comprises just 1% of the total car sales in India, roughly 50,000 vehicles. However, in that 1%, electric cars have almost a 10% share so far, per Puneet Gupta, director, S&P Global Mobility.

“With Tesla coming in, and if Tesla really starts manufacturing in India, maybe two years down the line, there is no doubt about it that it will make a strong case for all these OEMs [original equipment manufacturers], including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi, to make a vehicle for our Indian customer for the first time,” he said. “The problem is that India has never been able to convince these OEMs that they can really make an India-centric product, and it will have sufficient volumes.”

Overall, electric car sales in India accounted for just 2.5% of the total market in 2024, per Counterpoint. But it was “almost negligible” in 2016, when Tesla initially announced its entry. This was also the reason why people showed a lot of interest in Tesla back then.

“These days, everyone can get a beautiful, amazing, super powerful electric vehicle in India. So, Tesla is not something ‘wow’ worthy, except for 5-10 minutes, people should ask to just take a look inside it,” Bhawani of PhoneRadar said.

India’s automobile giant Tata Motors has dominated the country’s electric car market in recent years, though others — including China’s MG Motor, which recently signed a joint venture with Indian conglomerate JSW Group — are starting to gain ground.

The premium segment remains niche in the country, though the increasing number of high-net-worth individuals has led to a 66 percent year-over-year rise in the sales of premium EVs during the first five months of 2025, Abhik Mukherjee, a research analyst for automotive and IoT at Counterpoint, told TechCrunch.

BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Land Rover, Volvo, and select models from Hyundai and Kia are sitting in the segment where Tesla has brought the Model Y to the country.

“Tesla’s current price point is unlikely to cause any dent to the brands operating within that price range,” Mukherjee said.

Nonetheless, Tesla’s debut is likely to draw some customer attention to electric cars in a market where two-wheelers dominate the EV space.

“People will at least put EVs in their consideration set. Will Tesla sell a lot of cars? I don’t think so … Will Tesla increase the sales of other EV brands? I think so,” Khattar of AdvantEdge Founders said.

Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.

Donald Trump: six months in six charts

The US president has had a profound impact at home and abroad with a tumultuous start to his second term

It has been six months since Donald Trump began his second term as US president.

In that time he has shaken trading relations with US allies and upended markets with tariff threats, increased immigration enforcement, imposed wide-ranging tax cuts and embarked on a project to reshape the structure of the federal government.

Many of the changes have been implemented by executive orders, bypassing congressional oversight.

Below are six charts that capture some of the tumult of the past six months.

Stocks and the dollar

In early April, US stocks registered their biggest daily decline in nearly five years after Trump announced tariffs targeting dozens of countries on what he called “liberation day”.

Since then, the markets have rebounded to all-time highs as Trump has repeatedly delayed the implementation of his tariff threats, giving rise to the viral phrase “Taco”, or Trump always chickens out.

The US dollar, meanwhile, is having its worst year since 1973, raising alarms among economists that Trump’s economic policies, coupled with his attacks on Federal Reserve independence, risk diminishing the haven role of US dollar-denominated assets for foreign investors.

Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have surged under Trump, who has called for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

The administration aims to deport 1mn people a year, and while Trump had promised to focus on those with criminal records during his 2024 election campaign, government data shows that ICE arrests are skewing heavily towards immigrants without criminal convictions.

According to the Deportation Data Project by the University of California Berkeley law school, arrests by ICE nearly doubled year on year in the month after Trump was inaugurated.

In June, there were more than 1,400 daily arrests on multiple days, while over the same period last year, during former president Joe Biden’s tenure, the number never breached 500.

Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff threats have driven up the overall effective US tariff rate — which measures the revenue raised by duties on goods as a proportion of import value — from 2 per cent at the start of the year to 8.8 per cent, according to tracking of actual trade data released through the beginning of this month by the Financial Times.

Thus far these tariffs have raised $47bn more revenue than the same period last year, and reached a record-high $64bn in the second quarter. The bulk of this is from Washington’s 30 per cent levy on Chinese imports.

If all of Trump’s policies announced by July 13 are implemented, including 30 per cent tariffs on the EU and Mexico, the average effective tariff rate for US consumers could rise as high as 20.6 per cent — the highest since 1910, according to estimates by Yale’s Budget Lab.

From January 20 to the end of mid-July, Trump issued 170 executive orders, which allow him to act without congressional oversight, an average of about one per day and a pace that far exceeds any other recent president.

The orders define many of Trump’s signature policies: the “liberation day” tariffs, challenges to constitutionally guaranteed birthright citizenship, targeting law firms and challenging the authority of the judicial system.

A central goal for Trump in his second term was getting Congress to pass his flagship tax and spending legislation, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The bill passed the Senate and House by narrow, largely party-line votes, and Trump signed it into law on July 4 as military planes flew overhead.

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The legislation extends vast, regressive tax cuts, paid for in part by large cuts to Medicaid, the health insurance programme for low-income and disabled Americans. Nearly 11mn more Americans will be without health insurance by 2034 as a result of the law, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates.

The bill also allocates about $170bn for immigration enforcement and border security, including $45bn to increase ICE’s detention capacity and $30bn to hire thousands of new personnel.

The administration’s drive to reduce the size of the federal government was led by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, spearheaded by Elon Musk, ostensibly to root out “waste, fraud and abuse”.

The drive has led to entire departments being closed, sometimes with little consideration for the consequences. In February Musk posted to X that Doge “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper”, referring to the agency responsible for administering foreign aid. A recent paper in the medical journal The Lancet found that ongoing deep funding cuts could result in more than 14mn additional deaths by 2030, including 4.5mn deaths of young children.

Doge has dismantled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the broadcaster Voice of America, and slashed thousands of roles at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health.

Since January, it has fired more than 67,000 federal employees across a variety of agencies, according to Roger Lee, who tracks lay-offs across the federal government and tech industry.

The federal government is leading all US sectors in lay-offs, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Musk announced his departure from Doge in late May, but the cuts are continuing. On Monday, the US Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration could implement its plan to fire 1,400 employees at the Department of Education.

“The majority is either wilfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion.