{"text":[[{"start":1.898,"text":"One scoop to start: Sanctions against Manchester City will be handed down next year if the club fails next month to successfully appeal findings that it breached the Premier League’s financial rules."}],[{"start":13.364,"text":"Another thing: One of Donald Trump’s top cabinet members has been dragged into the Nvidia scandal, as furious US lawmakers demand Howard Lutnick explain how he allowed chips to be exported to a company linked to an alleged Chinese spy."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":13.864,"text":"In today’s newsletter:"}],[{"start":14.364,"text":"Nvidia after Jensen Huang"}],[{"start":58.08,"text":"The demise of Ovo Energy"}],[{"start":58.58,"text":"What next after the rise and sudden fall of an AI giant?"}],[{"start":59.08,"text":"Jensen Huang’s downfall is unfolding as one of the most spectacular corporate scandals of the 21st century, reminiscent of both a cold war drama and a Shakespearean tragedy."}],[{"start":52.24,"text":"The Nvidia co-founder resigned on Thursday after revelations he’d had multiple extramarital affairs, including with an alleged Chinese spy, an abrupt turn of fortune for a leading architect of the AI age."}],[{"start":59.166,"text":"Huang’s legacy remains far from certain as he faces an FBI probe and bipartisan lawmakers in Washington demand answers over any possible national security breach. Wall Street has been somewhat more sympathetic."}],[{"start":72.875,"text":"Former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein wrote in a post on X, “Sad about Jensen. Shakespearean. But as de Gaulle said, ‘The graveyards are filled with indispensable men.’”"}],[{"start":83.76,"text":"Bill Ackman wrote in his own post on Sunday, following the revelations about Huang’s affair with the alleged spy, “Even incredible humans make mistakes.”"}],[{"start":94.02,"text":"But Huang’s resignation is casting a pall over Silicon Valley, where many are wondering what’s next for the AI trade without one of its most prominent dealmakers."}],[{"start":102.404,"text":"“This whole thing sucks, and I wish none of it had happened. It’s a really sad day!” Clement Delangue, Hugging Face chief executive, wrote in an X post. (Nvidia agreed to acquire the AI model platform in September.)"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":115.908,"text":"Huang has made Nvidia the AI industry’s backer of last resort, and he did much of the dealmaking himself."}],[{"start":122.235,"text":"Despite having dozens of direct reports, he was personally involved in many of its investments worth billions of dollars, the FT reports."}],[{"start":130.4,"text":"For example, when CoreWeave, the neocloud and prodigious buyer of Nvidia chips, saw its IPO falter last year, Huang led Nvidia to step in with an anchor order. When OpenAI needed support to build a massive data centre campus in Ohio, Huang had Nvidia guarantee up to $105bn of its lease and power payments."}],[{"start":151.611,"text":"As monumental as the saga has been so far, what really matters is what comes next for Nvidia as well as for rivals like AMD and Broadcom that will be figuring out how to seize on the tumult."}],[{"start":163.207,"text":"Elon Musk may be weighing his own swoop. In response to a post on X from @zerohedge urging, “Elon please hire Jensen,” Musk responded, “That would be an honor.” (DD readers might be reminded of a similar exchange that preceded the world’s richest man buying Twitter.)"}],[{"start":179.259,"text":"For Nvidia’s part, the group’s finance chief Colette Kress has been appointed as interim chief executive, and the chipmaker is expected to report its earnings next week."}],[{"start":188.56,"text":"It’s not clear who Huang’s permanent successor will be, but the FT has spelled out some of the possibilities, including Arm boss Rene Haas and Ian Buck, who leads Nvidia’s critical data centre business. Jensen’s daughter Madison, who works at Nvidia in a senior product marketing role, had been touted as a long-term successor before her father’s resignation."}],[{"start":209.68,"text":"Donald Trump has even offered a curveball suggestion: former Apple chief executive Tim Cook."}],[{"start":214.72,"text":"While the Huang saga shakes out, the tech world might consider doing some soul-searching on whether other AI billionaires have also been flying a little bit too close to the sun."}],[{"start":225.12,"text":"The industry has pressed Washington for a light-touch approach to regulation and unabiding support for the AI trade."}],[{"start":230.47,"text":"Huang himself has spent the past two years lobbying against AI regulation, rubbishing AI safety fears and battling against proposals to ban exports of Nvidia’s leading chips to China."}],[{"start":241.453,"text":"Now he may be dragged before Congress just as sentiment towards Big Tech sours in Washington. Some Republicans are pinning the blame on their one-time Silicon Valley allies for the party’s midterm election losses while Democrats are about to seize the majority in Congress, having campaigned against AI and data centres."}],[{"start":259.786,"text":"“People in San Francisco are thinking . . . ‘we know that he had an affair, and he apologised, now it’s time to move on’,” said Alec Stapp, co-founder of the Institute for Progress, a Washington tech policy think-tank. “DC is not going to let it move on.”"}],[{"start":260.286,"text":"The deal that unravelled Ovo Energy"}],[{"start":279.04,"text":"Former commodities trader Stephen Fitzpatrick founded Ovo Energy in 2009 as one of a new wave of challenger companies set up in Britain."}],[{"start":286.314,"text":"But after quickly climbing the ranks, it has now been swallowed up by one of the legacy companies it sought to disrupt — selling its retail business to German energy group Eon in a deal the FT reports values the business at roughly £550mn-£600mn."}],[{"start":302.997,"text":"Its journey from upstart to high-flyer and into the arms of a rival has many causes, not least the double hit of a pandemic and energy crisis that pushed dozens of energy companies out of business in 2021 and 2022."}],[{"start":317.515,"text":"But it can also be traced back to its audacious £500mn purchase of FTSE 100 company SSE’s retail unit, completed in 2020, which tripled Ovo’s customer numbers, turning it into one of the UK’s biggest energy suppliers."}],[{"start":333.52,"text":"The deal was financed with term debt from Barclays and a high-interest payment-in-kind £100mn loan note from SSE. It brought with it a cohort of trickier customers and a very different corporate culture."}],[{"start":347.264,"text":"Ovo struggled to meet new capital adequacy requirements brought in by the regulator following the energy crisis, and its life as an independent company started to look doomed from late 2025."}],[{"start":358.566,"text":"The final year or so before the deal was also marked by significant boardroom turmoil, as detailed by the FT."}],[{"start":365.814,"text":"Ovo’s sale is a blow to competition in Britain’s retail market — and leaves Octopus Energy, now the UK’s largest household supplier, as the undisputed winner of the challenger companies that tried to disrupt the industry."}],[{"start":378.4,"text":"SSE, meanwhile, has received £237mn to repay its £100mn loan."}],[{"start":378.9,"text":"Job moves"}],[{"start":385.28,"text":"Skadden has hired Navneeta “Nav” Rekhi, Steve Argeris and Max Scott as partners. They join from Weil, Gotshal & Manges."}],[{"start":395.888,"text":"BHP has appointed Adrian Wood, a former Macquarie banker, as its finance chief as a shake-up at the top of Australia’s largest company continues under its new boss."}],[{"start":406.03,"text":"RBC Capital Markets has hired Adrian Bracher as global head of macro and spread products structuring in London. He joins from UBS."}],[{"start":416.38,"text":"Willkie Farr & Gallagher has hired Ed Harris and Charlotte Monk in London, and Adam Brown, Caitlin Piper and Michael Rogers in Washington, all as partners. The asset management team joins from Hogan Lovells Cadwalader."}],[{"start":416.88,"text":"Smart reads"}],[{"start":431.907,"text":"Unhappy ending In 2022 Switzerland carried out a rescue of a local subsidiary of Russia’s largest bank. Four years later it’s become a saga of unpaid debts, feuding owners and legal battles, the FT reports in a Big Read."}],[{"start":445.064,"text":"Key men The fall of Jensen Huang is the ultimate indictment of founder mode in Big Tech, Richard Waters writes for the FT. But even as every other board in Silicon Valley is now on notice, it looks like founder mode is here to stay."}],[{"start":458.8,"text":"Bye boss To put the drama at Nvidia in context, FT Alphaville embarked on a brief historical investigation of how CEO exits have impacted share prices at other companies."}],[{"start":459.3,"text":"News round-up"}],[{"start":468.48,"text":"Cravath employee charged with trading on firm’s corporate deals (FT)"}],[{"start":473.867,"text":"Singapore barred Alice Huang for giving police ‘inaccurate information’ (FT)"}],[{"start":478.432,"text":"Wall Street watchdog enforcement against public companies drops to 16-year low (FT)"}],[{"start":484.4,"text":"Kalshi cuts ties to Donald Trump Jr after Democrats’ midterm sweep (FT)"}],[{"start":489.28,"text":"Anthropic’s IPO is about six times oversubscribed (BBG)"}],[{"start":492.48,"text":"SpaceX and Tesla talks on record merger are said to progress (BBG)"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":496.64,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1794581297_9746.mp3"}