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One scoop to start: Citadel Securities’ profits jumped nearly 70 per cent in the first quarter to $1.7bn, as the high-speed trading firm benefited from a surge of volatility across financial markets as Donald Trump retook office.
首先带来一则独家消息：城堡证券(Citadel Securities)第一季度利润激增近70%，达到17亿美元。随着唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)重返总统职位，金融市场波动大幅上升，这家高速交易公司由此受益。
Another scoop: McKinsey has cut more than 10 per cent of its staff in the past 18 months, reversing a big expansion plan that peaked during the coronavirus pandemic when consulting services were in high demand and the firm increased its workforce by almost two-thirds.
又一则独家消息：在过去18个月里，麦肯锡(McKinsey)裁员超过10%，这也逆转了其在新冠疫情期间因咨询服务需求激增而大幅扩张、员工人数几乎增加三分之二的计划。
And a third: Private equity groups TPG and Blackstone made an approach to take Hologic private, offering to purchase the US medical technology group for more than $16bn, according to people familiar with the matter.
还有第三则消息：据知情人士透露，私募股权集团TPG资本和黑石集团(Blackstone)曾提出以超过160亿美元的价格收购美国医疗科技集团豪洛捷(Hologic)，将其私有化。
In today’s newsletter:
在今天的时事通讯中：
The Maga crypto bonanza
What went wrong at Builder.ai?
Litigation finance gets lit
MAGA加密货币热潮
Builder.ai 出了什么问题？
诉讼融资火热起来了
Spacs, Trump and crypto converge in Vegas
SPAC、特朗普和加密货币齐聚拉斯维加斯
Trump world is in Las Vegas this week for the self-proclaimed world’s biggest Bitcoin conference.
本周，特朗普世界齐聚拉斯维加斯(Las Vegas)，参加号称全球最大的比特币大会。
To create sufficient hype for the confab, as if there wasn’t enough already, the crypto crowd has revealed a series of deals in recent days that further yoke Donald Trump and his acolytes to the asset class.
为了给这次会议制造足够的热度——仿佛现有的关注还不够——加密货币圈最近几天又披露了一系列交易，进一步将唐纳德•特朗普(Trump)及其追随者与这一资产类别捆绑在一起。
But before we get into those deals, let’s first go over who will be in Vegas.
但在我们讨论这些交易之前，先来看看谁会出现在拉斯维加斯。
Members of Trump’s inner circle in DC, including vice-president JD Vance and White House crypto tsar David Sacks, are both supposed to attend, and so will the president’s sons Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump.
特朗普在华盛顿的核心圈成员，包括副总统JD•万斯(JD Vance)和白宫加密货币负责人大卫•萨克斯(David Sacks)，都预计将出席，总统的儿子小唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump Jr)和埃里克•特朗普(Eric Trump)也会到场。
And there will, of course, also be high-profile figures who sit just outside the bounds of Trump’s inner circle but who have undeniably close ties to the administration, such as Brandon Lutnick, the chair of Cantor Fitzgerald.
当然，也会有一些知名人士，他们虽然不在特朗普的核心圈子之内，但与政府有着不可否认的密切联系，比如建达公司(Cantor Fitzgerald)董事长布兰登•卢特尼克(Brandon Lutnick)。
In Vegas, the US government will give its full-throated blessing of an asset class that’s been treated as second-tier and outright speculative.
在拉斯维加斯，美国政府将对一直被视为二等和纯粹投机的资产类别给予全力支持。
The president has already put his money where his mouth is.
总统已经用实际行动证明了自己的承诺。
While you were perhaps out on a boat for Memorial Day, DD’s Antoine Gara and a team from the FT scooped that Trump’s family media company planned to raise billions to buy cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
也许你在阵亡将士纪念日乘船出游时，DD的安托万•加拉(Antoine Gara)和英国《金融时报》的一支团队率先报道，特朗普家族的媒体公司计划筹集数十亿美元，用于购买比特币等加密货币。
It was a clear sign that Trump Media & Technology Group was betting on the digital assets repeatedly championed by the president’s administration. It follows a series of crypto plays such as a Lutnick-backed blank cheque vehicle called Twenty One Capital aiming to replicate the ferocious bitcoin buyer MicroStrategy, now known as Strategy.
这清楚地表明，特朗普媒体(Trump Media)与技术集团正在押注于总统政府多次支持的数字资产。在此之前，市场上已经出现了一系列加密货币相关操作，例如由布兰登•布兰登•卢特尼克支持的空白支票公司二十一资本(Twenty One Capital)，旨在效仿如今名为Strategy、以激进购入比特币著称的微策略(MicroStrategy)公司。
TMTG said in a statement on Monday afternoon that “apparently the Financial Times has dumb writers listening to even dumber sources”. On Tuesday morning, the deal was officially announced.
TMTG于周一下午发表声明称：“显然，英国《金融时报》有些愚蠢的作者在听取更愚蠢的消息来源。”到了星期二(Tuesday)早上，这项交易被正式宣布。
Then there was another deal unveiled on Tuesday by Vivek Ramaswamy’s Strive Asset Management and Nasdaq-listed investment group Asset Entities.
随后，维韦克•拉马斯瓦米(Vivek Ramaswamy)的Strive资产管理公司(Strive Asset Management)与纳斯达克上市的投资集团Asset Entities于星期二公布了另一项交易。
The two firms, which announced a proposed merger earlier this month, said they hoped to raise as much as $1.5bn to support a “first wave of bitcoin acquisitions” targeting ailing biotech companies trading below their cash value.
这两家公司在本月早些时候宣布了拟议合并，并表示希望筹集高达15亿美元，用于支持“首轮比特币收购”，目标是那些交易价格低于现金价值、陷入困境的生物技术公司。
The concept, of course: exit the biotech operations and plough the cash into crypto.
当然，这个想法是：退出生物科技业务，把现金投入加密货币。
How do you make half a billion dollars disappear?
你如何让五亿美元消失？
For the roster of blue-chip investors in Builder.ai, which has collapsed in a suspected revenue inflation scandal, the answer is painfully simple: entrust it to a firm that employs a “chief wizard”.
对于因涉嫌收入虚增丑闻而倒闭的Builder.ai的蓝筹投资者来说，答案其实非常简单：交给一家雇有“首席魔法师”的公司。
A little more than a year ago, Sachin Dev Duggal, the charismatic founder and chief wizard of artificial intelligence start-up Builder.ai, was feted at the World Economic Forum in Davos as a visionary genius.
一年多前，人工智能初创公司Builder.ai极具魅力的创始人兼首席巫师萨钦•德夫•杜加尔(Sachin Dev Duggal)在达沃斯世界经济论坛(World Economic Forum)上被誉为富有远见的天才。
He was lauded for seizing on the burgeoning potential of AI technology years before ChatGPT was a twinkle in Sam Altman’s eye.
早在ChatGPT还未出现在萨姆•奥尔特曼(Sam Altman)的设想中时，他就因敏锐把握人工智能技术的巨大潜力而备受赞誉。
Now the company he founded is on the verge of insolvency, with the more than $500mn invested by the likes of the Qatar Investment Authority, Insight Partners and SoftBank expected to be flushed away.
如今，他创立的公司正濒临破产，卡塔尔投资局(Qatar Investment Authority)、远见资本(Insight Partners)和软银(SoftBank)等机构投入的5亿多美元预计将付诸东流。
(Note that $75mn of this was invested mere months ago in a bid to rescue the company as it faced dwindling cash balances and mounting debt).
（请注意，其中的7500万美元是在几个月前，为了挽救当时面临现金余额不断减少和债务不断增加的公司而投入的。）
Even OpenAI’s principal backer Microsoft got in on the action with a strategic partnership and equity investment in Builder.ai in 2023.
就连OpenAI的主要支持者微软(Microsoft)也在2023年通过与Builder.ai建立战略合作伙伴关系并进行股权投资，参与了这一行动。
If you’re new to the Builder.ai story, there’s a lot of FT reporting to catch up on.
如果你还不熟悉Builder.ai的故事，有许多英国《金融时报》的报道可以补看。
DD’s Alexandra Heal led a series of probing investigations into Duggal and his company last year. She revealed that he was named by authorities in India in relation to a high-profile criminal probe and had been dogged by legal disputes during a meteoric business career. (Duggal has denied wrongdoing in all cases).
《DD》的亚历山德拉•希尔(Alexandra Heal)去年主导了一系列针对萨钦•德夫•萨钦•德夫•杜加尔及其公司的深入调查。她披露，萨钦•德夫•杜加尔因一项备受关注的刑事调查而被印度当局点名，并且在其飞速发展的商业生涯中一直受到法律纠纷的困扰。
Then last week came the big reveal. The FT reported that prior to its collapse, an internal investigation at Builder.ai found evidence of potentially bogus sales and indicated that there might have been a concerted effort to inflate revenues.
接着，上周出现了重大消息披露。英国《金融时报》报道称，在倒闭前，Builder.ai 的一项内部调查发现了可能存在虚假销售的证据，并指出可能有人有组织地夸大收入。
But don’t count out Builder.ai’s fallen chief wizard just yet: the FT also broke news last week that Duggal had sounded out investors on a potential deal to buy the failed UK software company out of insolvency.
但别急着把Builder.ai这位“倒下的首席巫师”排除在外：英国《金融时报》上周还爆料称，萨钦•德夫•萨钦•德夫•杜加尔曾与投资者接洽，探讨以潜在交易将这家破产的英国软件公司从破产状态中收购出来。
Gone are the days when Builder.ai boasted of centimillion dollar funding rounds. Duggal conveyed to one potential investor that his bold gambit required less than $10mn in initial funding.
Builder.ai曾经炫耀获得数亿美元融资的日子已经一去不复返了。萨钦•德夫•萨钦•德夫•杜加尔向一位潜在投资者表示，他大胆的计划最初只需要不到1000万美元的资金。
Litigation finance funds mega payouts
诉讼融资助力巨额赔付
Since insurers are in the business of covering clients against unexpected losses, they don’t usually get much sympathy when they face big claims.
由于保险公司的业务本就是为客户承保意外损失，因此当他们遭遇巨额索赔时，往往难以获得同情。
But the sector has been increasingly annoyed at the chunky payouts they’ve faced from US lawsuits. Americans have always loved to take things to court, but insurers say legal payouts are getting costlier in a trend fuelled by litigation funding.
但该行业对因美国诉讼而面临的巨额赔付越来越感到恼火。美国人一向喜欢诉诸法庭，但保险公司表示，在诉讼融资推动下，法律赔付的成本正不断上升。
(They also blame “negative societal attitudes with anti-corporate sentiments, distrust in institutions and general dissatisfaction”.)
（他们还将原因归咎于“负面的社会态度，包括反企业情绪、对机构的不信任和普遍的不满”。）
The fight turned public when the boss of the world’s biggest publicly traded litigation funder told the FT that recent remarks from Chubb chief executive Evan Greenberg had amounted to “an inappropriate use of corporate power” and could be anti-competitive.
当全球最大上市诉讼资助机构的老板在接受英国《金融时报》采访时表示，安达保险(Chubb)公司首席执行官埃文•格林伯格(Evan Greenberg)最近的言论“属于对企业权力的不当使用”，并可能具有反竞争性质，这场争端便公开化了。
Burford Capital chief executive Chris Bogart was referring to comments Greenberg made at a trade conference in Chicago earlier this month, during which he urged brokers and insurers to cut ties with the litigation funding industry.
博福德资本(Burford Capital)首席执行官克里斯•博加特(Chris Bogart)所指的是格林伯格本月早些时候在芝加哥一次贸易会议上的言论，当时他敦促经纪人和保险公司与诉讼融资行业断绝关系。
Greenberg added that Chubb would sever ties with lawyers, bankers or asset managers if they continued working with funders.
格林伯格补充说，如果律师、银行家或资产管理人继续与资金提供方合作，安达保险将会与他们断绝关系。
Big companies such as Microsoft and Amazon have been hit with eye-popping damage awards by US juries, and Aon, the world’s second-largest broker, last year stopped offering insurance cover for litigation funders.
微软和亚马逊(Amazon)等大公司曾被美国陪审团判处巨额赔偿，而全球第二大经纪公司怡安(Aon)去年也停止为诉讼资助方提供保险保障。
The broker said litigation funding had created “an unsustainable marketplace for our corporate and insurance clients”.
该经纪人表示，诉讼融资为我们的企业和保险客户带来了一个不可持续的市场。
But insurers aren’t ready to cut ties with litigation funders just yet, since several have developed lucrative products tailored to the sector.
但保险公司还没有准备好与诉讼资助方断绝关系，因为有几家公司已经为该行业开发了利润丰厚的专属产品。
Assets held in insurance “wrappers”, which can cover losses above a set threshold on pools of uncorrelated legal investments, are one such product that has grown.
以保险“包装”持有的资产就是其中一种增长较快的产品。这类产品可以为一篮子无相关性的合法投资池在损失超过设定门槛时提供保障。
They’ve become so prevalent that private credit funds such as Mubadala-backed Fortress Investment Group have lent money against litigation funding portfolios with insurance wrappers, one market participant said.
一位市场参与者表示，这种现象已经变得非常普遍，像穆巴达拉(Mubadala)支持的堡垒投资集团(Fortress Investment Group)这样的私募信贷基金，已经开始以带有保险包装的诉讼融资投资组合为抵押发放贷款。
Job moves
职位变动
Chinese billionaire Li Zhenguo has stepped back from the day-to-day management of the solar group Longi as the industry faces turmoil with falling profits and factory overcapacity undermining years of rapid growth.
JPMorgan Chase has hired Lyndon Park as managing director for shareholder M&A capital markets. He previously worked as managing partner for global ESG advisory and shareholder activism at ICR.
Bow River Capital has tapped Mark Hantho as executive chair. He was most recently vice-chair of banking, capital markets and advisory at Citi.
Mayer Brown has hired Aideen Brennan as partner for the firm’s global corporate and securities practice in New York. She joins from Sidley Austin.
随着太阳能行业因利润下滑和工厂产能过剩而陷入动荡，削弱了多年来的快速增长，中国亿万富翁李振国(Li Zhenguo)已退出对隆基(Longi)的日常管理。
摩根大通(JPMorgan Chase)已聘请林登•帕克(Lyndon Park)担任股东并购资本市场董事总经理。他此前曾在ICR担任全球ESG咨询与股东维权管理合伙人。
博河资本(Bow River Capital)任命了马克•汉索(Mark Hantho)为执行主席。他最近担任花旗银行(Citi)、资本市场与咨询业务的副董事长。
孖士打律师事务所(Mayer Brown)已聘请艾迪恩•布伦南(Aideen Brennan)为其纽约全球公司与证券业务部的合伙人。她此前就职于盛德国际律师事务所(Sidley Austin)。
Smart reads
智能精选
Losing streak The Luxembourg start-up founded by Reform UK treasurer Nick Candy lost millions of pounds over a decade, the FT reports.
连年亏损据英国《金融时报》报道，由英国改革党(Reform UK)财务主管尼克•坎迪(Nick Candy)创立的卢森堡初创公司在十年间亏损了数百万英镑。
Public spat Rating agencies remain essential gatekeepers in the financial ecosystem, Lex writes. Bickering between them is a healthy sign for the private credit industry.
莱克斯(Lex)专栏指出，评级机构依然是金融生态系统中不可或缺的守门人。它们之间的争论对于私募信贷行业来说，是一种健康的信号。
Reconsidering America The US was once a haven for foreign investors, with Asia ploughing trillions of dollars into the country, Bloomberg reports. That bet is starting to unravel.
重新审视美国(America)。彭博(Bloomberg)报道称，美国曾经是外国投资者的避风港，亚洲向美国投入了数万亿美元。但如今，这一押注正开始瓦解。
News round-up
新闻综述
人工智能热潮为欧洲四家最古老的工业集团带来了1500亿欧元的市值增长（金融时报）
在500亿美元收购战中，7-Eleven母公司的管理层获得了股东的支持（英国《金融时报》）
美国政府将不会续签雪佛龙(Chevron)在委内瑞拉的石油许可证（英国《金融时报》报道）
欧盟调查Pornhub及其他色情网站的儿童安全问题（英国《金融时报》）
Due Diligence is written by Arash Massoudi, Ivan Levingston, Ortenca Aliaj, Alexandra Heal and Robert Smith in London, James Fontanella-Khan, Sujeet Indap, Eric Platt, Antoine Gara, Amelia Pollard, Maria Heeter, Kaye Wiggins, Oliver Barnes and Jamie John in New York, George Hammond and Tabby Kinder in San Francisco, Arjun Neil Alim in Hong Kong. Please send feedback to due.diligence@ft.com
《尽职调查》(Due Diligence)由阿拉什•马苏迪(Arash Massoudi)、伊万•莱文斯顿(Ivan Levingston)、奥尔滕卡•阿利亚日(Ortenca Aliaj)、亚历山德拉•希尔和罗伯特•史密斯(Robert Smith)，乔治•哈蒙德(George Hammond)和塔比•金德(Tabby Kinder)（旧金山），以及阿琼•尼尔•阿利姆(Arjun Neil Alim)（香港）撰写。欢迎将反馈发送至due.diligence@ft.com
虚拟货币相关活动存在较大法律风险。请根据监管规范，注意甄别和远离非法金融活动，谨防个人财产和权益受损。