FT : LBOs and activists for the corporate have-nots

LBOs and activists for the corporate have-nots

Activist investors convene at the Pierre Hotel
The marbled hallways at The Pierre hotel in New York buzzed with chatter on Tuesday about a surge in shareholder activism.

It was the marquee annual gathering for activist hedge funds at the 13D Monitor Active-Passive Investor Summit, where investors and advisers swap notes on who’s preying and being preyed on.

Investors’ obsession with artificial intelligence stocks and little else has created a market full of have-nots trading at low valuations and susceptible to calls for activist shake-ups.

“They’re readying the knives,” one adviser at the event told DD’s Oliver Barnes and Amelia Pollard.

Oil and gas equipment supplier Baker Hughes and eyecare group Cooper Companies were among the companies facing the glare of activist investors at the conference.

Starboard Value’s co-founder Jeff Smith took the stage early in the morning. He lobbied for Tripadvisor to sell off its restaurant bookings platform or even put itself up for sale, as well as outlining investments in construction group Fluor and payments company Bill Holdings.

This year is on course to be a record one for shareholder activism, with 191 campaigns launched in the first three quarters, ahead of the same period during 2018, the previous high-water mark, according to a report by Barclays.

Even American football star Travis Kelce is getting in on the action. He’s teaming up with activist hedge fund Jana Partners to push US theme park operator Six Flags to revamp its marketing strategy and customer experience, the firm also unveiled at the event.

Waiting in the wings as activist hedge funds are busy agitating for change are private equity groups, emboldened by abundant financing and ready to pounce on smaller companies unloved by the public markets.

The destination of many of these companies could ultimately be the same as medical technology group Hologic, which was taken private by a consortium in an $18.3bn deal on Tuesday. The company has been a perennial take-private candidate since Carl Icahn became its largest shareholder in 2013.

While Icahn has long since sold his position, Hologic’s noisy corporate structure failed to win a high valuation from shareholders.

Now, with banks offering cheap credit to finance a brewing wave of mega deals, Hologic has found a new home inside the portfolios of Blackstone and TPG.

Other large but middling public companies could soon face a similar fate.

FT : Stolen Louvre treasures are uninsured, France says

Stolen Louvre treasures are uninsured, France says
Government confirms country will not be reimbursed for loss of jewels from Paris museum heist

France will not receive payouts for the loss of jewellery of “inestimable” historical value stolen from Paris’s Louvre museum, after the French government confirmed the objects were not covered by private insurance.

Thieves on Sunday broke into the Louvre using a furniture lift to access the first floor, cut into display cases and seized eight pieces including a diamond encrusted brooch that belonged to Napoleon III’s wife Empress Eugénie, as well as necklaces and diadems. The looters also tried to steal the Empress’s crown but dropped it as they made their escape.

The police are investigating the burglary in the hope of recovering the stolen jewellery but France’s culture ministry said the country would not be reimbursed for any losses linked to the objects that have an “inestimable heritage and historical value”. 

“The state acts as its own insurer when national museums’ works are in their typical place of conservation,” a spokesperson said, in a statement first reported by Le Parisien newspaper, adding that this took into account the high cost of insurance “when the claims rate is low”.

On Tuesday evening, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told RTL France the curator of the Louvre had valued the loss at €88mn.

“This sum is indeed extremely spectacular, but we must keep in mind that this loss is an economic loss that has nothing to compare with the historic loss that this theft has caused,” she said.

“We must also say that the wrongdoers who took this jewellery will not get €88mn if they had the very bad idea of taking the stones out of these pieces of jewellery or of melting them.”

While liability for works in the national collection generally sits with the state, museums do purchase insurance cover when moving objects or lending objects to one another.

The insurance value is “very often higher than the value of acquiring the work”, the ministry added.

Private galleries such as the Louis Vuitton Foundation and Pinault Collection, by contrast, would typically buy commercial insurance cover.

“For an institution like the Louvre, it’s almost impossible to insure your entire collection,” said Charlie Horrell, head of fine art at insurance broker Marsh.

Fine art coverage within London’s speciality insurance market, which covers much of the world’s most complex risk, totals about $4bn. 

The Louvre’s collection alone would overwhelm the market, multiple insurance market figures said, with treasures ranging from Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” to the “Great Sphinx of Tanis” being almost impossible to value or appraise.

Similarly, the bulk of liability for Notre-Dame, the medieval cathedral that burned in 2019, sat with the French government, according to Grace Best-Devereux, a complex loss adjuster for claims management company Sedgwick, although some private contractors would take out commercial insurance cover when working on the monument.

However, private donations of about €840mn from 340,000 donors covered the cost of Notre-Dame’s renovation, preventing large costs from being borne by the taxpayer.

The heist at the Louvre is just the most recent in a string of museum thefts, with several involving gold. On Monday, French prosecutors said they had begun investigation proceedings against a Chinese woman on October 13 over the theft of 6kg of gold nuggets from the Natural History Museum of Paris last month.

The items came from gold discoveries in Bolivia, California, the Urals and Australia but the suspect was found with 1kg of melted down gold in Barcelona, after an international arrest warrant was issued. 

Earlier this month, the National Museum of Wales in the UK reported that Bronze Age gold jewellery had disappeared in an apparent heist, and gold was stolen earlier this year from the Netherlands’ Drents museum.

Gold and silver prices have soared in recent months, with gold bullion up more than 50 per cent this year.

The high cost of metals may have helped incentivise the thefts, Best-Devereux said. Since gemstones would probably be re-cut before being sold on the black market, she added, the value of melted-down metals could potentially exceed that of precious gems cut from the stolen objects.

Best-Devereux expects insurers to demand more information in future from museums seeking to loan works to French collections, including about security measures in place and where in the museum the works would be displayed.

“There’s going to be more attention on loan agreements,” she said.

FT : Space groups near deal on creation of European champion

Space groups near deal on creation of European champion
Airbus set to own 35% under agreement while Leonardo and Thales would each hold 32.5%

Airbus, Thales and Leonardo are nearing agreement on the merger of their space businesses, aiming to create a European champion capable of competing in a market destabilised by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Leonardo’s board met on Tuesday afternoon, becoming the last of the three companies to approve the proposed structure, according to people close to the discussions. An announcement is imminent, but could still slip as some technical points are still being finalised.

Under the plan, Franco-German Airbus will own 35 per cent, with the other two holding 32.5 per cent each, according to two people with knowledge of the agreement. As part of the deal, Airbus is expected to receive a payment from its new venture partners to compensate for limiting its stake to 35 per cent, despite contributing roughly half the combined turnover.

The new group will span nearly 30 sites across Europe employing more than 25,000 people, with combined revenues of about €6.5bn a year.

The companies are expected to confirm that no jobs will initially be lost or sites closed, as reported by the Financial Times in June. But they will highlight the potential for improved efficiency and cost savings from bringing together businesses that manufacture satellites as well as space exploration systems and components, and that offer satellite services. Insiders said, over time, some rationalisation in sites and jobs would be inevitable. 

Airbus said it was “having constructive discussions with its partners”, but declined to comment further.

Thales said no agreement had been reached at this stage. “We are continuing our work,” the company said. “Any further comment would be premature.”

Leonardo declined to comment.

The agreement follows more than a year of negotiations, often stalled by disagreement over governance, work sharing and shareholdings. The combined venture still has to be approved in Brussels, but it is understood that the European Commission is open to the creation of a more competitive space champion.

The timing of the deal, first reported by Reuters, comes as Europe struggles to respond to a revolution in satellite demand caused by the rapid expansion of SpaceX’s Starlink communications network in low Earth orbit.

Thales and Airbus have long competed ferociously in the market for large telecommunications satellites delivering broadcasting and connectivity services from geostationary orbit, some 36,000km above Earth.

However, demand for broadcast services has been in decline for several years because of the rise of broadband streaming.

As Musk rolled out high-speed broadband from low Earth orbit — up to 2,000km above the planet — Geo operators’ connectivity businesses also came under pressure.

Starlink, with some 7mn customers, is now moving aggressively into the aviation, maritime and government segments that Geo operators had hoped to serve. As a result, demand for Thales and Airbus Geo satellites has collapsed.

Airbus, Thales and Leonardo are hoping the combination of their businesses will create a more efficient and agile space company, better able to address the shift in the market. They are modelling their combination on MBDA, the European missile venture created in 2001 when France, Italy and the UK agreed to consolidate the industry. Britain’s BAE Systems and Airbus each owns 37.5 per cent of MBDA while Leonardo holds 20 per cent.

MBDA’s successful cross-border manufacturing and one-company ethos has been held up as a model for the space industry, especially as this domain is increasingly strategic for both national and European defence. The commission has emphasised its desire for sovereign capabilities in the space sector — everything from launch operations to space-based secure communications. A strong supply chain is considered a prerequisite to achieving that goal. 

However, in recent years all three companies have struggled with their space businesses. Airbus has taken more than €2bn in charges from underperforming space contracts since 2023 and last year announced 2,000 job cuts. Thales Alenia Space (TAS), a joint venture 67 per cent owned by Thales and 33 per cent by Leonardo, has announced almost 1,300 job losses in the past two years.

These troubles have been the catalyst for a merger that has been discussed on and off for several years, most recently in 2019.

FT : US offers nuclear energy companies access to weapons-grade plutonium

US offers nuclear energy companies access to weapons-grade plutonium
Expert warns commercial use of the radioactive material from cold war-era warheads carries safety risks

The US has offered energy companies access to nuclear waste that they can convert into fuel for advanced reactors in an attempt to break Russia’s stranglehold over uranium supply chains.

The Department of Energy on Tuesday published an application that nuclear energy groups can use to seek up to 19 megatonnes of the government’s weapons-grade plutonium from cold war-era warheads.

In the document seen by the Financial Times, the energy department said being selected to receive the plutonium could help companies secure faster approval for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license, which is required to operate a nuclear facility.

At least two companies, Oklo, which is backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and France’s Newcleo, are expected to apply to access the government’s plutonium stockpile.

The move is the latest in the Trump administration’s attempts to boost the nuclear industry, as electricity demand grows for the first time in decades. BloombergNEF forecasts the growth of data centres used to train and run artificial intelligence models will cause power demand to more than double by 2035.

While utility-scale nuclear plants in Michigan and Pennsylvania are set to restart operations within the next two years and billions have been poured into the development of small modular reactors, fuel bottlenecks remain a key constraint on the industry’s growth.

SMRs, which could provide up to 300 megawatts of power, typically require high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel, known as Haleu — the production of which is controlled by Russia.

In 2024 Joe Biden’s administration banned US imports of uranium products from Russia. The US produces less than a ton of uranium annually.

Trump in May issued four executive orders aimed at boosting the nuclear industry, two of which directed the energy department to identify and make surplus fuel available to reactor developers.

However, experts have raised concerns about the commercial use of plutonium and the risk of the material falling into the wrong hands.

“Unless you get assurances that they’re going to protect it as though it is a nuclear weapon, then it’s going to increase vulnerability to theft,” said Edwin Lyman, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“If there were adults in the room and I could trust the federal government to impose the right standards, it wouldn’t be such a great concern, but it just doesn’t seem feasible.”

Groups applying to access the plutonium stockpile must provide details of their plans for recycling and manufacturing fuel made from the radioactive material, and their safety procedures.

French company Newcleo last week agreed to invest as much as $2bn in the US as part of a joint agreement with Oklo, with the funds going towards developing advanced fuel fabrication and manufacturing infrastructure.

Stefano Buono, Newcleo’s founder and chief executive, said they would be “very happy” to use the plutonium.

“With the 92,000 tons of spent fuel that the US has, they could have 100 years of energy independence,” he said.

However, a previous attempt to use plutonium for civil purposes was cancelled in 2018 because of spiralling costs of converting the material into fuel. Trump’s legal authority to hand out the plutonium is also not clear because Congress has control over nuclear waste.

The energy department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

>>> US After Hours Summary: MANH -8.9%, TXN -8.1%, NFLX -6.4% lower on earnings;

After Hours Summary: MANH -8.9%, TXN -8.1%, NFLX -6.4% lower on earnings; ISRG +18.2%, PEGA +13.1%, VICR +13%, COF +4.1% higher on earnings

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: ISRG +18.2%, PEGA +13.1%, VICR +13%, COF +4.1% (also authorizes new $16 bln share repurchase program; also reports Sept metrics), WAL +3.5%, ROAD +1.6%, EWBC +1.2%, EQT +0.6%, WCN +0.6% (also increases dividend), ADC +0.5%, CASH +0.3%, CB +0.1%, PFSI +0.1%

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: DKNG +4.6% (acquires Railbird Exchange), WBD +2.3% (in sympathy with NFLX earnings), NOG +1.4% (boosts production guidance, closes $98 mln Uinta Royalty acquisition), CSX +1.4% (CEO bought 55,000 shares), OWL +1.1% (META and OWL funds form joint venture to develop Hyperion data center campus), GEV +0.6% (to acquire remaining 50% stake of Prolec GE JV), FSLR +0.3% (enters into 2 Tax Credit transfer agreements with digital payments co), GVA +0.1% (has begun construction of $138 mln rehab project in Chicago), PHIN +0.1% (PHIN details settlement agreement with BWA)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: MANH -8.9% (also names new COO; replenishes $100 mln buyback authorization), TXN -8.1%, NFLX -6.4%, MAT -5.1%, MCRI -4%, MTDR -3.8%, OMC -0.9%, WFRD -0.3%

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: ALEC -50.2% (results from Phase 3 trial evaluating latozinemab), OWLT -18.8% (stock offering), RDNT -16.5% (files prospectus supplement), TERN -11.3% (results from Phase 2 trial of TERN-601), AVAH -8.2% (certain selling stockholders commence 10 mln share offering; also provides guidance), ASTS -7.3% ($850 mln convertibles notes offering; repurchases portion of convertible notes), RAPT -4.7% (stock offering), VRDN -2.2% (commences offering of common shares and convertible preferred shares), ZBIO -1.9% (stock offering by selling shareholders), DIS -0.9% (in sympathy with NFLX earnings), DOV -0.8% (launches CDS Mentor 3.0), META -0.3% (META and OWL funds form joint venture to develop Hyperion data center campus), DVAX -0.2% (topline data from Part 1 of Phase 1/2 Trial for Shingles Vaccine), FOUR -0.1% (enters into exclusive negotiations to acquire Worldline's North American subsidiaries)

>>> Europe : Brokers Upgrades & Downgrades - 21st of October 2025

>>> Up
* Bankinter Raised to Equal-Weight at Barclays; PT 14.30 euros
* Kitron Raised to Buy at SB1 Markets; PT 70 kroner
* Rebl Group Oyj Raised to Reduce at Inderes; PT 1.05 euros
* Royal Gold Raised to Outperform at BMO; PT $240
* Sunrun Raised to Buy at Citi; PT $26
* Thomson Reuters Raised to Overweight at Huber Research Partners

>>> Down
* Cemex ADRs Cut to Sector Perform at Scotiabank; PT $11.10
* Goldman Sachs Cut to Neutral at JPMorgan; PT $750
* QT Group Cut to Accumulate at Inderes; PT 45 euros

>>> Initiation
* Apple Reinstated Buy at William O'Neil

>>> Call