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(Bloomberg) — Mexican truckers protesting Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s controversial border crackdown ended their blockade of a key international bridge and are switching to other crossing sites.

Commercial traffic has resumed over the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman said on Thursday. The crossing is where truckers upset about massive delays caused by Abbott’s measure began a blockade on Monday. 

The blockade was called off after an organized criminal gang set fire to some of the trucks and then engaged in a gun battle with responding police officers, local media reported. Trucking groups have since shifted their attention to other crossing points, where overflow traffic from the initial protest already had created miles-long queues of vegetable, fruit, electronics and auto-parts cargoes, the reports said.

Abbott ordered state troopers to begin safety inspections on northbound Mexican commercial trucks last week in what he described as an effort to crack down on undocumented immigrants and smuggling. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a Republican like Abbott, warned earlier this week that the dispute would trigger food shortages and push the price of avocados to $5 apiece.

“We have called on Governor Abbott to stop these unnecessary and duplicative inspections that are choking a key trade artery into our country,” White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday.

(Adds White House comment in last paragraph. A previously version of the story contained an incorrect day of the week in the second paragraph.)

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(Bloomberg) — Mexican semi-truck exports to the U.S. have slumped 80% in a matter of days as a border blockade to protest Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s stepped-up vehicle inspections drags on.

U.S.-bound cargoes are backed up for almost 9 miles (14 kilometers) at some border crossings, strangling shipments of the tractor units that power 18-wheelers, said Miguel Elizalde, head of the Association of Heavy Vehicle Producers. Mexico is the world’s top exporter of semi-trucks and the fourth-biggest source of cargo vehicles, according to the association’s data.

“This affects the industry as a whole,” Elizalde said. The group is calling on officials on “both sides of the border to find a quick solution and to have commercial flows reestablished to normal as soon as possible across the entire border and for all states that share a border with Texas.”

Mexican truckers began blockading a key border bridge on Monday after Abbott ordered state troopers to begin checking northbound vehicles for safety defects, a move that caused massive delays. Since state troopers began the checks last week, about 25% of inspected vehicles have been deemed unsafe and removed from service, according to the governor. 

Gun Battle

Tensions on the south side of the border boiled over on Wednesday as an organized-crime gang set fire to two trucks involved in the blockade, Reforma.com reported. When police arrived, a gun battle erupted with the arsonists, the news outlet said. 

Although commercial traffic has resumed at the initial blockade site, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, local media reported that truckers were shifting their focus to other crossing sites.

With pressure mounting from business interests and fellow Republicans to find a solution, Abbott on Wednesday struck a deal with the governor of Nuevo Leon state to halt inspections in exchange for heightened enforcement on the Mexico side of the line. 

However, the deal only involves a small section of the national boundary, and Abbott said he would seek similar agreements with other Mexican state governors in coming days.

‘Political Stunt’

Abbott’s border crackdown has drawn the ire of the Joe Biden administration, which has blasted the governor’s border-security agenda as an overreach of state power.

The Nuevo Leon agreement “does not dent the significant economic impact that his inspections have caused by creating delays of up to 16 hours along a border that stretches 1,245 miles and has 28 international bridges and border crossings into the United States,” a White House spokesperson said. 

Abbott “is choosing to continue with this political stunt rather than focus on alleviating the economic impact on Texas families, and his actions are contributing to rising prices,” the spokesperson added.

(Adds halt to protest at initial site in sixth paragraph)

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(Bloomberg) — The U.S. Export-Import Bank approved a plan Thursday that could yield a flood of financing for U.S. energy ventures, including wind and solar projects, battery manufacturing and terminals to sell LNG overseas.

The bank’s board voted 3-0 on a formal policy shift encouraged by the Biden administration that would extend support to domestic manufacturing and infrastructure projects that facilitate exports.

Under the program, the bank will provide support across the entire lifecycle of a project, from capital investment to financing meant to secure foreign sales, said Reta Jo Lewis, president of the board of directors.

The agency plans to prioritize financing for green projects, from renewable power ventures to clean energy manufacturing. The initiative would apply to non-energy ventures too, including the manufacture of semiconductors, biotech and biomedical gear. Environmentalists and natural gas advocates say the initiative could also bolster a host of LNG export terminals proposed from the U.S. Gulf Coast to Alaska, especially given the Biden administration’s efforts to supplant Russian energy in Europe with U.S. supplies.

Natural gas backers have cheered on the initiative, with the LNG allies arguing that Export-Import Bank financing could help developers seeking to sell their product to countries with fast-growing energy demand but no bankable credit rating.

Projects by Kinder Morgan Inc. and Tellurian Inc. are among those already fully permitted but still await final investment decisions.

Environmental activists warn the move would undermine President Joe Biden’s green goals.

Potential Ex-Im financing for LNG projects “could translate into billions of dollars” in support “and a catastrophic amount of U.S.-financed greenhouse gas emissions,” Friends of the Earth told the agency.

“It would be a climate disaster,” said Kate DeAngelis, the group’s international finance program manager. “These LNG export terminals would be in place for decades.”

An Ex-Im Bank spokesman said any application the agency receives under the new initiative would be subject to existing environmental and social impact reviews. Legally, the agency is barred from discriminating against application based on sector, including liquefied natural gas, the spokesman said. 

To qualify for support, projects generally would need to have a significant export nexus, such as by exporting 25% of their production. That threshold would be lowered to 15% for priority projects including “climate-related transactions,” the agency said on their website. 

(Adds information about priority export projects in last paragraph.)

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(Bloomberg) — Investors currently don’t think much of Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter Inc, but the growing army of day traders and Tesla Inc. fans could change all that. 

So far, institutional investors are underwhelmed. Musk offered Twitter’s board $54.20 per share in cash, valuing Twitter at about $43 billion. The social media company’s shares erased earlier gains and fell as much as 1.4% on the day to about $45.21. Not a good sign.

One shareholder is getting vocal. Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said he rejects Musk’s offer as not coming “close to the intrinsic value” of Twitter “given its growth prospects.”

But Twitter was also the most-purchased stock on Fidelity’s platform Thursday, with its ticker trending on Reddit’s WallStreetBets and Stocktwits. When Musk disclosed his 9% stake in Twitter last week, retail investors helped fuel record trading volume on Monday for Twitter and have pushed $423.9 million into the stock since the disclosure.

It’s hard to tell whether Musk will call on retail investors to help support his bid. Musk has made it clear — as much as it can be — that $54.20 is his final price. “I am not playing the back-and-forth game,” he said in a U.S. securities filing revealing his bid. 

That could mean if Twitter’s board rejects his offer, he might consider going hostile, and ask shareholders directly if they want to accept his bid. If he gets enough support — 51% — then Musk can do whatever he wants, in theory.  

Musk has a history of moving markets via Twitter, where he’s one of the biggest personalities with over 80 million followers. In January 2021, after Musk professed his love for Etsy Inc., the company’s value jumped by more than $2 billion. One the same day, the one word “Gamestonk!!” helped send shares in GameStop Corp. up 92%.

Read More: A Brief History of Elon Musk’s Recent Market-Moving Tweets

If Musk chooses, he may be able to turn Twitter into a so-called meme stock. Last year firms like AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and GameStop exploded, after retail investors flooded social media forums, causing shares to go haywire. 

And Twitter is arguably the meme-ish of all stocks. It’s where most of them are made. 

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(Bloomberg) — Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter Inc. follows a playbook familiar to activist shareholders. It’s one that other big investors have used to successfully take over companies, as well as to draw out other potential bidders for their targets. 

Musk, 50, first disclosed a 9.2% stake in the social-media network this month, and later rejected an offer for a seat on the board. He said in a filing Thursday that he would pay $54.20 apiece for the shares of Twitter that he doesn’t already own.

By taking a toehold in Twitter prior to making an offer, Musk is employing a tactic that’s been used by investors from Carl Icahn to Elliott Investment Management. Activists, who traditionally acquired small stakes in companies and ran proxy fights to effect change, are increasingly shifting their strategy to mimic private equity firms by following through with their own takeover bids. 

Part of the reason is that firms like Elliott, the activist fund run by billionaire Paul Singer, have raised a lot of capital in recent years. Now, they need to find ways to deploy large sums of money at once, said Kai Liekefett, partner and chairman of the shareholder activism practice at law firm Sidley Austin LLP.

“This is part of a broader trend, for sure. It’s not always a stalking bid. Often times it’s a real bid,” Liekefett said. “They’re sitting on a lot of firepower.” 

Icahn, Elliott

Icahn is locked in a battle to take over Las Vegas-based utility Southwest Gas Holdings Inc. The billionaire, who uses his own money for his bets and holds 4.3% of Southwest, has been agitating for changes at the company for months, and his tender offer comes alongside a proxy fight to replace its board.  

Singer’s Elliott, meanwhile, has often followed a similar strategy, including most recently teaming up with Brookfield Asset Management Inc. to acquire television ratings company Nielsen Holdings Plc for about $10 billion. Elliott originally took a stake in Nielsen in 2018 and pushed for a sale of the company, before launching a bid this year. It’s done the same at companies including Citrix Systems Inc., AthenaHealth Inc. and Mercury Systems Inc.

As the world’s richest person, Musk isn’t reliant on other people’s money to be able to launch a takeover — though how he will find $43 billion in cash has yet to be revealed. In a letter to Twitter’s board included alongside the offer, Musk wrote: “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”

‘Best and Final’

His tactics don’t only echo those of activist investors. Describing an offer as “best and final,” as Musk did on Thursday, isn’t language that commonly shows up in an initial takeover bid. But it has been used by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in the past — including at Heinz and NV Energy — as a way to avoid getting drawn into lengthy bidding wars.   

Twitter said Thursday that its board would review the proposal and any response would be in the best interests of “all Twitter stockholders.” 

The situation presents an extremely interesting challenge for Twitter’s advisers, Sidley’s Liekefett said. 

“How do you defend against the world’s richest man, who could buy you 12 times over before breakfast,” he said. 

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(Bloomberg) — Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter Inc. is giving a boost to the social-media company’s debt. 

Twitter’s bonds rose slightly Thursday after the world’s richest man announced the $43 billion takeover proposal. 

Yet the bonds are still trading below face value, promising more upside if the deal goes through. Robert Schiffman, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst, said Twitter would likely be required to buy back the securities for 101 cents on the dollar if the company is taken over.

With the bonds holding below that level, he said that suggests skepticism that Musk’s bid will succeed. 

“Twitter’s bonds, trading below par, appear well protected from Elon Musk’s all-cash offer to privatize the company by language that includes a clause potentially requiring the company to make an offer to repurchase the bonds at 101 cents on the dollar,” Schiffman said in a note.

Twitter’s 5% bond due March 2030 rose 0.87 cents on the dollar to 98.87 cents, according to Trace data. Its 3.875% bonds due December 2027 also rose 1.26 cents to 97.41 cents.

“Musk’s “best and final” $43 billion non-binding offer has numerous conditions, including completion of financing, which we believe give it a low probability of success,” Schiffman wrote.

The social media company’s shares rose as much as 5.8% before giving back the gains as investors began to assess the odds of Musk’s deal going through. Twitter said that its board would review the proposal and any response would be in the best interests of “all Twitter stockholders.”

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(Bloomberg) — CD Projekt SA reported stronger-than-expected earnings for last year as Poland’s biggest computer-game studio managed to overcome the fallout from the botched release of its flagship Cyberpunk 2077 game.

Net income for 2021 fell 82% to 208.9 million zloty ($48.7 million), above the 202 million zloty in the Bloomberg survey of 20 analysts. Operating income dropped 80% to 232.9 million zloty, while sales declined 58% to 888.2 million zloty, compared with an estimate of 889.6 million zloty. The company reported record net income of 1.15 billion zloty in 2020 following the Cyberpunk release in December that year.

The 1.2 billion-zloty production turned out to be less successful than anticipated as clients complained about numerous glitches in the game. Since the release and the game’s suspension from the Sony Corp.’s PlayStation store, the company has managed to fix most of the issues and release a version for the next generation consoles earlier this year, which should boost sales. 

However, as its next high-budget production — the upcoming Witcher game — is still at an early stage, the studio just hit another obstacle in its 2022 plans after it announced late on Wednesday it’s delaying the release of the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for next-gen consoles beyond the second quarter. The shares fell 1.7% on Thursday.

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(Bloomberg) — African efforts to produce Covid-19 vaccines on the continent may face a setback amid a dearth of orders for the injections. Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Ltd. informed the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention it’s concerned about a lack of requests for Covid-19 vaccines and may close that manufacturing line if nothing changes, …

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(Bloomberg) — Sasol Ltd.’s decision to reverse plans to use a proposed pipeline that would stretch from fields in northern Mozambique to its South African operations isn’t seen impacting the project’s prospects.  The fuel producer, South Africa’s second-biggest listed company by sales, said in 2020 it would potentially buy a small stake in the proposed …

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(Bloomberg) — Analysis of wastewater samples in South Africa show that there is an increased incidence of Covid-19 in three provinces. Samples from all wastewater plants in the industrial hub of Gauteng province, in eThekwini in KwaZulu-Natal and in Bloemfontein in the Free State, the South African Medical Research Council said in a report on …

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