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(Bloomberg) — Rishi Sunak, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, plans to establish the country as a global hub for crypto. He’s got some catching up to do: The competition between countries trying to attract crypto talent is only intensifying. But this environment, in which some politicians seem prepared to make major concessions to the crypto industry, gives rise to an important question: Who’s standing up for consumer protection? Bloomberg reporter Will Shaw joins this episode to discuss the regulatory landscape for consumer protection in digital assets in the UK.

Follow us on Twitter @crypto, and subscribe to the Bloomberg Crypto Newsletter at https://bloom.bg/cryptonewsletter

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(Bloomberg) —

Bitcoin dipped below $20,000 for the first time in almost a week, as the token’s lack of sustained upward momentum caused some technical analysts to raise the prospect of further declines.

The largest cryptocurrency dropped as much as 1.8% before recovering slightly to trade at $19,991 at 9:45 a.m. in London. The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 100 index, which measures 100 of the top tokens, fell as much as 3.9%.

“Most short-term technicals point to an above-average chance of a final ‘washout’-style decline before this bottoms,” said Mark Newton, technical strategist at Fundstrat, in a note Tuesday. Bitcoin has room to drop as low as $12,500 to $13,000, “which I expect should be an excellent place for intermediate-term buyers to add to longs,” he wrote. 

Bitcoin’s relatively steady trading since crashing to a low of $17,560 on June 18 had fueled optimism that the battered crypto market was setting the stage for a rebound. Yet the sector remains under pressure from central banks’ efforts to drain liquidity, as well as a series of high-profile crypto blowups that have dented investor confidence.   

Read more: Crypto’s $2 Trillion Shakeout Portends Lehman Moment

More stable crypto prices recently have probably sparked some relief “given the stream of negative headlines over the last couple of months,” said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda. “I fear more may follow in the weeks ahead and I wonder whether the community does too, given its inability to get any traction above $20,000.”

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(Bloomberg) —

Ministers are considering maximum stakes of between £2 and £5 for online casinos and a ban on free bets as the UK updates 17-year-old gambling legislation to address concerns about addiction, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

Gaming companies could also be required to remove features from online games that increase the level of risk for customers, such as quick games where customers can lose money faster, the person said, asking not to be identified because the deliberations are private. 

Online casinos may also have to implement “affordability checks” to show how much users can safely spend, the person said. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other cabinet ministers are expected to sign off on a final decision within the next week. 

Investors may be relieved that the proposed legislation isn’t more onerous, analysts, including Jefferies’s James Wheatcroft, said. The key points are “relatively benign” and can be expected to have a limited financial impact on the industry, he said in a note to clients on Wednesday. 

888 Holdings Plc shares rose 4.9% in London trading at 9:08 a.m., while Playtech Plc gained 0.2% and Flutter Entertainment Plc increased 0.8%. Entain Plc rose 0.1%. 

The government is also mulling plans to relax regulations for physical casino operators, allowing them to install as many as 80 gaming machines, up from 20, the person said. Casinos will also be able to extend credit to wealthy foreigners as part of an attempt to level the playing field with online gaming companies. Rank Group Plc, which operates casinos in the UK, rose 3.3%. 

The Gambling Commission, which regulates the industry, will be given new powers and additional funding from an increase in fees paid by the industry, the person said. 

A spokesman for the Betting and Gaming Council, which represents the industry, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. A call requesting comment from the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport was unanswered. 

The Times newspaper reported on the UK proposal earlier. 

(Updates with analyst and share reaction starting in the fourth paragraph)

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(Bloomberg) — Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani just got busy with the early stages of succession planning at his energy-to-technology conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd., naming two of his offspring as chiefs of key units in his $217 billion empire.

On Tuesday, the 65-year-old tycoon made way for his first-born Akash Ambani to become the chairman of India’s No. 1 wireless carrier Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. Akash’s twin sister Isha, 30, is set to be appointed chair of Reliance’s retail arm, and an announcement is expected as early as Wednesday, people familiar with the matter said. The company declined to comment.

While Mumbai-based Reliance has telegraphed such a leadership transition, the move underscores the senior Ambani’s efforts to avert family feuds that have torn many wealthy clans apart, including his own. Bloomberg News reported last year that the mogul’s favored succession plan shares elements with that of Walmart Inc.’s Walton family, a framework that would allow the biggest transfer of wealth in recent times.

The changes at the top come at a crucial time for Reliance. In a pivot from its legacy oil refining and petrochemicals business, the conglomerate is diversifying into e-commerce, green energy and expanding its retail footprint across the country. In 2020, technology venture Jio Platforms Ltd. lured more than $25 billion from marquee Silicon Valley investors including Meta Platforms Inc. and Google. It has also unveiled ambitious plans to take on Amazon.com Inc. in the country, including streaming.

“It shows a well-planned succession plan,” said Sankaran Manikutty, a former professor who taught at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad and has extensively worked on family businesses, telecommunications and strategy in emerging economies. “Ambani just ensured the continuity of the business. For now, nothing will change for the conglomerate, but Mukesh Ambani will be around to guide the next generation.”

Before their elevation, both Isha and Akash played prominent roles as directors in those units. They were part of teams that negotiated with Meta when the Menlo Park, California-based company decided to invest almost $6 billion in Jio Platforms. At annual shareholders meetings in recent years, the twins have introduced new products and demonstrated various technology applications such as virtual reality. Their father has credited his children with helping nudge him into the internet business.

Isha, a Yale University graduate and a former McKinsey & Co. consultant, kicked off Reliance’s e-commerce foray into fashion retail in 2016 by starting online shopping portal Ajio. Like Jio Platforms, Reliance Retail Ventures also brought on board many investors like General Atlantic and KKR & Co. in 2020, valuing the retailer at as much as $62 billion then. 

Reliance Retail runs supermarkets, India’s largest consumer electronics chain store, a cash and carry wholesaler, fast-fashion outlets and an online grocery store called JioMart. It reported $2.6 billion in revenue for the year through March 2022. The unit operates more than 12,000 stores across the country. 

Brown University Alumnus

Akash, who has studied economics and is an alumnus of Brown University, will oversee a telecommunications operator that debuted in 2016. With its free calls and cheap data, Reliance Jio shook up an industry mired in debt and sent some competitors into bankruptcy. The group is betting on this unit’s pipes to deliver a range of services from e-commerce to entertainment in a market with almost 600 million smartphones. Reliance Jio is now gearing up for India’s auction of 5G airwaves by the end of July.

The twins have a younger brother, Anant, 27, who is a member of the board of Jio Platforms. It’s still unclear what broader plans his father has for his youngest child. 

Mukesh Ambani, the chairman and managing director of the group’s flagship Reliance Industries, has for years studied the ways in which billionaire families, from the Waltons to the Kochs, passed on what they’d built to the next generation, Bloomberg News reported last year. With the latest moves, Mukesh Ambani may still be looking at the Walton family model.

Trust-Like Structure

In a nod to that structure, Ambani was considering moving his family’s holdings into a trust-like structure that would control the Mumbai-listed flagship Reliance Industries, people familiar with the matter said last year.

As part of that plan, Ambani, his wife Nita, and three children would have stakes in the new entity overseeing Reliance and be on its board, along with a few of Ambani’s long-term confidantes as advisers. Management, though, will largely be entrusted to outsiders, professionals who will handle the day-to-day operations of India’s most influential company and its businesses that span oil refining and petrochemicals to telecommunications, e-commerce and green energy. 

By bringing his children into formal roles, Ambani is also seeking to avoid repeating the mistake of his own father, Dhirubhai, who died in 2002 without leaving a will. Mukesh and his younger brother Anil feuded for three years over the control of Reliance, before their mother stepped in to resolve the dispute by carving up the empire. The older sibling inherited the oil refining and petrochemicals businesses, while the younger one got the newer ventures in finance, infrastructure, power and telecom.

Mukesh is Asia’s second-richest man with a net worth of about $91 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. 

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(Bloomberg) — The imploded sale of Boots is just the latest chapter in the UK drugstore chain’s long battle to compete on main streets up and down the country, but it may be the most challenging one yet.

The 173-year-old retailer will stay under the ownership of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., at least for now, after the US health-care group decided to abandon the sale Tuesday. Faced with the worst cost-of-living crisis in Britain in decades and an ambivalent parent company whose main focus is the core North American business, Boots and its Chief Executive Officer Sebastian James are going to have to fight hard to vie for customers. 

“For Boots the collapse of the disposal cannot be considered great news,” said Clive Black, head of research at Shore Capital. “Walgreens wants out. Meanwhile, Boots has a need for its stores to be recapitalized, a credible online capability evolved, staff to be energized and an estate to be managed.”

Since starting out as a herbalist store in Nottingham in 1849, Boots has grown to be a household name. It runs one of the largest store estates in the UK with more than 2,000 outlets and has developed a suite of private label beauty brands, such as the successful No7 Beauty Company. It also has smaller operations in Ireland, Norway, the Netherlands and Thailand, as well as an optician business. 

Walgreens said it will continue to invest in Boots and the No7 brand and stay focused on their further growth and profitability. Shares in Walgreens closed down nearly 3% on Tuesday. The stock is down more than 21% since the start of the year. 

Fierce Competition

“It’s an exciting time for these businesses,”said Walgreens Chief Executive Officer Rosalind Brewer in a statement Tuesday. 

Not everyone agrees. Many large Boots stores need to be renovated and adapted to changing consumer trends as they face fierce competition from rival Superdrug, owned by AS Watson & Co Ltd. The pharmacy business is battling pricing pressure as the National Health Service, Britain’s state-run health-care system, reins in reimbursement for prescribed drugs. 

While Boots has invested hundreds of millions of pounds in its warehouses and technology to support online sales, it’s still considered digitally behind some online-only beauty rivals. The chain has also had to make moves to become more competitive recently, freezing prices of key lines as consumers grapple with rising energy, food and fuel bills. 

The most recent figures from Walgreens showed Boots improving — and there could be fresh evidence of further progress when the latest quarterly numbers are released Thursday — but it’s going to be a long haul. James, a veteran UK retailer who previously ran Dixons Carphone, now has the job of trying to steer Boots through this tricky period. 

In-stock levels and the general state of the stores at Boots has been poor for a while, according to Tony Shiret, an analyst at Panmure Gordon. However, the more significant challenge facing James is “probably a draining effect on morale and a lack of obvious direction,” he said. 

Waiting Game

Shiret expects Walgreens to wait until markets are taking a more positive view of consumer businesses and then to try again to sell Boots. Others suggest that Walgreens won’t attempt a sale again soon after it not only failed to find a buyer, but only attracted bids at a far lower price than Stefano Pessina, Walgreens’ executive chairman who led the process, wanted.

Pessina has a long history with Boots that dates back to 2006 when he merged the chain with his Alliance UniChem business, before taking it private with KKR & Co. and then selling it to Walgreens in two transactions in 2012 and 2014. 

A partial listing of Boots chain might be the most realistic option in the future rather than a sale, although that could be a ways off given the torrid time Europe’s consumer sector is having. Europe’s retail index is down 35% year-to-date, the worst performing industry by far. The MSCI World Retailing Index, which includes the likes of Target Corp., Zalando SE and Amazon.com Inc., is down 30% in 2022, its first negative year since 2008. 

If You Thought the Tech Rout Was Bad, Spare a Dime for Retailers

Whether Boots receives the support needed from Walgreens to keep key staff and positively evolve, remains to be seen, Black said. “However, a click of the fingers cannot improve performance, the market conditions are deteriorating, and the competition is strong,” he said. 

 

(Adds some additional details and Walgreens closing share price)

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(Bloomberg) — Indian online-education provider Byju’s has offered to buy 2U Inc. in a cash deal that values the US-listed edtech company at more than $1 billion, a person familiar with the matter said.

Byju’s made the offer of about $15 a share to 2U’s board last week, said the person, who asked not to be named as the bid isn’t yet public. The offer represents a 61% premium to 2U’s closing price of $9.30 on the Nasdaq on Tuesday and gives the Lanham, Maryland-based company an enterprise value of about $2 billion.

Byju’s, one of the world’s most valuable startups with backing from Tiger Global Management and Mark Zuckerberg’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, is accelerating its expansion globally through acquisitions. Bloomberg reported in May that Byju’s was likely to bid for either 2U or Chegg Inc. Talks with Santa Clara, California-based Chegg haven’t progressed, the person said.

The talks with 2U could still fall apart and a deal may not materialize if its board rejects the offer. 2U has a current market value of $717 million and about $1 billion in debt and other liabilities. A representative for 2U declined to comment. Byju’s and Chegg didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Byju’s has secured financing of more than $2.4 billion for whichever deal it finally pursues as it looks to step up its growth and global expansion, said the person. While debt financing is more expensive than just three months ago, assets are cheaper and deals are still looking attractive, the person said. Shares of 2U have declined more than 80% since a peak of $55.55 in early 2021.

Meanwhile, Byju’s is pushing back payments for an approximately $1 billion acquisition of test-preparation provider Aakash Educational Services struck last year, according to people familiar with the matter. Byju’s asked to postpone the payments until late August because regulators have yet to clear the acquisition, said one of the people, adding that it had nothing to do with cash shortages. Aakash’s shareholders agreed to the extension, the person said.

Byju’s is India’s most valuable startup, with a valuation of $22 billion, according to the market researcher CB Insights. The edtech pioneer, formally known as Think & Learn Pvt, has about 115 million students using its online learning platform, with 7 million of them paying annual subscriptions. Its backers also include Silver Lake Management, Naspers Ltd., and Mary Meeker’s Bond Capital.

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(Bloomberg) — A Taiwanese chip company announced a $5 billion investment in the US this week and another is planning a research center in the Midwest. The back-to-back announcements may help allay concerns among American politicians and business leaders that the country is relying too much on Taiwan for production of semiconductors.

Silicon-wafer maker GlobalWafers Co. said on Monday that it plans to build a plant that will be the biggest of its kind on American soil with construction to start later this year. Chip designer MediaTek Inc., a rival to Qualcomm Inc., said on Tuesday it will create a research center in partnership with Purdue University in Indiana.

“With the global chips shortage and ongoing geopolitical concerns, GlobalWafers is taking this opportunity to address the United States semiconductor supply chain resiliency issue by building an advanced node, state-of-the-art, 300-millimeter silicon wafer factory,” GlobalWafers Chairwoman and Chief Executive Officer Doris Hsu said in a statement on Monday. Hsu told Taiwan media that 80% of its production capacity at the yet-to-be-built Texas plant has been booked.

US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has said dependence on Taiwan puts her country in a fragile situation. Former Google chief Eric Schmidt this month amplified concerns that it is a national security risk for America to rely on Taiwan and other Asian countries for the majority of its chip supply. Russia’s attack on Ukraine has heightened such worries, as some see the war increasing the chances that China will seek to invade Taiwan.

GlobalWafers and MediaTek are following in the footsteps of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest contract chipmaker, which is building a $12 billion plant in Arizona to diversify its production capacity and satisfy Washington’s demand that some chips for national security use should be made domestically.

Even after TSMC first announced its plans for the Arizona plant, US officials and business leaders continued to warn that it is too risky for the world’s chip production to be centralized in Taiwan. They have ramped up their rhetoric in recent months as part of their campaign to get lawmakers to approve $52 billion in federal grants to aid domestic manufacturing.

China sees self-governing, democratic Taiwan as part of its own territory, and hasn’t ruled out taking the island through force. A senior Chinese economist at a government-run research group this month called on authorities to seize TSMC if the US hits China with sanctions on par with those leveled against Russia.

While Taiwan hasn’t exactly addressed what it may do about chip supply should China invade, Taiwanese officials have repeatedly tried to reassure Washington that the island will be a stable supply chain partner to the US.

“Taiwan is the US’s most important partner when it comes to democratic values and industry development,” Taiwan’s Minister of National Development Council Kung Ming-hsin said during an event hosted by the Global Taiwan Institute in Washington, D.C., on Monday. The two sides can deepen partnerships in chip design and research and development capabilities, he said through his presentation materials. 

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(Bloomberg) — A conservative lawyer who advised former president Donald Trump on ways to overturn the 2020 election dropped his lawsuit challenging the release of his phone records to a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

John Eastman, a former professor at Chapman University School of Law, was seeking a court order prohibiting Verizon Communications Inc. from complying with a congressional subpoena demanding his phone and text data.

He drafted a two-page memo after the 2020 election that outlined ways for Vice President Mike Pence to derail the count of Electoral College votes in Congress on Jan. 6, thereby denying Joe Biden’s clear victory and handing the election to Trump. He also spoke alongside Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani at a Jan. 6 rally that preceded the storming of the Capital.

Eastman was among a group of Republicans and Trump insiders who have fought demands for their cooperation in the Jan. 6 investigation. 

He indicated in a court filing Tuesday that he was voluntarily dropping his claims over the phone records after the committee stated that it’s not seeking any “privileged communications.”

Still, it’s a surprising development. Just this week, Eastman filed a lawsuit to force the government to return his mobile phone that he claims was taken by federal agents without justification outside a New Mexico restaurant on June 22. 

Read More: Trump Lawyer Eastman Sues for Return of Phone Seized by FBI

It’s unclear what connection, if any, the seizure of his phone has to do with Eastman dropping the suit. A judge in a related California case earlier ordered Eastman to give the committee hundreds of documents that he has asserted were protected by confidentiality rules. 

In a separate related case, the House committee on Tuesday fired back at Kurt Olsen, a little-known lawyer who had multiple phone conversations with Trump on the day of the insurrection. 

The committee’s probe has revealed evidence that Olsen, who sued in March to block a subpoena for his testimony, promoted false claims that the election was fraudulent “and participated in attempts to disrupt or delay the certification of the election results,” the lawmakers said in a request for dismissal of Olsen’s suit. 

“Indeed, Mr. Olsen continues to peddle debunked claims of election fraud in this very lawsuit, and his amended complaint goes so far as to ask this court to declare that there is ‘credible evidence’ of election fraud that altered the results of the 2020 Presidential election in key swing states,” the committee said.

The committee said Olsen’s documents and testimony “are plainly important” to understand “the factors that fomented the attack on the Capitol and the disruption of the peaceful transfer of power.”

The case is Eastman v. Verizon, 21-cv-03273, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia.

 

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(Bloomberg) — Pro-Chinese agents posed as concerned local residents on social media to try and spark protests over the opening of rare earth mines in the US and Canada, cybersecurity researchers said in a new report.

The fake Twitter and Facebook accounts were created to give China, the largest producer of rare earth minerals, a competitive advantage, cybersecurity research company Mandiant disclosed on Tuesday.

Mandiant has reported on a network of thousands of fake accounts across numerous social media platforms, websites and forums since 2019 that support China’s political interests. In one recent campaign Mandiant coined “Dragonbridge”, fake accounts purported to be concerned local residents and environmentalists on Facebook to orchestrate protests at the Texas facility of the Australian mining company Lynas Rare Earths Ltd., according to Mandiant. It was unclear who was behind the campaign, the firm said.

The fake accounts claimed that the processing facility would spur irreversible environmental damage and radioactive contamination that could cause cancer and deformities in newborns, Mandiant researchers said. The accounts also criticized President Joe Biden’s plan to expedite mining of these rare minerals.

China has used its dominance in the rare earth minerals market, critical for manufacturing mobile phones and other electronics, to threaten the US with export bans. 

As a result, the Pentagon has promised to beef up domestic production. It inked a $30 million deal with Lynas in 2021 to build a facility in Texas, which the Australian company said could help it produce a quarter of the world’s demand. 

Dragonbridge was also behind fake accounts criticizing a new mine in Saskatchewan from Canada’s Appia Rare Earths & Uranium Corp., which was announced this month, according to the report. In addition, the campaign’s accounts stoked anger over USA Rare Earth LLC’s plans to open a mine in Oklahoma, Mandiant said. 

The Department of Defense said it will review the report, adding it would look into “ongoing concerns regarding a lack of transparency and over-reliance on concentrated foreign sources of critical minerals in key US supply chains for essential global civilian and national security applications.”

Dragonbridge has been behind 10 disinformation campaigns targeting Ukraine, according to Mandiant, including claims that the US was storing bio-weapons in labs in the country, according to Mandiant.

“The private sector is now the victim of attacks by Chinese information operations, which are growing increasingly aggressive,” said John Hultquist, vice president for Mandiant Intelligence.

“Information operations are typically a problem for civil society, governments, and platforms,” he said. “They rarely target the private sector so directly and aggressively.”

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(Bloomberg) — Sony Group Corp. is launching a new gaming gear brand called Inzone, trotting out headphones and displays for the PC to try and expand its reach beyond the PlayStation.

The new brand is the Tokyo-based firm’s effort to capture a slice of the peripherals market, augmenting its plans to release more former PlayStation exclusives on the Windows platform. Sony wants to signal to consumers that it’s making products and games that go beyond the scope of its console ecosystem and has been taking steps to grow its gaming empire to mobile and PC arenas in recent years. PCs account for a fifth of the global games market, or $41 billion in 2022, according to Newzoo data, and they play host to some of the most prominent e-sports and video streaming brands and players.

The first Inzone products will be a trio of gaming headsets accompanied by two gaming monitors. The headsets range from $99.99 for a wired version to $299.99 for a wireless option with noise canceling. All have so-called 360-degree spatial sound to help gamers better identify the sources of sound around them and are compatible with the PlayStation 5 console. The two 27-inch monitors also have PS5-specific features, such as automatic picture adjustment when connected to the console, and include a 4K model and a lower-resolution option with fast 240Hz refresh rate. 

All three headsets and the 4K monitor will go on sale on July 8, while the the other monitor will launch later in 2022, the company said in a release.

“We packed all our audio video knowhow into these Inzone products. We want to start by pursuing serious PC gamers,” Shuichi Mogitani, a general manager at Sony Marketing, said at a news conference in Tokyo Wednesday. “There is a wide-ranging business opportunity here. For these PC gamers, gaming for at least five to six hours a day is a given.”

Sony’s flagship PlayStation 5 console has been in chronic short supply since its debut in late 2020 and the company is also building a more universal online-gaming subscription service along the lines of rival Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox Game Pass. 

“Sony now seems to be dead set on expanding the PlayStation ecosystem,” said industry analyst Serkan Toto of Kantan Games, noting that the Steam platform on PC boasts more monthly active users than Sony’s PlayStation. “It makes total sense for a hardware company to not only sell software but also branded accessories to this scaled audience.”

Sony Plans to Buy More Game Studios, Grow With Live Services, PC

PC gaming benefits from much higher spending on hardware than Sony’s traditional console stronghold. The PlayStation 5 costs $499.99, which is less than half the going rate for a flagship graphics card, the marquee component of any gaming PC. By marketing to consumers who are used to paying more, Sony hopes to increase net income while diversifying its presence across gaming platforms.

Sony Interactive Entertainment, the company’s gaming unit, forecast net PC sales of $300 million this fiscal year, more than tripling 2021’s $80 million.

“Considering the short supply of PS5 and soaring game development costs, the PC gaming market is becoming critical for Sony in order to show stable profit to investors,” said Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Toyo Securities.

Sony will be a latecomer to a market where Microsoft has an advantage, with its own lineup of computers and peripherals, and there’s an established stable of popular gaming centric-brands such as Razer Inc., Corsair Gaming Inc., Logitech International SA and SteelSeries.

(Updates with release timing in 4th paragraph)

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