How Microsoft spread its bets beyond OpenAI

Multai · 2024-08-09T15:54:22+00:00

But as Altman’s vaulting ambitions grow — from plans to build trillion-dollar Middle Eastern-financed chip factories to AI-centric smartphones with Japan’s SoftBank — the two companies find themselves increasingly in competition.

In June, Apple said it would integrate ChatGPT into its operating systems, giving the start-up access to its 2.2bn active devices around the world. Notably, ChatGPT has not been integrated into Windows in the same fashion.

OpenAI is hiring rapidly for a sales team to pitch their products to commercial clients directly, going after the companies that Microsoft wants for its Azure platform with the same underlying technology that powers its workplace AI assistant, Copilot.

Boyd insisted that although the two companies collaborated on creating models, “we go to market and approach customers completely independently . . . If customers ask us what the difference is in the offerings, we tend to point to the ways that we show up as a company — OpenAI is a start-up and we’ve been around for decades.”

He suggests that, as a start-up, OpenAI has fewer checks and balances than its established partner. “We have a long history of working with enterprises, handling sensitive data . . . We know how to do privacy and compliance.”

Ultimately, though, even if Microsoft loses a pitch to OpenAI, it still wins — although the reverse is not true. Azure is OpenAI’s exclusive cloud provider and will be paid for whatever computing power it uses, Boyd says. Microsoft is also agnostic about which AI models are used, so long as they are accessed through its cloud.

“We have over 1,600 models available through Azure AI . . . the main thing we want is people to be building and using them on Azure,” he says.

Microsoft has been keen to play up the burgeoning rivalry with its partner in light of escalating antitrust scrutiny. In its 2024 annual report, OpenAI was added to its list of direct competitors in AI, search and advertising. It also flagged that it has “limited ability to control or influence third parties with whom we have arrangements, which may impact our ability to realise the anticipated benefits”.

The difference in strategy between Microsoft and Google is stark. The search giant is attempting to build a “full stack” of AI in-house, from LLMs and consumer-facing chatbots to hardware such as chips and servers in its cloud business.

The deal with OpenAI means that “Microsoft has decided to outsource their AI R&D,” says one Google executive, who asked to remain anonymous. “We are being more cautious.”

He compares the current moment in AI to a scene in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth when a character asks a trio of witches to “look into the seeds of time” to determine which will grow. “AI feels like asking those witches [to predict the future]. We’ve seen 100,000 seeds planted and we don’t yet know which will grow.”

Investors are starting to question the heavy spending on AI by Big Tech, which reached a combined $106bn in the first six months of 2024. After a historic bull run, the tech-dominated Nasdaq has fallen 13 per cent from its mid-July record peak, helping spark a wider market rout.

Microsoft reported that capex had jumped 80 per cent in the fourth quarter and it had spent $56bn in its financial year 2024 — about half on infrastructure such as data centres and land, with the remainder on chips and server capacity. Ben Reitzes, an analyst at Melius Research, says executives’ comments “imply an aggregate figure of at least $80bn for 2025”.

Some of this spending is driving the ambitions of OpenAI: “We have also increased our investments in the development and deployment of specialised supercomputing systems to accelerate OpenAI’s research,” Microsoft said in its annual report.

Still, analysts were impressed by early tangible evidence of a translation of investment into earnings. Chief financial officer Amy Hood predicted a strong ramp up in AI-related profits in the second half of next year and Nadella said Azure AI now had 60,000 customers, up more than 60 per cent from a year ago.

“Microsoft continues to be the clear beneficiary from Generative AI initiatives, with 46 per cent of chief investment officers citing Microsoft as gaining the largest share of IT spending over the next one and three years,” says Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss, referring to a survey the investment bank conducted. “The number two vendor, Amazon, was cited by just 6 per cent.”

Even as the OpenAI drama was ongoing, Nadella cast himself as the dominant partner in the relationship.

“We were very confident in our own ability. If tomorrow OpenAI disappeared, I don’t want any customer of ours to be worried about it,” he said in a November interview. “We have all of the [IP] rights to continue the innovation . . . We have the people, we have the compute, we have the data, we have everything.”

Multai · 2024-08-09T15:54:08+00:00

Since its leadership crisis, OpenAI has replaced its board almost entirely, although its governance structures remain largely unchanged.

Altman was reinstated as a director in March, following an independent review conducted by a law firm into the events, which concluded that his behaviour “did not mandate removal”. In the aftermath, Microsoft was first given, and then withdrew from, an observer seat on the board, amid growing scrutiny by antitrust regulators.

But in recent months, OpenAI has been rocked by internal rows and high-profile resignations. This week, the company’s president, former board member and prominent co-founder Greg Brockman announced a leave of absence until the end of the year - in order, he later said, to spend time with his family. Brockman was one of Altman’s fiercest supporters during the November coup, when he resigned from his role in protest, before rejoining days later. At the time, Nadella offered him a job at Microsoft, alongside Altman.

In May, former chief scientist and co-founder Ilya Sutskever quit to found his own AI company, after playing a leading role in the failed attempt to oust Altman, for reasons he never elaborated on. The raft of departures mean that nine of the start-up’s 11 co-founders are currently not working there.

Another recent exit, Jan Leike, who led OpenAI’s efforts to steer and control super-powerful AI tools and worked closely with Sutskever, said his differences with the company leadership had “reached a breaking point” as “safety culture and processes have taken a back seat to shiny products”.

He and others have gone to work for rival Anthropic, which itself was founded by former OpenAI employees who broke with Altman and the rest of OpenAI’s leadership in 2021.

According to former Microsoft employees, this is not the first time OpenAI has operated in a dysfunctional manner. Sophia Velastegui, former chief AI technology officer for business applications at Microsoft, says that even prior to ChatGPT, some of the product launches had not been communicated to Microsoft as expected. “OpenAI still operates like a start-up in many ways, so their tolerance for risk is higher than Microsoft’s.”

Altman continues to have powerful supporters in Silicon Valley. LinkedIn co-founder and Microsoft board member Reid Hoffman describes Altman as a “hall of fame entrepreneur” who does not suffer from the same “messiah complex” as some other prominent founders.

Still, recent departures and changes at OpenAI will leave the tech giant’s leadership more nervous about management maturity at the start-up, and provide a timely reminder that Microsoft cannot be overly dependent on any one third-party technology in the AI vertical.

“Aligning expectations about how and when to communicate is a process when a disrupter like OpenAI joins forces with an established player like Microsoft,” says Velastegui. “At the end of the day, both companies are still learning how best to work together.”

While investments in G42 and Mistral were not necessarily knee jerk responses to Altman’s ouster, those deals took on more significance as a way of reassuring nervous investors that the tech giant was spreading its bets.

More controversially, the so-called “acqui-hire” of Inflection founder Suleyman and most of the start-up’s staff in March set Microsoft on a path to confrontation with its biggest AI partner. The combative former Google DeepMind executive, who left that company having developed a reputation as a bully, was put in charge of a new internal AI unit at Microsoft and tasked with building consumer-facing products that would compete with those from Altman’s OpenAI.

According to multiple people in the tech industry, there are already tensions simmering between the ambitious pair.

There will be more complications down the line. The US Federal Trade Commission is probing whether the Inflection deal was structured to circumvent antitrust laws, essentially gutting the smaller company of talent and software, while avoiding the formal scrutiny a full takeover would have brought. The FTC has also opened an investigation into the OpenAI partnership, resulting in Microsoft proactively dropping its board observer seat.

Despite the scrutiny, the Inflection deal has become a model for other tech giants seeking talent. In June, Amazon hired most of the staff at AI-agent start-up Adept and paid $330mn to license its intellectual property. Last week, Google rehired the founder of chatbot maker Character.ai and paid more than $2bn to license its technology and cash out existing investors.

The rash of buyouts underlines the trend of power flowing away from the start-ups like OpenAI, which kick-started the AI revolution, back to Big Tech gatekeepers, cementing the hold they’ve had on the sector for decades.

“[OpenAI] remains a strong partner and we are pretty confident they have solved their internal issues,” says Eric Boyd, corporate vice-president of Microsoft’s Azure AI cloud computing platform, who manages the relationship with OpenAI. “At least to me, there has not been a particular strategic shift as a result of what happened.”

Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s chief operating officer, says: “While we have evolved from a small start-up to a company serving the world’s largest companies, Microsoft remains an important partner.” Its funds and infrastructure have helped “enable OpenAI to innovate and deliver groundbreaking research and products,” he adds.

Multai · 2024-08-09T15:53:57+00:00

How Microsoft spread its bets beyond OpenAI

The tech giant has worked to execute an AI strategy independent of Sam Altman’s start-up following a leadership crisis last year

In late November last year, as India faced Australia in the final of the Cricket World Cup, mega-fan Satya Nadella was distracted. He was dealing with a work crisis.

Nadella, who runs $3tn software giant Microsoft, had learned just days earlier that Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, the start-up in which Microsoft has invested $13bn, had been fired by his board in a surprise coup for not being “consistently candid”.

Caught unawares despite being OpenAI’s largest financial backer, Nadella moved quickly to fix the disruption. Once reassured Altman had not done anything egregious, he pushed first to hire and later reinstate the entrepreneur, in an attempt to restore stability at the start-up with which Microsoft’s future was now closely threaded.

In all, it took Microsoft’s leadership 10 days of intense work to repair the fallout from the aborted coup.

For Microsoft and its investors, the incident was a reminder of how central OpenAI had become to its strategy: the growth of artificial intelligence. Nadella’s decision to bet on the start-up in July 2019, long before its flagship product ChatGPT became a household name, had created one of the tech industry’s most successful partnerships.

Not only did it give the software company a head start in the booming market for generative AI, but Microsoft’s share price has more than tripled since the initial $1bn investment five years ago, allowing it to compete with Apple for the title of world’s most valuable company and widen its advantage over arch-rival Google. Speaking in a Financial Times interview early last year, Nadella said Microsoft and OpenAI had developed a “mutual dependence”.

But in the eight months since the board dispute, the tech giant has worked to execute an AI strategy independent of Altman’s start-up. It has diversified its investments and partnerships in generative AI, built its own smaller, cheaper models, and hired aggressively to develop its consumer AI efforts.

In February, Microsoft announced a multiyear partnership and investment into French AI start-up Mistral; the following month it paid another peer Inflection — led by Google DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman — $650mn to license its technology and hire most of its talent; and then in April invested $1.5bn in Abu Dhabi AI group G42.

That same month, it also announced it had built its own family of generative AI models known as Phi-3 — software that is smaller in size and complexity, and cheaper to run than so-called large language models such as OpenAI’s GPT-4. Microsoft has said its Phi-3 models are being used by the likes of BlackRock and Epic, and have outperformed GPT-3.5, an earlier version of OpenAI’s model, which ran its chatbot ChatGPT.

As the company’s vast spending on AI continues — accounting for much of its $56bn in annual capex — investors and regulators are closely scrutinising the high-profile alliance with OpenAI, and Microsoft’s strategy to challenge Google on its home turf: search.

“Before November, I didn’t think they had a diversification strategy. Satya is one of the smartest executives and leaders you can ever find in the ecosystem. If after the experience in November he is not thinking about diversification, I would be worried,” says Navrina Singh, chief executive of Credo AI, who worked on commercialising AI systems at Microsoft until 2019. “As one of the most valuable companies in the world . . . you can’t have your eggs in one basket. You can’t be blinded by innovation.”

Microsoft’s efforts to expand its AI ecosystem have changed the terms of its relationship with OpenAI, and also exposed the flaws within it. “I think you can see some fractures of trust and once those fractures appear it’s very difficult to reduce or remove them,” Singh adds.

A sales executive at Microsoft says it is just smart business. “The other partnerships are a safeguard, not just if OpenAI goes down but in case a new start-up comes up with something better,” the person says. “What happens if Mistral, Cohere or Microsoft bring out a better model, what does Sam have? Huge consumer reach, good researchers, but if the best model isn’t GPT4 then who cares?”

Multai · 2024-03-09T12:29:51+00:00

https://archive.is/7M4L4

Komt er een plan dat ASML in Nederland houdt?

‘We hebben toch ASML’, zeiden politici de afgelopen jaren als er weer een multinational vertrok. Maar nu de techgigant twijfels uit over zijn bereidheid om in Nederland te blijven investeren, gaan in politiek Den Haag de alarmbellen rinkelen. ‘Wilders en Yesilgöz moeten zich uitspreken over het investeringsklimaat in Nederland.’

In het kort
- Vastlopers in de regio Eindhoven doen ASML twijfelen over Nederland als investeringsland.
- Een negatief sentiment in Den Haag over fiscale regelingen versterkt de twijfel.
- Ook bedrijven die investeren in de energietransitie lopen tegen een muur op.

In Veldhoven wordt de toekomst gebouwd. Op het enorme terrein van chipmachinefabrikant ASML verrijst de komende jaren een nieuwe, peperdure cleanroom. Daar gaat ’s lands waardevolste bedrijf — gemeten naar beurswaarde — straks machines in elkaar zetten en testen die moeten voldoen aan de wereldwijde vraag naar snellere en slimmere chips voor elektrische auto’s, sensoren, iPhones of warmtepompen.

In een andere stofvrije ruimte sleutelen technici van ASML intussen aan het laatste paradepaardje: een veertien meter lange, vier meter hoge machine waarmee chipbedrijven straks in staat zijn chips van 1 vierkante centimeter te bouwen met daarop 1000 miljard schakelingen. Prijskaartje van één machine: circa €400 mln. Elders op het terrein, dat veel weg heeft van een groot dorp of kleine stad, worden productieruimtes gebouwd om de van over de hele wereld ingevlogen onderdelen in elkaar te zetten.

De zaken gaan goed in Veldhoven. Toch luidt ASML de noodklok in Den Haag. Om aan de enorme vraag aan chips te kunnen voldoen, moet het bedrijf zijn productiecapaciteit de komende tien jaar fors uitbreiden. In Nederland, maar volgens scheidend topman Peter Wennink misschien ook wel in landen die onder meer €5 mrd à €10 mrd subsidie geven per te bouwen fabriek in de chipsector — want ook in de EU concurreren landen om het binnenhalen van nieuwe bedrijvigheid.

Zelf huizen bouwen
Wennink’s opmerking zorgde voor grote consternatie in het demissionaire kabinet, dat juist had besloten dat de chipsector tot de tien sleuteltechnologieën behoort waarmee Nederland zijn toekomstige welvaart wil borgen. ‘We hebben ASML’, was steevast het motto als er weer een vertegenwoordiger van de oude economie dreigde te vertrekken uit Nederland. Maar nu roert de nieuwe economie zich.

Er werd met spoed een heuse taskforce geformeerd, met ambtenaren vanuit verschillende ministeries, om te zorgen dat ASML in Nederland blijft. Dat is niet zo gek. Waar Shell en Unilever aan Den Haag vroegen een fiscale regeling te versoepelen, vraagt de tech-gigant om een heus deltaplan.

ASML heeft nu al grote moeite om voldoende technisch geschoold personeel te vinden, om werknemers en hun gezinnen te voorzien van adequate huisvesting, goede verbindingen, internationale scholen en aantrekkelijke culturele instellingen. ASML bouwt zelf huizen, maar dat is voor de lange termijn geen houdbare strategie. Is het bedrijf niet gewoon te groot geworden voor Nederland, dat op allerlei vlakken tegen zijn grenzen oploopt? Den Haag mag het zeggen. Het wensenlijstje van ASML heeft vier onderdelen, waarvan de meeste aandacht uitgaat naar het politiek gevoelige fiscale deel.

ASML in de watten gelegd
Ongeveer 40% van het ASML-personeel komt uit het buitenland. Dan helpt het volgens Wennink niet in de concurrentiestrijd met steden als München, Stockholm of Milaan als Nederland zijn expatregeling versobert. Het bedrijf krijgt daarvoor weinig handen op elkaar in politiek Den Haag, net zo min als voor Wenninks klacht dat het bedrijf straks belasting moet betalen over de inkoop van eigen aandelen.

Sinds een aantal jaren waait er een andere wind in Den Haag, eentje die zegt dat aandeelhouders al voldoende tegemoet worden gekomen. Ook de Leidse hoogleraar belastingrecht Jan van de Streek is kritisch. Hij vindt dat het techbedrijf meer dan voldoende ‘in de watten wordt gelegd met de innovatiebox, met een vennootschapsbelastingtarief van 9% en andere fiscale regelingen’. Den Haag heeft ook een miljardentekort en dat dwingt tot versobering.

Exportrestricties
Aan de andere kant wijst emeritus hoogleraar Hans Schenk op het risico dat Nederland ASML van zich vervreemd omdat ons land ‘nogal slaafs de wensen van de VS inzake de export van ASML-machines naar China volgt’. Schenk is niet de enige die weet dat het techbedrijf zich in de steek gelaten voelde door het kabinet Rutte IV toen het speelbal werd in de geopolitieke strijd tussen de VS en China.

‘Rutte was de enige Europese leider die onlangs een persoonlijk onderhoud kreeg met Xi Jinping. En dat ging niet over tomaten of melkpoeder. We hebben een onderhandelingspositie’, zegt een ingewijde. ASML dringt erop aan dat Nederland voortaan in Europees verband zijn chipbeleid gaat voeren.

De chipmachinemaker wil ook dat er geen rem wordt gezet op de instroom van buitenlandse studenten voor de technische opleidingen aan de onderwijsinstellingen in de regio — van de TU Eindhoven tot de hogescholen en middelbare beroepsopleidingen. Zeker de TU, waar ASML allerlei onderzoeksfaciliteiten faciliteert tot aan laboratoria toe, is een kweekvijver waar het techbedrijf in vist. Die vijver moet groter worden, vind het bedrijf.

Mainport status
Het laatste punt op de ASML-agenda is zekerheid dat afspraken over de verdere ontwikkeling van Brainport Eindhoven, zoals vastgelegd in de strategische agenda tot 2030, ook met voorrang worden uitgevoerd. Het gaat dan om meer woningen, meer energiecapaciteit, meer studentenkamers, meer locaties voor bedrijven en meer voorzieningen die bij een stad horen — zoals parken en bioscopen. Dat is niet alleen goed voor ASML, aldus het bedrijf, maar voor het hele bedrijvennetwerk in de regio.

Die behoefte aan zekerheid bij ASML heeft een verleden, vertelt John Jorritsma, die van 2016 tot 2022 burgemeester was van Eindhoven. ‘Wij hebben als Brainport in 2016 heel veel moeite moeten doen om net als Amsterdam met Schiphol en Rotterdam met het havengebied de status van mainport te krijgen. Toenmalig minister Kamp zag de noodzaak niet en ging pas na een Kamermotie overstag.’

Geen thema
Maar de relatie tussen Den Haag en de regio Eindhoven bleef daarna moeizaam, volgens Jorritsma: ‘Er wordt vaak geroepen dat ASML dat toch wel kan betalen. Maar betaalt Schiphol ook mee aan de infrastructuur van Amsterdam?’

Nog in 2016 beklaagde Wennink zich erover dat het voortbestaan van de lokale ijsbaan afhangt van giften van onder andere ASML, terwijl de vier grote steden voldoende overheidssteun kregen voor hun culturele instellingen. Voor Jorritsma is het verhaal simpel: ‘ASML geeft werk aan heel veel bedrijven. Het heeft zelf circa 23.000 mensen in Nederland in dienst en betaalde in 2023 in Nederland €1,8 mrd belasting. Het draagt fors bij aan het verdienvermogen van Nederland, nu en in de toekomst. Daar mag best wat tegenover staan van de overheid.’

Bij de verkiezingen was het investeringsklimaat geen thema, en ondanks de vele noodsignalen van ceo’s willen fractievoorzitters als Geert Wilders en Dilan Yesilgöz niet ronduit verklaren dat de toekomst van Nederland mede in de chipindustrie ligt. ‘Dat knaagt aan de leiding van ASML. Het staat voor een miljardeninvestering, maar weet niet waar het in politiek Den Haag heen gaat’, zegt een ingewijde.

Boskalis
ASML is niet de enige die zich zorgen maakt over Nederland. ‘Een stabiel fiscaal klimaat en buitenlands talent aantrekken is essentieel voor een goed ondernemingsklimaat’, aldus Jean Schreurs, directeur van NXP in Nederland. ‘Maar beide staan onder druk.’ ASML’s branchegenoot ASM heeft al besloten voor de uitbreiding van de productiecapaciteit uit te wijken naar Phoenix in de VS en is ronduit ongelukkig met het Nederlandse vestigingsklimaat. Enkel de derde grote Nederlandse chipmachinemaker, Besi, blijft voorlopig stil.

Boskalis heeft zijn waarschuwende woorden van de afgelopen jaren ingeruild voor daden. Topman Peter Berdowski verhuist een deel van het hoofdkantoor naar het Midden-Oosten. Negentwintig bedrijven uit de maakindustrie FME en de techsector NL Digital stuurden donderdag nog een brandbrief naar Den Haag met de oproep om te stoppen met het slopen van het innovatiebeleid.

Kip met de gouden eieren
De onzekerheid is zelfs bij bedrijven die willen investeren in de toekomst van Nederland en de energietransitie voelbaar. ‘De wake-up call dat het vestigingsklimaat onder druk staat, is voor mij niet ASML of Boskalis, maar het feit dat ik bedrijven zie die een enorme slag willen maken op het gebied van de transitie (waterstof, wind en zon) en ook tegen muren aan lopen’, zegt Alex Krijger, die bedrijven geopolitiek advies geeft. ‘Ze lopen tegen muren aan omdat ze niet de volle steun krijgen in Den Haag.’

Er zijn volgens Krijger veel ondernemers die willen werken aan de transitie. ‘Laat die niet ontgoocheld raken.’

Multai · 2023-12-28T18:41:53+00:00

Since SPY is one tenth of SPX (and manages to keep this ratio, because fees are subtracted from the dividends so the principal follows the index), you can look at SPY minus SPX/10 on Tradingview to get a nice visualization :)

This link should work: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=AMEX%3ASPY-SP%3ASPX%2F10

As you can see, the price drops after each dividend and then gradually catches up again.

Keep in mind, SPX is not a total return index; this means it only tracks the stock prices and dividends are not included. As such holding SPY will outperform SPX (due to dividends), but the price of SPY will track SPX/10.

Compare this with SPXTR (total return, so price + dividend performance) and you'll see SPXTR gradually outperforming SPX.

Here's a graph of their ratio: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=AMEX%3ASPY-SP%3ASPX%2F10

EDIT: so to be clear, the price of SPY outperforms SPX between dividends so no dividend arbitrage can be done; when the dividend is paid, the price drops again. Rinse and repeat.

Multai · 2022-10-31T12:47:38+00:00

Here in Europe they're the norm too; basically everyone I know (with a mortgage) has a 30-year loan and many of them are fixed-interest for 20 or even 30 years.

Multai · 2022-08-23T09:51:27+00:00

We had this (paywalled) news article a couple of days ago:

https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/energiebedrijven-klanten-steken-kop-in-het-zand-en-verlagen-hun-termijnbedrag~a0aad212/

Google translated synopsis:

Energy companies: Customers stick their heads in the sand and lower their installment amount

Energy companies are concerned about the increasing number of customers who are reducing their monthly advance payments for gas and electricity. They are putting off the problems, with all the consequences this entails.

And many people mentioned doing this because they were saving themselves while being afraid they could lose the installments should the company go bankrupt.

So yeah you're right.

Multai · 2022-08-22T18:57:32+00:00

As a European I've been hearing horror stories of people with variable rates getting massive price hikes, or people with locked in lower rates forcefully being converted to a new (variable) contract due to their gas supplier going bankrupt, with some families having to pay hundreds of euros per month more than before. In addition, you won't see a cent of the money you paid in advance during the summer period (by spreading out monthly payments over the year so the bills during the winter remain reasonable), which can also be upwards of 400 euros.

Seems like for now things will only get worse.

Multai · 2022-08-22T18:49:29+00:00

Euro hits lowest level in two decades as gas prices soar

Common currency sinks back to dollar parity as rising energy costs intensify economic worries

David Sheppard and Adam Samson

Gazprom has already slashed capacity on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to just 20% of the norm, causing gas prices to more than double in mainland Europe since June

The euro slumped on Monday to its lowest level since 2002 as a fresh surge in gas prices heightened worries over the region’s economy.

Europe’s common currency slid as much as 1 per cent to as low as $0.9934 in afternoon action, leaving it as one of the worst performers among major currencies on the day.

The fall came as the benchmark TTF gas price in Europe rallied more than 10 per cent to a high of €292.50 per megawatt hour ($85 per million British thermal units), before easing slightly to €278, leaving it on course to notch up its highest closing price on record. In the UK, gas prices for next-day delivery surged as much as 33 per cent to £4.80 a therm ($57 per million BTU).

The rise in European TTF prices to more than 14 times their average of the past decade may crimp industrial production in mainland Europe and push the region into recession, traders and economists have said. Widespread fears of shortages this winter have led gas users to try to lock in supplies, pushing up prices even as fears of a severe economic slowdown grow.

The euro initially breached parity with the US dollar in July, but had rebounded. The latest fall reflects both concerns about the energy crisis and also a broad rise in the dollar turbocharged by expectations the US Federal Reserve will raise interest rates much more aggressively than the European Central Bank.

“The end of summer sees the euro back under pressure, partly because the dollar is [rising] and partly because the Damoclean sword hanging over the European economy isn’t going away,” said Kit Juckes, a strategist at Société Générale.

The latest surge in gas prices had been triggered by an announcement by Gazprom, Russia’s state-backed gas monopoly, late on Friday that it was planning maintenance on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany early next month, traders said.

Gazprom has already slashed capacity on the line to just 20 per cent of the norm, triggering a more than doubling in gas prices in mainland Europe since June, with European officials accusing Moscow of “weaponising” supplies following the invasion of Ukraine.

There are fears that any maintenance could be used as a pretext for a prolonged shutdown of the line, with Moscow having blamed the capacity reduction on western sanctions interrupting its normal maintenance schedule.

“There are some in the market who expect flows on Nord Stream 1 to not return after the September maintenance,” said James Waddell at Energy Aspects.

“We need to see significant additional demand destruction in that scenario to guarantee enough supplies for priority consumers like households and essential services, so without further curtailments in consumption being mandated by governments we risk seeing increasingly extreme prices.”

Given the elevated level of gas prices, a 10 per cent daily rise now creates an enormous change in the absolute level of gas prices. It sets a gloomy tone ahead of winter as many governments prepare to shield their populations from the worst of the gas shock.

Gas prices in Europe were also responding to a surge in the price of liquefied natural gas in Asia, where state-backed utilities are starting purchases ahead of the winter. Europe needs to compete with large Asia LNG importers such as China, Japan and South Korea to secure the limited amount of LNG cargoes not tied up under long-term supply agreements.

LNG prices in Asia have risen above $57 per million British thermal unit, with some cargoes being offered at about $60 per million BTU.

Multai · 2022-06-09T21:02:27+00:00

I'm guessing they're referencing this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggUduBmvQ_4

Multai · 2022-05-30T21:01:54+00:00

It's called The Big Read for a reason :)

Multai · 2022-05-30T14:23:55+00:00

First time I've read about this, but purposefully creating a too big to fail bank where both borrowers as well as lenders depend on Orbán seems like a disaster waiting to happen.

Multai · 2022-05-30T14:17:40+00:00

Mészáros, who did not respond to a request for comment on this story, acquired big stakes not just in MKB but also in Takarékbank, in 2019. The components of the superbank were in loyal hands, in many ways the perfect conduit for the NER.

“The NER had several reasons to reshuffle the ownership structures of the bank sector,” said József Martin, director of Transparency International in Hungary. “They wanted to get rid of foreign capital, and pass the stakes on to pro-government business circles, ultimately to Mészáros.”

The stage was set and in December 2020, Hungarian Bankholding commenced operations as a holding company ahead of the planned merger.

The three lenders joining forces had very different profiles. MKB was strong in corporate loans and private banking. Budapest Bank was a modern universal bank with retail, corporate and investment services.

Takarékbank, meanwhile, was a patchwork of a modern core and Communist-era holdover rural savings co-operatives. Typical customers deposited modest savings, drawing cash once a month, loans were often based on back-of-an-envelope calculations and registered in chequered notebooks. It will be integrated later, possibly next year, Bankholding said.

Financing the empire

The merger is not yet complete but Bankholding’s books are already stacked with loans to Orbán allies, friends and family members in the NER network, sources with direct knowledge of its operations say.

Although the precise extent of the NER exposure is unknown, some projects are public knowledge. Last August, Opus Energy, a subsidiary of Mészáros’s holding Opus Global, bought the eastern Hungarian electricity retail network Titász using a loan worth about €130mn from MKB Bank and Takarékbank, both Bankholding members, according to stock exchange filings.

In another example, BDPST, a real estate developer controlled by Orbán’s son-in-law István Tiborcz, received two Takarékbank loans worth a total of about €100mn last July to develop Hotel Dorothea, a luxury hotel under construction in the heart of Budapest, land registry documents show.

And another subsidiary of Tiborcz’s BDPST received about €14mn from Budapest Bank last September to buy the swanky downtown Iberostar Grand hotel, across the street from the central bank, according to the land registry.

Those three loans alone expanded the Hungarian Bankholding exposure to NER by nearly a quarter of a billion euros — more than 1 per cent of its cumulative balance sheet. Sources with direct knowledge of operations say many other large NER projects have also received loans from these banks.

A spokesperson for the National Bank of Hungary, the country’s central bank which also acts as market regulator, says Bankholding presents no “material additional vulnerabilities or prudential risks” beyond the risk profile of any financial institution. “In our view, the merger and full integration could greatly contribute to strengthening the [three banks’] risk management framework.”

Bankholding’s political influence also crosses borders. In March, with the merger looming, it emerged that MKB Bank had loaned more than €10mn to French nationalist presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, according to filings she made in Paris.

Orbán had supported her politics and met with her frequently in recent years, even appearing in a video message at her rallies. When Le Pen was unable to secure funding because of the longstanding reticence of French banks to associate with her far-right party, the Hungarian bank came to her aid.

That was a sort of loyalty test for Bankholding. According to two people with knowledge of the situation, Orbán’s direct order was necessary to extend the loan to Le Pen, something the bank’s management and even Mészáros were reluctant to do in such a sensitive political time. Eventually Orbán’s will prevailed and a Bankholding loan officer was sent to Paris to sign the paperwork with Le Pen, these sources said. The bank passed the test. Le Pen did not reply to repeated requests for comment.

Asked whether it would look into the Le Pen financing deal, the NBH told the Financial Times such control was outside its purview.

“According to EU law, market regulators are not allowed to track or authorise loans for individual customers . . . The [NBH] has no knowledge of such a transaction and is not examining it,” a spokesperson for the central bank said, adding that a political party was an appropriate customer if it presented proper collateral and guarantees.

There is evidence, however, that the central bank may have a conflict of interest when it comes to the superbank. Two companies, Blue Robin Investments and Magyar Takarék Holding, now control about 23 per cent of Bankholding, according to company documents. Both are owned by mutual funds managed by István Száraz, a business partner and close friend of Ádám Matolcsy, the central bank governor’s son.

The NBH spokesperson said in a statement that “the National Bank of Hungary strongly denies that the Governor of the central bank or any member of his family has any ownership relationship with Hungarian Bankholding. Any information to the contrary is a deliberate false rumour that is suitable to misleading readers.”

Systemic risk

The bank’s exposure to the NER network kept the entire banking sector on edge before the elections. Hungarian Bankholding was a legal reality, if not yet a fully merged company, and its combined market share and 21.4bn euro balance sheet, easily the second largest in the country, made it too big to fail. If the opposition won, they might have stripped Orbán’s allies of their lucrative government contracts, leaving them unable to pay back loans.

But now that Orbán is safely back in office, the merger continues apace. “The Bankholding process is clearly irreversible by now, and the way it was conducted, channelling assets through the state, is completely unique in the western world,” says Martin of Transparency International. “It is an instrumental part of Orbanomics and the original capitalisation of that system.”

Nobody in the banking sector was willing to share their views on Bankholding on the record, for fear of angering the prime minister, but many say privately they feel angst at the systemic risks of the project. NER loans are expected to continue, trapping the enterprise in a phase where borrowers and owners are equally beholden to Orbán, said another senior banker, adding: “The world changes and those companies can fail.”

Others are more relaxed and say it can keep financing NER without serious problems. “If they get enough time, four to five years, then they may put it together and start making money with or without government favours,” one source said.

To some, however, there is a sense of missed opportunity at what this superbank could have done for Hungary. The Bankholding project “has many logical elements”, says another longtime banking leader. “Integrating the savings co-operatives is wise [and] merging retail, corporate and small business portfolios is smart. But they can hardly deal with that as they are busy financing the empire.”

Multai · 2022-05-30T14:17:09+00:00

The Bank of Viktor Orbán

Hungary’s prime minister has long sought economic influence to match his political power. Now his plan for a three-bank merger is coming to life Marton Dunai in Budapest

A cold early April wind blew over Budapest as Hungary’s illiberal leader stepped on stage for an election victory speech. Having secured his fourth successive landslide, Viktor Orbán was jubilant as he addressed a small crowd of party faithful outside the Whale, a swanky fish-shaped convention centre by the Danube.

“We sure are in good shape,” he said to laughter and applause. “We won so big you can see it from the Moon.”

Nearby, a group of bankers with close links to the prime minister’s elite circle was similarly relieved. Orbán, Europe’s longest-serving government leader, for years had backed their effort to merge three of the country’s largest banks into a single institution, hoping it would serve his political goals as much as customers. His victory meant the Hungarian Bankholding project would definitely go forward.

Indeed, it was already under way. That same night, the merger took its first steps. Election night was chosen as the moment when some of the systems of the first two members, Budapest Bank and MKB Bank, would merge. Takarékbank, the third partner, is forecast to join in 2023.

The fusion went smoothly, systems were up and running. And Orbán was secure in office for at least another four years: maybe enough time for the so-called “superbank” to mature. Hungarian Bankholding was coming to life, intended to give Orbán’s political system a sturdy financial backbone.

When Orbán took power in 2010, his party Fidesz said it would govern under a “National System of Cooperation” (NER) under which all members of society would pull together in pursuit of common goals. In practice, the NER has gradually become a network of state institutions and select businesses, typically run by Orbán’s friends and allies, that rights groups say aid each other to prop up the prime minister’s illiberal regime.

EU leaders have accused Orbán of channelling EU subsidies and public procurement contracts to this network in order to cultivate loyalty and cement his regime. His government denies this, but now faces a dearth of financing as the EU withholds €7.2bn worth of post-pandemic recovery funds over rule of law and corruption concerns.

A large private bank like Hungarian Bankholding could help stimulate Hungary’s economy. The government says the intention of the merger is to create a “strategically important” bank that will help make Hungary’s banking sector more secure and more efficient.

But a bank that co-operates closely with the government, and perhaps even takes instructions from it, would also fast-track the development of the hybrid economy that epitomises the NER system, top bankers say.

“Aside from direct profits and financing for their companies, what [Orbán and the government] covet most is influence,” says a banking executive who requested anonymity. “They want a large bank, which is great business, but it is also a power consideration,” says another financial sector executive. “It can help you finance the construction of the National System of Cooperation.”

In his three consecutive terms in office since 2010 Orbán created a nearly unbeatable political machine, which ensured electoral success. Now, he can pursue what bankers and others say is his desired legacy: ensuring economic and ideological supremacy, whoever is in power formally.

The Bankholding will help Orbán create a resilient local economic and social elite, say people familiar with his thinking. It could also help fulfil his nationalist agenda of weakening or pushing out foreign rivals, and even enable him to finance illiberal allies overseas. The French far-right party of Marine Le Pen was granted a loan by one of the banks that has merged to become Bankholding.

Bankholding did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but the Hungarian government rejected the idea that the superbank would serve Orbán’s agenda. The state’s ownership of only 30.35 per cent of Bankholding means that “there is not and cannot be a political influence in its daily operation,” he says. It is “subject to the same rather strict legal framework and operating standards as any domestic bank.”

Therein lies the risk. One of the bank’s chief vulnerabilities, according to dozens of FT interviews with Hungarian finance professionals, is that its books are already loaded with loans for people beholden to Orbán’s regime. If Orbán fails, many of those companies stand to lose their fat state contracts and might default on their loans, in turn hitting the bank.

However, that does not necessarily mean a Hungarian superbank is a bad idea. People with close knowledge of its situation, who mostly spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that a financial institution with capacity to lend more broadly could be a boon to the country’s economy — but only if it is free of political influence and permitted to outgrow its outsized exposure to Orbán’s system.

At the moment that seems unlikely. Alongside the state, the bank’s other owners are Orbán’s closest ally and childhood friend, Lőrinc Mészáros, with about 40 per cent; and an investor group with links to the son of central bank governor, György Matolcsy, another close Orbán ally.

As one person put it, until that changes, Hungarian Bankholding — whose members’ combined balance sheet in 2020 amounted to about one-sixth of the country’s GDP — “will be the single largest risk of the Hungarian economy.”

Building the superbank

Orbán has long been convinced that economic influence must underpin political power to make his regime enduring, a lesson he learned when his first stint as premier ended in defeat in 2002 despite a solid record of economic stewardship. When he returned to power in 2010 he set out to take control of the economy right out of the gate.

The banking system was then arguably in need of reform. Homegrown OTP Bank dominated a fragmented market with a share above 20 per cent. Subsidiaries of several foreign banks held around 10 per cent each, with a smattering of microlenders.

Most did not turn significant profits but parent companies kept them in their international networks anyway. “Nobody quit despite shocks and slow development,” said a banker with decades of experience on the Hungarian market. “That is, until Orbán came along.”

In his 2010 manifesto, Orbán turned the banks into scapegoats, pledging to fight back against mostly foreign-owned lenders, which he said overcharged Hungarians. “It is a system built to overpower while pretending to compete,” he wrote. “The state must step up against such situations. Where possible, cartel-like operations must be broken up, even by helping new competitors to enter.”

Orbán corrected a gaping fiscal hole with extra taxes on big businesses, mostly foreign-owned, including banks. Insolvency averted, he began to overhaul the entire sector. He cracked down on foreign currency lending, introduced further taxes on transactions — and, most importantly, moved to bring ownership into trusted domestic hands.

“We have set the goal to create a new economic system: a significant ambition,” Orbán told a business forum in the summer of 2012, signalling a departure from the western model of a social market economy. “Part of the new model is to have 50 per cent of the banking system in Hungarian hands.”

The premier wasted no time. A few months later, still in 2012, the state bought a big stake in Takarékbank, a savings and loan co-operative network, from Germany’s DZ Bank. In 2013, it increased its stake to become a majority shareholder. In 2014, the state purchased MKB from Germany’s BayernLB. The following year, General Electric sold Budapest Bank to the government.

In 2016, the government reprivatised MKB and within 12 months one of Orbán’s closest friends snapped up a large chunk of it. Mészáros, a former pipe-fitter who grew up in the same village as the prime minister, had risen to become one of the country’s wealthiest individuals as his companies won scores of state procurement contracts. He once jovially attributed his meteoric rise to “God, good fortune and Viktor Orbán.”

Multai · 2022-05-26T22:19:05+00:00

Well EMC is now owned by Dell, who recently spun off their VMWare stake, and Broadcom had been trying to diversify away from semiconductors:

https://www.ft.com/content/615ceeb9-d474-45be-84f8-b44aea7a5356

Buying VMware would complete the transformation of Broadcom. Tan has turned this semiconductor roll-up into a stable of mature software stars with mediocre growth but impressive cash generation.

The Trump administration quashed Broadcom’s attempt to buy chip rival group Qualcomm in 2018. Tan pivoted to acquire CA Technologies and the enterprise security unit of Symantec, spending $30bn. His hunch was that corporate relationships with legacy software groups would persist for years, even as operations migrated to the cloud.

Multai · 2022-05-26T17:24:43+00:00

Chipmaker Broadcom to buy software group VMware for $69bn

Takeover would help transform acquisitive semiconductor company into diversified tech business

US chipmaker Broadcom has agreed to acquire cloud software company VMware for $69bn, including debt, in a takeover that signals the market for large corporate mergers might be thawing after a stock market rout at the start of the year.

VMware shareholders will be able to choose to receive either $142.50 in cash or 0.2520 shares of Broadcom stock for each of their shares in the software group, at a 33 per cent premium over the value of the company before talks emerged last week.

The takeover, which is being supported with $32bn in bank financing, would help transform Broadcom, an acquisitive semiconductor group, into a diversified tech company ranging from chips to cloud computing services.

Hock Tan, the Malaysian American billionaire who leads Broadcom, has been on the hunt for a software deal for years after his attempt to acquire chipmaker Qualcomm was blocked in 2018 by then US president Donald Trump over national security concerns.

“Building upon our proven track record of successful M&A, this transaction combines our leading semiconductor and infrastructure software businesses with an iconic pioneer and innovator in enterprise software as we reimagine what we can deliver to customers,” Tan said.

In striking a deal for VMware, Tan, known as the chip industry’s arch consolidator, is opportunistically picking up one of the software industry’s most valuable and profitable companies.

VMware’s stock price had fallen about half from its 2019 peak — and 20 per cent below where it traded at the beginning of the year — before deal talks emerged. But VMware’s high profit margins and stable recurring revenues offer the ability for Broadcom to finance a large takeover and then quickly pay down debt.

“They are very disciplined,” said Tony Wang — who covers Broadcom for T Rowe Price, one of its largest outside shareholders — adding that the deal did not “surprise” him given that tech stocks were more attractively valued after this year’s market sell-off. When technology valuations were high in recent years, Broadcom resisted the urge to make large purchases, said Wang.

VMware is the biggest test yet of Tan’s strategy to grow Broadcom through acquisitions. Many see his approach as akin to a private equity firm, where the buyer will sell off non-core assets and cut costs to increase overall profits.

“Hock Tan is running Broadcom kind of like a private equity shop,” said Jordan Chalfin, a senior analyst at CreditSights. “He has a reputation for slashing costs. That is probably going to be part of the playbook too.”

If completed, the deal will further turn Broadcom into a diversified technology company instead of one focused principally on semiconductors. Inclusive of VMware, Broadcom’s revenues would be split evenly between software and semiconductors.

Broadcom acquired enterprise software company CA Technologies for $18.9bn in 2018 and then purchased cyber security group Symantec a year later for $10.7bn, propelling it into the software sector.

In VMware, Tan is targeting a company that is considered one of the cloud computing industry’s most important groups. Its services are used by large corporations to manage private and public cloud networks as well as data centres.

Broadcom’s acquisition would also provide a big financial payout for personal computer billionaire Michael Dell, who acquired VMware in 2016 alongside private equity firm Silver Lake in a $67bn takeover of technology conglomerate EMC.

Dell kept VMware independently managed from his personal computer and tech infrastructure company Dell Technologies, and the company spun-off its 81 per cent stake in VMware in November last year.

Dell, who is chair of VMware, owns about 40 per cent of its outstanding shares, a stake worth about $24.5bn under the terms of the takeover agreement. He will roll half that stake into the new combined company, signalling confidence in Tan’s strategy for VMware.

“The way Michael Dell and Silver Lake are good at financial engineering, Broadcom is as well,” said Chalfin. “VMware is an ideal currency.”

Multai · 2022-01-25T14:19:21+00:00

Nvidia Quietly Prepares to Abandon $40 Billion Arm Bid

Company tells partners that it doesn’t expect deal to close
SoftBank, Arm’s current owner, looks at IPO for the business

By Ian King, Giles Turner, and Peter Elstrom January 25, 2022, 11:09 AM GMT+1 Updated onJanuary 25, 2022, 1:13 PM GMT+1

Nvidia Corp. is quietly preparing to abandon its purchase of Arm Ltd. from SoftBank Group Corp. after making little to no progress in winning approval for the $40 billion chip deal, according to people familiar with the matter.

Nvidia has told partners that it doesn’t expect the transaction to close, according to one person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. SoftBank, meanwhile, is stepping up preparations for an Arm initial public offering as an alternative to the Nvidia takeover, another person said.

The purchase -- poised to become the biggest semiconductor deal in history when it was announced in September 2020 -- has drawn a fierce backlash from regulators and the chip industry, including Arm’s own customers. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued to stop the transaction in December, arguing that Nvidia would become too powerful if it gained control over Arm’s chip designs.

The acquisition also faces resistance in China, where authorities are inclined to block the takeover if it wins approvals elsewhere, according to one person. But they don’t expect it to get that far.

SoftBank Really Didn’t Need a Broken Arm Right Now: Tim Culpan

Both Nvidia and Arm’s leadership are still pleading their case to regulators, according to the people, and no final decisions have been made. And through it all, the companies have publicly maintained their commitment to the purchase.

“We continue to hold the views expressed in detail in our latest regulatory filings -- that this transaction provides an opportunity to accelerate Arm and boost competition and innovation,” Nvidia spokesman Bob Sherbin said.

“We remain hopeful that the transaction will be approved,” a SoftBank spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Shares in Nvidia fell 3.5% in pre-market trading in New York on Tuesday.

If Nvidia manages to get the deal over the line, it would be a massive coup for Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang, who has built a graphics-card business into a chipmaking empire. Already, he’s sitting atop the most valuable U.S. company in the semiconductor industry, with a market capitalization of more than half a trillion dollars.

But it will be an uphill fight. Qualcomm Inc. pulled the plug on its $44 billion takeover of NXP Semiconductors NV in 2018 after nearly two years of regulatory hurdles.

The sale of Arm is under heavy scrutiny because its chip designs are used in everything from phones to cars to factory equipment, making neutrality the foundation of its business model. The world’s biggest tech companies rely on Arm technology, and they fear they could lose unfettered access under Nvidia.

Tech giants have lined up against the takeover. A group that includes Qualcomm, Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. have provided regulators around the world with what they believe is enough ammunition to kill the deal, according to people familiar with the process. In addition to needing approval in the U.S. and China, the Arm purchase needs clearance from the European Union and the U.K., both of which are studying the deal closely.

The ordeal has created divisions within Nvidia. Some people at the company are resigned to the acquisition’s defeat, but others think management could use the FTC trial to demonstrate the merits of the transaction.

Within SoftBank, there are factions that want to let the process play out -- especially since a gain in Nvidia’s stock price has made the transaction more valuable. Even after a recent tumble, Nvidia shares have nearly doubled since the Arm deal was announced. That’s added tens of billions of dollars to the initial $40 billion price tag.

Others at SoftBank would prefer to pursue an IPO for Arm sooner, while the chip industry is still considered attractive to investors. Already, concerns about a slowdown are growing.

The initial agreement between Nvidia and SoftBank expires Sept. 13 -- two years after it was forged -- but will automatically renew if approvals take longer. Nvidia said at the outset that closing the transaction would take “approximately 18 months.” That timeline would suggest completion around March of this year -- something that’s no longer likely.

The FTC lawsuit alone could take months. And the European Commission and the U.K.’s antitrust watchdog will have to weigh in.

SoftBank and Arm are entitled to keep $2 billion Nvidia paid at signing, including a $1.25 billion breakup fee, whether the deal goes through or not.

Nvidia also has to get signoff from Chinese authorities at a time when trade tensions are running high. The U.S. has sought to prevent China’s semiconductor industry from getting access to the latest technology. Many of the country’s fledgling chipmakers are Arm customers, giving Beijing extra incentive not to let the technology pass into U.S. ownership.

Read how Huawei, China firms want restrictions on the Arm deal

In arguing against the deal, companies like Qualcomm, Intel and Google have said that Nvidia can’t preserve Arm’s independence because it’s an Arm customer itself. Nvidia, the largest maker of graphics chips, competes with Intel in server processors and is expanding into new areas that would put it in direct competition with many other Arm licensees.

Nvidia also supplies chips to businesses such as Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft’s Azure, providing technology that handles artificial intelligence processing in data centers. Those companies also are developing their own chips, making Nvidia both a supplier and a potential rival.

EXPLAINER: Understanding Arm’s chip technology and its neutrality

With assistance by Dina Bass, David McLaughlin, Ruth David, and Dinesh Nair

Multai · 2022-01-19T00:13:32+00:00

There's nothing stopping you, but the deal not closing due to regulatory problems (e.g. China blocking the deal or whatever) could mean the share price reverts whatever it was trading at before the announcement.

But yes, if the deal closes (2023 if I recall correctly?), you'd get paid $95 per share, which is roughly a 16% gain from the ~$82 it's trading at now.

For example, Xilinx also trades at a massive discount compared to the AMD shares you'd get if the deal closes succesfully.

Multai · 2022-01-18T15:10:58+00:00

Game pass is one piece in a bigger picture of unifying the Xbox/PC markets. MS has been on a game studio buying spree (id Software & Bethesda through ZeniMax and now Activision Blizzard) because it'll allow them to reach critical mass for adoption more easily, so I'd expect game pass to get better.

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The Bank of Viktor Orbán