Good morning. Andrew here. We’ve got a lot of business news this morning. But I want to take a moment for all of us to reflect upon the horrific killing sprees that took place this weekend at Brown University and at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Australia. These episodes have become all too commonplace, with little real discussion about how to prevent them from happening. Many of you will remember that I spent years writing about possible solutions, including the role of credit card companies as well as how the larger business community could push for change. We also need to confront a critical factor in the rise of antisemitism: the shifting nature of anti-Zionism, in which many aren’t just questioning Israel’s policies but challenging its right to exist. That distinction may be clear in theoretical debates, but it frequently vanishes in the real world. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
A blockbuster I.P.O. on the launchpadThough Elon Musk is perhaps best known for his work at Tesla and his takeover of X, the rocket and satellite company SpaceX may be his most consequential business. Just how big SpaceX could become is getting more apparent, as it wraps up a stock sale that would make it the world’s most valuable privately held company — and eyes an I.P.O. that could be among the biggest ever. SpaceX will start hearing pitches from investment banks for an I.P.O. this week, according to The Wall Street Journal. The so-called bake-off is a major step toward going public, as bankers vie to lead what Bloomberg previously reported could be a deal for the ages: The company is looking to raise more than $30 billion at a valuation of $1.5 trillion. The company’s C.F.O., Bret Johnsen, told employees in an internal memo that it would buy insider shares at an $800 billion valuation — roughly double what it had fetched over the summer. Johnsen also suggested that the company was thinking about an I.P.O.: “A public offering could raise a significant amount of capital,” he wrote. It’s worth understanding the scale of SpaceX:
Musk has floated another ambitious new business for SpaceX: building data centers in space, amid constraints and political opposition to building them on Earth. (Celestial data centers would also benefit several of Musk’s other businesses, including Tesla and the artificial intelligence start-up xAI.) Whether that plan could overcome big hurdles — cost, preventing chips from being fried by solar radiation, questions about servicing equipment in space — is unclear. A SpaceX I.P.O. could create windfalls for plenty of investors, including big-name venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and Valor Equity Partners, as well as money-management giants like Fidelity. They also include Alphabet, which has been an investor for at least a decade and stands to make a big profit on paper. But the biggest winner of all would be Musk, whose stake in SpaceX alone could be worth more than $625 billion if the company is valued at $1.5 trillion, according to Bloomberg.
Here’s the latest on two shootings over the weekend. Australia’s government faced criticism — including from Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister — that it had not done enough to fight antisemitism, after officials said that two gunmen, a father and a son, killed at least 15 people at Bondi Beach, where hundreds had gathered for a Hanukkah celebration. In Rhode Island, the police continued searching for the gunman in a shooting that killed two students at a lecture hall, after releasing a person of interest. The Chinese economy stalls in November. New data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics showed an economic slowdown on several metrics, as the I.M.F. urged Beijing to shift its economy toward domestic consumers. The country’s factory output growth slowed to a 15-month low, and retail sales posted their worst performance outside the coronavirus pandemic. Investment in housing, public infrastructure and manufacturing also dropped, setting the country for its first investment decline in more than 30 years. Jimmy Lai, a media tycoon and pro-democracy activist, is found guilty in Hong Kong. Lai was convicted on charges of “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces,” and conspiracy to publish seditious material in Apple Daily, the now-shuttered Chinese-language newspaper that he founded in 1995. Officials in Hong Kong and mainland China had cast Lai, 78, as the mastermind of antigovernment demonstrations that engulfed the former British colony in 2019, and his case has highlighted shrinking tolerance for dissent in the city. The Hollywood director Rob Reiner dies at 78. The director of “The Princess Bride” and “When Harry Met Sally …” and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were found dead in their Los Angeles home, in what the police called an apparent homicide. After winning two supporting actor Emmy Awards for his role on “All in the Family” in the 1970s, Reiner directed major movies, including “This is Spinal Tap” and “A Few Good Men.” He was also a producer, and sold the production company he founded, Castle Rock Entertainment, to Turner Broadcasting System in 1993. The Persian Gulf’s Hollywood dreamsWhen Paramount Skydance introduced its $78 billion hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery last week, the company tucked away mention of the $24 billion in cash in the offer being put up by three Persian Gulf funds about 40 pages in of a regulatory filing. But Gulf investors themselves see Paramount’s campaign to outmaneuver Netflix for control of Warner Bros. as a rare opportunity to advance their decades-long quest for global influence, Vivienne Walt reports. The goal goes beyond money, and extends to gaining “soft power” in Hollywood, Charbel Chaaya, the executive director of production at MBC Group, a Saudi-based regional network, wrote on LinkedIn. The funds would get access to valuable intellectual property and production abilities — and could potentially influence where movies are filmed or where they premiere. Middle Eastern money is key to Paramount’s bid. The media company’s C.E.O., David Ellison, pieced together a $30-a-share all-cash offer with support from Abu Dhabi and Qatar funds, as well as from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, or PIF. In its continuing effort to diversify its economy, Saudi Arabia has poured fortunes into sports and entertainment, including into a planned $55 billion leveraged buyout of the gaming giant Electronic Arts. PIF is also a big investor in Affinity Partners, Jared Kushner’s private equity firm, which is backing the Paramount bid as well. But Riyadh’s funds are not unlimited. Saudi officials have forecast a $44 billion budget deficit next year, about 3.3 percent of G.D.P. That’s driven by low oil prices, which are around $58 a barrel on world markets, far below the $100 break-even price analysts say the kingdom needs for its splashy megaprojects. Paramount has not revealed the breakdown of the Gulf investments, but it hopes to improve its chances of regulatory approval by not granting them board seats or voting rights. Some Democrats have nonetheless vowed close scrutiny of Paramount’s bid in Congress, citing national security. The Saudi movie business is surging right now. Paramount’s bid prompted furious discussion last week at the Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where Hollywood stars like Adrien Brody, Kirsten Dunst and Anthony Hopkins attended a regional premiere of “Desert Warrior,” a Saudi epic shot in the country and financed in large part by PIF-related initiatives. The splashy event came just several years after the kingdom opened its first new movie theater in generations, ending a 35-year ban on moviegoing. Multiplex theaters have since proliferated. With a new generation of Saudi film enthusiasts on the rise, having access to Warner Bros.’s prized library becomes even more valuable. Inside the S.E.C.’s U-turn on cryptoIn President Trump’s first term, he criticized cryptocurrencies for having value “based on thin air.” In his second, he now tightly embraces them — and his family has made a fortune from them. The Times has taken a look at how the S.E.C. has cut back enforcement actions against crypto companies, an extraordinary retreat from lawsuits against a single industry. The Times’s investigation found that the S.E.C. had eased up on more than 60 percent of the crypto cases that were proceeding when Trump returned to the White House. (Twenty-one date back to the Biden era; two were from Trump’s first term.) The agency moved to pause litigation, lessen penalties or outright dismiss the cases — often in ways that benefited those with ties to the president: The dismissals were particularly unusual, The Times found. Under Mr. Trump, S.E.C. dismissals came at a far higher rate for crypto firms than other cases. And although the particulars of the crypto lawsuits differed, many of these firms had something in common: financial ties to Mr. Trump, the self-described crypto president. The S.E.C., the top federal regulator that polices wrongdoing in the financial markets, is no longer actively pursuing a single case against a firm with known Trump ties, The Times found. It backtracked against every firm that either has relationships with the Trump family’s crypto businesses or has donated to his political causes. The agency’s only remaining crypto cases are against little-known defendants without clear ties to Mr. Trump. Of the 23 crypto cases, the S.E.C. pulled back from 14. Eight of those were against defendants who formed ties to the president or his family, either before or shortly after their cases were resolved. The S.E.C., for example, dropped a case against the crypto exchange Binance after having argued that a pair of related entities had fraudulently misled customers about their efforts to prevent manipulative trading. Just weeks before the Binance case was dismissed, the firm participated in a $2 billion business transaction that used digital currency from World Liberty Financial, a company associated with the Trump family. The Trump administration says that the Biden-era S.E.C. overreached. Gary Gensler, who led the agency at the time, had adopted novel theories “in ways not supported by existing law,” according to Mark Uyeda, a Republican commissioner. The Times adds that there’s no indication that Trump pressured the agency to go easy on specific crypto firms, and it didn’t find evidence that the firms had tried to influence the cases against them through donations or business ties to Trump. We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.
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