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(Bloomberg) — Software company Globant SA is partnering with FIFA, the global soccer governing body, on its new streaming platform ahead of the World Cup next month, deepening its push into sports and entertainment.

Globant will create new features and experiences on FIFA+, the online streaming service for football’s governing body launched in April. The company will also sponsor the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand next year, among other FIFA events. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. 

Platform users “are going to feel a lot closer to football and FIFA is going to be able to have more information about what its users appreciate the most about the sport,” Globant CEO Martin Migoya said in an interview. FIFA is “seeking to get closer to consumers, and what we have to provide is the best form, through technology, of achieving that in the most exciting and efficient way.” 

Sports and entertainment make up Globant’s second-largest revenue category trailing only financial services. The FIFA partnership comes weeks after Globant inked a deal with Spain’s first division soccer league LaLiga, on creating a tech-based joint venture.

Globant’s shares rose 4.3% on Monday to about $174 per share. The stock has fallen 43% over the past year as part of a broad tech selloff. 

Migoya, along with Globant Chief Brand Officer Wanda Weigert, hinted during the interview at more sports announcements as soon as next week. 

“Let’s add more countries, let’s add more sports, we have a technological practice that applies very well to sports,” Migoya said. “That’s what’s happening in Globant with FIFA+, LaLiga Tech and everything we did for what we’re going to announce next week.” 

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(Bloomberg) — FTX Trading and its billionaire founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, are being probed by the Texas securities regulator over whether certain lending offerings violate state law. 

Texas is investigating whether the company’s yield-bearing crypto accounts are illegal securities offerings being sold to U.S. residents, according to a Oct. 14 court filing in the bankruptcy of Voyager Digital Holdings. Until the state determines FTX is complying with the law, the agency said the company shouldn’t move forward with its $1.4 billion purchase of Voyager assets announced last month. 

Texas State Securities Board enforcement director Joe Rotunda said he was able to access the company’s earn program despite FTX not being registered with the state, according to the filing. Generally, investments are labeled as securities when there’s an expectation of profit from management. 

Rotunda also cited an article linked to by FTX’s app, which explains users can earn yield by participating in staking.

The state securities regulator detailed the probe in bankruptcy court documents in which it objects to FTX’s purchase of Voyager after winning an auction. The federal judge overseeing Voyager’s bankruptcy will consider the objection before deciding whether to allow the sale to move forward. 

“We have an active application for a license which has been pending, and believe we are operating fully within the bounds of what we can do in the interim,” according to an FTX spokesperson. “We are working exceptionally hard to ensure Voyager customers get to the best possible outcome — which we believe will happen if our bid to give assets back to users is approved by the Voyager bankruptcy court.” 

Rotunda didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The US Securities and Exchange Commission and state investigators have been probing whether accounts offered by crypto lenders are akin to securities that should be registered with regulators. In February, the SEC and state regulators levied a record $100 million fine against BlockFi, a popular virtual-currency exchange, for failing to register products that pay customers high interest rates to lend out their digital tokens.

Bankman-Fried has been on a shopping spree for distressed assets during the crypto downturn, which earned him comparisons to John Pierpont Morgan in the 1907 banking crisis. But his crypto empire has also come under the attention of some regulators. In August, FTX US received a cease-and-desist letter from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. due to “false or misleading statements” about certain products being eligible for insurance protection.

(Updates with FTX comment in the sixth paragraph.)

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(Bloomberg) — The parent company of Stable Diffusion, an artificial intelligence tool that makes digital art, has reached unicorn status after raising funds from some top names in venture capital.

Stability AI Ltd. raised $101 million in a seed round led by Coatue Management and Lightspeed Venture Partners, according to a statement reviewed by Bloomberg News.

The round values London-based Stability AI at around $1 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked to not be identified because the details are private. A representative for Stability AI declined to comment on the valuation. 

Stable Diffusion is among a handful of upstart A.I. models with the potential to upend the visual arts, along with DALL-E 2. The way it works is people type in a description of an image — say an astronaut riding a horse — and the program spits out a realistic or surrealistic picture.

What sets Stable Diffusion apart from competitors is that its open-source software is available to the public. Users can build on its code to produce applications related to design, film, augmented reality, video games, advertising and even e-commerce. It also works on small devices. 

Its web application DreamStudio has more than 1.5 million users and Stable Diffusion has more than 10 million daily users across all channels, according to Emad Mostaque, chief executive officer of Stability AI. 

Practical uses range from designing applications in the metaverse to creating PowerPoint presentations, he said. 

“Every creative company in the world is testing this out right now because it allows for instant creation of any image in any style, especially when fine-tuned,” Mostaque said in an interview. “There’s been this promise of interactive personalized content for many years. This is the first technology that can deliver it.” 

Coatue, Lightspeed

Stability AI plans to use the funding to deploy custom versions of the model for users at a larger scale and to invest in more supercomputing power. It will also be hiring more people, with Mostaque saying he expects to grow to about 300 employees from 100 over the next year. 

Coatue and Lightspeed have prior investments in the machine-learning and artificial intelligence spaces, with Lightspeed having backed video game maker Epic Games Inc. and Coatue investing in Scale AI Inc., a data platform. 

“Stability AI’s commitment to open source is key – by giving the broader public the tools to create and innovate, open source will activate the momentum behind AI’s capabilities,” said Sri Viswanath, General Partner at Coatue, who will be joining the board as part of the deal. 

Stability AI has the potential to take a lot of “inefficiency” out of content creation, according to Gaurav Gupta, a partner at Lightspeed. “It fundamentally empowers people to do more,” Gupta said in an interview. “Stability has done what many people thought would be impossible.”

“We are very excited to be supporting the democratization of AI,” said Aemish Shah, managing partner at General Global Capital and adviser to Stability AI. “Truly open architecture where the community will develop the foundation, sets Stability apart from its competitors.” 

(UPdates with additional comment in final paragraph)

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(Bloomberg) — Russia attacked Kyiv for the second time since last Monday, striking the city center with Iranian-made drones that are essentially winged missiles, capable of loitering until they lock onto a target. Four people were killed and residential buildings damaged, local authorities said.

Foreign ministers of the European Union agreed to train around 15,000 Ukrainians, including for combat, as soon as mid-November and signed off on an additional €500 million ($487 million) in weapons financing. They were also due to discuss reports about Iran’s military support for Russia’s invasion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin plans a security council meeting this week, state media reported. The group last met on Oct. 10, the day Moscow launched dozens of missile strikes across Ukraine. 

(See RSAN on the Bloomberg Terminal for the Russian Sanctions Dashboard.) 

Key Developments

• Russia Hits Ukrainian Capital Kyiv With Kamikaze Drones
• How Russian Ships Are Laundering Grain Stolen From Occupied Ukraine
• Europe to Propose Dynamic Price Cap on Its Biggest Gas Exchange
• Europe Gas Drops to 3-Month Low as EU Plans More Crisis Measures
• Elon Musk’s Ego Muddies the War Effort: Lionel Laurent

On the Ground

Apart from the attack on Kyiv, an X-59 missile was fired from a Russian Su-35 aircraft from the direction of the Black Sea and hit an infrastructure facility in the Odesa region, Southern operational command said on Facebook. On Sunday, 14 Ukrainian civilians were killed by Russian attacks and another 15 were injured, according to the deputy head of the president’s staff, Kyrylo Tymoshenko. Russia attacked the Mykolaiv region with explosive-laden drones late Sunday, hitting industrial infrastructure and a pharmaceutical warehouse, Ukraine’s southern operational command said on Facebook. 

(All times CET)

Ukraine Returns 108 Women in Prisoner Swap, Yermak Says (6:20 p.m.)

Ukraine conducted its first-ever women-only prisoner swap with Russia, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said on Facebook.

The swap included Azovstal defenders, as well as women captured and illegally kept in Russia-controlled areas of Ukraine since 2019, according to Yermak.

Donetsk speratists leader Pushilin confirmed that the prisoners swap was completed today and that they got 110 prisoners released by Ukraine.

Russian Jet Crashes In Residential Neighborhood (6:10 p.m.) 

A Russian Su-34 fighter jet crashed in Yeysk, a Southern Russian city on Azov Sea across from Crimea, Interfax news agency reported citing the Russian Defense Ministry. The pilots escaped before the plane plane fell on a residential area, exploding in a fire, the agency said.

The Defense Ministry told Interfax that one of the plane’s engines caught fire when the plane took off for a training flight.

Belarus to Conduct Live-Fire Exercises With Russia (5:25 p.m.)

As many as 9,000 servicemen from Russia will be deployed to Belarus as part of a joint military force, Valeriy Revenko, an assistant to the minister of defense for Belarus, said during a briefing for military diplomats.

The Russian unit will contain nearly 170 battle tanks, as many as 200 armored personnel carriers and as many as 100 cannons and large-caliber mortars, he said. While the bulk of the “joint force” will be composed of local servicemen, Russian and Belarusian troops will participate in exercises that include live fire and anti-aircraft missiles, according to Revenko.

Russia already began to send its “air force component” in Belarus, the Defense Ministry said Sunday without elaborating.

State-TV Journalist Who Protested War Left Russia, Lawyer Says

Marina Ovsyannikova, the state-TV journalist who gained international prominence by staging an anti-war protest on the country’s top news program, has left Russia with her daughter after fleeing house arrest, her lawyer said.

Ovsyannikova is “under the protection of a European country,” Dmitry Zkhvatov said, declining to specify which one.

Put on Russia’s wanted list earlier this month, Ovsyannikova faced criminal charges under Russia’s new ‘fake news’ law for an anti-war protest held near the Kremlin over the summer. She had been fighting a custody battle with her ex-husband over their daughter. A Moscow court Monday ruled in favor of the husband in the case.

Georgia Questions Visa-Free Policy for Russians (2:10 p.m.)

The flow of Russians into Georgia is a “challenge” and may require a review of the visa-free regime, Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili said at a news conference in Moldova, where she held talks with Moldovan counterpart Maia Sandu.

Nearly 70,000 Russians fled to Georgia last month after Putin announced a partial mobilization Sept. 21 to bolster his forces in Ukraine. Tens of thousands had already left Russia for Georgia in the weeks following Moscow’s Feb. 24 invasion.

Polish Company Helps Rebuild Infrastructure (12:45 p.m.)

Polish digital terrestrial television provider Emitel provided an additional 50 transmitters to Ukraine to help rebuild infrastructure damaged by Russian shelling, according to a company statement. Since May, Emitel, owned by U.K. fund Cordiant, is running a logistics point in eastern Ukraine where it helps to prepare equipment necessary to maintain broadcasting of TV and radio signals.

‘Partial Mobilization’ Completed in Moscow, Mayor Says (12:20 p.m.)

Sergey Sobyanin, the mayor of Moscow, said on his website Monday that a “partial mobilization” had been completed in Russia’s largest city, and that collection points for the drafted would be closed at 2 p.m. local time.

Putin ordered the call up Sept. 21, which aimed to draw 300,000 reservists. The mobilization has spurred an exodus of draft-age men from the country. Last Friday, Putin sought to reassure Russians by saying that the mobilization effort would wrap up in a couple of weeks and wouldn’t be extended. Several Russian regions have recently reported the first losses among the mobilized.

Ukraine Says Blackouts Happening as Power Targeted in Attacks (12:15 p.m.)

Electricity infrastructure in central and northern Ukraine was damaged by Russian attacks, national power grid operator Ukrenergo said in a statement on Facebook. The situation was currently under control and repairs were being made, but Ukrenergo did not rule out planned rolling blackouts.

Power supply in Lviv in western Ukraine is subject to rolling blackouts, regional governor Maksym Kozytskyi said on Telegram. Power consumption must be limited to avoid emergency blackouts. The Lviv region has cut consumption by 10% Oct. 12, Kozytskyi said.

Russian Drones Hit Sunflower Oil Terminal in Mykolayiv (11:54 a.m.)

Russian drones damaged two huge tanks each containing 7,500 tons of sunflower oil, with oil leaking onto the street, Ukrayinska Pravda reported citing local news site Novyny-N and the Mykolayiv region’s spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk. The terminal handled almost 17% of the world’s oil export, Pletenchuk said without giving details about ownership of the reservoirs.

Iran Becoming ‘Accomplice’ in War, Lithuanian Minister Says (11:26 a.m.) 

“Iran, with its drones and missiles, is becoming an accomplice in the war, in a similar fashion as Belarus,” Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told reporters in Luxembourg, as his EU counterparts weigh whether to impose more sanctions on Iran after reports on alleged arms deliveries to Russia. Iran’s foreign ministry has denied exporting any weapons for use in the war in Ukraine.

EU Backs New Iran Sanctions Amid Worries Tehran Is Aiding Russia

Nuclear Plant Again Disconnected From Power Grid (10:57 a.m.)

Russian shelling of critical infrastructure facilities Monday damaged the last line connecting the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to Ukraine’s power grid, Ukraine’s Energoatom reported on Telegram. “The back-up transformer used for the ZapNPP’s own needs turned off and the diesel generators started,” the regulator said. Fuel for the generators was delivered to the station last week.

“Such nuclear blackmail by a terrorist country should not go unanswered by the world community! Ukraine needs protection of the sky above its energy facilities!” Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said on Facebook.

German Intelligence Expects More Russian Espionage (10:55 a.m.)

German intelligence services expect the fighting in Ukraine to continue next year and also warn of increasing Russian activities in Germany. “Putin feels threatened by the attractiveness of the Western social model of freedom and democracy in Ukraine and its neighboring countries,” Bruno Kahl, the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service BND, told a public hearing in Berlin. Putin will therefore continue to enforce his goals by military means. 

Intelligence experts also expect an increase in Russian espionage and subversive activities in Germany, said Thomas Haldenwang, the head of the domestic intelligence service BfV.

Iran Denies Exporting Any Weapons for Use in Ukraine War (10:10 a.m.)

Iran is not a party in Russia’s war on Ukraine and has made efforts to end the conflict, Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani tells reporters in Tehran.

Germany Doesn’t Expect Winter Lull in Fighting (9 a.m.)

German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said she’s not hopeful that the onset of winter will lead to a lull in the fighting in Ukraine.

“We mustn’t entertain the hope that calm will come,” Lambrecht said in an interview with public broadcaster ZDF. “We are seeing how Russia has changed its strategy in a very calculated way and is now attacking infrastructure and civilian targets,” she added. She promised Germany will supply Ukraine’s armed forces with equipment to help them cope with the colder conditions, including tents and power generators.

 

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(Bloomberg) — China is increasingly becoming a “tough competitor” for the European Union as it seeks to gain influence in the world, including Africa, Asia and Latin America, the bloc’s foreign policy chief said.

EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg broadly reconfirmed the EU’s approach toward China to treat it as a partner but also as a competitor and systemic rival, allowing the bloc to engage with the country in areas of mutual interest like climate change and health, Josep Borrell told reporters.

But China’s role as a “tough” competitor is of increasing importance, Borrell said after the meeting. 

“The message from China now is one of competing, competing on a political level, the desire to have influence on all sorts of levels,” Borrell said. He added that the EU still needs to engage with China to solve big global problems, “but engage in a way that stays clear-headed, bearing in mind that one of the three slots — competition — right now is probably the most salient.”

The bloc’s relationship with China has also been strained by its closer ties to Russia and its refusal to condemn Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. 

The discussion comes as the Chinese Communist Party Congress meets this week, with President Xi Jinping set to secure a norm-breaking third term in office. Xi made clear in an opening speech Sunday that China wouldn’t deviate from its policies, declaring the “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is now on an irreversible historical course.”

In a paper circulated to member states ahead of Monday’s ministerial meeting, the bloc’s foreign policy arm warned of the EU’s dependence on Chinese products as a “strategic vulnerability” and urged diversification of supply chains for critical technology, such as semiconductors, as well as critical raw materials. 

Inward Looking

The EU said it expects the party congress will confirm “inward looking policies” when it comes to political closure, economic and technological self-reliance, and will likely “widen the divergence between China’s and our own political choices,” the paper said. 

The paper also underscored Taiwan’s impact on the bloc’s relations toward China. The EU said it was important to urge “de-escalation and dissuasion to prevent the erosion of the status quo,” including by referring to “possibly consequences” in case China chose to start a conflict with Taiwan. 

“Any violent or coercive change of the status quo could have massive economic, political and security consequences, at global level, especially considering Taiwan’s primary role as supplier of the most advanced semiconductors,” the EU said in the paper. 

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(Bloomberg) — Stocks climbed after the S&P 500 breached a technical level that has triggered gains in the past, with risk appetite improving as more of UK Prime Minister Liz Truss’s unfunded tax cuts were reversed.

The breadth of the rally was so strong that at one point over 99% of the US benchmark’s companies were rising, with the gauge pushing away from its 200-week moving average. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 outperformed. Bank of America Corp. surged on solid earnings.

This year’s equity rout has left the S&P 500 testing a “serious floor of support,” Morgan Stanley’s Mike Wilson wrote, adding he “would not rule out” a rally to about 4,150 points — suggesting a 16% upside from Friday. Thatwould “be in line with bear-market rallies this year and prior ones.”

“What is likely an extreme oversold condition in the stock market could become a catalyst for a modest rally before the year’s end,” said John Stoltzfus, chief investment strategist at Oppenheimer.

Some 86% of respondents in the latest MLIV Pulse survey expect US markets to recover first, with investors slightly favoring stocks over bonds. The result suggests the longstanding premium for equities will remain in place — and as the Federal Reserve’s peak hawkishness becomes apparent, traders will be prepared to return to Treasury markets in droves.

For now, Mark Haefele at UBS Global Wealth Management notes that historically, markets have bottomed out when investors began to contemplate materially looser policy over the next six to 12 months, when a trough for economic activity was in sight, or when valuations already fully reflected a credible “bear case” scenario.

“Today, we do not believe these conditions have been fulfilled,” Haefele added. “Despite the increased risks to growth and the rise in volatility, equity markets have neither become cheaper relative to bonds, nor yet priced in a material slowdown in growth and earnings.”

The latest recession probability models by Bloomberg economists Anna Wong and Eliza Winger forecast a higher recession probability across all timeframes, with the 12-month estimate of a downturn by October 2023 hitting 100%, up from 65% for the comparable period in the previous update.

“This isn’t a Pollyanna moment,” said Robert Teeter, a managing director of Silvercrest Asset Management. “Inflation clearly remains a problem until proven otherwise, and disappointing earnings, particularly from consumer facing- companies, could trigger another rough stretch, with recession fears at the fore.”

Key events this week:

• US industrial production, NAHB housing market index, Tuesday
• Fed’s Neel Kashkari speaks, Tuesday
• Euro area CPI, Wednesday
• EIA crude oil inventory report, Wednesday
• US MBA mortgage applications, building permits, housing starts, Fed Beige Book, Wednesday
• Fed’s Neel Kashkari, Charles Evans, James Bullard speak, Wednesday
• US existing home sales, initial jobless claims, Conference Board leading index, Thursday
• Euro area consumer confidence, Friday

Some of the main moves in markets:

Stocks

• The S&P 500 Index climbed 2.1% to 3,660.09 as of 11:21 a.m. New York time.
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.3%.
• The Nasdaq Composite Index gained 2.7%.

Currencies

• The euro rose 0.9% to $0.9808.
• The British pound increased 2% to $1.1397.
• The Japanese yen depreciated 0.1% to 148.80 per dollar.

Bonds

• The yield on 10-year Treasuries decreased five basis points to 3.97%.
• Britain’s 10-year yield sank 36 basis points to 3.978%.
• Germany’s 10-year yield decreased seven basis points to 2.28%.

Commodities

• West Texas Intermediate crude was little changed at $85.64 a barrel.
• Gold strengthened 1% to $1,660.76 an ounce.

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(Bloomberg) — Chip delivery times shrank by four days in September, the biggest drop in years, in a sign that the industry’s supply crunch is easing.

Lead times — the gap between when a chip is ordered and when it is delivered — averaged 26.3 weeks in the period, according to research by Susquehanna Financial Group. That compares with nearly 27 weeks the prior month.

Wait times contracted for all key product categories, with power-management and analog chips seeing the biggest declines, Susquehanna analyst Christopher Rolland said in a research note.

A global chip shortage bedeviled a wide range of industries in the past year, with automakers and other manufacturers struggling to get enough semiconductors. Pockets of supply constraints remain, but now many chipmakers are concerned about the opposite problem: chip inventory getting too high. 

A sales slowdown in certain markets, such as personal computers, has left Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. with less demand than expected. AMD’s third-quarter sales missed projections by more than $1 billion earlier this month, and Intel is poised to cut jobs to cope with the slump. 

US tensions with China also are clouding the chip industry’s future. The Biden administration announced new export curbs this month, restricting what US companies can sell to the Asian nation.

The Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index, a key benchmark of chip stocks, has fallen 44% this year. 

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(Bloomberg) — Airbus SE is poised to carry out its first cargo flights for an external client using a fleet of giant Beluga jets originally built to ferry wings between the planemaker’s European factories.

The assignment with the model, named due to the resemblance of its domed fuselage to the white Arctic whale, will be performed before the end of this year, Benoit Lemonnier, managing director of Airbus Beluga Transport, said Monday.

Airbus is expanding into outsize cargo using the first generation of Belugas, a variant of the A300 widebody, which have outlasted their original use due to the emergence of larger and more efficient A330-based models to carry wings. The move has coincided with a drop in global heavy-lift capacity after the war in Ukraine reduced the availability of Antonov An-124s, which had dominated the market.

“We know that the market is made up of several hundred missions a year and we want to capture a significant part of that,” Lemonnier said in an online briefing after the new division delivered a satellite to the US. 

He declined to name the customer for the pending third-party flights, though Airbus said it’s pursuing contracts in the US, Europe and Asia. All five Beluga STs in service will be available by 2024 with the deployment of six new Beluga XLs for wing missions. 

In another example of how the jets will now be used, a satellite known as Hotbird I3G manufactured by Airbus’s space arm was flown to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it will be launched into orbit for French operator Eutelsat SA.

Further such Beluga assignments are likely, with eight more satellites in production, though Lemonnier said his business has to bid for the work like all external suppliers. Other operations this year have included the transportation of helicopters from an Airbus factory in Marignane, France.

Objects carried by outsize cargo planes range from heavy infrastructure for the oil and power industry through trucks, tanks and boats to disaster-relief equipment such as pre-assembled bridges.

Ukrainian cargo carrier Antonov has moved its operations to the Leipzig Halle hub in Germany since the Russian invasion, which saw attacks on its operations at Hostomel airfield outside Kyiv that saw the destruction of the sole An-225, the world’s heaviest-ever aircraft.

Russia’s Volga-Dnepr Airlines, the other main An-124 operator, has been limited by sanctions, with some aircraft impounded overseas.

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(Bloomberg) — Liquidators charged with untangling the blowup of Three Arrows Capital are taking unusual steps to force the crypto hedge fund’s founders, Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, to cooperate with its unwinding. 

Court-appointed liquidators from advisory firm Teneo, along with their lawyers, are asking a US judge for permission to serve Zhu and Davies with subpoenas through their Twitter accounts and email addresses because normal methods have failed, court papers show. The founders precise whereabouts are still unknown and their lawyers refuse to accept papers on their behalf, according to the filings. 

Zhu and Davies still have not fully cooperated with the probe after the hedge fund’s implosion several months ago, according to the liquidators. Following an initial Zoom call in July, Zhu and Davies have each spoken with the liquidators only once in the intervening months, in separate video conferences. 

The founders have provided only “meager” information to the liquidators, who are trying to take control of accounts and sort out the defunct hedge fund’s financial wreckage, according the court papers. For example, Davies has not yet provided access to a safety deposit that contains crypto account credentials, the liquidators say. 

“The founders, through counsel, have maintained that the limited information provided to us to date, which amounts to an incomplete list of assets and selective disclosures regarding the means to access digital assets electronically, represents all of the documents in their possession relating to” Three Arrows, one of the liquidators, Russell Crumpler, said in a statement filed in US bankruptcy court on Friday. The advisers think Zhu and Davies have yet more information to turn over, he said. 

Christopher Anand Daniel, a Singapore-based lawyer that Teneo says represents the founders, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The US bankruptcy case is Three Arrows Capital Ltd and Russell Crumpler, 22-10920, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

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(Bloomberg) — Companies from Apple Inc. to General Motors Co. to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are grappling with how to coax employees back to the office. Harley-Davidson Inc. is taking a different tack: let them stay home.

The 119-year-old motorcycle manufacturer shuttered its Milwaukee headquarters in March 2020 and hasn’t fully opened it since. Chief Executive Officer Jochen Zeitz is even planning to repurpose the 500,000-square-foot complex later this year, showing just how serious Harley is in its commitment to remote work.

Zeitz, who took over in 2020, is the father of two young children and splits his time between homes in Milwaukee and his ranch near Santa Fe, New Mexico. He says a combination of the pandemic and fatherhood convinced him that the flexibility of virtual meetings was far preferable to “less inclusive” physical office spaces.

“Having the ability to just push a button wherever that person sits, get that person online, or create a meeting — that is not defined by which floor you sit on and who’s in the corner office,” Zeitz said in an interview at Bloomberg’s New York headquarters. “It democratizes the way we work together and allows you to bring the best talent into the company, no matter where they sit.”

See also: Airbnb’s co-founder bets on remote work

That tolerance of nomadic employees isn’t just altruism. Zeitz spun off Harley’s e-bike business last month via a reverse merger, declaring LiveWire Group Inc. the “first virtual electric motorcycle company.” With the global auto industry going electric, he’s in a fierce battle for engineering talent, and he’s recruited from places like Rivian Automotive Inc. and Tesla Inc.

LiveWire has a research and development lab in Silicon Valley and engineering and product development in Milwaukee. The bikes are assembled at Harley’s factory in York, Pennsylvania. Harley says its Milwaukee headquarters will remain “integral” to the company’s US footprint, and Zeitz didn’t specify how he plans to remake the space.

Zeitz’s philosophy is in stark contrast to that of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who told employees recently they had to spend 40 hours a week in the office, and failure to show up would be considered a resignation.

Other companies that have tried to take that approach, or even a hybrid option, have faced blowback.

GM sent a letter to employees in late September requiring them to return to the office at least three days a week. The pushback was so strong, it walked back the mandate just a few days later. The Detroit automaker will gradually bring people back starting early in 2023, and allow managers to craft plans for individual employees, said a letter signed by CEO Mary Barra and other members of the executive team. Plus, any employee hired remotely will not be forced to relocate close to GM facilities.

Read more: GM scales back return-to-office plan after backlash

Even though Zeitz is embracing remote work, he still thinks face-to-face meetings are valuable — as long as there’s a clear purpose. 

“I don’t want to see the exact same agenda we would have if we were on a screen,” he said.

Earlier this year, the company opened up the product development center in Milwaukee and brought in 2,000 employees and their families.

That’s the kind of gathering Zeitz envisions in a world of remote work. He says he measures employees by their “engagement” — what they deliver — not by counting how many hours they sit in front of a screen.

“You can sit in an office and be very disengaged — instead of working on your computer, you just play with your games,” he said.  “We need to trust our employees, that’s critical.”

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