Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) — General Motors Co. will resume production of the Chevrolet Bolt and larger Bolt EUV electric vehicles in April after the automaker and its battery partner, an LG Group company, found a solution to its manufacturing gaffes. 

GM stopped production of the Bolt in August and recalled nearly 143,000 of them, which includes every one the company ever made, because a manufacturing defect at LG’s battery plant resulted in at least 13 fires. The company hasn’t made new Bolts because it had been redirecting limited supplies of new batteries to replace the defective storage system in recalled vehicles.

Even as the Bolt goes back into production, GM’s bigger push to compete with Tesla Inc. and rivals Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG in the burgeoning EV market rests more on new and future models. GM started building the new Hummer EV pickup in December and is getting ready to sell the Cadillac Lyriq SUV this spring, both of which are more in line with current consumer tastes than the compact Bolt.

GM has said that it has thousands of orders for both vehicles and is expanding production.

GM shares rose 2.1% at 11:32 a.m. in New York.

With the resumption of Bolt production, GM is trying to put a long and embarrassing chapter behind it. Recall costs soared to $1.9 billion, most of which were assumed by LG, but GM still had to manage customer complaints. While trying to find a fix, Bolt owners could not fully charge their vehicles and were advised to park them outside and, in some cases, more than 50 feet away from other vehicles.

Suspending Bolt sales also allowed rival Ford to cruise past GM into second place in 2021 in EV sales behind Tesla as the Mustang Mach-E caught on with buyers.

Bolt Name

Whether GM keeps the Bolt name is an open question. Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra told Bloomberg TV recently that the car is in GM’s “near-term future.” The Orion Township plant that builds the Bolt will be converted to make electric pickup trucks in 2024.

The automaker said in January that it plans to be selling 1 million EVs a year in the U.S. by 2025, including 600,000 electric pickup trucks.

GM has three lower-priced EVs coming, including the Chevy Equinox and Blazer that will both sell for around $30,000. The company also plans to build an EV priced below those two models.

(Updates with GM electric-vehicle plans in the third paragraph)

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(Bloomberg) — Banks led by Barclays Plc have lost millions of dollars of their own money plus wiped out fees from underwriting more than $1.2 billion of bonds and loans for Covis Pharmaceuticals Inc. that proved particularly hard to sell.  The banks were already stuck with more than $300 million of loans to the company …

Banks Sell Loans for Apollo-Owned Covis After Five-Week Struggle Read More »

(Bloomberg) — McLaren Racing has terminated its relationship with Bitci.com, the Turkish-based crypto group, after less than a year.

Last June the two companies announced a long-term sponsorship deal, tied in with the release of a fan token, the first of its kind in Formula 1. 

In an emailed response to a query by Bloomberg News Tuesday, McLaren Racing confirmed the termination of its relationship with Bitci.com. It did not give reasons for the termination and neither did it make mention of a fan token. 

Sports teams and leagues around the world have been rushing into the launch of digital fan tokens, which promise fans the chance to apply for benefits or influence the colors a team wears in return for a payment

A McLaren fan token is still being displayed on Bitci.com’s website. A Bitci.com spokesperson said she wasn’t able to help by answering questions.

Last week Bloomberg reported that a planned Bitci.com fan token for Premier League football team Wolverhampton Wanderers had not yet been launched despite a sponsorship agreement in June.

The team is still carrying out due diligence, people familiar with the situation said last week. Wolves declined to comment. 

Bitci Chief Executive Officer Onur Altan Tan said by text on Friday that everything was still on track with the Wolves token. “It is on the way,” he said.

McLaren also had a deal that ended in July 2021 with the fan engagement platform Iqoniq, which went into liquidation last month.

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(Bloomberg) — South African grocer Spar Group Ltd. benefited from the end of curbs on the retail sales of alcohol, with trade at its nationwide TOPS liquor stores surging 56% in the 18 weeks through the end of January.  That helped push Spar’s total sales in southern Africa up by 8.2% from the same period …

Spar’s Alcohol Sales Jumped 56% as South Africa Lifted Covid Ban Read More »

(Bloomberg) — Cape Town has threatened to scrap contracts with companies including EY, PwC and Nedbank Group Ltd., after the firms were named in a judicial probe on alleged graft relating to business done with the national government. In a letter to the companies, seen by Bloomberg, the city asked them to explain why the …

Cape Town Warns PwC, EY, Nedbank Over Graft Report Findings Read More »

(Bloomberg) — Discovery Ltd. and AIA Group Ltd.’s new Asian health-insurance technology business will look to bulk up through acquisitions and sees a valuation of several billion dollars over the next decade. The newly formed Amplify Health will be rolled out in all of AIA’s 18 markets and target a burgeoning middle class and rapidly …

Discovery, AIA Seek Deals to Bulk up New Asian Insurance Unit Read More »

(Bloomberg) — A cycle of widespread aggressive rate increases in emerging markets looks to be reaching its peak, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. strategists. Over the next three months, the proportion of authorities still tightening policy in developing nations could drop closer to 50% from about 70% currently, the strategists said, citing an in-house …

Goldman Sachs Says Peak Is in Sight for Emerging-Market Hike Cycle Read More »

(Bloomberg) — Investors pulled a record amount from Baillie Gifford’s U.K.-domiciled funds last month as its once-lucrative bets on tech giants continued to decline, according to new data.

The Edinburgh-based fund house lost a total of 10% from its U.K. funds in January, taking the total down to 56 billion pounds ($75.6 billion), data from research firm Morningstar showed. While most of this was due to poor performance, Baillie Gifford also suffered a rare month of outflows, with clients withdrawing a net 875 million pounds, according to the data.

Baillie Gifford, which managed a total of 336 billion pounds ($455 billion) at the end of last year, has stakes in a number of tech names that soared in recent years before suffering large drops over the past few months.

The firm is the largest investor in vaccine producer Moderna Inc. and biotech company Illumina Inc., and its funds are a top-10 shareholder in Zoom Video Communications Inc., e-commerce firm Shopify Inc. and Netflix Inc., according to data compiled by Bloomberg. All of those stocks have slumped at least 25% since the end of August, as nervous investors exit growth equities and brace for tighter monetary policy in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Clients withdrew more than 200 million pounds from Baillie Gifford’s previously popular American Fund in January, according to Morningstar, after its value shrank by almost 40% in the past year to less than 5 billion pounds.

The European fund, which manages 2.68 billion pounds according to data compiled by Bloomberg, has also suffered. Clients pulled about 100 million pounds last month, the Morningstar figures show, following an 18% decline in performance over the past year. 

Longer term investors are still sitting on gains, though, with some of Baillie Gifford’s funds up more than 10% over the past three years, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Baillie Gifford declined to comment on the figures. 

The company is trying to reassure customers, who include major U.S. pension funds as well as British municipalities and individuals, about the market declines. “We were neither heroes in 2020 nor villains in 2021,” Baillie Gifford wrote in a letter to investors in January, adding that it won’t divert from its “tried and tested” long-term investment strategy.

“It makes no real sense that Zoom can increase its sales by 30% and see its price drop by 40%,” James Budden, director of marketing and distribution at Baillie Gifford, told Bloomberg News earlier this month. “Calm will return at some stage and we will all move on.”

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(Bloomberg) — Alphabet Inc.’s Wing unit elevated its leading technology official to head the company as it seeks to rapidly expand its drone delivery operations, including in the Dallas suburbs. 

Adam Woodworth, who has spent his entire career designing new-age aircraft, was named Wing LLC’s chief executive officer, the company said in an announcement Tuesday. He replaces James Ryan Burgess, who is stepping aside from most of his duties following a health issue. 

“Adam’s involvement in just about everything Wing has been doing to date, and James’s continued advisory support, will allow us to continue to grow,” the company said in a press release. 

Wing has become what it calls the world’s largest residential drone delivery service. In the first six weeks of this year, the company says it has performed 25,000 deliveries by drone, a 10-fold increase over the same period last year. 

It does the most business in Australia, where it has begun deliveries from a mall in Logan City, near Brisbane. It has also been testing deliveries using its hybrid aircraft in Christiansburg, Virginia, and in Finland. It plans to expand soon to a Walgreens in suburban Dallas from which it can carry small items to the nearby Texas communities of Frisco and Little Elm. 

Woodworth, 36, has worked at Wing since 2014. He became chief technology officer in 2018, according to his LinkedIn page. He previously worked at Aurora Flight Sciences, a Virginia-based company.

Burgess, 39, will remain an adviser to the company, the release said. He is recovering from the undisclosed health issue, but opted not to return to his job. 

Wing, Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Air and United Parcel Service Inc. are racing to develop drone delivery services they are betting will revolutionize retailing and other commerce. But the trajectory remains unclear with U.S. regulators still devising sets of rules for the new technology. 

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