Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: This is the Boomberg Day a Q podcast. Good morning,
Speaker 2: It's Thursday, the twelfth of February. I'm Caroline Hepkeit in London.
Speaker 1: And I'm Stephen Carolin Brussels. Coming up today. Another investor
Speaker 1: cuts ties with the global ports giant DP World over
Speaker 1: the CEO's alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein. As the fallout
Speaker 1: from the release of documents grows.
Speaker 2: The UK Prime Minister Kis Starmer calls on Manchester United
Speaker 2: co owner Jim Ratcliffe to apologize after he said Britain
Speaker 2: has been colonized by immigrants.
Speaker 1: Plus a rare and detailed view into the mechanics of
Speaker 1: an alleged multimillion euro insider deal revealed in the trial
Speaker 1: of two traders in Paris.
Speaker 3: Let's start with a round up of our top stories.
Speaker 1: A UK government owned investment firm has halted its relationship
Speaker 1: with global ports giant DP World over the CEO's alleged
Speaker 1: ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Comes after Canada's second largest pension
Speaker 1: fund also suspended future investment plans with Dpworld. With Maury
Speaker 1: Here's Boomberg's crispest.
Speaker 4: Both firms took the decision after emails released by the
Speaker 4: US Justice Department and others obtained by Bloomberg News last
Speaker 4: summer showed that DP World CEO Sultan Ahmed bin Salaam
Speaker 4: corresponded with Epstein for more than a decade after Epstein's
Speaker 4: jail sentence in two thousand and eight on charges that
Speaker 4: included procuring a minor for prostitution. A spokesperson for DP
Speaker 4: World wasn't immediately available for comment. Meanwhile, neither Bin Salaam
Speaker 4: nor representatives for DP World responded to repeated requests for
Speaker 4: comments on a Bloomberg News investigation about the email exchanges
Speaker 4: in London, Chris Pitt Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: The latest revelations come as the fallout from the release
Speaker 2: of the Epstein files continues to reach across governments, companies,
Speaker 2: and universities. US Attorney General Pam Bondi yesterday revealed that
Speaker 2: there are pending investigations by the US Justice Department related
Speaker 2: to the probe of the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 2: During a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Bondie said in a
Speaker 2: response to a question about whether there were any additional
Speaker 2: Epstein related prosecutions, planned that we have pending investigations in
Speaker 2: our office, but did not elaborate, and during that same hearing,
Speaker 2: New York Congressman Jerry Nadlers tried to ask BONDI, how
Speaker 2: many men connected with Epstein have been indicted?
Speaker 5: How many perpetrators are you even investigating?
Speaker 4: First you showed it, I find how many have you?
Speaker 1: Excuse me, I'm going to answer the question.
Speaker 3: Answer my question.
Speaker 4: I'm going to answer the question the way I want
Speaker 4: to answer the question.
Speaker 3: You answer the question.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get in the gutter with these people.
Speaker 1: I'm going to answer the question, how many of you?
Speaker 2: The exchange between Nadler and Palm Pam Bondie came as
Speaker 2: Columbia University said that it admitted a student to its
Speaker 2: dental school via what it called irregular process that coincided
Speaker 2: with fundraising solicitations by former faculty and alumni to disgrace
Speaker 2: financi Jeffrey Epstein. That revelation came after Bloomberg reported on
Speaker 2: a year's long chain of communication between Epstein's camp and
Speaker 2: senior members of the Columbia dental faculty.
Speaker 1: The Republican led US House of Representatives, as past legislation
Speaker 1: named at ending President Trump's tariffs on Canada. The move
Speaker 1: signals growing anxiety over the White House's economic agenda ahead
Speaker 1: of midterm election campaigns that are expected to focus on
Speaker 1: affordability issues. President Trump can still veto the bill, meaning
Speaker 1: the vote was largely symbolic and a way to get
Speaker 1: lawmakers on the record regarding their support for tariffs on
Speaker 1: Canadian goods. Here's our senior US Government editor, Derek Wallbank.
Speaker 6: These votes sort of represent an increase in political pressure
Speaker 6: on the President to change course just months before the
Speaker 6: midterm elections. They also, though, represent a big difficulty for
Speaker 6: some swing district Republicans whose districts may be heavily affected
Speaker 6: by tariffs, but who have to face a very real
Speaker 6: question about whether or not they want to cross the
Speaker 6: President on his signature issue.
Speaker 1: Derek Weelbank was speaking of sources of Tel Bloomberg. President
Speaker 1: Trump is privately considering quitting the US Mexico Canada Trade
Speaker 1: Pact that he signs during his first term.
Speaker 2: Now, the British Prime Minister has labeled comments on immigration
Speaker 2: made by Manchester United's co owner Jim Ratcliffe as offensive
Speaker 2: and wrong.
Speaker 3: A spokesperson for No.
Speaker 2: Ten also called on the billionaire boss of Enios Chemicals
Speaker 2: to apologize for the remarks made during an interview with
Speaker 2: Sky News. During the conversation, Ratcliffe said that the UK
Speaker 2: couldn't sustain its current population growth.
Speaker 7: You can't have an economy with nine million people on
Speaker 7: benefits and huge levels of immigrants coming in. I mean
Speaker 7: that the UK has been colonized. It's costing too much money.
Speaker 7: It will cause the UKO has been colonized by immigrants, really,
Speaker 7: isn't it. I mean the population of the UK is
Speaker 7: fifty eight million in twenty twenty, now it's seventy million.
Speaker 2: In that interview with Sky News, Jim Ratcliffe went on
Speaker 2: to argue that Kirs Darman needs to make difficult decisions
Speaker 2: to get the UK back on track. Data from the
Speaker 2: Office for National Statistics estimates the UK population in mid
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five was sixty nine point four million, almost
Speaker 2: three million higher than in twenty twenty. Several managers the
Speaker 2: United Supporters Clubs have condemned the comments, as well as
Speaker 2: the Kick it Out campaign against discrimination in sports.
Speaker 1: The leaders of France and Germany are at odds over
Speaker 1: a Made in Europe push across the EU that says
Speaker 1: European leaders are gathering in rural Belgium to discuss their
Speaker 1: economic challenges. Bloomberg tea at of Bio has more.
Speaker 8: We have to preserve and define by design European content.
Speaker 8: Those were the words of French President Emmanuel Macran to
Speaker 8: a summit of business leaders as he's urging EU countries
Speaker 8: to prioritize buying from within the bloc in strategic sectors.
Speaker 8: But his Made in Europe agenda has a significant opponent.
Speaker 8: Germany's Chancellor has worn the approach could be too narrow,
Speaker 8: arguing that European preference rules should only be used as
Speaker 8: a last resort. Friedrich Mertz's remarks at the same event
Speaker 8: illustrate the divisions going into today's European leaders retreat on competitiveness. Meanwhile,
Speaker 8: the UK's Rachel Reeves has appealed for any Made in
Speaker 8: Europe law to be broadened to include like minded countries
Speaker 8: outside the EU. In London, he were at a bioblion
Speaker 8: Berg Radio.
Speaker 2: WhatsApp says that Russia has tried to fully block its
Speaker 2: encrypted messaging service in the country. WhatsApp, which is owned
Speaker 2: by Meta, said in a statement on Wednesday that it's
Speaker 2: trying to keep more than one hundred million Russian users connected.
Speaker 2: The Russian government is trying to drive the adoption of
Speaker 2: a new state sponsored app called Max, modeled on China's
Speaker 2: we Chat, while it is also trying to choke off
Speaker 2: access to other foreign owned services, including Telegram. Those are
Speaker 2: some of our top stories for you this morning. In
Speaker 2: terms of the markets, Asian equities have had a huge
Speaker 2: impressive start to the year in terms of the rally
Speaker 2: that we've seen. The costpy continues that today up by
Speaker 2: two point seven percent, the topics also climbing by eight
Speaker 2: tenths of one percent, the Japanese yen strengthening against the dollar.
Speaker 2: There's a real sort of by Japan moment, it seems. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: AI taking a bite out of more industries, including US
Speaker 2: real estate names and Dasso Systems yesterday in Europe. Very
Speaker 2: hot US jobs report yesterday means that trades are pricing
Speaker 2: in a rakeup from the FED now in July, so
Speaker 2: not until then. And a number of earnings out today
Speaker 2: ab im Beev, Siemens and Mercedes benz Ziemen's actually raising
Speaker 2: its outlook, so a sort of validation for Roland Bush's
Speaker 2: push to reshape the company. Mercedes Benz expects margins to
Speaker 2: remain under pressure this year.
Speaker 3: Those are the markets in a moment.
Speaker 1: More on the latest on how revelations in the Epstein
Speaker 1: files are reverberating across the corporate world. Plus a court
Speaker 1: case in Paris reveals rare insight into the mechanics of
Speaker 1: an alleged multimillion euro insider trading scheme. But another story
Speaker 1: that we've been reading first this morning, on the question
Speaker 1: of imitations, copies, counterfeits. Is it flattery or is it frustrating?
Speaker 1: Felix Salmon has been writing about this for Bloomberg Pursuits.
Speaker 1: He points to the long tradition of artists copying slash
Speaker 1: being inspired by one another through history, and the value
Speaker 1: that we now place on reproductions that are very old,
Speaker 1: and he says that as we transition from a century
Speaker 1: that was dominated by the US to one dominated by China,
Speaker 1: the world will have to start grappling with its attitude
Speaker 1: toward copies and fakes. They're far more accepted the in
Speaker 1: Asia than they are necessarily in the West. Perhaps that's
Speaker 1: the attitude we should be adopting.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I mean, I'm more interested in handbags.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, than art, and that apparently if you have
Speaker 2: fake handbags that, according to a professor who've done research
Speaker 2: into this, luxury knockoffs actually mean that consumers want to
Speaker 2: spend more on the original.
Speaker 3: Chadn't realized.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like, I don't have a problem with having
Speaker 1: prints of artwork on my walls at home rather than
Speaker 1: necessarily everything being original either. I mean, if you like
Speaker 1: the picture, you like the picture, which is sort of
Speaker 1: the element of a two. Felix always very intellectual in
Speaker 1: the way that he, of course looks at these issues
Speaker 1: as well. He quotes the artist Eric Duringer as well,
Speaker 1: who notes that the word copy comes from the Latin copia,
Speaker 1: which is the root of cornucopia. So take from that
Speaker 1: what you will. You can read Felix's piece at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com or put a link to it in our
Speaker 1: podcast show notes as well.
Speaker 2: Now, and let's bring you more on the fall out
Speaker 2: from the Epstein files. The UK's Development Finance Bank British
Speaker 2: International Investment has suspended dealings with Dubio Logistics gan DP
Speaker 2: world over alleged ties between the firm CEO and Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 2: Around the world, politicians and business leaders are having to
Speaker 2: respond to revelations found in the millions of documents released
Speaker 2: by the US Justice Department. Joining US now as Harry Wilson,
Speaker 2: the Bloomberg reporter at the center of our investigation that
Speaker 2: first uncovered the extent of Epstein's ties to the UK's
Speaker 2: former ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson. Harry, good to
Speaker 2: speak to you. You've also been reporting on the story
Speaker 2: around DP world this week, and those revelations around the
Speaker 2: chairman and CEO's contacts with Epstein having consequences really far
Speaker 2: beyond Dubai.
Speaker 3: Tell us what's happened.
Speaker 5: Yes, well, it's been quite a familiar story now, hasn't it.
Speaker 5: With all the release of these documents, what we're seeing
Speaker 5: is a whole host of people around the world, often
Speaker 5: very wealthy, very influential people, being caught up in this,
Speaker 5: I guess ever growing scandal, which is that they in
Speaker 5: some way have either had linked connections, were close friends
Speaker 5: associates of Jeffrey Epstein, and those relationships now are getting
Speaker 5: exposed in a very public and a very I guess
Speaker 5: sort of damaging way for them at the moment.
Speaker 3: Harry.
Speaker 1: This is part of a deluge of documents released now
Speaker 1: more than a week ago. Why just on the mechanics
Speaker 1: of this, why are we still learning significant new details
Speaker 1: each day? And should we expect that to continue?
Speaker 5: I supposely the answer is pretty simple, which is that
Speaker 5: there's three and a half million documents that have been released.
Speaker 5: Quite a few of those documents will be one hundreds,
Speaker 5: maybe thousands of pages long, So we're talking about potentially,
Speaker 5: I think, probably upwards of tens of millions of pages
Speaker 5: of information here and quite simply just going through the
Speaker 5: process of sifting through that long time. You know, even
Speaker 5: with all the technology we have at our fingertips today
Speaker 5: that's access to aisystems and such like, it's still a
Speaker 5: very very labor intensive process. And I think that we're
Speaker 5: probably only you know, about maybe five ten percent of
Speaker 5: the way into into this. You know, there's just just
Speaker 5: simply a huge amount of information to go through. Quite
Speaker 5: often as well, documents require a lot of context. You know,
Speaker 5: you can see an email that looks pretty innocuous, but
Speaker 5: it can only reveal its true significance quite often in
Speaker 5: a wider context of what was happening at the time
Speaker 5: when the email was sent. And that's just a very
Speaker 5: labor intensive, time consuming process. So My guess is that
Speaker 5: this is going to go on for at least several
Speaker 5: more weeks, probably months, and who knows, we can still
Speaker 5: be a year or so out from this learning new
Speaker 5: things from this cash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and some of the allegations are much more serious
Speaker 2: than others. What has stood out to you most in
Speaker 2: terms of what has emerged so far?
Speaker 5: I think probably what stands out to me, probably what
Speaker 5: stands out to a lot of our listeners as well,
Speaker 5: probably is the unguardedness and the year. I guess sort
Speaker 5: of vulgarity maybe is the word. But what I think
Speaker 5: a lot of people finding surprising is just simply the
Speaker 5: way in which people communicated so openly about such often
Speaker 5: terrible things with Jeffrey Epstein. You might have expected, you know,
Speaker 5: at least by I guess sort of the mid twenty
Speaker 5: tens or something, people to be more guarded in their
Speaker 5: electronic communications. But what we actually see is people sending
Speaker 5: incredibly I guess, sort of course or unwise communications to
Speaker 5: and from Epstein. And I think that to me has
Speaker 5: been a huge surprise that people were quite openly sending
Speaker 5: this type of staff to Epstein years after he was
Speaker 5: convicted of soliciting sex from a minor and I think,
Speaker 5: you know, I think a lot of other people probably
Speaker 5: find that very surprising too.
Speaker 1: Okay, Harry, thanks so much for joining us, Harry Wilson.
Speaker 1: They're a reporter who's been covering the Epstein files and
Speaker 1: indeed broke many of these stories before the delage of
Speaker 1: documents that came from the US Justice Department as well.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for joining us this morning. Stay
Speaker 1: with us. More from Bloomberg Daybreak Europe coming up after this.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 2: The trial of two traders in Paris is offering a
Speaker 2: rare view into the mechanics of an alleged multimillion euro
Speaker 2: inside a deal. It follows a decade long investigation into
Speaker 2: trades that were made before French chemical producer air le
Speaker 2: Ked announced plans to acquire American rival air gas. Our
Speaker 2: Paris legal reporter gaspell Seabag joins us now for more.
Speaker 2: Good to talk to you, Gas about what has stood
Speaker 2: out doing this trial.
Speaker 9: You know, what was really extraordinary during this trial is
Speaker 9: that some of the suspects were using what's known as
Speaker 9: Berner phones. They were using these prepaid cell phones that
Speaker 9: you typically discard to avoid being detected by authorities, but
Speaker 9: Despite these precautions, Coop managed to trace their movements and
Speaker 9: somehow actually wiretapped these secret lines, and so in court
Speaker 9: there was this moment where the judge actually played the
Speaker 9: tapes and so instead of surmising that these traders who
Speaker 9: had been making millions over the past years, surmising that
Speaker 9: maybe they'd got a tip from somewhere, well, actually we
Speaker 9: were listening to them as they appeared to get leaks
Speaker 9: from a banker of details about out a yet unannounced
Speaker 9: multi billion dollar acquisition.
Speaker 10: It was really really quite extraordinary.
Speaker 9: You could hear the suspects laugh at times in court.
Speaker 9: I really sensed unease from the defendants. And what was
Speaker 9: really quite amazing was the wealth of details that this
Speaker 9: gang had. They didn't just know the names of the
Speaker 9: companies that you just cited. They also appeared to gain
Speaker 9: information about the price they acquired was going to pay,
Speaker 9: which was basically a forty percent premium. They seemed to
Speaker 9: know the date the deal was going to be announced,
Speaker 9: they seemed to know how it was going to be financed. Basically,
Speaker 9: they kind of seemed to have everything in hand.
Speaker 1: One of the unusual characters in this case, it's been
Speaker 1: a paintball executive. Can you tell us more about about
Speaker 1: Hyman and how he was embroiled in this Yes?
Speaker 10: Absolutely.
Speaker 9: In fact, you know, beyond these berna phones that I mentioned,
Speaker 9: what makes cracking inside a trading case it's very difficult,
Speaker 9: is when you have these unusual intermediaries. You know, it's
Speaker 9: essentially people that there's no real objective reason to suspect,
Speaker 9: and that I believe was the case in many ways
Speaker 9: with this Paintball executive, mister Thomas Seligman, who'd started his
Speaker 9: career running hair salon family business for several years and
Speaker 9: then set up, as you said, a paintball supply firm.
Speaker 9: He didn't carry any stock trading himself, so you know,
Speaker 9: he never raised any red flags with market regulators. But
Speaker 9: as it seemed to turn out, he was the connector.
Speaker 9: He was the essential node in this alleged scheme. You know,
Speaker 9: independently over the years he'd met a banker and then
Speaker 9: at another occasion he'd met a solo trader, and thereafter,
Speaker 9: using these secret lines, he was phoning one to collect information,
Speaker 9: then calling the other to share what he'd learnt.
Speaker 10: And you know that was the.
Speaker 9: Person that eventually authorities started tailing. You know, they started
Speaker 9: to follow what he was doing, and they finally managed
Speaker 9: to place a wiretapp on his phone.
Speaker 3: So then what was in it for him?
Speaker 2: Since he wasn't himself trading on the intel Allegedly.
Speaker 10: That's where it gets really really quite interesting too.
Speaker 9: You know, obviously you can imagine that according to investigators,
Speaker 9: he wasn't doing this for free. He expected seemingly a
Speaker 9: kit back on the proceeds, and the authorities alleged that
Speaker 9: he and his co conspirators were using these quite roundabout
Speaker 9: ways to make payments, right, they weren't just like you know, making.
Speaker 10: A wire trade transfer like this, you know.
Speaker 9: And and so in one one instance, mister Seligman had
Speaker 9: received a regency period console when he'd got married several
Speaker 9: decades earlier, and he was desperately trying to get rid
Speaker 9: of it in the in the years proceeding uh this
Speaker 9: this case, and he'd had Christie's auction it several times,
Speaker 9: but you know, no one was a buyer. The price
Speaker 9: kept on dropping, and still no one was a buyer.
Speaker 10: And then one day.
Speaker 9: Actually he was on Christmas Eve, just after a protagonist
Speaker 9: had made a mint on air gas, this fellow Seligman
Speaker 9: got a big wire transfer worth at least three times
Speaker 9: the value of this furniture piece from one of the
Speaker 9: trader friends who who'd made fortune. You know, this was
Speaker 9: just one of the alleged Kickmax schemes. There were other
Speaker 9: which were seemingly disguised in a distribution contract for Paintball Ammo.
Speaker 9: But I do think this Regency one is pat the
Speaker 9: most telling.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Daybreak Europe, your morning brief on the
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