offers, dynasties and a jumbo jet | USAEMALL.com

One scoop to start: Macquarie-controlled Southern Water asked Ares Management and other lenders to write off about £370mn of debt, in an effort to allow new equity to flow directly into the utility’s heavily-indebted operating company.

And another thing: Activist investor Elliott Management has won the backing of influential proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services for all four board nominees in its campaign against oil refiner Phillips 66.

 In today’s newsletter:

Trump’s Middle East bromance

Billions of dollars are on the table this week as US President Donald Trump jets off to the Middle East.

Ties between the US and the Gulf states have become all the cosier even before the president touches down. Qatar has offered Trump a $400mn jumbo jet replacement for Air Force One: a luxury Boeing 747-8.

While the move drew criticism from supporters and opponents alike, it’s a symbolic way to kick off a week that’s sure to be filled with more transactions. 

It’s just the first in a number of deals that have been discussed ahead of the president’s tour of the Middle East. 

Top of the agenda for the US administration will be a normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and investment commitments from the oil-rich Gulf states.

Trump’s family already knows the region well, with its members and associates spending the past year on a stretch of intense dealmaking there.

DD has previously written about the exploits of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who parlayed the connections he made as a senior adviser in the president’s first administration into a global business.

Kushner’s Affinity Partners has received over $3.5bn from funds backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, Trump’s sons, who assumed control of the president’s business interests when he took office, have also been busy striking deals. 

Last month, Eric Trump appeared at an event with Qatar’s minister of municipality to announce a new Trump golf resort in the country. The Trump Organization has also landed licensing deals for residential blocks in Dubai and Jeddah.

And the previous month, Abu-Dhabi’s MGX investment fund used a stablecoin developed by the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial to finance a $2bn deal with crypto exchange Binance.

Trump adviser Elon Musk’s businesses have also benefited from Gulf state money.

Qatar and the UAE contributed to a $6bn fundraising round for xAI and in February, Dubai said it would use Musk’s Boring Company to build a tunnel network.

It’s expected that Musk will join other US executives this week at an investment forum in Riyadh focused on technology, AI and energy.

The forum will close with a flurry of investment announcements, and the executives, including the likes of Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Fink, will hope for further deals in the future.

Those deal announcements will probably be the real fireworks. And as always with Trump, we’re anticipating some shockingly large dollar figures attached.

EU and US bicker over antitrust

Jonathan Kanter’s office at the US Department of Justice’s headquarters embodied his guiding principles. 

Perched on a wall was an “anti-monopoly” game, signalling the former antitrust chief’s tough competition policy.

But the office also spoke to the state of US-EU relations during the Biden administration.

Among the room’s many accessories was an elephant knitted by ex-EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager — a token of the transatlantic partnership that peaked under Joe Biden’s presidency, with Kanter at the DoJ and Lina Khan at the US Federal Trade Commission.

Today under Donald Trump’s antitrust team, the only needlework exchanged between Washington and Brussels is in the form of biting criticism.

Soon after his appointment as FTC chair in January, Andrew Ferguson accused “Brussels bureaucrats” of “taxing American companies” via the Digital Markets Act, a new EU law aimed at curbing Big Tech’s dominance. 

But he appeared to save one of his sharpest rebukes for an in-person meeting.

Last week, he told a roomful of competition officials in Edinburgh that Europe’s “heavy regulatory hand is at least partially to blame” for its poor competitiveness relative to the US.

The remarks struck a discordant note at the conference, which aimed to “foster a more harmonised approach to competition law”.

EU competition chief Teresa Ribera told reporters that she thought Ferguson had misunderstood the DMA. “In any case what I appreciate is mutual respect,” she added. (A senior Trump administration official said Ferguson “has a very intimate and deep understanding” of the law.) 

For now, both Washington and Brussels are sustaining an antitrust crackdown on Big Tech.

But some experts say the real split between the two will be on rulemaking, rather than merger control or antitrust enforcement.

The US is pushing for deregulation, while Europe is trying to impose rules upfront.

The hard policy implications of this divergence have yet to unfold — and Gail Slater, Kanter’s successor, was far more conciliatory than Ferguson in her own appearance in Scotland.

Nonetheless, the prospect of a deep rift is making lawyers on both sides of the Atlantic nervous — nobody wants the uncertainty it would bring.

Santander digs in

We’ve known for a while that Britain’s largest banks have been circling Santander UK in the hope of an acquisition.

But there’s one big issue: none of them appear willing to pay what group executive chair Ana Botín wants for the business.

In public, Botín has insisted that Banco Santander’s UK business is “not for sale”. But privately, people at the highest level of the bank say an exit is still possible.

The Spanish lender has its eyes set firmly on the US, where it hopes to expand its corporate and investment bank.

It’s already sold its retail banking business in Poland for roughly €7bn, but in the UK, it’s been holding firm.

Last summer, Barclays made what was described as a “low ball” offer — and NatWest also made a bid last year, the FT reported in February.

Missing from those earlier reports was a figure for the bids.

Now, the FT’s Simon Foy, Akila Quinio and Ortenca Aliaj have reported that NatWest offered between £10bn and £12bn for Santander UK.

That puts the bid roughly in line with the business’s market value: at the end of last year, Santander’s UK subsidiary had a total equity value of £10.4bn.

A deal makes sense for Santander and NatWest — it would provide dry power for Santander as it pushes into the US and help NatWest as it prepares for an aggressive expansion in the UK market.

But Santander’s sale of its Polish unit means it has less need to rid itself of the UK business. Also, the Polish deal achieved a far higher multiple — Santander Bank Polska was sold for 2.2 times its tangible book value.

And while the UK business has a high cost base and lower returns relative to other markets, it remains in the black.

For now then, it looks like Botín is prepared to sit tight and wait.

Job moves

• Evercore has hired Citigroup’s Luigi de Vecchi to lead its effort to establish a new Milan office. De Vecchi spent more than a decade at Citi as one of the bank’s most senior client-facing bankers.

• Rothschild & Co has named Matthew Greenberger as managing director and head of real estate for North America. Greenberger previously served as managing director and global head of real estate, gaming and lodging at Citigroup.

• General Catalyst has hired Madhu Namburi to co-run its Creation fund, Bloomberg reports. Namburi spent 25 years at JPMorgan Chase and was most recently its global chair of technology investment banking.

• Advent International has appointed Stephan Scholl as an operating partner. He was most recently chief executive of Alight Solutions.

Smart reads

LLM vs LLB Large language models could reshape the legal sector. As money pours into the technology, Lex asks what the future holds for junior lawyers.

Fizz in the sky More airlines are offering champagne to first-class flyers as competition in the industry heats up. “It’s terribly important to get it right,” says Singapore Airlines’ wine consultant Oz Clarke.

Sam’s kitchen Sam Altman was the guest (and chef) for last week’s Lunch with the FT. Naturally, Alphaville pored over every second of the short video of his kitchen that accompanied it.

News round-up

Andrea Orcel says UniCredit will not complete deals unless they boost value (FT)

Perplexity nears second fundraising in six months at $14bn valuation (FT)

Saudi Arabia launches AI venture Humain ahead of Donald Trump visit (FT)

UK unveils ‘backstop’ plan to force pension funds to invest in private assets (FT)

Push by private equity and Big Four into law sparks California backlash (FT)

EV battery maker CATL to raise at least $4bn (FT)

Crypto miner backed by Trump sons will list on Nasdaq (FT)

Cobalt Holdings plans London IPO with Glencore taking 10% stake (FT)