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☆ Exclusive: Bain Capital nearing final close of Asia fund worth $6 billion - sources
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Kane Wu | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

The committed capital to the fund has exceeded the firm's initial target of $5 billion, said one of the two people and a third source with knowledge of the fundraising. Bain Capital declined to comment. About $131.6 billion in total was raised in 2022 for Asia-focused funds, about half of 2021's $251.2 billion, Preqin data showed. Fundraising so far this year has totalled just $15.5 billion, the data showed. Last year, Bain Capital closed a $2 billion "special situations fund" for Asia Pacific to cover a range of asset types but with a focus on real estate.

☆ Here’s what the SEC will require under its strict new stock buyback disclosure rules
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Christina Wilkie | In | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

The new disclosure rules will begin to apply when U.S. corporations report earnings for the fourth quarter of 2023, and to foreign issuers on a slightly longer timeline. The new rules "will increase the transparency and integrity" of corporate stock repurchasing overall, and allow investors "to better assess issuer buyback programs," SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said in a statement about the updated disclosures. The changes approved Wednesday represent a softening of the SEC's initial proposed disclosure rules, which would have required public companies to report trades by corporate insiders on a daily basis. Public interest groups, many of which have become increasingly critical of widespread corporate buybacks, applauded the new rules. On Capitol Hill, bipartisan support for stricter buyback disclosure rules has been apparent since the start of the SEC's rulemaking process, more than a year ago.

☆ Energy stocks were due for Friday's rally. Here's how we're approaching our oil-and-gas names now
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Kevin Stankiewicz | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Oil stocks showed signs of life Friday, boosted by a sharp rise in crude prices. CTRA YTD mountain Coterra Energy YTD performance A bright spot in Friday's trading was Club holding Coterra Energy (CTRA), which rose as much as 9% before giving back some of those gains. "This is the beginning, I think, of a real trend in oil," Jim Cramer said Friday. Our calculus on energy stocks has changed as a result of this vicious move. HAL YTD mountain Halliburton YTD performance We took advantage of that notion early Friday with the Pioneer purchase.

May 3 (Reuters) - PacWest Bancorp (PACW.O) is exploring strategic options including a sale or capital raising, a source familiar with the matter said, sending the shares of the bank and several other U.S. regional lenders tumbling in after-market trading. The Phoenix-based regional lender said it was "reaffirming its financial strength as well as its deposit growth guidance in response to recent industry events." PacWest stock has lost almost 90% of its value since the regional banking crisis started on March 8. Zion Bancorp (ZION.O), First Horizon (FHN.N) and Comerica (CMA.N) each slumped more than 7% and the SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF (KRE.P) dropped 5%. The cost of insuring against further losses in regional U.S. bank stocks stood on Wednesday near a one-month high in options markets.

As each domino falls, the next weakest bank begins to wobble," billionaire investor Bill Ackman wrote in a tweet. PacWest stock has lost almost 90% of its value since the regional banking crisis started on March 8. Zion Bancorporation (ZION.O), Comerica (CMA.N) and First Horizon (FHN.N) each slumped more than 7% and the SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF (KRE.P) dropped 5%. The cost of insuring against further losses in regional U.S. bank stocks stood on Wednesday near a one-month high in options markets. On Wednesday a source said the lender was looking at options that include a potential sale or capital raise.

☆ Berenberg names stocks to play A.I. transformation in the auto industry - including one expected to double
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Samantha Subin | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

He said the auto industry is in the midst of a transformation that "parallels the evolution of consumer electronics from 1985 to 2010," noting both companies are poised to benefit from innovation propelled by AI and the growth of driving automation systems. Despite a crowded market, Maymon expects both names to "cut through the noise." When combined with Nvidia and Qualcomm, he forecasts all four names will account for at least 90% of the more than $30 billion Tier 2 silicon and software market for driving automation by 2030. Of the group, he views Mobileye as the "best pure-play" silicon and AI algorithm supplier and a driving automation systems "pioneer." MBLY YTD mountain Mobileye shares in 2023 Mobileye shares fell last month after the company slashed its guidance and said it now expects a wider-than-expected operating loss.

☆ Exclusive: Generative AI startup Runway just raised $100 million at a $1.5 billion valuation from a cloud service provider
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Generative AI startup Runway has raised a funding round of at least $100 million, Insider has learned. The deal tripled the startup's valuation from its last round to a whopping $1.5 billion. Investors recently told Insider that they were big fans of buzzy photo and video generative AI startup Runway. Runway has raised a Series D funding round of at least $100 million at a $1.5 billion valuation from a cloud service provider, according to multiple people familiar with the deal. Have a tip on a startup funding round?

☆ Show Me the Capital
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailShow Me the CapitalCurrently, one of the most pressing needs for small businesses is access to working capital. With dwindling revenue a growing concern, we'll discuss strategies to access funds, along with advice on how to keep your money safe following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

☆ Dubai to build world's first 3D-printed mosque
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Nadia Leigh-Hewitson | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

CNN —In recent years, 3D-printing has been used to build everything from homes to businesses and even bridges. Now, Dubai is set to construct the world’s first 3D-printed mosque. A rendering of the 3D-printed mosque, which will be built in Bur Dubai. By 2019 it held the world record for the largest 3D-printed structure – the Dubai Municipality building (standing 9.5 meters tall with an area of 640 square meters) – as well as being home to the world’s first 3D-printed office, and a 3D-printed drone research laboratory. He believes that a project like Dubai’s proposed mosque is the next phase in 3D-printed architectural design, but anticipates it will face challenges.

☆ Wolfe double-upgrades this regional bank stock that's an 'attractive place to hide'
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Alex Harring | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Prosperity Bancshares is a safe pick in a sector that's been recently defined by risk, according to Wolfe Research. Analyst Bill Carcache double-upgraded the regional bank stock to outperform from underperform, saying the bank has "relative safety on high ground" amid sector turmoil that was initially ignited by the closure of Silicon Valley Bank in March and reignited by the auction won by JPMorgan for First Republic Bank this week. His new target implies the stock could rally 15% from Tuesday's close. That's of increasing importance as industry insiders expect more stringent regulations following the recent bank failures, he said. He said that the bank has historically had fewer write-offs than regional peers.

☆ PacWest explores strategic options amid stock price plunge -source
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Anirban Sen | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

The Los Angeles-based lender said in its first-quarter earnings last week that its deposits had stabilized after some customers pulled their money, but investors have continued to sell the bank's shares amid concerns about its future. PacWest shares dropped 58% on the news on Wednesday to $2.88 a share. The stock has lost almost 90% of its value since the regional banking crisis started on March 8. The crisis has led to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation taking over regional lenders Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank and selling them in whole or parts to other banks. Shares of other regional banks also fell after First Republic Bank collapsed last weekend and was sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N).

☆ How to become a millionaire 'hiding in plain sight': Real-estate wealth manager David Wieland shares the low-risk strategy most of his mom-and-pop clients have used to scale up their portfolios over d
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( William Edwards | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Dave Wieland's wealth-management firm Realized works primarily with older real-estate investors who are ready to cash out of the properties they've owned for decades. The portfolio values of his clients differ — some are worth a couple million, while some total $15 million, Wieland said. But the common thread between all of them is that they're mom-and-pop, individual investors who work normal jobs: plumbers, used car salesmen, lawyers. Many of them have also used the same strategy over the years to scale up their portfolios, Wieland said. Work, work, work.

☆ How 2 longtime Warner Bros. execs and a veteran media banker plan to invest $360 million in sports, live experiences, and proven IP
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Lucia Moses | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Alex Iosilevich, Kevin Tsujihara, and Jeff Bewkes raised $360 million to invest in media, entertainment, and gaming. "Today it's television, tomorrow it's virtual reality," Alex Iosilevich, a longtime media banker and investor, told Insider. The trio announced April 27 that they raised $360 million for their first private equity fund to invest in media, entertainment, and gaming companies. Bewkes was chairman and CEO of Time Warner; he left as part of AT&T's 2016 acquisition of the company. With the market for subscription-based streaming services getting saturated, streaming companies will have to look more aggressively for new audiences through overseas expansion, ad-supported tiers, and new entertainment content.

☆ IMF raises Asia's economic forecast on China recovery, warns of risks
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Leika Kihara | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

"Asia and Pacific will be the most dynamic of the world's major regions in 2023, predominantly driven by the buoyant outlook for China and India," the IMF said its regional economic outlook report. "As in the rest of the world, domestic demand is expected to remain the largest growth driver across Asia in 2023." Asia's economy is expected to expand 4.6% this year after a 3.8% increase in 2022, contributing around 70% of global growth, the IMF said, upgrading its forecast by 0.3 of a percentage point from October. "The costs of failing to bring inflation below target are likely to outweigh any benefits from keeping monetary conditions loose," the IMF said. "Insufficient tightening in the short term would require disproportionately more monetary tightening later to avoid high inflation becoming ingrained, making a larger contraction more likely."

☆ Three media veterans just raised $360 million to invest in sports, live experiences, and proven IP — trends that are 'permanent' even as streamers struggle for profits and consumers churn
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Lucia Moses | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Alex Iosilevich, Kevin Tsujihara, and Jeff Bewkes raised $360 million to invest in media, entertainment, and gaming. "Today it's television, tomorrow it's virtual reality," Alex Iosilevich, a longtime media banker and investor, told Insider. The trio announced April 27 that they raised $360 million for their first private equity fund to invest in media, entertainment, and gaming companies. And Iosilevich's resume includes more than a decade of media dealmaking at UBS, Deutsche Bank, and Barclays. With the market for subscription-based streaming services getting saturated, streaming companies will have to look more aggressively for new audiences through overseas expansion, ad-supported tiers, and new entertainment content.

Instead, fixed income, which was unpopular when rates were low, is back in favor and seeing strong capital flows into products like bond funds, said fund managers at the Milken Institute Global Conference this week. Attendees also discussed whether federal regulators should raise FDIC deposit insurance after First Republic Bank was seized and sold to JPMorgan, and how markets will react to even higher interest rates and potentially more market volatility. Others warned that companies will soon have to refinance their debt at higher rates, making them less attractive. Instead, thanks to higher interest rates, fixed income is once again playing a bigger role in portfolios. "The Fed has helped us put the income back in fixed income," said Anne Walsh, Chief Investment Officer for Guggenheim Partners Investment Management.

☆ Banks are finally admitting they have a problem with billions of dollars in looming real-estate defaults
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

This earnings season, some major banks bucked tumult in the sector by raking in record revenues and surpassing Wall Street expectations. The bank separately disclosed $725 million of "non-accrual loans" tied to office assets — debts that are already delinquent on payments. That was a nearly fourfold increase in dollar volume of bad office loans over the previous quarter held by the bank. Even some loans tied the nation's robust market for apartment buildings have faltered recently. Anderson said about $760 billion of office loans were held by banks, which amounts to roughly 35% of their commercial-real-estate debt.

☆ A 31-year old real-estate investor with a 134-unit portfolio shares the strategy he's using to sidestep high mortgage rates and buy properties with none of his own money
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( William Edwards | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Seller-financing is when a property owner agrees to sell their property to the buyer directly instead of using a bank. For one, they might be able to command a higher price if they're able to offer a lower interest rate than one could get from a bank. That translates to $13,125 per month in interest payments alone for eight years. It's enough to cover their interest payments, he said. He added: "Those are the same people who call me for deals, they're the same people who sometimes sell me property, they're the same people who have financed me.

☆ Here's what's next for bank stocks after the failure of First Republic
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Jesse Pound | In Jesse-Pound | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

First Republic's demise was the third regional bank failure since early March, when Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank folded within days of each other. There is cautious optimism on Wall Street that First Republic will be the last failure of this period. However, reports from other regional banks weren't nearly as dire, with many reporting that deposits had stabilized and were growing again. However, the failure of First Republic could cause some more turbulence, at least in the short-term, for both deposits and bank stocks. "We don't believe that regional banks are completely out of the woods," Wolfe Research chief investment strategist Chris Senyek said in a note to clients on Monday.

☆ Quotes: Fed plans broad revamp of bank oversight in wake of SVB collapse
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +11 min

The assertion in the introduction that the Fed should focus on large bank capital requirements is disconnected from the report's conclusions. AMERICAN BANK ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT AND CEO ROB NICOLS"We take any bank failure seriously, and we will review the findings and proposed policy changes in these reports carefully, including where the conclusions may differ. JONATHAN MONDILLO, HEAD OF NORTH AMERICAN FIXED INCOME AT ABRDN"We're likely to see higher capital requirements. What that means for the overall markets is that the devil is in the details: how stringent those capital requirements will be. A potential First Republic Bank failure could similarly present a risk to the long-term investment strategy of high net-worth individuals."

☆ ‘New York, New York’ Review: A Musical of City Striving
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Charles Isherwood | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The company of ‘New York, New York’ Photo: Paul KolnikThe Broadway musical “New York, New York,” set in the heady days after the end of World War II, is an unabashedly rhapsodic love letter to the city. It embraces with a big bear hug—one that contemporary dwellers would probably recoil from, speaking literally—the image of New York as the fabled dream-chasing capital of the world, a notion immortalized in the title song. New York, New York St. James Theatre, 246 W. 44th St., New York $59-$279, 888-985-9421The show is very loosely based on the stylized 1977 Martin Scorsese movie of the same title. The looser the better. The movie is turgid and almost unwatchable today, primarily due to the repellent behavior of Robert De Niro ’s character—he’s basically a saxophone-playing Travis Bickle from “Taxi Driver,” minus the charm.

☆ US Fed plans broad revamp of bank oversight in wake of SVB collapse
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

Many commentators linked the lessons learned from the earlier crisis to the ongoing concerns about First Republic Bank. INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL BANKERS CEO BETH ZORC"The IIB commends the Federal Reserve's timeliness of producing its report on SVB. "There are similarities between SVB's situation and what is happening with First Republic Bank: both are affected by the rapid movement of very large sums of money." A potential First Republic Bank failure could similarly present a risk to the long-term investment strategy of high net-worth individuals." "It feels isolated, than the rest of the regional bank system, feels like it's in a different place than where FRC is."

☆ This beaten-up bitcoin proxy should rebound 35% as the cryptocurrency reclaims the spotlight, Berenberg says
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Tanaya Macheel | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Bitcoin is back in a bull market by many accounts and is poised to continue its 2023 rally as the rest of crypto comes under regulatory scrutiny. Equity investors interested in riding bitcoin's current uptrend should consider buying shares of Microstrategy , the enterprise analytics firm and bitcoin proxy, according to Berenberg Capital Markets. Microstrategy offers "the most attractive means" through which investors can express a view on bitcoin, Palmer said, citing its correlation of 0.90 to the crypto asset for his stance. The mandates of many institutional investors preclude them from purchasing bitcoin directly. "MSTR's stock offers a leveraged means through which investors can take advantage of that event."

[1/2] Solar panels are built at the QCells solar energy manufacturing factory in Dalton, Georgia, U.S., March 2, 2023. The Inflation Reduction Act, which passed last year without a single Republican vote, is a signature Biden accomplishment and offers $369 billion investment to address climate change. This includes $270 billion in tax incentives. Republicans have portrayed the tax credits as a distortion of the free market that gives unfair advantage to clean-energy producers over fossil fuels. Frisone, of CZAR-Power, said he plans to call Republican officeholders to make his case, adding, "This is a political stunt -- why are we doing it?"

☆ Chile's lithium push emerges as test for Latin American resource nationalism
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( David Alire Garcia | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

[1/2] Laborers work at a lithium plant on the Atacama salt flat in the Atacama desert of northern Chile January 8, 2013. While the former student protest leader's proposal to give the government a majority stake in all future lithium projects faces an uncertain path in Congress, its mere introduction shook one of the mining industry's most lucrative corners. Lithium is in high demand for rechargeable batteries for future fleets of electric vehicles in the global transition to green energy. That leaves the exception to the trend, Argentina, as an increasingly likely Latin American destination for new private capital for lithium. A strong pipeline of lithium projects in Argentina, the world's No.

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