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Opening Bell: 3.8.21

Opening Bell: 3.8.21

Deliveroo and IonQ; Japan to the rescue; “a levered casino;” and more!

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Deliveroo and IonQ; Japan to the rescue; “a levered casino;” and more!

Amazon-backed Deliveroo reveals it lost $309 million in 2020 ahead of IPO [CNBC]
A date for Deliveroo’s initial public offering has not been officially announced but it is likely to be in the next few weeks. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Cazenove have been appointed as the joint global coordinators.
Deliveroo could be valued at around $10 billion in the stock market listing….

IonQ to become first publicly traded quantum computing company via merger with SPAC dMY Technology Group [MarketWatch]
The deal has a pro forma implied market capitalization for the combined company of about 2 billion, the companies said in a joint statement…. The deal will generate $650 million in gross proceeds and will include investment from Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, Silver Lake, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, MSD Partners, L.P., Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Corporation, and other institutional investors….
"By 2023, IonQ plans to develop modular quantum computers small enough to be networked together, which could pave the way for broad quantum advantage by 2025."

Greensill’s Key Clients Included West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice’s Coal Company [WSJ]
Bluestone Resources Inc., the coal-mining company owned by West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, has borrowed about $850 million from Greensill, making it one of Greensill’s largest clients…. Mr. Justice is the billionaire governor of West Virginia who switched parties from Democratic to Republican in 2017. He owns several coal-related businesses in the region, and has settled a number of cases in recent years for alleged nonpayment of bills….

David Tepper is getting bullish on stocks, believes rising rates are set to stabilize [CNBC]
“Basically I think rates have temporarily made the most of the move and should be more stable in the next few months, which makes it safer to be in stocks for now,” Tepper told CNBC’s Joe Kernen…. Tepper believes Japan, which had been a net seller of Treasurys for years, could start buying the U.S. government bonds again following the surge in yields. The potential buying could help stabilize the bond market, Tepper said.

Deep Basin Fund Returns Capital Citing ‘Dangerous’ Market [Bloomberg]
“I do not believe that risk markets are functioning properly and am deeply concerned about the immediate investment climate,” Matthew J. Smith, managing partner of the Stamford, Connecticut-based fund, wrote in the letter…. Smith cited a shift in the market’s ability to tolerate short selling as one reason for liquidating the fund, writing that in recent weeks “we have witnessed a tectonic shift in the market’s ability to short anything.” Agencies that are tasked with regulating the market have also turned it into “a levered casino.”

Trading Chicken Feet Is Going Digital [WSJ]
For agricultural giants like Tyson Foods Inc., moving millions of pounds daily of meat and poultry products from farmers to vendors world-wide still requires phone calls, spreadsheets and personal relationships with middlemen who take a cut. Brokers fees can add up, and it is hard to get reliable up-to-the-minute pricing information. Unlike other markets, inventory and supply aren’t available on a centralized database…. It is a landscape that resembles old-school Wall Street, when brokerage companies sold shares for commissions and small investors paid higher fees than giants like JPMorgan Chase & Co. or Merrill Lynch. Electronic trading and the growth of giants such as Charles Schwab have since driven fees near zero and far expanded ordinary investors’ ability to buy and sell stocks and other assets.

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Global Finance Chiefs At Odds (WSJ) At the annual meetings here of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, European officials bickered about the damage caused by austerity; this week they head into a major euro-zone summit with no clear rescue plan for Greece. A territorial row between China and Japan, the world's second- and third-largest economies, bled into the conference with no sign of resolution, highlighting a new risk to growth. And many top finance officials pointed fingers at the U.S. for casting a new cloud over global markets by failing to make progress on the budget mess in the world's largest economy. Thousands March In Spain To Protest Austerity (Reuters) Several thousand anti-austerity protesters in Spain marched down a major street in the capital banging pots and pans Saturday. Many protesters also blew whistles as they blocked part of the Castellana boulevard Saturday carrying placards saying "We don't owe, we won't pay." "None of us pushed the banks to lend huge sums of money to greedy property speculators, yet we are being asked to pay for other's mistakes," 34-year-old civil servant Maria Costa, who was banging an old pot along with her two children, said. Bernanke Defends Fed From Claims It Is Being Selfish (NYT) Critics say the Fed’s unorthodox policies weaken the dollar and bolster the currencies of developing countries, hurting their ability to export. “It is not at all clear that accommodative policies in advanced economies impose net costs on emerging market economies,” Mr. Bernanke said at an event sponsored by the Bank of Japan and the International Monetary Fund. The Fed last month announced a program of open-ended bond purchases that will be continued until there is substantial improvement in labor market conditions, barring a sustained and unexpected spike in inflation. To start off, the central bank will buy $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities each month. “This policy not only helps strengthen the U.S. economic recovery, but by boosting U.S. spending and growth, it has the effect of helping support the global economy as well,” Mr. Bernanke said. Fischer Backs Fed QE3 as World ‘Awfully Close’ to Recession (Bloomberg) While there has been “a lot of progress made” to improve the global economy, its impact hasn’t materialized, Fischer said in an interview in Tokyo with Bloomberg Television airing Sunday. He signaled that by deciding not to set an end date or total amount to its third program of bond buying, the Fed is easing worries it will run out of ammunition before achieving its goals. Can Morgan Stanley's Gorman Save Wall Street? (BV) Gorman’s strategic moves are enough to convince one natural born skeptic, Mike Mayo, a financial-industry research analyst at Credit Agricole SA (ACA), to recommend Morgan Stanley’s stock for the first time in years. “The stock is valued as if it is a Greek or Spanish bank but its risk is far less,” he wrote in an e-mail to me. For Morgan Stanley to return to its glory days, he said, margins need to be improved in asset management, fixed-income trading needs to be further slimmed down and the core investment-banking franchise needs to be maintained and reinvigorated. Good advice. A firm built around lower risk-taking and lower overall pay while still providing clients with the advice and capital they need to innovate and expand is what we need on Wall Street. It’s the vision of one man taking seriously his responsibility to make the capital markets safe and productive for economies all over the world, instead of just some casino gone haywire where the house absorbs the losses and the profits go to the gamblers. The question is whether other leaders on Wall Street will follow Gorman’s example. Sex Life Was ‘Out of Step,’ Strauss-Kahn Says, but Not Illegal (NYT) More than a year after resigning in disgrace as the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn is seeking redemption with a new consulting company, the lecture circuit and a uniquely French legal defense to settle a criminal inquiry that exposed his hidden life as a libertine...In France, “Libertinage” has a long history in the culture, dating from a 16th-century religious sect of libertines. But the most perplexing question in the Strauss-Kahn affair is how a career politician with ambition to lead one of Europe’s most powerful nations was blinded to the possibility that his zest for sex parties could present a liability, or risk blackmail. The exclusive orgies called “parties fines” — lavish Champagne affairs costing around $13,000 each — were organized as a roving international circuit from Paris to Washington by businessmen seeking to ingratiate themselves with Mr. Strauss-Kahn. Some of that money, according to a lawyer for the main host, ultimately paid for prostitutes because of a shortage of women at the mixed soirees orchestrated largely for the benefit of Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who sometimes sought sex with three or four women. German finance chief Wolfgang Schaeuble says Greece won't default or exit (Telegraph) "Greece has to take a lot of very serious reforms" and "everyone is trusting that the Greek government is doing what is necessary", he said at a meeting with business leaders in Singapore on Sunday. Mr Schaeuble said an increasing majority of Greeks understand that being in the euro "is in the best interest of Greece" and said did not think there would be a ‘staatsbankrott’ - or state bankruptcy. He said he did not see “any sense to speculate on Greece leaving the euro” because it would be very damaging for both the country and the region. High-Speed Trading No Longer Hurtling Forward (NYT) Profits from high-speed trading in American stocks are on track to be, at most, $1.25 billion this year, down 35 percent from last year and 74 percent lower than the peak of about $4.9 billion in 2009, according to estimates from the brokerage firm Rosenblatt Securities. By comparison, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase each earned more in the last quarter than the high-speed trading industry will earn this year. Titanic Tycoon Plans Stake Sale Talks for $8 Billion Gas Project (Bloomberg) Australian mining magnate Clive Palmer, who’s planning to build a modern replica of the Titanic, aims to start talks next year to sell stakes in a potential $8 billion natural gas project in Papua New Guinea. “We’ve had interest from major petrochemical companies who want to joint venture” including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chinese companies, Palmer said in an interview. “We will talk to them at the appropriate time,” likely mid-2013 when field work is scheduled to be completed, he said. Occupy Supporters Stage Protest in London (AP) Several supporters of the anti-corporate Occupy movement chained themselves to the pulpit of St. Paul’s Cathedral during a service on Sunday in an action for the anniversary of its now-dismantled protest camp outside the London landmark. The dean of St. Paul’s, David Ison, said he was conducting an evening prayer service when “four young women dressed in white” chained themselves to the structure. Dutch make massive cocaine bust in fruit shipment headed for zoo, arrest five (AP) A major cocaine seizure in Europe turned out to be good news for the animals at Rotterdam’s zoo. The drugs were hidden among boxes of bananas, and the fruit went to the monkeys and other creatures at the Blijdorp zoo. Dutch prosecutors said Friday more than eight tons of cocaine was hidden among the bananas on a ship from Ecuador. The drugs were seized Monday in the Belgian port of Antwerp, while the bananas were allowed to continue on to Rotterdam – the shipment’s final destination. Dutch police arrested a Belgian truck driver and four Dutch men on Tuesday.