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AC Milan’s sale to a China-based consortium is expected to complete in two months, if not slightly sooner, according to a broker acting on behalf of both sides. The Sunday Times said broker Salvatore Galatioto declined to name the members of the “very ambitious” consortium but said they are extremely interested in the Italian football club.

The Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore reported on 14 April that Galatioto Sports of New York, heading an unidentified Asian investment consortium, was in talks to acquire a controlling interest in AC Milan via a deal which gives the club a EUR 650m valuation.

The original report appeared in The Sunday Times, Sport section, page 6

Source Sunday Times

AC Milan’s sale to a China-based consortium is expected to complete in two months, if not slightly sooner, according to a broker acting on behalf of both sides. The Sunday Times said broker Salvatore Galatioto declined to name the members of the “very ambitious” consortium but said they are extremely interested in the Italian football club.

The Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore reported on 14 April that Galatioto Sports of New York, heading an unidentified Asian investment consortium, was in talks to acquire a controlling interest in AC Milan via a deal which gives the club a EUR 650m valuation.

The original report appeared in The Sunday Times, Sport section, page 6

Source Sunday Times

Weekly Performance

Dow +1.82% S&P+1.62% Nasdaq +1.80% Russell +3.06% Bovespa +5.84% EuroStoxx +4.89% FTSE +2.25% CAC+4.46% Dax +4.46% Ibex +5.02% MIB +4.30% SMI +2.52% Nikkei +6.49% Hang Seng +4.64% Shanghai +3.12%

Macro :

IMF: Lagarde Says Ready to Support ‘Realistic’ Greek Program

G-20 Weighs Penalties Against Tax Havens After Panama Papers

Negative Interest Rates ‘Insane’ Experiment, El-Erian Tells FAS

OPEC Chief Says Oil Sell-Off May Be Hitting Bottom: Statement

Saudi Prince Reiterates Oil Freeze Depends on Others Joining

Saudi Arabia’s Post-Oil Plan Starts April 25, Prince Says

Keep an eye on :

- AIR FP : Airbus Interested in Russian Helicopters Shares, Interfax Says

- AIR FP : Airbus Said Poised to Win Delta Deal for at Least 30 A321 Jets

- AIR FP : Airbus Says No Plan to Buy Stake in Russian Helicopters: Rtrs

- AAPL US : China is now #2 in iOS revenue, behind the U.S. - TechCrunch - http://tcrn.ch/1VwtMve

- BPE IM : Pop. Emilia Considering Merger, Won’t Take Risks, Il Sole Says

- DBK GY : German Banks Fear Iran Deals Due to U.S. Sanctions: Der Spiegel

- DIS US : Disney wants to invest in Major League Baseball’s video streaming company - re/code.net - http://on.recode.net/1S1dtU5

- EDF FP : Macron Sees Hinkley Point Deal Signed in Coming Weeks or Months

- ENI IM : Eni Loses Appeal to Resume Operations in Val d’Agri Plant

- HMB SS : H&M Chairman Stefan Persson Has Bought Further 3m Shares

- EMG LN : Man Group’s AHL Fund Boosts Machine Learning Investment: FT - http://on.ft.com/1WzdCAj

- MKS LN : M&S Landlord Topland Named Agents to Sell 76 Stores: Telegraph

- OML LN : Old Mutual Reports Smaller Delta Lloyd Stake of 2.19%: AFM

- 1913 HK : Tiffany, Prada Dig Deeper in Digital to Boost In-Store Sales

- PUB FP : +ve article in the BArron's, 30% potential upside

- RHK GY : Rhoen-Klinikum does not expect takeover bid; to invest in Medtec start-ups - Boersen-Zeitung

- RWE GY : RWE Redid Suspected Falsified Inspections, Hesse Ministry Says

- SBRY LN : CVC And Qatar Abandon £6bn Sainsbury’s Bid- Sky News - http://bit.ly/1SeSjhU

- SIE GY : Siemens to Build EU500m Reserve Power Plant in Germany: Welt

- SKY LN : Sky, Sony Deal Would Put Films on Sky Channels First: Telegraph

- SREN VX : Swiss Re could merge Corporate Solutions with rival; buys outside core business possible - Neue Zuercher Zeitung

- SUNE US : SunEdison to File for Bankruptcy as Early as Sunday: Rtrs

- TKA GY : ThyssenKrupp does not expect swift consolidation of European steel market - Boersen-Zeitung

- VOW3 GY : VW Appoints New Crisis Manager in Diesel Affair: Automobilwoche

- VOW3 GY : VW faces looming deadline as potential costs of scandal mount - FT - http://on.ft.com/22EMHmf

- WKL NA : Wolters Kluwer Buys Adaptive Learning Tech Tool for Education

Before open : HAS, MS, LII, PEP After Close : CE, IBM, NFLX, PNFP

Before open : GS, HOS, JNJ, OMC, PM, After Close : INTC, VMW, YHOO

Soggy US growth in the early months of the year has raised new questions over the next Federal Reserve interest rate rise as policymakers balance evidence of strong corporate hiring against softer activity and inflation numbers.

James Bullard, president of the St Louis Federal Reserve, said in an interview on Friday that weak first-quarter growth numbers were “somewhat concerning” and supported arguments for patience as the central bank assessed the pace at which it lifts rates.

He spoke a day after Dennis Lockhart, president of the Atlanta Fed, signalled he would no longer be pushing for an interest rate move this month as soft spending and price growth “gives me pause”.

Janet Yellen, Fed chair, last month sent a strong message that she wanted to proceed cautiously given the overseas risks confronting the central bank.

A rate move at the Fed’s April 26-27 meeting now appears to be off the table, and some analysts question whether the central bank will be ready to pull the trigger on a second rate increase as soon as June.

Mr Bullard, who votes on rates this year, said one explanation for the poor first-quarter numbers could be seasonal factors that in the past have tended to suppress output data at the beginning of the year. However, evidence of a strong second-quarter bounceback was lacking so far, he cautioned.

“The jobs report we got was very strong but the GDP tracking has moved down substantially for the first quarter and to some extent for the second quarter,” he said. “We are on track to continue normalising [rates] this year, but it certainly gives us room for manoeuvre and we can be patient and go gradually.”

The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model estimates first-quarter GDP growth at just 0.3 per cent. This extends the long-running conundrum of punchy jobs growth combined with damp GDP data, Mr Bullard said, adding his bank’s model had been repeatedly indicating that 3 per cent growth was “just around the corner” and this was not happening.

While the median forecast from policymakers is for two increases this year, investors are expecting a shallower path of rate rises.

Recent data disappointments have included slow March retail sales and inflation numbers, as well as weak factory figures on Friday. Analysts at Oxford Economics say there were increasing odds that GDP growth for 2016 could fall below 2 per cent, down from 2.4 per cent in 2015.

Political risks are also hanging over Fed decision-making this year, with the June Federal Open Market Committee meeting occurring just before the UK’s referendum on whether to exit the European Union.

While some investors argue the Fed would be reluctant to lift rates just ahead of an event that the International Monetary Fund sees as one of the biggest global risks this year, Mr Bullard rejected the idea that it stands in the way of a June move.

“I would strenuously push back against the idea that we are going to sit on the sidelines because the UK is going to vote one way or another on that,” he said. The Fed cannot afford to wait for everything in the world to be “just right” before making the best policy decision for the US, he said.

Man's Group computer-powered AHL hedge fund plans to ratchet up its investment in “machine learning”, a hot new area of artificial intelligence that is garnering increasing attention in the investment industry.

AHL, which manages more than $19bn, is mostly known for investment strategies that follow trends and its two main funds have returned an average of 12-13 per cent annually since the mid-1990s.

But the success of its machine learning experiments in recent years led the company to plough more money into the field, and it is now the single biggest investment area at AHL, according to Sandy Rattray, chief executive.

“It’s very powerful, and could unleash a very important period for quantitative investing,” he said.

AHL has been researching machine learning — a field of artificial intelligence where dynamic algorithms pore over vast data sets for patterns — for five years, and has been using the technique in trading for the past three years. The results have been encouraging, according to executives at the hedge fund.

A machine learning strategy helped one of AHL’s funds swing from a narrow loss to a narrow gain in August last year, when markets were convulsed by concerns over China, by autonomously buying and selling stock at vital junctures in the turmoil. Many traders initially stood on the sidelines, unable to quantify rapidly-changing data.

“It learnt to buy the dip,” said Nick Granger, co-head of research at AHL and deputy chief investment officer. “No one taught it to do this, it learnt how to do this when we showed it a lot of data. It responds to the market environment, which makes it much more dynamic.”

Machine learning involves writing algorithms that can continuously “learn” from evolving data, and is an increasingly popular niche of AI that is being used for everything from generating film recommendations for Netflix to Google’s translation service. Sophisticated hedge fund and other money managers are ramping up their use of the technique.

The AI field has been around for some time, but increasingly fast computers allow fund managers to use machine learning on an accelerating data deluge.

Some experts are more sceptical over the utility of machine learning to trade financial markets, pointing out that financial data are immensely complex, chaotic and more “noisy” than other industries. The concern is that it has become a faddish concept in quantitative investment.

Mr Rattray concedes that machine learning has become a buzzword, but argued that AHL’s results using the AI technique shows it has immense promise.

“Our results have been encouraging, which is why we have been throwing a lot of money at it,” he said. “We’ve moved from a world where we’d come up with a model and check if it fit the data, to a world where we feed in data and find models.”

The success of AHL — its four main vehicles returned between 3.9 and 7.6 per cent in the first quarter, despite the turbulent markets — helped keep Man Group’s overall funds under management relatively steady at $78.6bn, as net inflows of $1.3bn into its “quant” funds offset outflows from its more traditional hedge funds.

Happy hour is coming to the initial public offerings market.

Jose Cuervo, a brand of tequila that is over two centuries old, is preparing for an I.P.O., according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The family-owned Mexican company is working with JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley to prepare for the deal, said the people, who asked not to be named because the process is still private.

The initial offering of stock could raise about $750 million, the people said. Jose Cuervo has not decided whether it will list in the United States, Britain or Mexico, one of the people said.

The Beckmann family has owned Cuervo, the top-selling tequila brand, for centuries. In 1758, José Antonio de Cuervo y Valdés received land in modern-day Mexico from the Spanish king and started producing tequila. The billionaire Beckmann family is made up of direct descendants of the 18th century founder. Cuervo is made in the central Mexican town known as Tequila, using blue agave from the region in its production.

Representatives from the banks declined to comment, and a representative for Jose Cuervo did not immediately respond.

Jose Cuervo almost did a deal with Diageo, the British spirits giant, five years ago. The two were in talks for Jose Cuervo to sell its brand, but ultimately the two sides failed to agree on a price. Analysts at the time valued Jose Cuervo at $3 billion. Shortly after, speculation rose that Cuervo would instead pursue a public debut.

A consortium involving the biggest shareholder in Formula One motor racing and a Qatari state fund have abandoned secret plans to bid for J Sainsbury, Britain’s second-largest supermarket chain.

Sky News can reveal that CVC Capital Partners, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and Brookfield, a giant Canadian property group, drew up detailed plans to make an offer for the grocer earlier this year.

The plans were sufficiently advanced for the consortium to have been given formal approval from the City’s Takeover Panel to act as a joint offeror for Sainsbury’s, according to an insider.

Archie Norman, the chairman of ITV and a former chairman of Asda, was identified by the bidders as a potential chairman of Sainsbury’s if the takeover had gone through, they added.

CVC, Brookfield and the QIA are understood to have regarded Sainsbury’s as being significantly undervalued when they began work on their offer last autumn.

However, the consortium is said to have aborted its plan to approach the Sainsbury’s board shortly after the supermarket chain confirmed that it intended to make an offer for Home Retail Group, the owner of Argos.

It was unclear this weekend exactly why or when the putative bid collapsed, although one source said that Sainsbury’s decision to buy Argos had been “a complication”, both because it had altered the financial dynamics of a takeover and had altered Sainsbury’s stated strategy.

Since the formal takeover of HRG was agreed, Sainsbury’s shares have risen, giving the company a market value of £5.5bn at the close of trading on Friday.

The QIA has been Sainsbury’s largest shareholder for the last decade, and now holds just over 25% of the company.

According to Sainsbury’s website, the stake is held through Qatar Holding LLC, a QIA subsidiary.

Earlier this year, the Qataris were reported to be unhappy at Sainsbury’s approach for Argos’s parent company, prompting the grocer to issue a clarifying statement in late January that "the QIA has not yet taken a final position on the proposed Home Retail Group transaction".

Mike Coupe, Sainsbury’s boss, has argued that buying Argos will give Sainsbury’s enormous power in non-food retailing because of the improved supply chain and distribution capabilities that will result from the takeover.

Under the consortium’s plans, CVC would have emerged as the biggest shareholder in Sainsbury’s, with the QIA and Brookfield, the owner of Center Parcs, as minority investors.

Brookfield’s involvement was designed to extract value from Sainsbury’s large property portfolio, according to an insider.

Perella Weinberg Partners, an investment bank, was advising the CVC-led consortium, while Deutsche Bank was appointed to assemble the financing for a bid, according to City sources.

McKinsey, the management consultancy, was also involved in the plan.

No approach was made to the board of Sainsbury’s, and David Tyler, the grocer’s chairman who also chairs Domestic & General, another company backed by CVC, is understood to have been unaware of the consortium’s proposals.

Sainsbury’s has been a perennial subject of takeover speculation dating back to 2007, when a private equity consortium involving CVC withdrew an £11.4bn bid.

Since then, the landscape of British food retailing has changed dramatically, with the big four chains – Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Wm Morrison – under assault from fast-growing discount rivals and internet-based competitors.

Sainsbury’s and CVC declined to comment, while none of the other parties could be reached on Saturday.