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