The Daily Ten – Car Sales Surge, Airbnb seeks $3 Billion in IPO, Atlanta Falcons reopen stadium, Ultra Rich use home loans for cheap credit…
The Daily Ten
1. The Ultra-Rich Are Using Giant Home Loans to Access Cheap Credit | Bloomberg
JPMorgan has issued a $42.5 million loan on a New York penthouse owned by a Russian billionaire’s family.
The penthouse at 15 Central Park West has everything you’d expect for an $88 million property: 6,744-square-feet of space, a wraparound terrace and killer views of Manhattan.
Since June, the apartment owned by the family of Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev has an added feature available just for the super rich: a $42.5 million mortgage from JPMorgan Chase & Co. With a 2.9% interest rate, payments are about $177,000 a month.
Rybolovlev — who declined to comment through a spokeswoman — bought the apartment from Sandy Weill about a decade ago for his daughter Ekaterina. The family tried to sell it a few years later as prices for ultra-expensive properties in the city had started to slip. Instead they choose to leverage the asset.
While the super-sized mortgage is one of the biggest arranged in recent months, it’s far from the only one. Lenders are increasingly providing credit to their most valuable clients after central banks slashed interest rates to protect the economy from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. That’s enabling the ultra-wealthy to borrow to invest in stock markets, cryptocurrencies or real estate, even as protracted unemployment drives serious delinquencies to their highest levels since 2010.
2. America’s Main Street Revival Goes Into Reverse, Cutting a Small-Town Lifeline | WSJ
The challenges faced by businesses in Emporia, Kan., show how much that revival is now in danger from Covid-19
Kim Redeker opened The Sweet Granada chocolate shop in Emporia, Kan., in 2004, in a storefront that had been vacant for years. She was an early foot soldier in a push to revitalize Emporia’s downtown.
Other specialty shops, restaurants and bars popped up—the Bourbon Cowboy bar, a bike shop called Gravel City Adventure & Supply Co., Dynamic Discs for disc golf. By early 2020, the vacancy rate on Emporia’s Main Street corridor had dropped below 10%, compared with about 40% in 1991. “It has been a sweet ride being part of that…
3. The Pandemic Depression Is Over. The Pandemic Recession Has Just Begun. | New York Times
Signs of a slower, grinding recovery sure look familiar.
There is a straightforward narrative of the economy in 2020: The world shut down in the spring because of the coronavirus pandemic, causing an economic collapse without modern precedent. A sharp recovery began in May as businesses reopened.
That is accurate as far as it goes. But the snapback effect over the summer has masked something more worrying: We’ve entered a longer, slower grind that puts the economy at risk for the indefinite future.
In the details of government employment data — covering hundreds of industries — can be seen a jobs crisis that penetrates deeply into the economy. Sectors that in theory shouldn’t be much affected by the pandemic at all are showing patterns akin to a severe recession.
Business news headlines are reflecting a drumbeat of layoffs normally seen in recessions. In the last few weeks alone, the oil giant Shell said it was cutting 9,000 positions, with Disney eliminating 28,000 and the defense giant Raytheon 15,000
4. Small Software Companies Find a Home With ESW Capital | WSJ
Backed by Texas billionaire Joseph Liemandt, ESW has built a Netflix-like service for business-to-business software by buying startups whose owners are looking to cash out
Founders of small technology businesses can sometimes hit a wall generating enough profits to expand their companies. Some have found a solution by selling their companies to ESW Capital LLC, an investment firm that is stocking a Netflix-like subscription service with business-to-business software.
ESW, short for enterprise software, is controlled by Texas billionaire Joseph Liemandt. Over the past couple of decades, the firm has bought more than 100 companies in deal sizes ranging from less than a million dollars to at least…
5. Led by Tesla, Auto Industry Rebounds as Car Sales Surge | New York Times
Tesla reported record deliveries in the third quarter as growing interest in electric vehicles and other cars boosted sales across the industry.
When the coronavirus pandemic forced businesses to close this spring, the auto industry was hit particularly hard. North American auto plants that typically churn out more than a million cars a month produced fewer than 5,000 in April.
While airlines and other industries continue to struggle, automakers are now enjoying a clear upswing. Last month, some large automakers reported that sales in the United States were up from the previous September. If this pace of sales continues for a year the industry would sell more than 16 million cars and trucks, up from an annualized pace of 13 million in June.
This recovery is being led by Tesla, the electric car pioneer. On Friday, the company reported record deliveries in the third quarter as steady growth in China and Europe more than offset weakness in the United States. The company does not provide a geographic breakdown of its sales.
The automaker delivered 139,300 electric cars in the third quarter, an increase of more than 50 percent from the second quarter, when the pandemic forced Tesla and other automakers to close factories and many consumers stayed away from car dealerships.
6. The Atlanta Falcons will use ‘disinfecting drones’ to sanitize the team’s stadium when it welcomes back fans this month | CNN Business
(CNN)Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium (MBS) is the first professional sports venue to sanitize its arena using drones.
MBS, which is home to the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United FC, partnered with Charlotte-based company Lucid Drone Technologies to use its D1 disinfecting drones to sanitize key areas in the arena, according to a news release.
The technology has been tested as part of the sanitization process as the arena welcomes fans back for the Falcons’ upcoming home game against the Carolina Panthers on October 11.
The team has not yet announced how many fans will be allowed in for the game –only that fans would be allowed in a limited capacity. The Falcons hosted 500 friends and family members on September 27 for the team’s home game against the Chicago Bears, but have not allowed ticketed spectators in for its first two home games of the season.
The drones are being used to disinfect the seating bowl, handrails and glass partitions in the stadium after events. The use of the drones have allowed stadium workers to be redeployed in other areas of the stadium, and allow for a 95% reduction in time spent cleaning the seating bowl, the release said.
7. Inside the New Coronavirus Relief Bill: a Total Eviction Moratorium | Bloomberg CityLab
The $2.2 trillion stimulus package passed by House Democrats includes a complete ban on eviction and foreclosure filings for 12 months.
On Oct. 1, just hours before the first reports of the news that President Donald Trump had tested positive for Covid-19, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package. Among the elements in the bill: a complete ban on eviction filings over nonpayment. That’s a far stronger action than Congress or the White House has taken previously.
The legislation that Democratic lawmakers passed would prevent landlords from filing evictions for nonpayment for a full year after the bill is passed. It would further prohibit foreclosures over nonpayment over the same period and enact automatic forbearance for delinquent borrowers to address the needs of struggling homeowners. Also included in the bill are $50 billion in emergency rental assistance funds and a homeowner assistance fund with up to $80 million for each state, along with other types of aid to blunt the economic damage wrought by the pandemic.
“This relief is essential, and the Senate must act now to keep Americans safe at home,” says Noëlle Porter, director of government affairs for the National Housing Law Project, in an email.
The CARES Act — a $2.2 trillion package in response to the worst economic fallout since the Great Recession — passed with bipartisan support in March, but Senate Republicans have not budged on a second spending package since the House passed the $3.4 trillion HEROES Act in May. This revision of that bill that passed on Thursday is narrower in scope, but leadership in the House and Senate still seem too far apart for any action on the legislation.
8. Lime and Scoot veterans have built Ridepanda, a one-stop micromobility marketplace | TechCrunch
Chinmay Malaviya and Charlie Depman found themselves at the center of the shared micromobility industry just as it took off, working for companies like Bird, Lime and Scoot. They experienced a rollercoaster ride of venture funding and skyrocketing demand, product pitfalls and regulatory hurdles. It was in the midst of this activity that the pair noted a shift in the industry and an opportunity.
“From our vantage point there was a massive shift happening in mobility and transportation, in terms of personal ownership,” Malaviya told TechCrunch in an interview last month. “People were looking for their own electric scooter, electric bike and electric moped.”
Malaviya and Depman, who met on LinkedIn, determined there wasn’t a suitable way to research, vet and buy e-bikes, e-mopeds or e-scooters beyond Google and Amazon searches. And Ridepanda, an online marketplace for light electric vehicles, was born.
It’s safe to call the pair “light electric vehicle” evangelists. They see Ridepanda, which raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from General Catalyst and Will Smith’s Dreamers Fund, as the best way to deliver on the mission of getting more electric bikes, scooters and mopeds in the public’s hands.
9. Regal-owner Cineworld to close all US, UK and Irish screens | New York Post
Cineworld, the world’s second-biggest cinema operator, will close all its screens in the United States, Britain and Ireland this week after studios pulled major releases such as the latest James Bond film, a person familiar with the situation said.
The Regal cinema owner, which began reopening in July after COVID-19 lockdown restrictions started to ease, employs 37,482 people across 787 venues in the U.S., Britain and central Europe, with 546 sites in America.
The release of the new James Bond movie, “No Time To Die,” was pushed into next year on Friday, crushing hopes for a 2020 industry rebound as rising rates of the coronavirus prompt new restrictions and keep viewers away.
Britain’s Sunday Times said the London-listed company had written to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Culture Minister Oliver Dowden to warn that the industry was becoming unviable.
10. Airbnb seeks to raise roughly $3 billion in IPO | CNBC
Home rental company Airbnb is aiming to raise around $3 billion in its upcoming initial public offering, people familiar with the matter said on Friday, taking advantage of the unexpectedly sharp recovery in its business after the COVID-19 pandemic roiled the travel industry.
Airbnb will be one of the largest and most anticipated U.S. stock market listings of 2020 which has already been a blockbuster year for IPOs, featuring the likes of record label Warner Music Group, data analytics firm Palantir and data warehouse company Snowflake.
Airbnb said in August it had filed confidentially for an IPO with U.S. regulators.
The company’s current plan is to make its filing publicly available in November after the U.S presidential election and is targeting an IPO some time in December, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the plans are private.