Biden rolls out the red carpet for Modi and sees business
The White House is rolling out the red carpet for India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a state dinner on Thursday. High on the agenda: Talks to strengthen economic and security ties as the Biden administration grooms partners to counter China. Business is also watching closely, as it pours money into one of the world’s fastest-growing large economies, despite the challenges of operating there.
Elon Musk is on board. The CEOs of Tesla and SpaceX met Mr Modi in New York on Tuesday and said India has more potential than any other big country. Captivated by the nation’s sustainable energy potential, Mr. Musk said He hoped his electric carmaker could start doing business there “as quickly as humanly possible”.
India is booming. Mr Modi has managed to stay in the good graces of the West And Russia since the Kremlin’s declaration of war on Ukraine. It has been a huge beneficiary of cheap Russian oil which, in turn, has made it a high-growth, (relatively) low-inflation standout on the world stage.
investors have keep coming to the country, as commercial giant, And, its IPO market is strong, thanks to a vibrant entrepreneurial scene and tech sector.
But Mr. Musk made no mention of India’s pressure on another of his companies. co-founder of twitter jack dorsey India accused India of trying to shut down the platform in the country in 2020-21 – before Mr Musk bought it – for refusing to remove content critical of the government. The government has denied that allegation but India has declined democracy ranking,
Big questions about India, Inc. abound. Apple has expanded production in the country, but the transition is reportedly off to a rocky start. According to Financial TimesThe iPhone maker was seeing an increase in factory defect rates this year compared to its manufacturing output in China.
And the short-seller attack by Hindenburg Research on the Adani Group, a huge Indian conglomerate founded by a close ally of Mr. Modi, has raised concerns about crony capitalism and less-than-transparent accounting standards. The Adani Group denies the allegations.
None of this is impressing Mr Modi Popularity at home. One of the secrets of this is their tight grip on the flow of information. As The Times’s Mujeeb Mashal reports, “This is especially true of the broadcast media – anchors for the bulk of the nightly newscasts proclaim Mr Modi’s greatness and defend him against any criticism. “
What’s going on over here
A surveillance plane picks up underwater sounds in search of a missing submersible. Concerned about declining oxygen levels in the submersible, Titan, rescue workers search for the source of the noise. Oceangate, the company that operates the ship, was warned years ago about the potentially “catastrophic” security issues.
The UK is battling cripplingly high inflation. Consumer prices there rose 8.7 percent in May, holding steady as the cost-of-living crisis persisted. The Bank of England is expected to raise interest rates for the 13th consecutive time to 4.75 percent on Thursday.
Samuel Alito is under scrutiny for a visit with hedge fund mogul Paul Singer. Supreme Court justices 2008 flight not disclosed to an Alaskan fishing trip on a private jet provided by Mr. Singer, whose Elliott management has been involved in cases before the court, ProPublica reports. Mr Alito took the unusual step of defending his behavior Wall Street Journal opinion article Before ProPublica’s article was published.
TV super-producer Ryan Murphy is set to make the jump from Netflix to Disney. Mr. Murphy, whose hits include “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” is in advanced talks to rejoin the team, five years after signing a $300 million production deal with Netflix Five. helped produce their previous successes such as “American Horror Story”. year ago. Separately, Netflix is reportedly in talks to license some Contents of Warner Bros. Discovery,
masa son is back
For months, SoftBank’s outspoken founder Masa Son remained silent as his tech conglomerate grappled with huge investment losses.
But as the world races to adopt artificial intelligence – something that has long fascinated him – Mr Son has used his company annual shareholder meeting Wednesday publicly, and memorably, restore your commitment To be a leader in cutting edge technology.
“We are ready to go into offensive mode,” “I want SoftBank to lead the AI revolution,” Mr. Son told investors and analysts. reviving the kind of grand productions that he had long supported – who can forget “Valley of the Coronavirus” Slide In 2020, featuring the Flying Unicorn? – The SoftBank chief began by asking, “What is mankind?,
The answer, apparently, is something the technology behind chatbots could benefit from, which has already sparked a flurry of investment. (To be fair, the potential of AI was one of several central theses behind SoftBank’s $100 billion First Vision Fund.) The sum of all human knowledge,” he said on Wednesday. Where SoftBank would fit in, he said, was to try and “be an architect to build the future of mankind”.
Mr. Son argues that better days are ahead for SoftBank. While the company’s Vision Fund has suffered large paper losses amid a collapse in start-up valuations, he said SoftBank has amassed more than $35 billion in cash since then in “defense mode” and is prepared to invest it. Is. (The company is also set to benefit from the upcoming IPO of Arm, which owns the chip designer.)
And Mr. Son said he is upbeat again after being quiet last year. “There were times when I felt very empty,” he told investors. ‘Is it enough? Is this what?’ I cried and cried and couldn’t stop crying for days. Now, he said, “I’m having a lot of fun.”
Justice Department’s new playbook for bank deals
Following the regional banking turmoil of the spring, Washington officials including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have suggested that the United States consolidation may be required To build strong banks that can face future crises.
But in a speech at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday, Jonathan Cantor, the Justice Department’s antitrust chief, suggested that his department might take a more critical look at banking M.&A.
Justice Department plans to change the way it reviews bank mergersThat includes resuming “competitive factors reports” to the main regulators that oversee such transactions, including the Fed and FDIC (it stopped sending those reports several decades ago.)
More important, the department will consider a wide range of potential impacts from a deal beyond concentrations in deposits and the overlap of branches, including fees, interest rates and customer service.
And if the banks go ahead with a transaction that Mr. Cantor’s team opposes, the department could sue, as it did to block Philadelphia National Bank Endeavor To merge with Girard Trust Corn Exchange Bank in 1963.
This could chill efforts to consolidate US banking. While the country has fewer regional lenders than it once did – about 4,100, down from about 10,000 in 1990 – some in the industry believe it is still too many. There are about 30 banks in Canada.
Bank executives and deal makers have stressed that smaller banks will face more challenges in complying with capital requirements to move on from the run that toppled the Silicon Valley bank. (Analysts at Goldman Sachs have estimated that regulatory pressure could shave 3 percent to 6 percent off smaller banks’ returns on equity.)
“Do you want us to be there too?” Ken Vecchione, CEO of Western Alliance, which was battered during the recent crisis, said he has been asking regulators recently.
“We are running water through pipes that have not run for a long time. So where are the leakages going to happen?
, jennifer christie, chief people officer of software maker DocuSign. The company plans to test tweaks to its hybrid-working system this summer, as corporate America gears up to return employees to the office full-time.
D.C. heads to Detroit as the car war heats up
Lawmakers descended on Detroit on Tuesday for a “fact-finding mission” that turned political over car companies’ ties to China.
Members of Congress, from right and left, in a gathering with the CEOs of Ford and General Motors, Jim Farley and Mary Barra message sent that breaking away from China was becoming an economic and security imperative.
Ford faced a grilling. parliamentarians asked about its plans announced in February to build a $3.5 billion factory in Michigan making electric vehicle batteries with technology licensed from Chinese manufacturer CATL, a deal that shows difficulty separating supply chains.
Ford may qualify for a special tax credit. The Inflation Reduction Act aims to encourage domestic battery making, and Ford could benefit even though its partner has close ties to the Chinese government.
Ford has insisted that CATL will not benefit, saying that domestic manufacturing is good for the economy. But critics say the deal undermines the IRA. “The goal of the Inflation Reduction Act was to reduce dependence on China — we want to make sure we’re moving toward that goal,” said Representative Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin. Said top Republican recently formed the House Committee on Competing with China.
Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the top Democrat on that committee, left the meetings with similar concerns. He said the US should do more to favor American businesses in this emerging sector, and invest heavily in innovation to reduce dependence on Chinese supplies.
Politicians said they didn’t go to Detroit to pressure Ford, but to the carmaker’s CATL alliance has become a hot political topic, Marco Rubio of Florida, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee and longtime China hawk, introduced legislation in March to block tax credits For batteries produced using Chinese technology. He called for an immediate review of the Ford deal by the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
Neither Ford nor the Treasury Department responded to a request for comment.
read speed
deal
Policy
-
Gannett, the newspaper publisher, sued Google, saying the tech giant’s dominance in advertising technology was abused. (NYT)
-
drawn by chris christie big-name corporate donors for his 2024 presidential campaign — but his highest-profile aide, financier Steve Cohen, is keeping quiet for now. (CNBC)
-
plans a federal judge open the names Of the three people who helped Republican Representative George Santos of New York forge bond in the criminal case against him. (CBS News)
best rest
We want your feedback! Please email your ideas and suggestions to Dealbook@nytimes.com.
