It’s Tuesday and everyone’s looking for answers on how the US, EU and UK will respond to Vladimir Putin’s decision to recognise two separatist regions in Eastern Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk, as independent states. We can’t provide those. But we can tell you wot u should’ve wrote in response to the latest edition of FAWUK.
1. Novalpina Capital, a London-based private equity firm, made headlines in the FT on Friday. Which notorious Israel-based spyware group is Novalpina an investor in?
That’d be NSO Group, a company that currently sits on the US’s trade blacklist.
2. Cathie Wood once again went on CNBC to underscore the deep value nature of her speculative tech portfolio on Thursday. Can you name one of the three top holdings in her ARK Innovation Fund ETF?
You should know this one. But in case you didn’t: Tesla (obvs), Teledoc (which reports earnings after the bell today) and Zoom Video.
3. Which payments firm did Amazon reach a truce with this week over fees?
Visa. The decision comes after Amazon threatened to stop accepting Visa credit cards for sales made under its UK wing owing to higher post-Brexit charges.
4. After two years of stellar performance, macro hedge fund Caxton Associates is raising its fees for investors. But with which famous private equity firm does it share an office building with on Mayfair’s Berkeley Square? For a bonus point, name the gentleman’s club and casino of yonder year that was once based next door? (Hint: it featured heavily in an Adam Curtis documentary.)
Caxton shares a building with Blackstone’s masters of the universe. The bonus point answer? The Clermont Club — once the venue of choice for such illustrious characters as Lord Lucan, James Goldsmith and private military pioneer David Stirling. The building is now home to sugar daddy den Annabel’s.
5. Mercedes unveiled its new F1 car on Friday — but can you name its stay-at-home-play sponsor, which has seen its shares fall 70 per cent over the past year?
If you answered TeamViewer, you’d have been correct.
6. E-commerce stocks have taken a beating since last Easter — to the nearest whole number, guess the percentage fall in fast fashion seller Boohoo’s shares over the past 12 months.
75 per cent. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer company.
7. BONUS QUESTION: Today is Jemima’s last official day on FT Alphaville (sad face). But which newspaper front page did she feature on as the splash back in January 2019?
8. Who tweeted this nonsense?
Believe it or not, that’s a tweet from former Democrat presidential primary candidate and full-time tech bro Andrew Yang. How the mighty have fallen.
And the winner is . . . Pier Giorgio! While he didn’t get Andrew Yang for the last question, this answer . . .
some crypto/blockchain guru guy probably from South California who self proclaims cyber-futur-liberal-socialist but drives a Tesla and is planning to get a cryo chamber.
. .. was close enough.
Pier, do get in touch to arrange delivery of your empty jelly bean jar (Covid-safe, we assure you) to an address of your choice.
