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(Bloomberg) — Troubled EV startup Mullen Automotive Inc. has emerged as the leading bidder for the assets of bankrupt competitor Electric Last Mile Solutions Inc., including a now-idle former Hummer SUV factory in Indiana.

Mullen agreed to a stalking horse bid of “almost $100 million in total consideration,” according to a Sept. 16 filing by the trustee in Electric Last Mile’s Chapter 7 case. Competing bids are due by Oct. 3, and an auction will be held Oct. 7.

Details of the offer come after Mullen, which aims to bring electric vehicles to market including a compact SUV and a sports car, announced it was acquiring a majority stake in rival Bollinger Motors in a cash-and-stock transaction.

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

The firms are among a number of EV startups struggling to break through in a market dominated by Tesla Inc. at a time of overstretched supply chains and high costs. One day after the Bollinger deal was announced, Mullen, whose stock has declined about 90% this year, revealed it had fallen out of compliance with Nasdaq’s minimum share price requirements.

The shares fell 5.7% at 12:22 p.m. Monday in New York.

The trustee has said that as many as 245 potential strategic or financial parties were solicited for the assets of Electric Last Mile, which filed for bankruptcy in June, and that 39 of those have executed non-disclosure agreements to perform due diligence and potentially make a bid. Securing Mullen as a stalking horse bidder “represents a tremendous benefit to the debtors’ estates and creditors,” he wrote in Friday’s filing.

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(Bloomberg) — Vista Equity Partners has offered to buy software-security firm KnowBe4 Inc. for $24 per share in cash, according to a statement Monday. The stock soared on the news. 

The buyout firm’s non-binding proposal represents a 39% premium to KnowBe4’s closing share price on Friday. The stock rose 28% to $22.16 at 11:26 a.m. in New York trading Monday, giving the company a market value of about $3.9 billion. 

Vista Equity, run by billionaire Robert Smith, is one of the most active private equity investors in the software space, announcing deals this year for companies including Avalara Inc. and Citrix Systems Inc. 

KnowBe4, led by Chief Executive Officer and Founder Stu Sjouwerman, offers so-called security awareness training, which helps companies teach their employees to fend off malware, phishing and other cybersecurity threats, according to its website. 

KnowBe4’s board has formed a special committee of independent directors to consider Vista’s offer. Morgan Stanley is its financial adviser while Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati is its legal adviser. Potter Anderson & Corroon is the special committee’s legal adviser. 

 

 

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(Bloomberg) —

Europe’s biggest truckmakers are stockpiling natural gas and preparing to shift to alternative fuels amid the threat of a winter shortage as Russia continues to cut off pipelines to the continent.

Mercedes-Benz Trucks, a unit of the world’s biggest commercial vehicle maker Daimler Truck Holding AG, is switching to oil for a large part of production at plants in Germany, according to division head Karin Radstrom. Volkswagen AG’s Traton SE, owner of the Scania and MAN brands, has a “huge” gas tank on the way and is going back to “good old coal,” said Chief Executive Officer Christian Levin. 

“The worst period will be the cold months when there’s competition with private households, hospitals and business,” Levin said, speaking at the IAA Transportation show in Hanover, Germany. “The entire Volkswagen group is preparing for a period of shortages.”

As Europe’s energy crisis rolls on and temperatures have started to cool, sky-rocketing prices rippling through supply chains are starting to hit home. Germany, which is most dependent on Russian gas, has seen imports of vital chemicals jump 40% during the first half as companies increasingly replace gas-intensive processes with products from elsewhere. 

Manufacturers are also grappling with higher costs that are pushing many smaller companies supplying key parts to the brink. Others, like Domo Chemicals Holding NV, has begun partly filling European polymer orders to the car industry with materials from the company’s facilities in North America and China, where possible. 

“We have identified at-risk parts and we’re talking to suppliers about them,” said Levin. “We need to act responsibly and make sure they survive these tough times.”

Italian truckmaker Iveco Group NV said it was holding talks with suppliers about their struggles with energy prices, adding it is discussing options for financial support or assistance in securing energy supplies. Several of the company’s suppliers had planned extended production breaks over the summer due to the high price of electricity and gas.

“In most of the cases we could motivate them to restart production for us,” Iveco Chief Executive Officer Gerrit Marx said. “We have a full order book and we need our suppliers to be on board.”

While energy availability and its cost has taken center stage, Traton continues to work through shortages for semiconductors and other parts that are capping production at about 85%, Levin said. Mercedes likewise is still struggling to source enough chips, even as the situation has improved from a year ago, according to Radstrom. 

“It’s almost part of normal business somehow,” she said.

After months chip shortages idling production, truckmakers remain in catch-up mode even as the energy crisis takes center stage and order books are full.

“It’s a very uncertain time and we look at the early indicators,” said Radstrom. “I see all the signs, but I don’t see it in the business. I’m cautiously optimistic.”

(Updates with Iveco CEO comment in seventh and eighth paragraphs.)

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(Bloomberg) — The founder of a cryptocurrency investment research firm was accused by the SEC of promoting an initial coin offering without disclosing that he had been paid $5 million to do so.

Ian Balina, 33, promoted the SPRK token on social media platforms including YouTube and Telegram without revealing that he had been paid by the company that offered it, the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a suit filed Monday in federal court in Austin, Texas. 

While the SEC didn’t identify Balina’s firm, the description matches that of Token Metrics, an Austin-based firm that provides “AI-based cryptocurrency ratings and price predictions.” Balina’s bio on the site describes him as a “former IBM Watson Analytics evangelist” who has “built million-dollar businesses from the ground up.”

Balina, a self-described crypto asset investor, promoter and influencer, documented his investment process and research on YouTube and other social media outlets through an online diary called “Diary of a Made Man.”

The SEC also accused Balina of organizing an investing pool of about 50 people and offered them the chance to buy tokens from him upon their release without registering. 

Balina’s lawyer, Stephen Galebach, didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Token Metrics also didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The SEC said the company behind SPRK, Sparkster Ltd., a software development company incorporated in the Cayman Islands, raised about $30 million from almost 4,000 investors in an unregistered offering that took place between April and July 2018. 

In addition to paying him $5 million, Sparkster also gave Balina a 30 percent bonus on any tokens he bought, the regulator said in the suit.

The case is US v Balina, 22-cv-950, US District Court, Western District of Texas (Austin.)

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(Bloomberg) — What is Bitcoin for, exactly? While that’s been a tricky question to answer in years past, it’s safe to say that right now, it’s definitely not for preservation of wealth. The shiny new thing is down 60% YTD against the grimy old thing (aka the USD). More losses may follow as the Fed hikes, with the bank’s next installment due midweek.

Bitcoin’s collapse makes for a decent new entry in the tulip mania archives. Since peaking last November, it’s down 73%. That’s quite a train wreck. With delicious irony, the same week it registered a record, the Fed warned of perilous plunges for risky assets should the economy take a turn for the worse. As the US central bank responded belatedly to inflation, Bitcoin tanked.

In commodityland, my engagement with Bitcoin is derivative and I don’t fully understand its pricing dynamics (does anyone?). So I check to see how its performing vis-a-vis gold, an old haven that some crypto evangelists used to say was out of date. It turns out that neither are great when the Fed really means business. But while gold’s prospects look merely dim, Bitcoin’s look absolutely dire and a four-figure price isn’t out of the question.

This was a post on Bloomberg’s Markets Live blog. The observations are those of the blogger and not intended as investment advice. For more markets analysis, go to MLIV.

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(Bloomberg) — American Express Co. is on the hunt for software engineers, coders and developers, part of a 1,500-person hiring spree for its sprawling technology arm.

The company, the biggest US card issuer by purchases, has already added more than 3,600 technical workers this year and hopes to fill the remaining openings by the end of the year, Ravi Radhakrishnan, AmEx’s chief information officer, said in an interview. Roughly 60% of the hires will be in the US, with about a third in India and the rest in Europe, he said. 

AmEx, which had 64,000 employees as of the end of last year, is up against a raging war for technology talent. Nearly two-thirds of human-resources professionals cited hiring qualified developers as their biggest recruitment challenge of the year, according to a Deloitte report in February.

“It is without a doubt a challenging environment to recruit technical talent,” Radhakrishnan said in an interview. “The war for talent is a true consideration.” 

Spending on AmEx’s network has roared back this year as customers return to traveling and dining out following years of pandemic-related lockdowns. The company now expects revenue for the year to climb as much as 25%, a bigger increase than previous forecasts. As a result, New York-based AmEx has said it wants to beef up its investments in technology and talent. 

“We now expect our full-year operating expenses to be around $13 billion as we invest in our talented colleague base, technology and other key underpinnings of our growth given our tremendously high levels of revenue growth,” Chief Financial Officer Jeff Campbell said in July. 

Radhakrishnan said teams across the company are looking for data scientists, engineers and analysts for handling everything from fraud management to lifestyle services to the company’s venture-capital arm.

AmEx has been one of the few banks to embrace remote work even after the pandemic, with 40% of staffers opting to be fully virtual. The majority of the company’s staffers have chosen to come into the office two days a week and work remotely the rest of the week.

“There’s a lot of talent that wants to understand how we approach flexibility,” Radhakrishnan said. “It’s not just the flexibility that we offer — the option to be virtual, in-person or hybrid. It’s combining it with purpose. We do do that. We ask people to work with their leaders to determine the purpose for coming in.” 

(Updates with headcount figure in third paragraph.)

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(Bloomberg) — Chinese researchers have developed a mask that lets users know if they’ve been exposed to Covid-19 or the flu, a development that could help vulnerable populations even as the use of face coverings falls and more nations ease virus restrictions.

A sensor built into a mask was able to detect the Covid-19, H5N1 and H1N1 influenza viruses in the air within 10 minutes and send notifications to a device, according to the study led by six scientists working with Tongji University in Shanghai. The peer-reviewed findings were published in the scientific journal Matter on Monday.

While the pandemic prompted the widespread wearing of masks and a proliferation of designs — including a version with a microphone developed by Razer Inc. — the easing of Covid-related mandates in most major economies has led to a drop-off in use. 

Still, mask use remains widespread in countries including China, which retains a strict Covid Zero policy, while many people around the world continue to wear them to protect themselves and others from the virus regardless of government rules. An Axios-Ipsos survey in early September found that 37% of Americans wear a mask outside the home at least sometimes, down from 89% two years ago.

China’s Deadly Quarantine Bus Crash Stokes Covid Zero Anger

The new device, which is mounted outside the mask with a rechargable lithium battery, was tested by spraying pathogens on it in an indoor setting, simulating a likely scenario where someone is talking or coughing. Sensors responded to liquid about 70 to 560 times less than the amount produced in a sneeze, sending alerts to wireless devices like a phone. 

The researchers said that the device was best used in enclosed spaces where the risk of infection is high, and are working on shortening the detection times and sensitivity of the device, which can be configured for different viruses if necessary. No cost estimates were published on the accessory.

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(Bloomberg) — A slide in cryptocurrencies Monday sent Bitcoin to a three-month low as sentiment took a knock from a wave of monetary tightening that’s set to stretch from Europe to the US this week.

The largest digital token sank as much as 7.4% to $18,273 before paring losses. That’s the lowest since digital-asset prices tumbled after the collapse of crypto lender Celsius in June. Ether shed up to 6.6%, struggling to hold the $1,300 mark. Coins like XRP and Polkadot posted heavier losses.

Investors are bracing for volatility from the jumbo Federal Reserve interest-rate hike expected Wednesday to fight price pressures. Higher borrowing costs are sapping the liquidity that the crypto sector relies on. 

The backdrop is such that “in this inflationary environment macro trumps everything,” wrote Antoni Trenchev, managing partner at crypto lender Nexo.

Ether, the second-largest token, was at a two-month low. A jump in the coin since mid-June — spurred by hype around an upgrade of the Ethereum blockchain to slash energy usage — is unwinding now the revamp is done.

An additional token investors received after the Ethereum revamp continued to tumble. EthereumPOW, as the offshoot is known, represents much of the legacy computing operations of the blockchain that chose not to participate in the software update. It was down 40%, according to CoinGecko data.

The XRP token affiliated with Ripple Labs Inc. was among the biggest decliners, shedding as much as 13.5%. That came amid reports that the firm and the US Securities and Exchange Commission prefers an immediate ruling in a court case over whether Ripple was “reckless” in claiming XRP isn’t a regulated security.

Meanwhile, interest in digital currencies has waned, according to Google trends data compiled by Nicholas Colas of DataTrek Research. Search volumes have trended lower as Bitcoin fell toward $20,000 this year. 

Bitcoin “works best when new investors come into the fold with fresh money. It is hard to argue that the current global investment and economic environments favor speculative asset classes,” Colas wrote in a note. “There will be a time to look at virtual currencies from the long side; we just think it is a bit too soon to consider that trade now.”

The market value of digital tokens is down more than $70 billion in the past 24 hours to $941 billion — a far cry from the $3 trillion peak in 2021, according to CoinGecko figures. Tightening financial conditions and spectacular blowups at leveraged crypto firms sparked a rout in prices this year.

Bitcoin is down almost 60% this year. If the price drops below the $17,599 reached on June 18, it would be at the lowest level since December 2020.

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(Bloomberg) — A startup backed by a billionaire Brazilian family is partnering with e-commerce platform Farmers Business Network to offer robots that spray fertilizer and pesticides to US farmers. 

Solinftec’s robots, which run on solar panels, are autonomous and were designed to apply fertilizer and weed killer only where needed. The company said the technology, already in use in Brazil, can reduce product use by as much as 70%. As a result of the deal, both companies will work with farmers in the US to commercialize the robot and to develop new methods for agrochemicals to be used with robotics technology.

“We believe we can service demand for localized application, reducing soil compression, with smaller and cheaper equipment, all connected and running autonomously,” said Leonardo Carvalho, director of operations for Solinftec. The company already serves sugarcane, soybeans, corn, cotton and coffee farmers in Brazil.

Read more: Billionaire family buys stake in Brazil agricultural tech firm

Solinftec is backed by Brazil’s Trajano family, which made a fortune through retailing. The startup’s technology uses AI to analyze crops and weather, determining how to use chemicals and seeds most efficiently. Solinftec is currently servicing 22 million acres (8.9 million hectares), but says it can reach over 124 million acres in the next few years with the partnership. 

The company already has 30 robots to deliver to producers in spring 2023, in addition to the ones being tested this year, Carvalho said. This year, Solinftec received a $60 million investment from private equity investors The Lightsmith Group and Unbox Capital, which manages investments for the Trajano family, and sold about $27 million of green bonds. The series C round will happen at the end of this year, and the company expects to reach a $1 billion valuation.

(Updates with Trajano family backing)

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(Bloomberg) — A hacker published authentic, pre-release footage from development of Grand Theft Auto VI, the most anticipated video game from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.

The cache of videos offers an extensive and unauthorized look at the making of one of biggest games in the industry. A leak of this scale is so rare that some people cast doubt on its authenticity when it emerged over the weekend, but people familiar with the game’s development said the videos are real. The footage provides an early and unpolished view of plans for Grand Theft Auto VI, though the final version will look much more refined, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the details are private.

Take-Two issued requests for YouTube and other websites to remove the videos, citing a copyright claim, but not before they were widely disseminated. Rockstar Games, the Take-Two studio that makes Grand Theft Auto, confirmed the hack in a statement posted to Twitter on Monday. It blamed a “network intrusion” that allowed the hacker to download the content. Take-Two shares were down as much as 3.3% on Monday.

The hacker posted dozens of never-before-seen videos from Grand Theft Auto VI on an online message board over the weekend. On the forum, the person suggested they were the same hacker who infiltrated Uber Technologies Inc. in a high-profile incident last week. The claim is unverified. The hacker indicated in a follow-up message about the upcoming Grand Theft Auto game, “I am looking to negotiate a deal,” and raised the prospect of publishing more internal information about the project.

The last Grand Theft Auto came out in 2013 and became the most valuable entertainment property, built on the sustained popularity of its companion online game. The upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI has been in development in some form since 2014, Bloomberg has reported. It will feature a playable female protagonist for the first time in the series and will be primarily set in a fictional version of Miami, Bloomberg reported. Take-Two acknowledged the game’s existence for the first time in February, a disclosure that quickly sent its stock surging 7%.

Rockstar Games employees were stunned by the leak, the people familiar with the project said. Many were grappling with the implications of the event and how management would respond to it over the weekend. In the statement Monday, Rockstar expressed disappointment but said the hack would not affect development of the game or any others. “We do not anticipate any disruption to our live game service nor any long-term effect on the development of our ongoing projects,” Rockstar said in the statement.

In July, the video game maker Roblox Corp. accused a hacker of publishing stolen information in an attempt to extort the business. Neil Druckmann, co-president of Sony Group Corp.’s Naughty Dog who dealt with pre-release information about his game the Last of Us II, posted a message Sunday on Twitter seeking to reassure “my fellow devs out there affected by the latest leak.”

(Updates with company comment starting in the third paragraph.)

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