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What do you get if you mix together tech billionaires, performance-enhancing drugs and a Spac merger? The answer is a surprisingly intriguing investment case, albeit one pumped up with risk.

On Wednesday, The Enhanced Group, best known as the creator of the future “steroid Olympics”, said it would list its shares in the US via a merger with a US blank cheque company sponsored by a Chinese businessman. It expects negligible revenue until its inaugural games next year. Nonetheless, Enhanced plans to go public at a mooted enterprise value of $1.3bn.

Enhanced’s primary backer, German entrepreneur Christian Angermayer, has built what looks like a sporting league running live events, plus a DIY pharmacy. It can sell media rights to competitions such as the Enhanced Games, which will be held in Las Vegas next year, where athletes under the care of doctors are permitted to take drugs otherwise banned in mainstream athletics. Alongside this, it can peddle medicines such as “peptide hormones” and “metabolic modulators” through online prescriptions and over-the-counter ventures.

That fits with the zeitgeist. Longevity is increasingly a pet project of Silicon Valley. Enhanced’s backers include PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, Donald Trump Jr, tech investor Balaji Srinivasan and Saudi prince Khaled bin Alwaleed bin Talal. True, there is some controversy over the games themselves: it is not yet clear what treatments for athletes cross ethical and safety barriers and which do not.

Fans may not be overly perturbed by that, as long as they are watching feats of extraordinary skill and strength. And perhaps they will be wowed enough by what they see to buy the pills and supplements that their boosted heroes are ingesting. Enhanced projects $357mn of revenue by 2028, evenly split between media, prescriptions and over-the-counter products. Its valuation would be less than 10 times that year’s forecast ebitda. Hims & Hers Health, a US online provider of sexual health and hair loss treatments, trades at more than 20 times, according to LSEG.

One question for investors is when Enhanced’s current backers might make a dash for it. Angermayer’s firm and its affiliates will be the biggest shareholders and will keep control through a dual-class structure. Insiders can sell some of their shares a month before the 2026 games and all of them 18 months after the event. But investors in a new $40mn financing will get to sell a slug of their existing holdings immediately, equivalent to four times their new contribution.

While enhanced athletes may beat the regular kind, it remains to be seen whether Enhanced can beat the Spac pack. The median return on Spac mergers completed on US exchanges since 2020 is minus 85 per cent, according to ListingTrack, with fortified projections rarely getting real results. Only 2 per cent of those closed in 2024 are above their listing price. Whatever the financial equivalent of a metabolic modulator is, this company will need a double dose.

sujeet.indap@ft.com

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Indian business tycoon Prateek Gupta has denied funnelling millions of dollars to his wife or sprawling group of companies, the missing cash that Trafigura alleges disappeared as part of a huge fraud scheme.

The commodities trading house claims to have lost around $600mn when it became the victim of a “systemic fraud” that it alleges was perpetrated by Gupta and companies he controlled. Trafigura is suing the businessman in London’s High Court.

Gupta claimed on Thursday that he had no knowledge of where the money had gone, telling the court: “I cannot recollect the exact breakdown.”

“So you just lost hundreds of millions of dollars and you can’t remember where it went, is that right?” said Nathan Pillow KC, a lawyer representing Trafigura.

“I don’t have an answer to that,” said Gupta in response, giving evidence via video link on the second day of his testimony as a defendant.

“You don’t, do you, because you’re lying about it,” said Pillow, to which Gupta responded: “I’m not lying.”

Gupta argues that Trafigura’s former star nickel trader, Socrates Economou, orchestrated the scheme, which involved the transportation of purported nickel shipments that in fact contained various low-value materials. Economou staunchly denies he had any knowledge of the arrangement at the time.

Gupta, based in Dubai, denied when questioned that he had given the money to his wife or to other senior officials in his group of companies. 

In response to Pillow’s suggestion that he had been “robbing Peter to pay Paul”, by using the money from Trafigura to “pay off other creditors in your business empire”, Gupta said: “No, I don’t agree with that.”

Gupta said in his witness statement that his company, UD Group, had been facing depleted cash reserves in early 2021, when the arrangement was ongoing. 

Gupta claimed in court on Thursday that “substantial” sums went towards shipping costs and interest payments, but could not otherwise outline where the money paid by Trafigura for purported nickel shipments had gone.

Giving evidence in the case this week, the businessman repeatedly claimed that he did not oversee the day-to-day operations of the arrangement.

The trial continues.

The SEC is seeking information from Jefferies about whether it gave investors in one of its funds enough information about their exposure to the auto business, the report said.

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Jefferies declined to comment.

“The SEC does not comment on the existence or nonexistence of a possible investigation,” an agency spokesperson said.

First Brands did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

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