Author: Press Room

Alphaville has already highlighted how much AI mania has contributed to the US equity market’s 2023 gains. SocGen is now arguing that even those estimates underplay the impact.The French bank’s analysts find that without the gains of stocks that are possible AI winners, the S&P 500 would now be down 2 per cent this year, rather than up 8 per cent. It’s not immediately clear from the note how SocGen classifies “AI Boom stocks”, but we’re guessing it includes the likes of Nvidia, Microsoft, SalesForce, and Alphabet. Here’s SocGen’s Manish Kabra, with our emphasis: The AI boom and hype is…

One thing to start: Shareholders in British healthcare start-up Babylon are set to be wiped out as the company’s main lender is poised to take control of the business.Welcome to Due Diligence, your briefing on dealmaking, private equity and corporate finance. This article is an on-site version of the newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter sent to your inbox every Tuesday to Friday. Get in touch with us anytime: Due.Diligence@ft.comIn today’s newsletterSilver Lake and Bain’s dealmaking duelSoftBank gives up on being the next BerkshireAdani goes on the defence The Silver Lake and Bain Capital deal drama in GermanySilver Lake,…

Source: Securities and Exchange Commission Republican leader at the US Securities and Exchange Commission said Europe’s legislation to regulate cryptocurrency could be a model as the country grapples with how to write rules for the industry.SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, also nicknamed “Crypto Mom,” spoke at a Financial Times live event this week.“MiCA can serve as a model for us,” Peirce said.European Union lawmakers voted in April to pass the Markets in Crypto Assets law (or MiCA). MiCA establishes rules for crypto aimed to ensure that crypto transfers can always be traced and for suspicious transactions to be blocked. The law would cover transactions…

A lot went wrong during the coronavirus pandemic as the virus tore through a polarized nation and public health leaders, policymakers and elected officials struggled to respond.Chronic underinvestment in public health at the federal, state and local levels only made things worse. All told, more than 1.1 million people have died of Covid-19 in the United States, and more than 1,000 are still dying each week.More than three years after the Trump administration declared the virus a public health emergency in January 2020, the government’s pandemic response is now entering a new phase. On Thursday, the Biden administration will allow…

Market Movers rounded up the best reactions from investors and analysts on Twilio after its earnings results were released Tuesday after the bell. The experts, including Jim Cramer , discussed the software stock as shares plunged 12% Wednesday. The company’s first-quarter report beat expectations but, Twilio also announced its revenue forecast for the second quarter, which came in lighter than expected. It anticipates between $980 million and $990 million in revenue, while analysts polled by Refinitiv were expecting $1.05 billion in revenue. Additionally, KeyBanc downgraded Twilio to sector weight from overweight, adding it sees a deceleration in the company’s business outlook.

One might expect paintings from the illustrious collection of the late magazine publisher S.I. Newhouse Jr. — by Picasso, de Kooning, Lichtenstein and Bacon, among others — to generate some fireworks in the art market.Yet even with that provenance, the Thursday evening sale at Christie’s that kicked off the spring 2023 auction season was muted. Most of the 16 lots went for solid if predictable prices at, or just above, their estimates, for a total of $177.8 million. This may well be because the market has cooled in response to recession fears and spending sprees during the pandemic.But it is…

Thomas Stacy sometimes told the story of how, when he was a boy growing up in Arkansas, an Italian who had been dead for about 80 years changed his life.He’d been studying piano with his mother, but when he heard a piece of music by the composer Gioachino Antonio Rossini, his focus shifted to a different instrument and he determined to make a career of it.“I was fascinated by the sound of the oboe on a record we had of the overture to Rossini’s opera ‘The Silken Ladder,’” Mr. Stacy recalled in a 1996 interview with The Associated Press. “I…

MIAMI — A Knicks season that began with mild expectations and turned into what some fans called the team’s most exciting run in more than 20 years ended Friday night with a 96-92 loss to the Miami Heat in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference semifinals.Jalen Brunson nearly carried the Knicks to a win, consistently scoring each time the game appeared to be slipping away. He had 41 points, which led all scorers. But Brunson’s teammates struggled; Julius Randle and RJ Barrett combined to shoot 4 of 24 for 26 points. Jimmy Butler led the Heat with 24 points.Barrett acknowledged…

Sadek Wahba, founder of I Squared CapitalPhoto courtesy Sadek WahbaThe next few decades are critical for humanity to respond to climate change. They’re also going to see a massive trend of building and urbanization as millions of people move to cities.The confluence of those two massive global trends holds countless climate challenges — and similarly expansive opportunities for investors, says Sadek Wahba, the founder and chairman of I Squared Capital, a global infrastructure management company that currently manages around $40 billion worth of investments in infrastructure projects in over 50 countries.”Investing in infrastructure, climate-related technology is the future,” Wahba told…

Palm Springs conjures many images in the popular imagination: California oasis, Old Hollywood hide-out, golf and tennis hot spot, midcentury modern pilgrimage site. But long before Richard Neutra’s airy, glassy Kaufmann House or John Lautner’s concrete-domed Elrod House, there was Welwood Murray’s rickety wooden bathhouse.That two-room shack, built over a hot spring in the late 1880s, was one of the first tourist attractions in the Coachella Valley — newly accessible by railroad to people with tuberculosis and other ailments who were seeking relief in the desert air and mineral water.Mr. Murray, a Scottish rancher and entrepreneur, had secured a lease…