Category: 3. Business

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Rich individuals are increasingly making multi-million-pound loans to fellow wealthy people who need money faster than banks can provide or who might not pass “know your customer” checks, according to their advisers.

Loans of between £3mn and £10mn are becoming more popular as banks step back. But they can also be worth more than £50mn, secured by assets including property, company shares, art, jewellery, yachts and private jets.

Adam Russ, Deutsche’s global head of wealth management and business lending, said lenders often knew borrowers through their social circles: “When we lend money, whether you’re a bank or a person, it starts with character — it’s the first thing you assess.”

One area of investment attracting private lenders is real estate as property developers face financing gaps.

The declining attractiveness of London prime property, due to higher interest rates, stamp duty and the departure of rich people from the UK, has made development opportunities riskier and less appealing to banks.

Advisers said wealthy individuals were also replacing Russian investors in the UK after many were sanctioned following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Laura Uberoi, head of private wealth finance at law firm Addleshaw Goddard, said the wealthy needed to borrow because they often had little cash on hand.

“The trick to being a multibillionaire is having zero liquidity — borrowing is consistently needed by ultra-high net worths to fund their ongoing liquidity needs as well as their next business venture,” she said.

Nazir Dewji, global department leader for real estate at law firm BCLP, said: “We’ve seen family offices creating debt arms over the last two to three years as an alternative way of investing into real estate.”

Some loans are given out before development starts, he added, while others were designed to support acquisitions.

London-based Cohort Capital started making loans six years ago as a family office and has since put together syndicates to make loans. By the end of this year, it will have originated £1.5bn in loans from 15 family offices, which provide 90 per cent of the capital, according to co-founder Matt Thame, with the rest coming from banks.

Cohort makes short-term loans that average £15mn for acquisitions and refinancing, and has experienced a rise in business as banks retreat, he said.

One example of a Cohort loan was for a student residence in Paddington, west London, being bought for £85mn. “We funded £60mn in 10 days,” Thame said, charging its typical interest rate of 12 per cent.

Giuseppe Ciucci, executive chair of high net worth adviser the Stonehage Fleming Group, said family offices were often much faster than banks at providing funds at a “very attractive rate”, particularly when property is pledged as security. “It’s become more of a go-to solution than it used to be.”

One private banker said a client was an expert in a very small slice of London super-prime property and was therefore comfortable assessing collateral valuations. While many lenders do “know your customer” checks, in this case he did not want to.

The head of a single family office, who did not want to be named, said: “With real estate there’s a big advantage that it’s quick and easy to take charge over the assets.” Lenders can register charges over an asset at the Land Registry.

Other types of assets were less appealing, the head of the family office added: “Things like yachts and art are more complex; I would be concerned about them. Famously, yachts move.”

Uberoi said simple loans started at interest rates of 10 per cent. However, lending using “your funky things” as collateral, such as land without development permission, “can go into the twenties and people will pay it because they want quick money — they will pay it because no one else will lend because the assets are risky”.

Hong Kong, China, Nov. 07, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — New Century Logistics (BVI) Limited (hereinafter referred to as “New Century” or the “Company”), a company listed on the NASDAQ, reported that it expects to implement a 1-for-8 reverse stock split on its common stock. The effective date is scheduled to be Friday, November 14, 2025, subject to the Company’s satisfaction of Nasdaq Operations notice requirements, with trading to begin on a split-adjusted basis at the market open on that day. Trading in the common stock will continue on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol “NCEW”. The new CUSIP number for the common stock following the reverse stock split will be G64627113. In the event that the effective date is delayed the Company will update the effective date via a subsequent press release.

The reverse stock split at a ratio of 1-for-8 shares was approved by the Company’s Board of Directors.

Upon the effectiveness of the reverse stock split, every 8 shares of the Company’s issued and outstanding common stock will automatically be converted into one share of issued and outstanding common stock. No fractional shares will be issued as a result of the reverse stock split. Instead, any fractional shares that would have resulted from the split will be rounded up to the next whole number. The reverse stock split affects all stockholders uniformly and will not alter any stockholder’s percentage interest in the Company’s outstanding common stock, except for adjustments that may result from the treatment of fractional shares.

In connection with the reverse stock split, the Company has filed an Amended and Restated Articles of Association with the Financial Services Commission of the British Virgin Islands to reduce the authorized number of shares of the Company’s common stock from 100,000,000 shares to 12,500,000 shares, the reduction at the same ratio as its reduction in the issued and outstanding shares of common stock, with no par value, and there will be no change to the par value per share. The Board of Directors of the Company approved the reverse stock split on October 3, 2025. No stockholders’ approval of the reverse stock split is required pursuant to BVI law.

About New Century Logistics (BVI) Limited

New Century is an international freight forwarding company and logistics service provider. Its customers include direct shippers and other freight forwarders. New Century assists its clients in both importing and exporting of goods which principally involves the arrangement of shipment upon receipt of booking instructions from our customers, including sale of cargo space, cargo pick up, off-airport air cargo security screening, palletization, preparation of shipping documentation, arrangement of customs clearance and cargo handling at ports. New Century’s freight forwarding services principally generate revenues from air freight export shipments to regions such as North America, Europe and Asia.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT CONCERNING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release contains “forward-looking statements”. You can identify forward-looking statements as those that are not historical in nature, particularly those that use terminology such as “may,” “should,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “contemplates,” “estimates,” “believes,” “plans,” “projected,” “predicts,” “potential,” or “hopes” or the negative of these or similar terms. The reader is cautioned not to rely on these forward-looking statements. Actual results could vary materially from the expectations and projections of New Century. We base these forward-looking statements on our expectations and projections about future events, which we derive from the information currently available to us. By identifying such information and statements in this manner, the Company is alerting the reader that such information and statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such information and statements. A more complete discussion of the risks and uncertainties facing the Company appears in the registration statement and in the Company’s Annual Information Form and other continuous disclosure filings, which are available on EDGAR at www.sec.gov. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking information and forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. In connection with the forward-looking information and forward-looking statements contained in this press release, the Company has made certain assumptions. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing, and the expectations contained in, the forward-looking information and statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information and statements, and no assurance or guarantee can be given that such forward-looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information and statements. The forward-looking statements discussed in this press release and other statements made from time to time by us or our representatives, may not occur, and actual events and results may differ materially and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions about us, including those described in New Century Logistics’ prospectus filed with the SEC. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information or future events or developments, except as required by U.S. federal securities laws.

Contact:
ir@nclogistics.com.hk 
New Century Logistics (BVI) Ltd 
A-E 33/F King Palace Plaza
55 King Yip Street 
Kwun Tong Hong Kong 
www.nclogistics.com.hk 

Elon Musk predicts Tesla’s Optimus robot will be a force for economic good — even if it ultimately eliminates much of the need for human labor.

While the humanoid robots are a production challenge and aren’t launching anytime soon, Tesla has demoed them handing out candy on Halloween, performing Kung Fu with Jared Leto, and dancing onstage at its recent shareholder meeting.

But Musk says he has an even bigger vision for the robots; he wants them to transform the economy.

“People often talk about eliminating poverty, giving everyone amazing medical care,” Musk said at the Thursday shareholder event. “There’s actually only one way to do that, and that’s with the Optimus robot.”

Musk later doubled down: “Optimus will actually eliminate poverty.”

Minutes earlier, the crowd cheered and broke out into chants of “Elon, Elon!” as shareholders approved Musk’s $1 trillion pay package. The Tesla CEO — who is the world’s richest person — will unlock up to $1 trillion in shares if Tesla achieves a series of lofty targets, including selling one million Optimus robots in the next decade.

Musk also said that Optimus would change life for incarcerated people at the meeting. Instead of physically jailing prisoners, Optimus could “follow you around and stop you from doing crime,” he said.

The robots would increase the global economy by a factor of 10, Musk said, or possibly even 100.

On Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call, Musk imagined a world of “sustainable abundance,” a goal outlined in Tesla’s Master Plan Part IV, with Optimus leading the way. An Optimus robot will have 5x the productivity of a human per year, Musk predicted, because it would be able to operate 24/7.

“There’s limit to much how much AI can do in terms of enhancing the productivity of humans, but there is not really a limit to AI that is embodied,” Musk said.

Musk also described how “sustainable abundance” and a robotic future will transform the economy in a recent interview with Joe Rogan.

“I came to the conclusion that the only way that the only way to get us out of the debt crisis and to prevent America from going bankrupt is AI and robotics,” Musk said.

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Robots like Optimus will make working “optional” in the future, Musk said.

“We’ll have, in a benign scenario, universal high income,” Musk said. “Anyone can have any products or services that they want. But there will be a lot of trauma and disruption along the way.”

Musk isn’t the only business leader touting the prospects of a universal basic income. Musk’s friend-turned-foe Sam Altman ran a pilot studying basic income in 2024. Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes has expressed support for UBI, as has eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

There’s an economic irony here, Musk told Rogan.

“The capitalist implementation of AI and robotics, assuming it goes down the good path, is actually what results in the communist utopia,” he said.

What will humans do in Musk’s robotic future? Certainly not working, Musk wrote in an October X post.

“AI and robots will replace all jobs,” he wrote. “Working will be optional, like growing your own vegetables, instead of buying them from the store.”

Musk is no stranger to making bold, highly ambitious predictions — he’s called himself “pathologically optimistic” and said that he has “an issue with time.”

Tesla is currently in the design stage for Optimus, which Musk has said has proven challenging — especially when it comes to the robot’s hands. Musk said that he eventually expects to be able to sell Optimus for $20,000 to $30,000 once the robots hit volume production.

Thank you, I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today.¹

I am excited to be discussing stablecoins. This innovation has been unfairly treated as a pariah by some, but stablecoins are now an established and fast-growing part of the financial landscape. Putatively, stablecoins were originally intended to facilitate holding and trading cryptocurrency. But their proliferation has been aided by providing users with a stable store of value, a means of payment, and the ability to move capital quickly, irrespective of territorial borders.

Demand for dollars continues to be strong, so it’s no surprise that a more efficient means of accessing dollars has become increasingly popular. With the passage this year of the GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act), there is now a clear regulatory pathway in the U.S. for stablecoin issuers to broaden their reach and solidify stablecoins as a core part of the payment system. I believe economic research has some catching up to do. Economists meticulously study demand for dollar assets and consider how monetary policy may be affected, and the rapid growth of stablecoins affects the supply of loanable funds in the U.S. economy. I am encouraged that the Federal Reserve is taking steps to recognize the importance of stablecoins for the payment system; greater transparency and rising adoption should help us consider their effect on monetary policy as well.²

Stablecoins and Dollars

Essentially all stablecoins are denominated in dollars, and their success is at least partly due to the U.S. dollar’s enduring status as the world’s preferred currency.³ Stablecoins are also contributing to the dollar’s dominance by allowing an ever-growing share of people around the globe to hold assets and conduct transactions in the most trusted currency.

My thesis is that stablecoins are already increasing demand for U.S. Treasury bills and other dollar-denominated liquid assets by purchasers outside the Unted States and that this demand will continue growing. All else equal, this new demand lowers borrowing costs for the U.S. government. However, as a central banker, my focus is on what I believe may be a substantial and long-term force putting downward pressure on a crucial guideline for monetary policymakers known as r*. The neutral rate, or r*, is the policy interest rate that neither stimulates nor restricts economic activity when the economy is operating at its potential once the transitory effects of cyclical economic shocks have abated. There are several open questions with respect to the impact of stablecoins on U.S. monetary policy: How many assets will be managed by stablecoin issuers? Will the funds come from domestic or foreign sources, and where might substitution pull funds out of the banking system? What are the systemic risks related to runs on stablecoins? Since monetary policy must be forward looking, my colleagues and I would be best served exploring these topics now. In these remarks, I’ll focus on the consequences for monetary policy if stablecoin growth follows industry expectations. In short, stablecoins may become a multitrillion dollar elephant in the room for central bankers.

GENIUS Act

While I tend to view new regulations skeptically, I’m greatly encouraged by the GENIUS Act. This regulatory apparatus for stablecoins establishes a level of legitimacy and accountability congruent with holding traditional dollar assets. For the purposes of monetary policy, the most important aspect of the GENIUS Act is that it requires U.S.-domiciled issuers to maintain reserves backed on at least a one-to-one basis in safe and liquid U.S. dollar–denominated assets. These reserves can be held in bank deposits, short-term Treasurys, overnight repurchase agreements (repos) or reverse repos backed by U.S. Treasurys, or government money market funds. Depending on the source of funds used to invest in stablecoins, it may constitute new loanable funds in the U.S. economy or the overall amount of money available for borrowing and lending.

Even stablecoins outside the ambit of the GENIUS Act are likely to boost demand for Treasurys and other dollar-denominated assets. Stablecoins that do not comply with the GENIUS Act can invest reserves in a much broader range of assets but, to be viewed as reliable stores of value, will likely end up still investing substantially in U.S. dollar securities with minimal credit risk.

The inter-quartile range of private-sector estimates compiled by Federal Reserve staff roughly projects stablecoin uptake reaching between $1 trillion and $3 trillion by the end of the decade. For reference, the Fed grew its holdings of U.S. Treasury securities by just over $3 trillion during the latest round of quantitative easing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In total, under $7 trillion in Treasury bills are outstanding today. If these forecasts prove accurate, the magnitude of additional demand from stablecoins will be too large to ignore.

Potential for Broad Adoption

The innovation of public blockchains means that stablecoins can trade freely on rails that anyone in the world can use. This advancement represents potentially transformational change for consumers and businesses outside the U.S., particularly those in emerging market economies (EMEs) or even advanced foreign economies (AFEs) with burdensome restrictions on their payment systems. In many jurisdictions, low-friction payment rails are unavailable. Banking services to convert local currency or assets into dollars may be limited. Basic banking services themselves may be limited. And billions of people worldwide are subject to capital controls preventing convertibility and access to dollars. Globally, savers disproportionately favor dollar-denominated assets, and the ubiquity of capital controls is indicative of that revealed preference.

For stablecoins to enter widespread use, there must be a bridge from local fiat currencies into stablecoins. One can imagine many possible bridges, often already in use for existing dollar vehicles: Remittances from immigrants working in the U.S. might take the form of stablecoins; exporters may receive portions of their payment in stablecoins, perhaps undeclared if domiciled in jurisdictions that proscribe stablecoin use; people might trade local currency for cryptocurrency and then use that cryptocurrency to buy a stablecoin; or they might trade physical cash or goods or services or other assets for stablecoins. Stablecoins merely make it easier to traverse some of these bridges and increase incentives for doing so because once stablecoins are in circulation in an economy, they can circulate more freely and cheaply behind capital controls than traditional forms of dollar payments.⁴

These bridges will not be frictionless or have infinite capacity. For people who want to use dollars either as a store of value or a means of payment but are unable to do so, stablecoins make it incrementally easier. Stablecoins will not instantly obliterate barriers to dollar use, but they will perforate those barriers.

Reserve assets and currency provided by the U.S. are global public goods, but some jurisdictions prohibit their citizens’ enjoyment of them. Stablecoins might establish an easier means for the financially repressed to enjoy these global public goods and evade draconian restrictions on their finances. For individuals and businesses in many nations, especially those in which dollars are used for large purchases like homes, this also leapfrogs the challenges of high and unstable inflation or volatile exchange rates.

To be fair, stablecoin growth may not live up to the forecasts I cited earlier. Potential limits on yield and reward arrangements could limit adoption, particularly in open economies. The presumption that the crypto industry will grow at the prodigious rates of recent years cannot be taken for granted. But even with these considerations, it seems likely to me that the growth in stablecoin usage outside the U.S. will continue at a high rate.

One important distinction is that if domestically purchased stablecoins are financed with bank deposits, or foreign purchases are financed with existing dollar-denominated holdings, then that doesn’t affect the amount of loanable funds in the financial system. Further, there’s some risk that a flow of deposits out of the U.S. banking system and into stablecoins could disintermediate banks, affecting the transmission of monetary policy and stunting the velocity of money.

However, because GENIUS Act payment stablecoins do not offer yield and are not backed by federal deposit insurance, I see little prospect of funds broadly fleeing the domestic banking system. The real opportunity in stablecoins is to satiate untapped foreign appetite for dollar assets from savers in jurisdictions where dollar access is limited; by contrast, users in the U.S. and AFEs like the euro zone already freely access Treasurys, dollars, and other instruments that offer yield or deposit insurance. I therefore expect most demand for stablecoins to come from locales unable to access dollar-denominated saving instruments, boosting demand for dollar assets.

Implications for Monetary Policy

The supply–demand balance for loanable funds determines the neutral interest rate, or r*. As I discussed in a recent speech, I believe a range of different factors are putting downward pressure on r* and should be considered in formulating monetary policy.⁵ Some researchers have tried to estimate how much stablecoin growth might lower interest rates. In 2024, work by Marina Azzimonti and Vincenzo Quadrini estimated that if stablecoins are in widespread use and fully backed by U.S. securities, it could put as much as 40 basis points of downward pressure on interest rates.⁶

In estimating the effect of the projected growth of stablecoin issuance on demand for Treasurys and other highly liquid dollar assets, it is helpful to make a comparison to what most researchers believe was a large factor during an era of declining interest rates that began around the turn of the millennium—what former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke called the global saving glut.⁷ In measuring the global saving glut, Bernanke reported that the annual U.S. current account deficit widened by 4 percentage points of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) from 1996 to 2004.⁸

As I mentioned earlier, projections indicate between $1 trillion to $3 trillion of growth in stablecoins over the next several years. Adoption depends on regulatory clarity, institutional integration, and factors emanating from outside the U.S.—for instance, growth in EMEs, foreign exchange fluctuations, foreign political stability, and so forth.

An additional $2 trillion of foreign demand for dollar assets by the end of the decade would, all else equal, increase the current account deficit by roughly 1.2 percentage points of GDP over this period. This increase would represent about 30 percent of the size of the original global saving glut. More bullish stablecoin-uptake forecasts on the order of $4 trillion would double the size of this effect, making it about 60 percent the size of the original global saving glut. These magnitudes would matter for monetary policy.

Demand could obviously differ in domestic versus foreign adoption or miss these estimates. My goal is not to pinpoint the most accurate forecast, but to highlight the potential power of this channel. You can fill in your own numbers using this same method—my crystal ball is no clearer than others’. Moreover, the asset mix purchased by the rest of the world 20 years ago differs from that purchased by stablecoin issuers. The effects of a lower neutral rate might therefore manifest in financial markets differently than they did last time.

Even relatively conservative estimates of stablecoin growth imply an increase in the net supply of loanable funds in the economy that pushes down r*. If r* is lower, policy rates should also be lower than they would otherwise be to support a healthy economy. A failure of the central bank to cut rates in response to a reduction in r* is contractionary.

If a global stablecoin glut looks like a global saving glut, some other consequences may be replicated, too. For instance, a lower r* increases the odds that the zero lower bound (ZLB) binds in the future, limiting the ability of short-term interest rates to move down to provide accommodation but not restraining their ability to move up to restrict activity. Markets may expect policy to spend more time at the ZLB because of that inability to provide accommodation and get away from zero. That may make the fed funds rate more volatile to the upside with respect to other financial conditions, even as downside volatility remains muted by the ZLB, simulating elements of former Chairman Alan Greenspan’s “conundrum.”⁹

Moreover, if a global stablecoin glut is driven by flows out of foreign currencies and into the U.S. dollar, it will, all else equal, make the dollar stronger. Depending on the strength of this effect relative to other forces affecting the Fed’s price-stability and maximum-employment mandates, that might be something that monetary policy reacts to.

Finally, incremental dollarization may reduce the benefits of floating exchange rates. Exchange rates often function as shock absorbers, adjusting rapidly to changes in relative conditions across countries so that nominal prices don’t have to. If nominal prices are sticky and exchange rates are not, the cyclical distortions associated with those rigidities are less detrimental for the economy. Increased real price rigidity because exchange rates cannot adjust would intensify the volatility of global business cycles. And Fed policy will have a greater effect on foreign economic growth with greater dollarization, increasing business cycle synchronization. Whether this phenomenon would matter for the U.S. and not just for countries that dollarize a portion of their economies remains speculative.¹⁰

America’s capital markets are the world’s deepest, helping to support economic growth, fund new ideas, and allocate capital efficiently. However, our financial infrastructure, not unlike our physical infrastructure, could use a reboot. Stablecoins may well lead the way on this front, facilitating dollar holdings and payments domestically and abroad. While there has been extensive research on the topic since the advent of stablecoins a decade ago, the scope for rapid increases in issuance makes it now even more imperative to consider what widespread adoption may mean for monetary policy, both in the U.S. and abroad.

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1. The views expressed here are my own and are not necessarily those of my colleagues on the Federal Reserve Board or the Federal Open Market Committee. Return to text

2. See Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2025), proceedings of the Payments Innovation Conference, streamed live on October 21, YouTube (Washington: Board of Governors). Return to text

3. For the list of stablecoins circulating, see the DeFiLlama website at https://defillama.com/stablecoins; at the time of writing, 99.6 percent of stablecoins were denominated in dollars. For more on the enduring global preference for dollars, see Carol Bertaut, Bastian von Beschwitz, and Stephanie Curcuru (2025), “The International Role of the U.S. Dollar – 2025 Edition,” FEDS Notes, (Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, July 18). Return to text

4. Although many countries have existing black markets for dollars, these are likely to be less preferred to stablecoins because of the difficulty of verifying and saving currency. Relative to stablecoins, physical cash is riskier, and both more difficult and costlier to store or move in large volumes. Moreover, many black market dollars trade at a premium because the amount of dollars available is limited. Return to text

5. See Stephen I. Miran (2025), “Nonmonetary Forces and Appropriate Monetary Policy,” speech delivered at the Economic Club of New York, New York, September 22. Return to text

6. See Marina Azzimonti and Vincenzo Quadrini (2024), “Digital Assets and the Exorbitant Dollar Privilege (PDF)” AEA Papers and Proceedings, vol. 114 (May), pp. 153–56. This paper and related work by the same authors—including the 2025 paper “Digital Economy, Stablecoins and the Global Financial System,” NBER Working Paper Series 34066 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, July)—expand on some of these ideas but do so in a model in which stablecoin issuers can choose to hold much less—or even none—of their assets in Treasury securities. The prediction on the interest rate depends on the fraction of reserves held in Treasury securities by stablecoin issuers. With a low enough fraction, the stablecoin steady-state interest rate can actually also be higher. However, such a pattern does not match what we observe from issuers or the guidelines in the GENIUS Act, and I therefore prefer to assume a high value of the fraction of reserves held in Treasury securities. It follows that the stablecoin steady-state interest rate is lower than the steady-state interest rate in which stablecoins are absent. Return to text

7. In his 2005 speech that coined the term and launched a thousand papers, then-Fed Governor Ben Bernanke estimated that the global saving glut began around 2001. See Ben S. Bernanke (2005), “The Global Saving Glut and the U.S. Current Account Deficit,” remarks delivered at the Sandridge Lecture, Virginia Association of Economists, Richmond, Virginia, March 10. Return to text

8. After peaking in 1995 at 7.91 percent, the 10-year yield fell to 4.92 percent in January 2001. Return to text

9. See Alan Greenspan (2005), testimony before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate, February 16, 109th Cong. (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office), quoted text in paragraph 23. Return to text

10. Caballero, Fahri, and Gourinchas (2017) note that once the ZLB for global interest rates is reached, the world economy becomes increasingly interdependent as countries can no longer use monetary policy to insulate their economies from world capital flows; see Ricardo J. Caballero, Emmanuel Farhi, and Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas (2017), “The Safe Assets Shortage Conundrum (PDF),” Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 31 (Summer), pp. 29–46. Return to text

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) said it will supply more than 60,000 advanced Nvidia (NVDA) artificial intelligence chips to the United Arab Emirates under export licenses cleared by the U.S. Commerce Department.

The approval, issued in September, permits the transfer of Nvidia’s high-end GB300 Grace Blackwell processors under what officials called strict security and compliance conditions. The chips will be deployed across UAE data centers to expand cloud and AI infrastructure.

The development comes shortly after President Donald Trump said in a 60 Minutes interview that U.S. authorities would block shipments of the most advanced chips overseas, particularly to China. The UAE deal, however, falls under an earlier license granted with additional oversight.

The export agreement is linked to the UAE’s pledge to channel about $1.4 trillion into U.S.-based projects in AI and energy, a figure that far exceeds the Gulf nation’s annual GDP of roughly $540 billion.

Microsoft said the deliveries form part of its $15.2 billion regional technology investment and will support AI access from OpenAI, Anthropic, open-source developers, and its own cloud platforms already running over 21,000 Nvidia GPUs in the UAE.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.

Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE:TMO) just announced a big win for shareholders a $5 billion stock buyback plan with no expiration date. That means the company can repurchase shares at its own pace, whenever the timing feels right.

Alongside that, Thermo Fisher is keeping things steady on the income side, maintaining its quarterly dividend at $0.43 per share.

It’s a confident move that signals the company’s strong balance sheet and steady cash flow. By buying back stock and sticking with its dividend, Thermo Fisher is showing it can balance growth investments with shareholder rewards a combo investors always like to see.

Sequoia Capital’s Roelof Botha was ousted by top lieutenants who lost confidence in his ability to keep Silicon Valley’s most powerful venture capital firm ahead of rivals.

Botha stepped down as managing partner of the group on Tuesday following an intervention from Alfred Lin, Pat Grady and Andrew Reed, said multiple people with knowledge of the matter.

The trio of senior partners had the blessing of the wider firm and Doug Leone, Sequoia’s former managing partner, said three of the people.

Their move came on the back of concerns about Botha’s management style, questions about Sequoia’s artificial intelligence investment strategy and follows high-profile clashes between senior figures at the firm, said the people.

The Financial Times spoke to 10 people close to the firm, including investors who have worked with Botha and the institutions that bankroll Sequoia, known as limited partners. His ousting was motivated by a belief that a new generation of leaders would better serve Sequoia’s LPs, they said.

One of those described the removal as a “revolt” against Botha’s “imperial style of leadership”, following a period of upheaval at one of Silicon Valley’s most successful and enduring firms.

“On an IQ level he is off the charts . . . But the heart of the matter is that Roelof is one of these people who always needs to be seen as the smartest guy in the room,” the person said, adding Botha’s emotional intelligence did not match his intellect.

“Roelof is a legendary investor, leader and human being,” Sequoia’s new leadership team told the FT. “He was part of the decision to empower the next generation, and he will continue to serve on boards and advise the partnership, alongside former stewards Doug [Leone] and Jim [Goetz].”

The trio of lieutenants took advantage of Sequoia’s unique governance, which allows partners to call a vote in the leadership at any point, said two people with knowledge of the arrangement.

The measure gives additional weighting to the longer-serving investors and is designed to prevent senior partners blocking the ascent of dealmakers beneath them, they added.

“The reason Sequoia has stayed Sequoia for 53 years is they have refused to cement themselves in hierarchy,” said one person with knowledge of Botha’s removal.

Grady and Lin will now run the firm, while Reed and Grady will co-lead Sequoia’s fund investing in more mature start-ups. Lin and another partner, Luciana Lixandru, will co-lead the firm’s early stage investment fund.

Botha, who has run its US and European business since 2017 and took over the whole firm in 2022, will remain as an adviser.

The 52-year old grandson of Roelof “Pik” Botha, the last foreign secretary under South Africa’s apartheid regime and later a member of Nelson Mandela’s first government, was hired to PayPal by Elon Musk early in his career.

He has led a string of investments, including in Instagram, YouTube and $30bn database management company MongoDB. Sequoia has returned more than $50bn to its US and European investors since 2017, said a person with knowledge of the matter.

Despite these successes, partners decided Lin, who has backed Airbnb, DoorDash and OpenAI, and Grady, behind investments in Snowflake, Zoom and ServiceNow, were better placed to lead Sequoia forward.

Under Botha, Sequoia has taken a more cautious approach to AI investment than some rivals. The firm invested a little more than $20mn in OpenAI in 2021, when the ChatGPT maker was valued at about $20bn, and has boosted that stake in subsequent rounds, said people with knowledge of the deals.

When OpenAI raised funds at a $260bn valuation earlier this year, Sequoia offered to invest $1bn, but ultimately was given a stake of a fraction of that, according to people with knowledge of that deal.

Sequoia also holds a stake in Musk’s xAI, but has focused on early investments in AI application companies such as Harvey, Sierra and Glean — an approach also advocated by Grady.

Botha also grappled with major conflicts during his tenure. Last month, the FT reported Sequoia’s chief operating officer Sumaiya Balbale left the firm in August after complaining that colleague Shaun Maguire’s X posts about New York’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani were Islamophobic.

Botha reminded Maguire — a vital Musk ally — of the need to consider Sequoia’s reputation, but otherwise refused to discipline him, citing the firm’s long-standing position that all partners had a right to free speech. Balbale left after considering her position untenable, according to those with knowledge of the incident.

Last year, a fight over board seats at Swedish fintech Klarna exposed a schism between Botha and Michael Moritz, who had previously led the firm and backed some of its most successful companies.

Botha threw his weight behind an effort to vote Moritz out as Klarna chair, said people familiar with the situation. The effort backfired, with Moritz remaining in post and Sequoia’s Matthew Miller being ousted as a Klarna director instead.

Early in his tenure, Botha also split from Sequoia’s lucrative Chinese business. Geopolitical pressure gave the firm little choice, but the decision nonetheless impacted returns.

“I do think the last five years have been super intense, it’s really hard to lead a firm through all of that,” said one long-standing Sequoia LP.

Botha was also hurt by other strategic decisions of his own, said multiple people with knowledge of the matter.

This included the announcement, as Leone was handing over the reins, of a new “evergreen” fund to hold on to Sequoia’s best companies after they went public, a point at which VCs typically cash out.

The timing was disastrous: the fund was launched at the peak of a tech investment boom in 2022 and the valuations of start-ups which Sequoia had clung on to cratered.

Public market valuations have since rebounded, and the fund has generated nearly $7bn in gains on where the companies were priced when they were rolled in, according to a person with knowledge of Sequoia’s financials. But the decision angered some LPs who were given little option but to participate in the new fund, said people familiar with the matter.

“The evergreen structure came at the wrong time, they put a lot of strain on LPs and didn’t return money at the top of the market,” said a Silicon Valley VC.

It is unclear if Lin and Grady intend to move the firm in a new direction. The pair are “very warm, very capable and clever”, said the long-standing Sequoia LP, adding they are also “sitting on a very hot seat”.

Additional reporting by Stephen Morris in San Francisco