Together with

Good Morning,

One Google engineer claimed that their AI is "sentient," England is raising interest rates, the US Senate reached a bipartisan deal on gun safety, the US is lifting Covid test requirements for international travel, and the UK is putting Credit Suisse on watch after a series of scandals.

Bad Friday for stocks, worse weekend for crypto. Let's see if we can get a turnaround this week!

Let's dive in.

Before The Bell

As of 6/10/2022 market close.

If you want to learn more about crypto trading strategies and the world of DeFi, check out our Foot Guns newsletter.

Markets

  • Major stock indexes fell over 2% on Friday as May's CPI inflation reading reached the highest level in more than four decades

    • Investors also dumped US Treasuries with two-year yields rising to their highest level since 2008

  • Crypto had a volatile weekend, with Bitcoin briefly dropping below $27,000 and Ethereum hitting a low of $1,422

  • Oil extended losses over the weekend as investors weighed the prospect of more monetary tightening to combat surging US inflation and potential for more virus restrictions in China

Earnings

  • What we’re watching this week:

    • Mon: Oracle

    • Thurs: Kroger, Adobe

  • Full calendar here

Headline Roundup

  • Bank of England is set to raise rates again as inflation tops 10% (RT)

  • Google sidelines engineer who claims its AI is sentient (NYT)

  • Bank of England says UK banks are no longer "too big to fail" (RT)

  • Amazon is exiting a $7.7B race for streaming rights over IPL, the world's most popular cricket league (TC)

  • UK regulator put Credit Suisse on watchlist as the bank continues to grapple with series of scandals (FT)

  • Shopify lost its early investor Mawer over concerns of rising competition, risks in e-commerce, and their recent Deliverr deal (YHOO)

  • US Senate reached a bipartisan deal on gun safety (AXIOS)

  • US lifts Covid testing requirement for fliers entering the country (CNBC)

  • DOJ's antitrust lawsuit against JetBlue and American Airlines will go to trial (RT)

  • US House Select Committee investigating Jan 6 attacks held its first public hearing on Friday (RT)

  • Ferrari suffers nightmare double DNF as Red Bull cruises to 1-2 finish at Azerbaijan GP (F1)

A Message From FranShares

Franchises Are Hotter Than Ever – And For Good Reason

Last fall, Los Angeles Lakers superstar Lebron James passed $1B in career earnings, but only $330M of that came from his NBA salary. The rest? His endorsements, media company, and investments. One of James’ biggest investments? Franchises. Lebron owns 19 Blaze Pizza franchises across the country. The industrial logic of franchises is crystal clear — skip the whole “product-market fit” question and get to the “making money” part. Plus, you don’t have to try to day trade WWIII and inflation headlines to generate profits.

The only issue? With an average startup cost between $100,000-$300,000, franchises require some serious commitment to get involved with – until now.

Thanks to FranShares, investing in the franchise game is now accessible to savvy investors everywhere.

Want to invest like Lebron? Get the full scoop on FranShares here.

Deal Flow

M&A / Investments

  • A prominent Gold Fields investor urged the South African miner to cancel its $6.7B takeover of Canada's Yamana Gold, citing profitability concerns (RT)

  • Leading automotive chip supplier Denso is considering a spinoff of its chip business, valued at $3.1B (BBG)

  • A KKR-led consortium has made an unconditional offer to acquire bicycle company Accel at a $1.66B valuation (RT)

  • African food and drink group Promasidor is exploring a $1.5B sale of the company (BBG)

  • Philippines' Globe Telecom is seeking to earn $1.5B via a sale of half of its telecommunications tower portfolio (BBG)

  • Sabinal Energy, a Texas oil producer backed by Kayne Anderson, is looking to sell the company at a $1B+ valuation (BBG)

  • EQT Partners is weighing a sale of its stake in specialty packaging firm GPA Global at an $800M valuation (BBG)

  • Cancer therapy developer Zymeworks adopted a poison pill to prevent a hostile takeover from All Blue Capital (RT)

  • Dyal Capital agreed to acquire a minority stake in growth-equity investment firm Lead Edge Capital (BBG)

  • Apollo, among other PE firms, is considering a purchase of Grubhub (YHOO)

  • Argentina’s central bank approved fintech Uala’s purchase of digital bank Wilobank (BBG)

VC

  • AI-driven drug discovery startup Charm Therapeutics raised a $50M Series A led by F-Prime Capital (TC)

  • Edge cloud services provider PPIO raised a $37.6M Series A led by Panlin Capital, China Creation Ventures, IMO Ventures, and more (PRN)

  • Boulder Care, a telehealth provider for patients with substance abuse disorders, raised a $36M Series B with participation from Qiming Venture Partners, US Goodwater Capital, Laerdal Million Lives Fund, and others (PRN)

  • Gaming influencer marketing platform Lurkit raised a $2.7M seed round from VOID Interactive and Behold Ventures (PRN)

  • Identity management platform ZITADEL raised a $2.5M seed round led by Nexus Venture Partners (BW)

  • Blockchain-based gaming site Haste.Arcade raised a $1.5M seed round led by Jonathan Cogley (CEO of Logic Boost Labs) (PRN)

IPO / Direct Listings / Issuances / Block Trades

  • Brazil’s Eletrobras share sale raised $6.9B, privatizing Latin America's biggest utility in the process (RT)

  • Virgin Australia is considering a Sydney IPO as early as 2023, underscoring their faster-that-expected pandemic recovery (BBG)

  • Middle East hospital operator VPS Healthcare is set to court investors ahead of its planned Abu Dhabi IPO (BBG)

SPAC

  • Singapore's Kacific Broadband Satellites is in advanced talks to go public via a $1B SPAC merger with Pegasus Asia (BBG)

  • Online jewelry retailer Blue Nile is going public again through an $873M SPAC deal with Mudrick Capital (MW)

Debt

  • Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Royal Bank of Canada are offering $2.8B in debt financing for the sale of Motor Fuel Group, UK's largest gas station operator (BBG)

  • Apollo is in talks to provide up to $2B in debt financing for Kohl's sale (RT)

Bankruptcy

  • EV truck startup Electric Last Mile says it plans to liquidate (BBG)

Crypto Corner

  • JPMorgan wants to bring trillions of dollars of tokenized assets to DeFi (CD)

  • Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao questions the SEC investigation into BNB (CD)

  • ‘Really dumb’: Coinbase CEO slams employee petition to remove execs (DC)

  • Celsius announced that they are pausing all withdrawals, Swap, and transfers between accounts (Celsius)

Exec's Picks

  • Over the weekend, Mario Gabriele wrote a fantastic deep dive about one of the biggest names in venture capital: Y Combinator. Check out his latest here.

  • Jack Raines covered everything you need to know about the LIV Golf tournament in Saturday's Exec Sum column. Check out his thoughts here.

The Hiring Block 💼

  • If you're looking to break into finance, lateral, or move out, check out our job board on Pallet, where we curate highly relevant roles for you. We've got 40+ jobs spanning IB, S&T, VC, tech, private equity, DeFi, crypto, CorpDev and more. We sift through all the noise on LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, etc. so you don't have to.

  • 💼 Today's highlighted job 💼

    • Liquidibee, a capital provider for businesses of all sizes, ranging from startups to established companies, is hiring an underwriting analyst. Responsibilities for this role include the analysis of financial documents such as credit reports and bank statements, detailed financial analysis to determine credit worthiness, and communication with ISOs, sales managers, and merchants. Think you're the perfect candidate? Apply here through our job board!

Meme Cleanser

Advertise with us // Visit our merch store // Invest alongside Lit Ventures

Catch the latest episode of our Big Swinging Decks podcast, presented by CoinFLEX.US, on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube 🤝