🦑 Ink Everywhere
Everyone’s squirting blame, nobody’s cleaning the tank.
Also available:🇫🇷 Édition française
Good morning!
A firm that paid $4.3B to American authorities, whose founder pleaded guilty to money laundering before collecting a presidential pardon, and which France is investigating for laundering and tax offences between 2019 and 2024, has failed to charm a European regulator. Somewhere, a central banker must be to blame. The world’s largest crypto exchange spent 18 months courting Greece’s market regulator for the licence that would passport it across all 27 member states before the MiCA deadline on 30 June. Athens, reportedly, declined. That a company hauling this much regulatory luggage might stumble where barely 210 firms have cleared is the dull, sufficient explanation. It lost, within a day, to a better story.
The better story arrived sourced to nobody in particular and confirmed by no one at all. Christine Lagarde, it ran, leaned on the Greek prime minister in May and declared Binance unwelcome in Europe. Reuters, which broke the rejection, mentioned no such call. The ECB said nothing. Athens said nothing. The detail that travelled furthest, that the application was « compliant » and « about to be approved, » traces back, with admirable consistency, to the company that needed it to be true. A licence refused on the merits is a failure. A licence refused by a vengeful central banker is a martyrdom, and martyrdom sells. Lagarde made an irresistible villain: she dislikes stablecoins in public, wants a digital euro, and carries the accent of a Bond antagonist plotting against monetary sovereignty.
That she would rather see a $300B stablecoin market, 90% of it pegged to a currency she does not print, wither before her digital euro limps into being is a fair reading of her incentives. It is not a phone record. The persecution thesis develops an awkward limp the instant France appears: the same state whose prosecutors are chasing Binance for money laundering is now reportedly fighting to keep it, keener to supervise the exchange from Paris than to watch it sail east. A continent supposedly hounding Binance into exile cannot keep its story straight across two of its own capitals.
None of which proves Lagarde kept her hands in her lap. It proves something duller and harder to shake off. The Binance rejection is among the most checkable stories in European finance this year: a deadline, a public register, a named regulator, a paper trail. It was rewritten anyway, in real time, by people who found a personal vendetta more useful than a compliance file. The cost is not Lagarde’s reputation, which will outlast this, nor Binance’s market access, which it will buy in Paris. It is that the next reader trying to work out what actually happened to the exchange will have to dig the audit back out from under the legend.
🗞️ Top Story
- 🇬🇧 Burnham Notice. Andy Burnham wins a key UK parliamentary seat, setting up Greater Manchester’s mayor as a rival to Prime Minister Keir Starmer. (Bloomberg)
- 🇬🇧 Spy Hard. Two men in the UK have been jailed for spying on pro-democracy groups on behalf of China, turning activism into a surveillance target. (Bloomberg)
- 🇫🇷 Drone Alone. French police arrested a suspect near Delair’s drone factory after Molotov cocktails and suspected Russian interference targeted the Ukraine supplier. (Le Parisien)
- 🇪🇸 Family Ties. The two daughters of former Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero have been formally charged with influence peddling as part of the ongoing “Plus Ultra” investigation, adding a family twist to Spain’s latest political scandal. (Le Monde)
- 🇪🇺 Free Ride. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth blasts NATO allies for relying on American protection and warns of troop cuts for countries spending too little on defense. (The Guardian)
- 🇺🇸 Fund and Fury. Republican senators slam President Trump’s Iran ceasefire deal for including a $300B reconstruction fund for Tehran, calling it a historic foreign policy blunder. (Spiegel)
- 🇲🇽 Drone Alone. Mexican military forces neutralized an unregistered drone hovering above the South Korean football team’s training site, raising questions about pre-match surveillance. (Le Parisien)
- 🇨🇴 Peace Out. President Gustavo Petro’s government secures the surrender of 99 CNEB guerrillas in southern Colombia, offering rare proof that his « total peace » policy is more than just a slogan. (Le Figaro)
- 🇸🇦 Deal Flow. Following a breakthrough between the US and Iran, Saudi oil supertankers are rerouting toward the Gulf of Oman, chasing new opportunities. (Bloomberg)
- 🇦🇪 Minor Issue. The United Arab Emirates sets a world-first in the Arab region by barring under-15s from social media, with no exceptions for parental consent. (France Info)
- 🇮🇱 Contactless Policy. Gideon Saar announces a freeze on all communication with diplomat Kaja Kallas, citing her reported apartheid comparison and insisting dialogue is off the table until she takes it back. (Boursier)
- 🇳🇪 Runway Routine. Niamey’s airport was hit by heavy gunfire and blasts early Thursday, echoing January’s attack, while officials remain silent and the city stays on edge. (Boursier)
- 🇰🇪 Payback Time. William Ruto unlocks 2B shillings for families of those killed by police since June 2024, but stops short of saying sorry. (Le Monde)
- 🌍 Child’s Playbook. The UN reports a record 14,000 children killed or maimed in armed conflicts in 2025, with state forces now leading the violations for the first time. (Die Zeit)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇬🇧 Tartan Turnaround. Douglas Lumsden delivers a shock victory for the Scottish Conservatives in Aberdeen South, breaking a half-century drought for the party at Westminster. (BBC)
- 🇬🇧 Shame and Blame. After years of survivor advocacy, the Church of England finally apologized for operating “mother and baby homes” that separated thousands of unmarried women from their babies between 1949 and 1976. (New York Times)
- 🇬🇧 Whip Lash. Liberal Democrat MP Cameron Thomas has been suspended from the party after being arrested by Gloucestershire police on Wednesday night, pending investigation. (The Guardian)
🇺🇸 United States
- 🇺🇸 Legal Tender. Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook received nearly $1.2M in legal and security aid last year as she fought President Trump’s attempt to oust her, with $700K coming from a nonprofit critical of Trump. (Wall Street Journal)
🏛️ Economy
- 🇵🇱 Pole Position. Poland secures its largest foreign investment ever as Intel 🇺🇸 announces a $4.6B chip factory, putting the country on the semiconductor map. (Bloomberg)
- 🇪🇺 Heavy Metal Band. The G7 launches a joint alliance to secure critical minerals like lithium and nickel, aiming to reduce dependence on China for essential tech supplies. (Libé)
- 🇪🇺 Free Range Banks. Brussels is set to propose reforms allowing banks to shift capital and liquidity across countries, loosening national restrictions that have long frustrated the sector. (Financial Times)
- 🇪🇺 Pound for Pound. Michel Barnier says the UK could rejoin the and keep its pre-Brexit perks, including the pound and border controls, if it ever comes back. (The Guardian)
- 🇪🇺 Fuel’s Gold. Jet fuel prices in Europe and Asia have plunged nearly 50 percent as traders anticipate renewed Gulf exports, offering airlines a rare break after months of crisis warnings. (Financial Times)
- 🇨🇭 Zero Gravity. The Swiss National Bank holds its main interest rate at 0%, defying global inflation trends and keeping Switzerland in a monetary orbit of its own. (Boursier)
- 🇳🇴 Rate Expectations. Norges Bank keeps its key rate at 4.25% for now but signals a likely hike later this year to fight inflation, just as analysts predicted. (Boursier)
- 🇺🇸 Wire and Prejudice. The DOJ is scrutinizing banks for possible connections to Iranian Supreme Leader-linked money, suggesting compliance may be more performance than practice. (Bloomberg)
- 🇺🇸 Fee Defense. Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook racked up over $1.3M in legal and security costs after Trump tried to fire her, with nonprofits footing the bill and the Supreme Court now weighing in. (Cnbc)
- 🇹🇭 Paradise Papers. On Phuket and Samui, officials target foreigners who hide behind Thai proxies to illegally control lucrative island real estate. (Le Monde)
- 🇮🇷 Frozen Assets. The Trump administration will let Iran access $6B of its oil money in Qatar to buy US humanitarian goods as part of an interim deal. (Financial Times)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇬🇧 Exit Fee. A Bank of England-backed study finds the UK economy is 6% smaller than it would have been without Brexit, confirming the bill for going it alone. (BBC)
- 🇬🇧 Job Drop. The UK’s unemployment rate slipped to 4.9% in April, surprising economists who expected it to stay at 5% and putting pressure on the Bank of England to hold rates. (Wall Street Journal)
🇺🇸 United States
- 🇺🇸 PAC to the Future. The Guardrails Alliance, a new super PAC backed by tech workers and unions, is launching with $5M to push for AI regulation, taking on industry giants who have $100M to spend defending the status quo. (TechCrunch)
- 🇺🇸 Claim to Fame. jobless claims dropped to 226,000 last week, beating expectations and suggesting employers are not rushing to cut staff just yet. (Wall Street Journal)
- 🇺🇸 Rate Race. California’s proposed billionaire tax cleared the signature threshold for the November ballot, pitting unions against business and political leaders in a high-dollar showdown. (Wall Street Journal)
🏢 Real Estate
🇺🇸 United States
- 🇺🇸 Cover Charge. President Trump’s $350M transfer from the Secret Service bankrolls “security enhancements” for his White House ballroom and bunker, where private donations supposedly pay for everything but the essentials. (New York Times)
- 🇺🇸 Storage Wars. ICE spent over $700M on seven detention warehouses for Trump’s deportation push, but now plans to offload them after a policy reversal. (New York Times)
🔗 On-chain
- 🇬🇧 Coin Toss. Nigel Farage demands the Bank of England ditch its Britcoin ambitions, claiming the digital pound would put privacy on the line. (FinExtra)
- 🇺🇸 Betting Odds. Polymarket 🇺🇸 faces scrutiny as wagers on a potential US-Iran deal spark renewed fears of insider trading on political outcomes. (Bloomberg)
- 🇺🇸 ID Required. The Federal Reserve proposes a new identification program for payment stablecoin issuers, aiming to keep a closer eye on digital dollar wannabes. (Bloomberg)
- 🇺🇸 Perp Walk. CME Group 🇺🇸 is suing the CFTC for greenlighting Kalshi’s perpetual crypto futures, accusing the regulator of bypassing public process and threatening its turf. (Financial Times)
- 🇺🇸 Yield of Dreams. Michael Saylor’s Strategy 🇺🇸 hiked Stretch dividends five times to keep its preferred stock at $100, but the security still trades at $89, putting both the asset base and investor faith at risk. (Financial Times)
💱 Listed Markets
- 🇫🇷 Server Error. Strasbourg-based 2CRSi 🇫🇷 plunged 40% after Grizzly Research accused it of fabricating nearly all its revenue, calling the company “almost entirely a fraud.” The stock was suspended as 2CRSi denied the claims and promised a detailed response. (Tradingsat)
- 🇺🇸 Grand Theft Timing. After years of anticipation, Rockstar Games sets June 25 for GTA VI pre-orders, sending the industry into a scheduling panic. (Libé)
- 🇺🇸 Artificial Scarcity. Big Tech’s obsession with AI investment is draining their buyback budgets, so investors hoping for share repurchases may want to reset expectations. (Bloomberg)
- 🇺🇸 Chip Shot. Intel stock surged as Trump announced a supposed Apple partnership, giving investors a reason to believe in Silicon Valley magic again. (Bloomberg)
- 🇺🇸 Rocket Merger. Wall Street is buzzing about a possible Tesla and SpaceX union as Elon Musk weighs whether one Musk stock is better than two for investors and himself. (Financial Times)
- 🇺🇸 Booked Off. Accenture 🇮🇪 slashed its revenue outlook and saw shares tumble, with investors spooked that AI is eating into old-school consulting demand. (Financial Times)
🇺🇸 United States
- 🇬🇧 Force of Habit. Palantir’s £330M NHS contract faces mounting political and public pressure, as UK officials debate whether American tech should run the nation’s health data. (Financial Times)
🛎️ Big Deals (M&A)
- Wise 🇬🇧 acquires Expatica 🇳🇱, an expat information and news business.
- BC Partners 🇬🇧 acquires Edenred 🇫🇷 (considering a bid around €27-28 per share after Edenred shares jumped ~17% to €24.2).
- Ceva 🇫🇷 could merge with Virbac 🇫🇷, a potential union of the world’s 5th and 6th largest veterinary labs, though numerous obstacles are cited.
- L’Oreal 🇫🇷 acquires a majority stake in Innovist 🇮🇳, a beauty company in India.
- Crédit Agricole 🇫🇷 considers increasing its stake in Banco BPM 🇮🇹. Stake was 22.9% at end-Q1 and ECB cleared a rise to just under 30%.
- EQT 🇸🇪 acquires Intertek 🇬🇧 for £11B, with Emirati sovereign investors ADIA 🇦🇪 and Mubadala 🇦🇪 investing alongside.
- Accenture 🇮🇪 acquires a majority stake in Dragos 🇺🇸 for $4.18B in a cybersecurity deal.
- Elastic 🇺🇸 acquires DeductiveAI 🇺🇸 for up to $85M. AI startup (founded three years ago) that finds and resolves software bugs.
- Deluxe 🇺🇸 acquires Celero 🇨🇦 for $625M, payment processor.
- Netflix Inc. 🇺🇸 is under contract to buy Radford Studio Center 🇺🇸, an historic Los Angeles movie studio space seized by lenders including Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
- Berkshire Hathaway 🇺🇸 acquires Alphabet 🇺🇸 shares for $11B, tech-sector purchase.
- Connie Health 🇺🇸 acquires Clearlink Insurance Agency 🇺🇸, and announces Series B funding to accelerate growth in Medicare.
- Penske Media 🇺🇸 acquires Eater 🇺🇸, The Verge 🇺🇸, The Dodo 🇺🇸, Popsugar 🇺🇸, Punch 🇺🇸, SB Nation 🇺🇸 and Thrillist 🇺🇸. Sites left from Vox Media sale to be housed in new PMX division overseen by Ryan Pauley.
- Hyundai 🇰🇷 to buy SoftBank’s remaining stake in Boston Dynamics 🇺🇸 for $325M.
🧳 Private Markets & VC
- 🇬🇧 Prompt and Circumstance. UK cybersecurity firm Mindgard found that ChatGPT 🇺🇸 can generate violent and sexual images unprompted, bypassing OpenAI’s safety filters with only slight tweaks to user inputs. (Le Parisien)
- 🇪🇺 Trading Places. Legora alerts investors to unauthorized shares appearing on a major secondary platform, raising questions about who is really in control of its equity. (Sifted)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇬🇧 Equity Evasion. Labour’s manifesto quietly omits Wes Streeting’s plan to ban private equity in social care, proving some sharks are harder to net than others. (The Guardian)
Fundraising
- Baseten 🇺🇸 (AI): $1.5bn
- Odyssey 🇺🇸 (AI): $310M
- General Intuition 🇺🇸 (AI): $300M
- Dream 🇮🇱 (AI): $260M
- Twenty Banks 🇺🇸 (Fintech): $100M
- Prem AI 🇨🇭 (AI): $100M
- Genspark.ai 🇺🇸 (AI): $100M (Sozo Ventures, Korea Mirae Asset, UpHonest Capital, other existing investors)
- HyperLight 🇺🇸 (AI): $80M
- Triveni Bio 🇺🇸 (Biotech): $65M (Ascenta Capital, Janus Henderson Investors, Deep Track Capital)
- Gradial 🇺🇸 (Marketing): $65M
- Arcade 🇺🇸 (AI): $60M
- Verse Enterprises 🇺🇸 (AI infrastructure): $54M (Bessemer Venture Partners, GV, Nvidia, Norrsken VC)
- Glossier, LLC 🇺🇸 (Beauty): $45M
- Comand AI 🇫🇷 (Defense): €32M
- Pramaana Labs 🇺🇸 (AI): $27M (Khosla Ventures, Accel, Boldcap, Nexus Venture Partners, Premji Invest, Unbound)
- Architect Labs 🇺🇸 (Semiconductors): $24M
- NeuralTrust 🇪🇸 (Cybersecurity): $20M (Alstin Capital, VentureFriends, Seaya, Kibo Ventures, Banc Sabadell, EA Ventures, Plug and Play Fund, Finaves, European Innovation Council, AEI)
- Cuprum Metals (Mining): $19.4M
- Flagright 🇸🇬 (Regtech): $12.5M
- Vivici 🇳🇱 (Foodtech): €12.5M
- Cargofy 🇺🇸 (Logistics): $11M
- Warren 🇧🇪 (Fintech): €10M (Motive Ventures, Motive Partners)
- Kvasir Technologies 🇩🇰 (Biofuel): €10M (European Energy, EIFO, Mærsk Growth, Footprint Fund)
- Frontier Health 🇬🇧 (Healthcare): £9.7M
- Causa Prima 🇩🇪 (Fintech): €8.5M
- Microamp 🇵🇱 (Telecom): €6.5M
- HighGround 🇺🇸 (Aerospace): $6.5M (Next Frontier Capital, Tandem Ventures, Fulcrum Capital, Context Ventures)
- Tenet Security 🇺🇸 (Cybersecurity): $6M (The Westly Group, MizMaa Ventures)
- Channel Robotics 🇺🇸 (Medtech): $4.6M (True Ventures, Defined VC, Old Line Capital Partners)
Fund Watch
- Bpifrance 🇫🇷: €4B (Blue Sea, €4B fund to rival US private-market giants and strengthen European economic sovereignty)
- AVP 🇫🇷 & Earlybird 🇩🇪: €500M (E2D, pan‑European defense fund)
- Serena, UMR & Makesense 🇫🇷: €75M (Entourâge, silver economy fund — ~20 startups, €1–5M tickets)
- FPE Capital 🇬🇧: €46M (Fund IV, cornerstone commitment to support high-growth smaller businesses in UK & Ireland)
- Elanco Animal Health 🇺🇸: $25M (Elanco Ventures, CVC for animal health, multi-year commitment)
🔔IPO
- DAZN 🇬🇧 (Sports streaming): restructuring its loss-making business to make it easier to raise new equity or pursue a potential IPO.
- SGB‑SMIT 🇩🇪 (Grid equipment): in early IPO talks that could value the company at over €4B amid AI and data‑centre demand.
- Mediterranean Reit 🇪🇸 (Real estate): joined Euronext Access via a direct listing at €1.266, valuing it at just over €10M (portfolio €10.54M).
- KNDS NV 🇳🇱 (Defense): board to meet Thursday to decide whether to proceed with a highly-anticipated European IPO.
- Efacec 🇵🇹 (Engineering): Mutares is weighing a sale or IPO for the Portuguese group.
- Reformation 🇺🇸 (Retail): preparing a summer IPO after celebrity backing from Taylor Swift and Meghan Markle.
- Momenta 🇨🇳 (Autonomous driving): targeting about $1B in a Hong Kong IPO at roughly a $9B valuation.
🧳 Debt
- Limagrain 🇫🇷: secured €450M in a new syndicated credit facility.
- Eolo 🇮🇹: in talks with Apollo over private debt.
- SpaceX 🇺🇸: plans a $20B bond sale to refinance a $20B bridge loan.
- Parafin 🇺🇸: secured a Goldman Sachs–led credit facility to expand embedded lending inside Amazon, DoorDash, TikTok Shop, Gusto, and Walmart.
- REPAY 🇺🇸: raised a $500M term loan led by Silver Point to fund acquisition of KUBRA.
- Etorigis Energy 🇺🇸: closed a $900M corporate credit facility.
- Pellera Technologies 🇺🇸: offering a steep discount on a $775M loan they’ve held for over a year.
- Lenovo 🇨🇳: raised $2B in seven-year zero-coupon convertible bonds to refinance debt and buy back stock.
- Kenya 🇰🇪: to raise $763M after lawmakers watered down tax proposals.
❌ Failures
- City & Guilds 🇬🇧: after a planned cut of about 400 roles as part of a £22m cost‑cutting drive following its sale to PeopleCert, mass redundancies and offshoring to Greece were cancelled.
- Polyamid GmbH 🇩🇪: filed for insolvency in self-administration after raw‑material price spikes of 40–100% pushed liquidity needs beyond plans. Seeking an investor while continuing operations.
- Extenet 🇺🇸: warns cash will run out in days and could cease operations before month-end without relief from ABS holders.
- First Brands 🇺🇸: a judge barred its lender from distributing cash collected from inventory sales during the auto‑parts supplier’s liquidation.
- BHP 🇦🇺: is taking a $2.3bn writedown on its Jansen potash project after phase two costs rose by $2bn and delays pushed production to 2027/2031.
🎯 For a Few More Minutes…
- 🇨🇭 Peace Out. FIFA president Gianni Infantino secretly awarded Donald Trump a « peace prize » in Washington, leaving even FIFA’s own council baffled and excluded from the decision. (Le Monde)
- 🇺🇸 Copy Paste Repeat. AI-powered tools like humanizers and autotypers now let students cheat undetected, leaving educators and detection software hopelessly outpaced in a never-ending arms race. (New York Times)
- 🇨🇦 Visa Denied. Elye Wahi, under investigation for alleged match-fixing, cannot join Côte d’Ivoire for their World Cup game against Germany in Canada due to a visa refusal. (Le Parisien)
- 🇲🇽 Pray for Play. Fans flock to Mexico City’s cathedral to pray before a jersey-wearing baby Jesus, hoping faith will deliver a World Cup win. (Le Parisien)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇬🇧 Clay Day. Bristol’s M Shed opens an exhibition celebrating 50 years of Aardman, featuring Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, and plenty of plasticine nostalgia. (The Guardian)