US Business

Germany has officially confiscated the world’s largest superyacht owned by Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov, as part of sanctions against Moscow following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, police sources said Thursday.

The 156-metre (1,680-feet) long “Dilbar” has an estimated value of $600 million ((555 million euros) according to Forbes magazine.

Since last October the boat has been docked for repairs in a Hamburg shipyard.

German customs had been eyeing the superyacht for several weeks, but could not formally seize it earlier due to a legal imbroglio over its ownership.

Eventually the German Federal Judicial Police indicated that they had succeeded “after lengthy investigations, and in spite of concealment via offshore companies, in identifying the owner of the M/S Dilbar and it is Gulbakhor Ismailova, the sister of Alisher Usmanov”.

“The luxury yacht is now under the sanctions regime and so could be confiscated in Hamburg,” police added on Twitter.

The Russian billionaire and his sister are both targeted by European sanctions against Russian oligarchs as well as members of their families.

Usmanov, 68, was ranked sixth in the Sunday Times’ list of the richest people in the UK in 2021.

He is one of dozens of Russian oligarchs hit by Western sanctions since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine.

On Wednesday, English Premier League football club Everton suspended its sponsorship agreements with several companies in which Usmanov held shares.  

The confiscation of the “Dilbar” is just the latest in a string of seizures of Russian superyachts under the Western sanctions. 

Tesla chief Elon Musk said Thursday he’s not sure his $43 billion bid to buy Twitter will succeed, but asserted he has a “plan B” in case of failure.

In his first spoken comments since the shock offer became public, Musk downplayed his concerns over money, though assembling the funding for an all-cash offer of this size is never simple.

The world’s richest person would need to part with some of his mountains of Tesla stock if his offer gets board backing — which is not guaranteed.  

“I’m not sure that I will actually be able to acquire it,” Musk told a conference in Canada, referring to Twitter. He went on to note that money wasn’t the primary issue, saying “I could technically afford it.”

Musk acknowledged he has a “plan B” if his offer fails, but refused to elaborate when pressed.

“For another time, I think,” the billionaire said.

Musk’s filing to US authorities on the proposal offered an idea of what he’d do if rejected: “My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.”

Musk last week disclosed a purchase of 73.5 million shares — or 9.2 percent — of Twitter’s common stock, which ignited a roller-coaster of events, including his refusal to join the company’s board.

In his comments Thursday, Musk reiterated his statements that the aim of his bid was to promote freedom of speech on Twitter. 

“This is not a way to make money,” he said.

“My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization. I don’t care about the economics at all,” he added.

The serial entrepreneur’s endeavors include driving a shift to electric vehicles through his automaker Tesla, private space exploration, and linking computers with brains.

His behavior, however, has raised eyebrows, prompted laughs, and sometimes drawn condemnation or even litigation.

US President Joe Biden traveled to North Carolina on Thursday to tout his efforts on combating inflation and jumpstarting high-tech research and manufacturing to make the United States more competitive in the global economy.

The president is due to visit a new engineering research and innovation complex at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, the largest historically Black university in the country.

The visit comes with the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting inflation at a 40-year high of 8.5 percent — mainly due, it says, to Russia’s invasion to Ukraine, rent hikes and gas prices.

The White House said Biden would meet faculty and students studying robotics and cybersecurity and discuss how the Bipartisan Innovation Act can boost the economy by improving American manufacturing.

“That means stronger supply chains, more manufacturing jobs, and lower prices for consumers as we break up the bottlenecks, like semiconductor chips, that have driven inflation over the last year,” said Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki. 

She added that the initiative would “create more good-paying jobs and lower prices for working families.”

Psaki’s deputy Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One that Greensboro was an example of the kind of “regional manufacturing ecosystem” that Biden envisions building across America, to create an industry that can counter China’s growing influence.

One of the administration’s top priorities, the legislation would offer funding to the city of 300,000 and places like it, to promote job creation and business growth.

North Carolinians have voted for the Republican candidate in every presidential election since the Reagan era except 2008, when the state went for Barack Obama over John McCain.

But five out of its seven governors over the same period have been Democrats, and statistical analytics website FiveThirtyEight described North Carolina in 2020 as a “perennial” swing state.

– Deep underwater –

Biden is deep underwater in recent polling, however, with inflation seen as the Democrats’ biggest challenge ahead of November’s midterm elections.

A poll released last week by High Point University gave the president a job approval rating of 35 percent in North Carolina, while 53 percent said they disapprove.

His lowest marks were for his handling of inflation (19 percent), including rising gas prices (18 percent), and his stewardship of the economy in general (26 percent).

Nationally, a new Quinnipiac University poll has the president at just 33 percent approval, while 54 percent disapprove of his job performance.

Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate have been discussing the contours for launching formal negotiations on Biden’s legislation as early as April, with a floor vote expected in May or June.

The Senate passed its own package with a decisive bipartisan 68-32 vote last summer but that needs to be synched up with a more contentious equivalent passed mostly along party lines in the House.

Republicans argued that the 2,900-page House version wasn’t tough enough on China and overly focused on unrelated issues like climate change and social equity. 

North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Bobbie Richardson said in a statement Biden had been “laser-focused” on lowering costs for voters still recovering from the pandemic.  

But Thom Tillis, one of the state’s two Republican senators, said North Carolinians were “sick of inflation and tired of President Biden’s excuses.” 

“President Biden’s only answer to date is blaming everyone else for his decisions and pushing a multitrillion-dollar tax and spending spree,” Tillis said in a statement, according to Fox News.

Sending miniature robots deep inside the human skull to treat brain disorders has long been the stuff of science fiction — but it could soon become reality, according to a California start-up.

Bionaut Labs plans its first clinical trials on humans in just two years for its tiny injectable robots, which can be carefully guided through the brain using magnets.

“The idea of the micro robot came about way before I was born,” said co-founder and CEO Michael Shpigelmacher.

“One of the most famous examples is a book by Isaac Asimov and a film called ‘Fantastic Voyage,’ where a crew of scientists goes inside a miniaturized spaceship into the brain, to treat a blood clot.”

Just as cellphones now contain extremely powerful components that are smaller than a grain of rice, the tech behind micro-robots “that used to be science fiction in the 1950s and 60s” is now “science fact,” said Shpigelmacher. 

“We want to take that old idea and turn it into reality,” the 43-year-old scientist told AFP during a tour of his company’s Los Angeles research and development center.

Working with Germany’s prestigious Max Planck research institutes, Bionaut Labs settled on using magnetic energy to propel the robots — rather than optical or ultrasonic techniques — because it does not harm the human body.

Magnetic coils placed outside the patient’s skull are linked up to a computer that can remotely and delicately maneuver the micro-robot into the affected part of the brain, before removing it via the same route.

The entire apparatus is easily transportable, unlike an MRI, and uses 10 to 100 times less electricity.

– ‘You’re stuck’ –

In a simulation watched by AFP, the robot — a metal cylinder just a few millimeters long, in the shape of a tiny bullet — slowly follows a pre-programed trajectory through a gel-filled container, which emulates the density of the human brain.

Once it nears a pouch filled with blue liquid, the robot is swiftly propelled like a rocket and pierces the sack with its pointed end, allowing liquid to flow out.

Inventors hope to use the robot to pierce fluid-filled cysts within the brain when clinical trials begin in two years.

If successful, the process could be used to treat Dandy-Walker Syndrome, a rare brain malformation affecting children.

Sufferers of the congenital ailment can experience cysts the size of a golf ball, which swell and increase pressure on the brain, triggering a host of dangerous neurological conditions.

Bionaut Labs has already tested its robots on large animals such as sheep and pigs, and “the data shows that the technology is safe for us” human beings, said Shpigelmacher.

If approved, the robots could offer key advantages over existing treatments for brain disorders.

“Today, most brain surgery and brain intervention is limited to straight lines — if you don’t have a straight line to the target, you’re stuck, you’re not going to get there,” said Shpigelmacher.

Micro-robotic tech “allows you to reach targets you were not able to reach, and reaching them repeatedly in the safest trajectory possible,” he added.

– ‘Heating up’ –

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last year granted Bionaut Labs approvals that pave the way for clinical trials to treat Dandy-Walker Syndrome, as well as malignant gliomas — cancerous brain tumors often considered to be inoperable.

In the latter case, the micro-robots will be used to inject anti-cancer drugs directly into brain tumors in a “surgical strike.”

Existing treatment methods involve bombarding the whole body with drugs, leading to potential severe side effects and loss of effectiveness, said Shpigelmacher.

The micro-robots can also take measurements and collect tissue samples while inside the brain.

Bionaut Labs — which has around 30 employees — has held discussions with partners for the use of its tech to treat other conditions affecting the brain including Parkinson’s, epilepsy or strokes.

“To the best of my knowledge, we are the first commercial effort” to design a product of this type with “a clear path to the clinic trials,” said Shpigelmacher.

“But I don’t think that we will be the only one… This area is heating up.”

An NFT of the first tweet ever posted on Twitter was struggling to attract bidders on Thursday, with the highest offer so far just shy of $10,000 — a year after it was bought for $2.9 million.

In what could signal waning interest in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) hawked by athletes, artists, celebrities and tech stars, the famed inaugural Twitter post authored by co-founder Jack Dorsey seemed headed for an epic fail.

It has spent more than a week on the auction block at NFT marketplace OpenSea. The top offer was in the cryptocurrency Ether, its current value translating to just under $10,000, according to the website.

The historic first tweet from the account of @Jack reads “just setting up my twttr.”

Malaysia-based entrepreneur Sina Estavi bought the tweet as an authenticated virtual object known as an NFT for $2.9 million early last year, but put it up for auction last week hoping to get some $48 million for it and give a chunk of the money to charity.

Dorsey had originally sold his tweet as an NFT in Ether.

Blockchain technology used in making the tokens allows people to own virtual objects with provable authenticity.

Estavi is among the early players in the NFT market, and is chief executive of blockchain platform Bridge Oracle.

The NFT trend includes a digital work by US artist Beeple selling for $69.3 million at a Christie’s auction.

The euro slumped to a near two-year low on Thursday after the European Central Bank remained vague about when it will raise interest rates in the face of soaring inflation.

Meanwhile oil prices, whose recent surge has contributed to inflation around the globe reaching the highest levels in decades, came off the boil.

The ECB stood still in the face of record eurozone inflation, keeping its stimulus plans and rates unchanged, as the war in Ukraine cast a pall over the eurozone economy.

Meeting for the second time since the outbreak of the conflict, the bank’s 25-member governing council stuck to a plan that “should” see its bond-buying scheme come to an end in the third quarter.

An interest rate hike would follow “some time” after the stimulus programme comes to an end, and any increases “will be gradual”. 

The decision leaves the ECB further out of step with many of its peers. Central banks such as the Bank of England, US Federal Reserve and the Bank of Canada have already triggered their first interest rate rises in response to soaring inflation.

The euro took a knock after the ECB’s decision, slipping under $1.08 for the first time since May 2020, falling as low as $1.0758.

The ECB “continues to show little sign of looking to hike rates after leaving rates unchanged at their policy meeting today, while being even handed over the risks facing the eurozone economy,” said market analyst Michael Hewson at CMC Markets UK. 

The ECB’s provided a boost for eurozone stocks, however, which moved into positive territory and ended the day higher.

– Musk Twitter bid –

Wall Street was mixed, with another major bank reporting a big fall in profits and setting aside money due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Citigroup said its first quarter profits tumbled 46 percent to $4.3 billion, in a similar performance to JPMorgan Chase which reported Wednesday a sharp drop in profits and warned of downside risks from the Ukraine war and surging inflation.

Its shares nevertheless rose 2.1 percent in late morning trading.

Elsewhere on the corporate front, Tesla chief Elon Musk launched a hostile takeover bid for Twitter, offering to buy 100 percent of its stock and take it private, according to a stock exchange filing.

Musk offered $54.20 a share, but the company’s share price was up by around 0.4 percent to $46.03 in late morning trading.

The reaction “appears to suggest little enthusiasm on the part of investors” said Hewson at CMC Markets.

While this may indicate they believe Musk is not serious, Hewson said the share price would likely take a hit if he is rebuffed and dumps his holding. 

“Given the recent share price performance of Twitter they ought to be ripping his arm off, because it’s unlikely they will get a better offer from anybody else,” he said.   

Despite falling Thursday, both main oil contracts stayed firmly above the $100 per barrel mark, with fears swirling about global supply constraints over the invasion of Ukraine by Russia — a major producer of oil and gas.

– Key figures around 1530 GMT –

New York – Dow: UP 0.4 percent at 34,701.82 points

Frankfurt – DAX: UP 0.6 percent at 14,163.8 (close)

Paris – CAC 40: UP 0.7 percent at 6,589.35 (close)

London – FTSE 100: UP 0.5 percent at 7,616.38 (close)

EURO STOXX 50: UP 0.6 percent at 3,785.46

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 1.2 percent at 27,172.00 (close)

Hong Kong – Hang Seng: UP 0.7 percent at 21,518.08 (close)

Shanghai – Composite: UP 1.2 percent at 3,225.64 (close)

Brent North Sea crude: DOWN 0.9 percent at $107.85 per barrel

West Texas Intermediate: DOWN 1.1 percent at $103.13 per barrel

Euro/dollar – DOWN at $1.0803 from $1.0894 at 2100 GMT

Pound/dollar – DOWN at $1.3060 from $1.3109

Euro/pound – DOWN at 82.72 pence from 83.03 pence

Dollar/yen – UP at 125.95 from 125.59

The European Central Bank on Thursday stood still in the face of record inflation, keeping its stimulus plans and rates unchanged, as the war in Ukraine cast a pall over the eurozone economy.

Meeting for the second time since the outbreak of the conflict, the bank’s 25-member governing council stuck to a plan that “should” see its bond-buying scheme come to an end in the third quarter, it said. 

An interest rate hike would follow “some time” after the stimulus programme comes to an end — a delay the ECB’s President Christine Lagarde stressed could be “between a week and several months”.

Governors would “assess exactly the timing of the conclusion of our net asset purchases” at the bank’s next meeting in June with the help of new forecasts, Lagarde said.

The decision to stick to its plan leaves the ECB further out of step with many of its peers. 

Central banks such as the Bank of England, US Federal Reserve and the Bank of Canada have already triggered their first interest rate rises in response to soaring inflation.

Calls for the ECB to follow suit as soon as possible from within the governing council have grown stronger as price rises in the eurozone have taken off. 

Year-on-year inflation hit 7.5 percent in March, an all-time high for the currency bloc and well above the bank’s own two-percent target.

The surge owes a great deal to the take off in prices for energy, commodities and food as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

At the same time, high energy costs, added disruptions to supply chains and weaker confidence were “severely affecting” the eurozone economy, Lagarde said in a press conference.

The former French finance minister last week tested positive for Covid and had to dial into the press conference via video link.

– ‘Europe is different’ –

Lagarde conceded that the bank’s forecasts had been “wrong in the past”, as calls increased for the central banks to get out ahead of the inflation wave by raising interest rates.

Minutes from the last ECB meeting in March revealed that many members of the governing council wanted “immediate further steps”.

Central bankers use rate rises as a tool to try and tame inflation, but pulling the trigger too soon risks hurting economic growth.

Any hike would be the ECB’s first in over a decade and would lift rates from their current historic low levels.

The Frankfurt-based institution even set a negative deposit rate of minus 0.5 percent, meaning banks pay to park excess cash at the ECB.

The ECB’s straightforward reiteration of its stimulus planned showed a “somewhat strengthened” commitment to end its bond-buying scheme in the third quarter, said Carsten Brzeski, head of macro at ING bank.

But the status quo stance showed that “Europe is different and the ECB is different” to other countries and central banks, Brzeski said.

The ECB’s gradual plan would see it put an “end to the era of negative interest rates before the end of the year”, he predicted.

– Gas boycott –

Comparing the eurozone with the United States and the policies of the Fed was like “apples and oranges”, Lagarde said.

Just as the risks from the pandemic “have declined”, the European economy will “be more exposed and will suffer more consequences” from the war in Ukraine, she said.

The impact “will depend on how the conflict evolves, on the effect of current sanctions and on possible further measures,” Lagarde said.

Looming over the outlook was the possibility of a stop to supplies of Russian gas, which many eurozone countries rely on heavily to meet their energy needs.

“An abrupt boycott would have a significant impact,” Lagarde said.

While the ECB’s bond-buying stimulus is being phased out, the advent of a fresh crisis has some speculating about the possibility of the bank designing a new tool to contain the impact of the war.

Questioned on the subject, Lagarde simply said the ECB would stay flexible and act “promptly” if new risks emerged and some countries found it harder to finance their response.

Space conquest: check. Disrupt the auto industry: check. Take over Twitter? Why not. From eccentric entrepreneur to the world’s richest man, Elon Musk likes to dream big — and these days, he is everywhere you look.

Two decades after banking his first millions, the South-African born Musk last year became the world’s richest person — wresting the title from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos — following the meteoric rise of Tesla, his electric automaker founded in 2003.

The billionaire’s latest big splash: a bid announced Thursday to take over Twitter, capping a rollercoaster fortnight of announcements and counter-announcements — which Musk punctuated, characteristically, by gleefully firing tweets at the platform.

Just a week earlier, the 50-year-old was making headlines as Tesla cut the ribbon on a “gigafactory” the size of 100 soccer fields in Texas, where the firm is now based and Musk himself has relocated from California.

At the same time, his space transport firm SpaceX was breaking yet another boundary as a partner in a three-way venture to send the first fully private mission to the International Space Station.

Musk also makes news of a less flattering kind: Tesla has faced a series of lawsuits alleging discrimination and harassment against Black workers as well as sexual harassment.

In parallel with the whiplash-inducing stream of business news, Musk’s controversy-courting persona — with an unrestrained Twitter style and penchant for living by his own rules in the private sphere too — keeps the gossip press busy.

It recently emerged Musk had had a second child with his on-again off-again partner, the musician Grimes: a girl they named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk — although the parents will mostly call her Y.

He is even expected to make an appearance — in person or not — at the celebrity defamation trial pitting Johnny Depp against his ex-wife Amber Heard, who formerly dated Musk.

But one way or another, Musk has become one of the most ubiquitous figures of the era. So how did he get where he is today?

– To Mars… and beyond? –

Born in Pretoria, on June 28, 1971, the son of an engineer father and a Canadian-born model mother, Musk left South Africa in his late teens to attend Queen’s University in Ontario.

He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania after two years and earned bachelor’s degrees in physics and business.

After graduating from the prestigious Ivy League school, Musk abandoned plans to pursue further studies at Stanford University.

Instead, he dropped out and started Zip2, a company that made online publishing software for the media industry.

He banked his first millions before the age of 30 when he sold Zip2 to US computer maker Compaq for more than $300 million in 1999.

Musk’s next company, X.com, eventually merged with PayPal, the online payments firm bought by internet auction giant eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.

After leaving PayPal, Musk embarked on a series of ever more ambitious ventures.

He founded SpaceX in 2002 — now serving as its chief executive officer and chief technology officer — and became the chairman of electric carmaker Tesla in 2004.

After some early crashes and near-misses, SpaceX perfected the art of landing booster engines on solid ground and ocean platforms, rendering them reusable, and late last year sent four tourists into space, on the first ever orbital mission with no professional astronauts on board.

Musk’s jokingly-named The Boring Company is touting an ultra-fast “Hyperloop” rail transport system that would transport people at near supersonic speeds.

And Musk has said he wants to make humans an “interplanetary species” by establishing a colony of people living on the Mars.

To this end, SpaceX is developing a prototype rocket, Starship, which it envisages carrying crew and cargo to the Moon, Mars and beyond — with Musk saying he feels “confident” of an orbital test this year.

Musk, who holds US, Canadian and South African citizenship, has been married and divorced three times — once to the Canadian author Justine Wilson and twice to actress Talulah Riley. He has seven children. An eighth child died in infancy.

Forbes estimates Musk’s current net worth at $265 billion.