TheChek News Flow

Fundraise values company at more than $7.5 billion

An early mover in the effort to open up private markets to individuals is now reaping the benefits of the industry’s push into the mainstream.

iCapital, a provider of private-markets financial technology for wealth advisers, has raised more than $820 million in a deal that values it at more than $7.5 billion, the company said. It was last valued at about $6 billion in 2022, according to PitchBook.

Asset-manager T. Rowe Price and technology-investment firm SurgoCap Partners led the new investment. iCapital, which has been profitable since 2019, plans to use the proceeds to do more acquisitions and expand its business globally, according to Chief Executive Lawrence Calcano.

“We believe we can create a marketplace and an infrastructure for people to buy and sell a complicated range of assets in their portfolio,” he said. “The new investors see that opportunity and view it as both a strategic one and a financial one.”

Private-equity firms are increasingly looking to wealthy individuals as growth from institutional investors such as pension funds and endowments levels off. Wealthy individuals, typically via financial advisers, are expected to increase their allocations to private markets to more than $20 trillion by 2030, up from $13 trillion today, BlackRock estimates.

iCapital was founded in 2013 to help independent wealth advisers get access to private markets. Its first set of offerings were feeder funds, which pooled commitments from wealthy individuals and invested them in private-equity funds. iCapital now also offers investments in funds specifically structured for individuals and has expanded to areas like credit, real estate and infrastructure. It has $945 billion in transaction volume on its platform and 114,000 users.

The company’s roster of existing investors is a who’s-who of the asset-management world, including Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase. It is considered a likely candidate for an eventual initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter.

iCapital has done 23 acquisitions, doubling its employee base in recent years to more than 1,800. It has 16 offices around the world.

BMW Vehicle Deliveries Rise as Strength in Europe Offsets China Weakness

The result marks a contrast to rival Mercedes-Benz, which earlier this week reported a 9% drop in vehicle sales

BMW BMW 0.63%increase; green up pointing triangle group vehicle deliveries rose slightly in the second quarter as the German automaker saw strong growth in Europe offset hefty declines in China, while deliveries in the U.S. edged higher.

The company, which houses its namesake brand as well as the Mini and Rolls-Royce marques and a motorcycles business, said sales rose 0.4% in the period to 621,271 million vehicles.

The result marks a contrast to rival Mercedes-Benz, which earlier this week reported a 9% drop in vehicle sales on weakness in the U.S. and China after President Trump slapped a 25% duty on imported cars and parts entering the U.S. in early April.

BMW has previously cautioned that tariffs would take a toll on its second-quarter results, but has expected levies to go down from July and that its impact on earnings would ease in the second half. In China, pricing was a headwind in the first months of this year, mainly due to challenges in the country’s highly competitive market.

The company said Thursday that sales of BMW branded cars and Minis in China fell 13.7% to 162,667 units in the second quarter. That compares to a 10.1% rise in European sales to 255,910 cars and a 1.4% rise to 98,504 cars in the U.S.

The group’s electrified models saw sales growth of 10.2% in the year, with BMW branded plug-in hybrids seeing a surge in demand and the Mini brand’s fully-electric models experiencing strong global demand.

“New orders across all drive technologies developed positively in the first six months, showing significant year-on-year growth,” the company said.

Companies hope content-sharing agreement will help them attract new subscribers in fiercely competitive market

Disney and ITV have struck a deal to show their programmes on each other’s platforms for the first time in the latest sign of the fast-changing relationships between traditional European broadcasters and US streaming platforms.

Under the terms of the agreement announced on Thursday, ITV will begin showing some of Disney’s hit programmes, such as The Bear, while giving the US streamer some of its biggest shows, including Love Island, in a promotional grab for each other’s audiences. Viewers will be able to watch the shows on each service from July 16.

Last month the Financial Times revealed plans by Netflix to show all of the channels broadcast by TF1 on its platform, in effect removing the need for audiences to use the French broadcaster’s own streaming service. 

ITV, however, is relying on its streaming platform as a source of future growth. Traditional TV groups such as ITV are struggling with declining linear audiences and advertising revenues as more people watch TV online.

The British broadcaster has so far sought to try to rival groups such as Disney and Netflix directly, although lacks the resources to produce the big budget global content made by the US streamers.  

Karl Holmes, general manager for Disney+ in Emea, said in an interview that the partnership would boost subscriptions and engagement for both platforms, given only a small overlap in their audience.

He said that the Disney audience tended to skew younger — with a larger number of children and families, as well as viewers between 15 and 34 — while ITV’s service had more viewers in the 55+ demographic.

Disney will offer some of its more adult-orientated programmes such as Andor, The Bear and Only Murders in the Building to ITV’s audience to encourage them to sign up to its platform.

“It would not work if our demographics were the same,” said Holmes, adding that this sort of arrangement was more attractive to free-to-air broadcasters that wanted to maintain their own streaming business than a wholesale deal to show all content.

ITV will provide Disney with hit shows including the award-winning drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, espionage thriller A Spy Among Friends and selected seasons of the reality hit Love Island.

Both companies will also be able to sell advertising on the programmes provided by their partner. ITVX is free to watch in the UK, supported by advertising, although a premium service is also available for viewers who want to watch ad-free. 

The promotional selection of hit shows and movies, billed as a “Taste of ITVX” and a “Taste of Disney+” respectively, will be regularly refreshed and presented on special “rails” on the platforms. 

Kevin Lygo, managing director of media and entertainment at ITV, said the tie-up “allows us to show our complementary audiences a specially selected collection of titles, regularly . . . that gives a flavour of the range in our respective offerings”.