Finance

Mike Lynch was founder of enterprise software firm Autonomy.
He became the target of a protracted legal battle with Hewlett Packard after the firm accused Lynch of inflating Autonomy’s value in an $11.7 billion sale.
HP took an $8.8 billion write-down on the value of the company within a year of buying it.

Mike Lynch, former chief executive officer at Hewlett-Packard Co.’s Autonomy unit, speaking at a conference on Thursday, April 25, 2013. 
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

LONDON — The body of British technology entrepreneur Mike Lynch, 59, has been retrieved from the wreckage of a yacht that sank off the coast of Sicily, a source familiar with the matter told CNBC on Thursday, confirming earlier reporting by Sky News.
Lynch’s daughter, Hannah, remains unaccounted for, according to the source, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the situation. Sky News earlier reported that five bodies pulled from the wreck had been identified by the Italian coast guard, and that Lynch was among the dead.

Lynch, who was reported missing Monday, was one of 22 passengers aboard the Bayesian superyacht, which capsized while anchored in the small fishing village of Porticello, in the province of Palermo in Italy.
On Wednesday, Salvatore Cocina, head of the civil protection agency in Sicily, confirmed to NBC News that five bodies had been recovered from the wreckage of the yacht. The only person confirmed dead by authorities so far has been Recaldo Thomas, a Canadian-Antiguan chef.
CNBC has contacted the Italian coast guard and is awaiting a response.
Lynch was founder of enterprise software firm Autonomy. He became the target of a protracted legal battle with Hewlett Packard after the firm accused Lynch of inflating Autonomy’s value in an $11.7 billion sale. HP took an $8.8 billion write-down on the value of the company within a year of buying it.
Lynch was acquitted in June of fraud charges in a surprise victory in U.S. court following a trial that lasted for three months. He had faced charges of wire fraud and conspiracy for allegedly scheming to inflate Autonomy’s revenue. Lynch denied wrongdoing and told jurors HP botched Autonomy’s integration.

Lynch was also founder of Invoke Capital, a venture capital firm endorsing European tech startups. He became a key voice supporting the U.K. technology industry, backing key names like cybersecurity firm Darktrace and legal tech firm Luminance.
Tributes were paid to Lynch following news of his death.
Russ Shaw, founder of technology industry groups Tech London Advocates and Global Tech Advocates, said Lynch “leaves a legacy as one of the great modern British tech entrepreneurs.”
“His ability to understand how tech can solve big challenges, and then successfully commercialise it was truly unique” Shaw said in a statement emailed to CNBC. “Mike will rightly be remembered for his work in nurturing some of Britain’s great tech companies, including Darktrace, Luminance and Sophia Genetics.”
The Royal Academy of Engineering, which made Lynch a fellow in 2008, said its trustee board, fellows and staff are “deeply saddened” to learn of his death and “send our profound condolences to his family.”
“We have fond memories of the active role he played [as a fellow] in the past, as a mentor, donor and former Council member. He was also one of the inaugural members on the Enterprise Committee,” the academy said on the social media platform X. “Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this time.”
Lord John Browne, former CEO of energy firm BP, said in a post on X that Lynch “should be remembered as the person who catalysed a breed of deep tech entrepreneurs in the U.K. His ideas and his personal vision were a powerful contribution to science and technology in both Britain and globally.” More

WeRide delayed its plan for an initial public offering in the U.S., citing the need for more time to complete documents.
It has been a dry market for Chinese IPOs in the U.S. in recent years, and many were watching WeRide’s potential listing for signs of a pickup.
WeRide was expected to offer 6.5 million ADS (American depositary shares) in the range of $15.50 to $18.50.

In this photo illustration, a WeRide logo of Chinese robotaxi firm is seen on a smartphone and a pc screen.
Getty Images

Self-driving technology company WeRide delayed its plan for an initial public offering in the U.S., citing its need for more time to complete documents.
“Updating transaction documents is currently taking longer than expected, and WeRide is working to complete the documentation necessary to move forward with the transaction,” the company said in a statement Thursday.

WeRide was expected to offer 6.5 million ADS (American depositary shares) in the range of $15.50 to $18.50. It was looking to raise up to $440 million in a U.S. listing that had been set for this week. 
The company, which develops self-driving technology for robotaxis, minibuses as well as freight sanitation vehicles, was last valued around $5.11 billion and has raised $1.39 billion, according to Pitchbook data.
Beijing approval for the deal will expire this week and it’s unclear if the company would need to reapply for approval if it misses the deadline.
The firm was founded in Silicon Valley in 2017 and incorporated in the Cayman Islands, before it launched a robotaxi service in Guangzhou, China, in 2019. It filed for an IPO on the Nasdaq in July.
It has been a dry market for Chinese IPOs in the U.S. in recent years, and many were watching WeRide’s potential listing for signs of pick up. If completed, the IPO would be one of the largest U.S. listings by a Chinese company since Didi’s IPO in 2021. More

John Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group and pioneer of index funds, may have saved investors more money than anyone else in history. By some estimates, his crusade to drive down fees has, over the past five decades, left them with more than $1trn that would otherwise have gone to fund managers. Index funds, through which speculators can invest in the stockmarket as a whole, cut out the middlemen. In doing so, they have transformed the world of investing. More

The profits of European listed firms rose during the second quarter of this year. In much of the rest of the world, that would be unremarkable. On the old continent, 4.3% earnings growth in the three months to June, compared with the year before, was enough to provide a boost to the Stoxx 600, its benchmark index. After all, the growth came after four consecutive quarters of falling earnings. Markets strategists are now talking up European stocks. Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, even says that they are “in the sweet spot”. More

An early-warning system for recessions would be worth trillions of dollars. Governments could dole out stimulus at just the right time; investors could turn a nice profit. Unfortunately, the process for calling a recession is too slow to be useful. America’s arbiter, the National Bureau of Economic Research, can take months to decide. Other countries simply look at gdp data, which emerge with a lag. More

Kamala Harris’s price-gouging ban would be the first of its kind nationally in America. It is far from clear that such a policy is required. But it would have precedent at lower levels of government: 37 states have rules to stop firms from “excessive” price rises. Those decrying Ms Harris’s idea as a step towards communism can be reassured that many are Republican strongholds, from Arkansas to Idaho. More

People line up as they wait for the JobNewsUSA.com South Florida Job Fair to open at the Amerant Bank Arena on June 26, 2024, in Sunrise, Florida. 
Joe Raedle | Getty Images

There’s a lot of debate about how much signal to take from the 818,000 downward revisions to U.S. payrolls — the largest since 2009. Is it signaling recession?
A few facts worth considering:

By the time the 2009 revisions came out (824,000 jobs were overstated), the National Bureau of Economic Research had already declared a recession six months earlier.
Jobless claims, a contemporaneous data source, had surged north of 650,000, and the insured unemployment rate had peaked at 5% that very month.
GDP as reported at the time had already been negative for four straight quarters. (It would subsequently be revised higher in the two of those quarters, one of which was revised higher to show growth, rather than contraction. But the economic weakness was broadly evident in the GDP numbers and ISMs and lots of other data.)

The current revisions cover the period from April 2023 to March, so we don’t know whether current numbers are higher or lower. It may well be that the models used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are overstating economic strength at a time of gathering weakness. While there are signs of softening in the labor market and the economy, of which this could well be further evidence, here’s how those same indicators from 2009 are behaving now:

No recession has been declared.
The 4-week moving average of jobless claims at 235,000 is unchanged from a year ago. The insured unemployment rate at 1.2% has been unchanged since March 2023. Both are a fraction of what they were during the 2009 recession.
Reported GDP has been positive for eight straight quarters. It would have been positive for longer if not for a quirk in the data for two quarters in early 2022.

As a signal of deep weakness in the economy, this big revision is, for now, an outlier compared to the contemporaneous data. As a signal that job growth has been overstated by an average of 68,000 per month during the revision period, it is more or less accurate.
But that just brings average employment growth down to 174,000 from 242,000. How the BLS parcels out that weakness over the course of the 12-month period will help determine if the revisions were concentrated more toward the end of the period, meaning they have more relevance to the current situation.
If that is the case, it is possible the Fed might not have raised rates quite so high. If the weakness continued past the period of revisions, it is possible Fed policy might be easier now. That is especially true if, as some economists expect, productivity numbers are raised higher because the same level of GDP appears to have occurred with less work.
But the inflation numbers are what they are, and the Fed was responding more to those during the period in question (and now) than jobs data.

So, the revisions might modestly raise the chance of a 50 basis-point rate reduction in September for a Fed already inclined to cut in September. From a risk management standpoint, the data might add to concern that the labor market is weakening faster than previously thought. In the cutting process, the Fed will follow growth and jobs data more closely, just as it monitored inflation data more closely in the hiking process. But the Fed is likely to put more weight on the current jobless claims, business surveys, and GDP data rather than the backward looking revisions. It’s worth noting that, in the past 21 years, the revisions have only been in the same direction 43% of the time. That is, 57% of  the time, a negative revisions is followed the next year by a positive one and vice versa.
The data agencies make mistakes, sometimes big ones. They come back and correct them often, even when it’s three months before an election.
In fact, economists at Goldman Sachs said later Wednesday that they think the BLS may have overstated the revisions by as much as half a million. Unauthorized immigrants who now are not in the unemployment system but were listed initially as employed amounted for some of the discrepancy, along with a general tendency for the initial revision to be overstated, according to the Wall Street firm.
The jobs data could be subject to noise from immigrant hiring and can be volatile. But there is a vast suite of macroeconomic data that, if the economy were tanking like in 2009, would be showing signs of it. At the moment, that is not the case. More

“The vast majority” of participants at the July 30-31 meeting “observed that, if the data continued to come in about as expected, it would likely be appropriate to ease policy at the next meeting,” the summary stated.
Markets are fully pricing in a September cut, which would be the first since the emergency easing in the early days of the Covid crisis.

Federal Reserve officials at their July meeting moved closer to a long-awaited interest rate reduction, but stopped short while indicating that a September cut had grown increasingly probable, minutes released Wednesday showed.
“The vast majority” of participants at the July 30-31 meeting “observed that, if the data continued to come in about as expected, it would likely be appropriate to ease policy at the next meeting,” the summary said.

Markets are fully pricing in a September cut, which would be the first since the emergency easing in the early days of the Covid crisis.
While all voters on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee voted to hold benchmark rates steady, there was an inclination among an unspecified number of officials to start easing at the July meeting rather than waiting until September.
The document stated that “several [meeting participants] observed that the recent progress on inflation and increases in the unemployment rate had provided a plausible case for reducing the target range 25 basis points at this meeting or that they could have supported such a decision.”
One basis point is 0.01 percentage point, so a 25 basis point reduction would be equivalent to a quarter percentage point.
In the parlance the Fed uses in its minutes, which do not mention names nor specify how many policymakers felt a certain way, “several” is a relatively small number.

However, the summary made clear that officials were confident about the direction of inflation and are ready to start easing policy if the data continues to cooperate.
The sentiment was twofold: Inflation markers had shown price pressures easing considerably, while some members noted concerns over the labor market as well as the struggles that households, particularly those at the lower end of the income spectrum, were having in the current environment.
“With regard to the outlook for inflation, participants judged that recent data had increased their confidence that inflation was moving sustainably toward 2 percent,” the minutes stated. “Almost all participants observed that the factors that had contributed to recent disinflation would likely continue to put downward pressure on inflation in coming months.”
On the labor market, “many” officials noted that “reported payroll gains might be overstated.”
Earlier Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, in a preliminary revision of the nonfarm payroll numbers from April 2023 through March 2024, that gains may have been overstated by more than 800,000.
“A majority of participants remarked that the risks to the employment goal had increased, and many participants noted that the risks to the inflation goal had decreased,” the minutes said. “Some participants noted the risk that a further gradual easing in labor market conditions could transition to a more serious deterioration.”
In its post-meeting statement, the committee noted that job gains had moderated and that inflation also had “eased.” However, it chose to hold the line on its benchmark funds rate, which is currently targeted in a 5.25%-5.50% range, its highest in 23 years.
Markets rose the day of the Fed meeting but cratered in following sessions on worries that the central bank was moving too slowly in easing monetary policy.
The day after the meeting, the Labor Department reported an unexpected spike in unemployment claims, while a separate indicator showed the manufacturing sector contracted more than expected. Things got worse when the nonfarm payrolls report for July showed job creation of just 114,000 and another tick up in the unemployment rate to 4.3%.
Calls grew for the Fed to cut quickly, with some even suggesting that the central bank do an intermeeting move to head off worries that the economy was sinking fast.
However, the panic was short-lived. Subsequent data releases showed jobless claims drifting back down to normal historical levels while inflation indicators showed price pressures easing. Retail sales data also was better than expected, assuaging worries of consumer pressure.
More recent indicators, though, have pointed to stresses in the labor market, and traders largely expect the Fed to begin cutting rates in September.

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