1. PE firms sitting on $4 trillion of unsold assets, on investments largely made between 2020 and 2022 when rates were slashed to zero, are finding creative ways to offload them. Sample this
Blackstone is marketing a so-called collateralised fund obligation that will bundle more than $2bn of stakes in leveraged buyout funds into bonds to sell to investors and insurers, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal would provide an infusion of cash to investors in a Blackstone Strategic Partners fund, the firm’s unit that invests in other private equity groups’ funds. It is unclear if Blackstone will ultimately go ahead with the securitisation or seek to sell the stakes in a secondary transaction, one person briefed on the matter said... The vehicles, which are sliced and diced to give investors exposure to different levels of risk and return, have boomed. Issuance of CFOs soared to a record of $25.9bn last year from a modest $4.8bn in 2021, according to credit rating agency KBRA.
2. This is a brilliant articulation of the problem with articulating something purely in terms of absolute numbers and aggregates.
In his novel Hard Times, Charles Dickens described a girl called Sissy, who was having a terrible time in her lessons. Her schoolmaster told her to imagine that her schoolroom was a nation in possession of “fifty millions of money”. Wouldn’t that mean it was a prosperous and thriving state? “I said I didn’t know,” she relayed afterwards to a friend. “I thought I couldn’t know whether it was a prosperous nation or not, and whether I was in a thriving state or not, unless I knew who had got the money, and whether any of it was mine. But that had nothing to do with it. It was not in the figures at all.”
3. Interesting story about how old companies are reinventing themselves to profit from the AI-boom.
AI servers must be more tightly linked together, increasing the need for advanced cabling and optics. Shares in Corning, the 175-year-old inventor of Pyrex glass that also supplies screens for Apple’s iPhones, have increased by more than 270 per cent in the past year after it signed deals with Meta and Nvidia to supply optical fibre cabling to AI data centres. The vast amounts of electricity needed for AI training are also fuelling demand for specialised power management, high-voltage electronics and cooling technologies. This has led to big interest in traditional suppliers of electrical equipment, typically deployed in residential and industrial projects. Eaton, an Ohio-based power management company, received 240 per cent more data centre orders in Q1 this year...
French electrical equipment maker Legrand has doubled its revenues this decade with half of the growth coming from data centres, which now make up more than a quarter of its turnover. Air conditioning and liquid cooling — using water to stop chips from overheating — are in demand too. Shares in AC maker Comfort Systems USA have shot up 260 per cent over the past year, while Schneider Electric bought a stake in data centre liquid cooling specialist Motivair for $850mn last year. Utilities are rushing to supply AI companies with power — including Spain’s Iberdrola, a leading supplier of power contracts to tech groups in Europe, according to Pexapark data, and Entergy in the US, whose share price hit a record high after a $10bn deal with Meta... Several generator and engine companies have also pivoted to supplying data centres, including Caterpillar, Boeing supplier Howmet Aerospace, Finnish ship engine maker Wärtsilä and Baker Hughes, which formerly focused on oilfield services.
4. China demographics facts of the week.
This year’s cohort of gaokao-takers were mostly born in 2008, a year of 16.1m births. By 2025 births had more than halved, to just 7.9m. The demographic cliff is already visible in nurseries, which saw pupil numbers plummet from 46m to 32m between 2022 and 2025. Numbers in primary schools have also started to thin. Inevitably, over time, secondary schools and then colleges will follow.
And technology adoption
A survey of 322,000 students last year by the China National Academy of Educational Sciences, a state-affiliated think-tank, found that 85.6% of them had already tried using AI to complete their homework. On popular apps such as Zuoyebang (“Homework Help”) and Yuanfudao (“Ape Tutoring”), pupils snap photos of questions and ai walks them through the solutions. (Teachers are using similar technologies to help mark homework.)
5. Public moods on the role of government in the UK - 70% support nationalising energy and 82% water.
Rail subsidies have been rising, £12bn in operational support in 2024-25, up in real terms from £2bn in 2000-01.
6. Indian economy facts of the week.
The World Trade Organization data show that for non-agricultural goods, the share of tariff lines in the category 10-15 per cent increased sharply from 1.4 per cent to 33.5 per cent between 2014 and 2024 and for the tariff category 15-25 per cent from 1.7 per cent to 14.9 per cent, while the share of tariff lines in the category 0-10 per cent fell steeply from 90.5 per cent to 42.5 per cent over the same period.
7. From Thomas Astbridge's book on the Black Death
In its most intense phase, from 1347 to 1353, the Black Death killed more than 100mn people, or about half the population in the areas infected, Asbridge estimates. This makes it more lethal than two other great pandemics — the 6th-century Plague of Justinian in the Mediterranean and the pestilence that swept across Asia from the mid-19th century until the aftermath of the second world war — and far worse than Covid-19 in our times... Asbridge demonstrates that the Black Death was probably more devastating in cities such as Cairo and Damascus than in, say, Constantinople or Florence. In Cairo, a metropolis of 500,000 people, almost 10 times larger than London’s population, perhaps 250,000 died, Asbridge suggests.
8. On the role of luck in football tournaments.
According to one study of historical matches, the chances of the team with the worse record winning was 45 per cent in football, compared with just 36 per cent in America’s National Football League. (Yes, this pep talk has statistics. Bite me.) The knockout structure raises the role of chance, as just one dodgy penalty can crash a team out of the competition. According to numbers crunched by James Tozer of Prospect, a sports analytics company, betting odds gave the top four teams in the most recent Premier League a combined 89 per cent chance of winning (after adjusting for bookies’ ability to take advantage of fans’ optimism that their team would win). In the World Cup an upset is more likely, as that figure is only 48 per cent.
9. Aldi effect, as the discount grocery retailer seeks to expand aggressively, as it envisages 4000 stores at an investment of $9 billion in a US market where consumers are facing higher prices due to persistent inflation.
Credit card data analysed by the bank found that when an Aldi store opened, it shaved an average of one percentage point off annual sales from competitors within a 10-mile radius... Aldi prospered in postwar Germany under brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht before a disagreement led to a split in the 1960s. One offshoot, Aldi Süd, oversees Aldi’s US business after opening the first store in Iowa in 1976. The other, Aldi Nord, owns the quirky US grocer Trader Joe’s. The discounter’s stores are austere places with only about six staff on duty. They are designed for maximum efficiency: groceries are shelved without leaving their cardboard shipping trays and oversized bar codes are printed on packing so checkout operators can scan at pace. Customers must deposit a coin to obtain a shopping trolley, which is refunded if they return it. Operating cost savings fund the chain’s low prices... Aldi’s compact stores, which stock only about 2,000 product lines, are often located near competitors such as Walmart, whose large-format stores carry about 120,000 products, including low-priced groceries.
10. Andhra Pradesh shrimp production facts.
India exports approximately 8 lakh tonnes of shrimp a year, with Andhra Pradesh accounting for over 60 percent of production. The state accounts for 80 percent of the country’s shrimp exports and 34 percent of marine exports, valued at around Rs 21,246 crore annually. The state has 2.5 lakh aqua farmer families, of which 2 lakh are small and medium farmers. Another 30 lakh people depend on allied sectors. According to the Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry, India exported a record 17,81,602 MT of seafood worth US$ 7.38 billion (Rs 60,523.89 crore) in 2023-24, of which frozen shrimp alone accounted for 92 percent — a significant share from Andhra Pradesh.
GVK’s 216-megawatt (Mw) Jegurupadu plant became an early proof-of-concept under a power purchase agreement. IL&FS built a 12-km toll road between Rau and Pithampur in Madhya Pradesh, marking India’s first private toll concession.
12. This is a true success story for the Indian economy.
Between 2020 and 2026 the number of Indian retail investors rose from around 40m to 130m.
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