Andrew here. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has reverberated around the world. The question for business and policy leaders, beyond the immediate implications for the election, is how to halt the increasing political violence in this nation. America’s economy and innovation may be the envy of the world, but our politics and polarized culture are not.
The heated rhetoric is only getting worse. Business leaders and donors are not doing enough to tamp it down; most won’t speak out, afraid of potential blowback, giving outsize influence to a handful of voices on social media. If most voters are genuinely in the middle, corporate executives — whose customer base is the American public — should use their voices and wallets to make sure that view is properly represented.
It’s unfortunate how big a role money plays in U.S. politics, but it’s worse that those who could influence the political machine with their resources have done next to nothing to fix a clearly broken system filled with vitriol that helped lead to the political violence this weekend we all witnessed on Saturday.
A shooting changes the election
Twenty-four hours after surviving an assassination attempt, Donald Trump arrived in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention, while President Biden and political and business leaders continue to denounce the incident.
The shooting has galvanized the Trump campaign, turning his nomination at the four-day convention into more of a coronation. And the incident led some sympathetic business leaders, including Elon Musk and Bill Ackman, to publicly throw their support behind Trump.
It may have also scrambled the debate among Democrats over whether Biden should step aside: Some potential replacements are likely rethinking the wisdom of running this year, while donors are weighing support for a dark-horse candidate.
Pictures of a fist-pumping and defiant Trump dominated headlines and social media all weekend. Musk posted a video of the incident on X, his social media platform, to announce: “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery.”
That followed months of warming relations between the pair. The two have reportedly discussed an advisory role for Musk if Trump wins in November.
A second Trump administration could give Musk a better relationship with Washington. Trump has criticized electric vehicles and threatened new tariffs that could drive up the costs at many of Musk’s businesses. But the Tesla chief has also felt slighted by the Biden administration on auto policy and sharply criticized its efforts on immigration at the border with Mexico.
For many Democrats, the shooting has changed the political calculus on Biden. The president has struggled to allay concerns among lawmakers and donors about whether he should continue to run after last month’s disastrous debate performance. While the incident has taken the spotlight off his debate stumbles, it may also undercut Biden’s argument about whether he could defeat Trump.
Political betting markets have shown an uptick in the odds that Trump wins in November.
Some donors have suggested privately that the increasingly long odds mean that potential Biden replacements — such as Gov. Gavin Newsom of California or Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan — may want to sit out 2024 and try again in 2028.
Other donors are talking up a new potential candidate, DealBook hears: Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. A former astronaut and U.S. Navy fighter pilot, Kelly has won two elections in a crucial battleground state, demonstrating a potential allure to undecided moderates. (He is married to Gabby Giffords, the former Arizona Representative who survived an assassination attempt in 2011.) For some Democratic financial supporters, his bio makes him the man of the moment.
But Kelly has many of the drawbacks that other donor wish-list names share. Those include a lack of name recognition; logistical hurdles to taking over the Biden campaign’s infrastructure and, crucially, money. Also a lack of experience on the national and international stage.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
More Wall Street giants report earnings. BlackRock, the world’s biggest investment firm, said its adjusted profit per share rose 12 percent year-on-year to $10.36; its assets under management grew to a record $10.6 trillion. Goldman Sachs reported better than expected profit and revenue, helped by a surge in investment banking and trading revenue.
Earnings and central banks will be in focus this week. Investors will examine the strength of corporate earnings amid a pullback by consumers: Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and UnitedHealth Group report on Tuesday, while Netflix and the Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC do so on Thursday. Also, retail sales data is due on Tuesday, the Fed economic report known as the beige book on Wednesday and an interest rate decision by the European Central Bank on Thursday.
Burberry replaces its C.E.O. The British luxury brand appointed Joshua Schulman as its new leader, ousting Jonathan Akeroyd after two and a half years in the role. Burberry’s decision came as the company reported a 20 percent decline in second-quarter revenue and suspended its dividend; its shares were down 16 percent on Monday.
Google’s latest antitrust test
Google is nearing a deal to buy the cloud security start-up Wiz for $23 billion, in what would be the technology giant’s biggest-ever takeover.
The talks for Wiz, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, underscore two competing pressures on Google: the need to grow, especially in the hotly contested market for cloud computing services, and closer antitrust scrutiny of Silicon Valley titans, especially on issues like M.&A.
Google has been trying to bolster its cloud computing division, which is a distant third after Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure. One way it has tried to catch up is by making cybersecurity a point of differentiation from competitors, after buying one service provider, Mandiant, in 2022 for $5.4 billion.
Wiz is one of the hottest non-A.I.-focused start-ups around. The four-year-old company focuses on helping corporate clients, including BMW and Morgan Stanley, safeguard their data when they use cloud computing platforms including Google’s or Amazon’s.
Wiz, whose backers include Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Thrive Capital, raised $1 billion in May at a $12 billion valuation.
The potential Wiz deal is a big risk for Google, especially on the regulatory front:
The pursuit of Wiz comes as the Biden administration has been cracking down on tech titans, especially on competition matters. Mergers are a particular focus. And Google itself was sued twice by the Justice Department on two separate antitrust matters.
Unlike its rivals, Google doesn’t usually make big-ticket acquisitions. The company’s largest transaction to date was the $12.5 billion takeover of Motorola Mobility in 2012. And its track record is mixed, with the company selling Motorola to Lenovo just two years later, at a loss.
How does China want to reboot its economy?
Chinese economic growth slumped in the second quarter as it struggled with a prolonged real estate downturn and weak consumer spending. That pullback has been felt globally, contributing to a sharp sell-off in luxury stocks in Europe on Monday.
The weak performance underscores the challenge facing President Xi Jinping, as he and top policymakers meet this week to decide how to kick-start the world’s second-largest economy.
China’s economy grew 4.7 percent year-on-year between April and June, according to official data published on Monday. That’s down from 5.3 percent in the first three months of this year and its slowest growth rate since the first quarter of 2023.
Economists had forecast that the Chinese economy would expand by 5.1 percent.
The slowdown adds more pressure on Xi. The most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, Xi has sought to reshape the economy to ensure that business works in line with Beijing’s long-term policy goals, including dominating green energy, to promote what he calls “high-quality growth.”
In recent years, Beijing has tightened state control of the economy and cracked down on foreign and domestic companies that don’t fall into line.
The Chinese Communist Party began a crucial planning meeting on Monday. The so-called Third Plenum of the party’s Central Committee, which is held every five years, will define the country’s economic goals for the next decade.
It will probably focus on two priorities, according to Yu Jie, a senior fellow on China at Chatham House, a London-based think tank:
Making China the global leader in technologies such as artificial intelligence, and
Allocating national resources and investment to support sectors that the Communist Party sees as strategically significant, a move that’s more about geopolitics than economics.
“It’s another step toward top-down and centralized economic governance under Xi,” Yu told DealBook.
What does this mean for global investors? Beijing will most likely favor local enterprises that can make the sort of tech breakthroughs the government wants, over companies that aren’t as focused on furthering its interests, Yu added.
The tide may be turning on Vista Outdoor’s breakup plan
The fate of Vista Outdoor’s plan to split itself up is looking increasingly uncertain, with shareholders in the maker of outdoor sports equipment and ammunition set to vote on it in just over a week.
After an influential advisory firm changed its mind and recommended that shareholders reject Vista’s $2.1 billion deal to sell its ammo division to the Prague-based Czechoslovak Group, some shareholders said Vista should be pursuing an alternative transaction with a bidder it had spurned.
“The market has spoken,” TIG Advisors, an investment firm that owns a 0.8 percent stake in Vista, wrote in a public letter to Vista about the deal. TIG noted that Vista’s stock was trading well below the $49 to $58 a share that the company’s preferred plan is worth. That plan calls for selling the ammo business to CSG and leaving the remaining outdoor sports equipment division, Revelyst, to trade publicly. (Vista shares closed on Friday at $37.56.)
TIG said in its letter — and others have said privately, DealBook hears — that Vista’s assumptions for how Revelyst will trade in the future were “unrealistic.”
TIG and others urged Vista to instead negotiate with MNC Capital, which is offering $42 a share for the entire company. Some of these investors have expressed concern about how solid the offer is from MNC, an investment firm founded by a former Vista board member.
But they added that they are confident enough to demand that the company negotiate in good faith with its unwanted suitor, MNC.
Some investors who previously supported the CSG offer now reject it, DealBook hears. But it’s unclear how Vista’s biggest investors, including BlackRock and Vanguard, will vote.
A representative for Vista declined to comment, pointing to statements last week in which the company continued to recommend the CSG offer.
THE SPEED READ
Deals
The Chinese owner of Smithfield, the biggest producer of U.S. pork, plans to list the business’s American and Mexican operations in New York. (WSJ)
Private equity firms are cutting back their borrowing against their own investment funds to pay out cash to their limited partners, a practice that has drawn scrutiny. (FT)
Elections, politics and policy
Before the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the Republican billionaires Ken Griffin and Paul Singer reportedly met with the former president to discuss donating to his campaign. (Bloomberg)
“Battle Over Shareholder Pacts Strains Delaware’s Business Courts” (WSJ)
Best of the rest
An in-depth look at the big bet by Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s C.E.O., on artificial intelligence — and how it has paid off handsomely. (NYT)
“How Janet Yellen Became an Unlikely Culinary Diplomat” (NYT)
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