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African Payments Company MFS Africa Acquires U.S. Fintech!

Charlene Lensburg
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African Payments Company MFS Africa Acquires U.S. Fintech!

MFS Africa (www.mfsafrica.com), a digital payments company, will acquire Oklahoma-based Global Technology Partners (GTP) in a rare instance of an African group closing a technology deal in the United States. The acquisition, which will allow MFS to issue prepaid cards to customers, marks another development in Africa’s fast-growing fintech scene. MFS had paid $34 million for GTP in cash and stock.

Based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, GTP is the number one processor for prepaid cards in Africa, with over 80 banks – including UBA, Ecobank, BIA, Stanbic, Coris, NSIA, and Zenith Bank – using its platform. GTP’s client base covers 34 countries and is fully connected to the Visa, Mastercard, GIM, GIMAC, and Verve networks.

Robert Merrick, founder and chairman of GTP, said, “MFS Africa is an ideal home for GTP, and we are focused on adding new features and functionality to our platform. and making a significant contribution to MFS Africa’s business growth.”

MFS Africa raised $100 million in 2021 in a mix of debt and equity. The company has diversified mainly through acquisitions, including the purchase of Baxi, a Nigerian digital payments service, last October for an undisclosed sum. Dare Okoudjou, founder and CEO of MFS, said that about 500,000 customers actively used GTP prepaid cards but that the market’s potential size was many times that amount. About 400 million people use mobile money in Africa, he said.

Hundreds of millions of Africans who do not have bank accounts store their money on their cell phones or digital mobile wallets. But many international companies, including Netflix and Amazon, do not accept digital money payments from Africa, according to Okoudjou. He said the acquisition of GTP would solve that problem.

Tech Investor Peter Thiel Calls Warren Buffet A

bluechipper
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Tech Investor Peter Thiel Calls Warren Buffet A

Famous tech investor Peter Thiel presented while speaking at a major cryptocurrency conference in Miami, a crypto hot spot. He wanted to expose anti-crypto investors, he said. Warren Buffett is top-ranked on this enemy list. Thiel referred to Buffet as a “sociopathic grandpa” for Buffett’s previous comments casting doubt on the value of crypto.

“Enemy No. 1,” Thiel said. In addition to Buffett, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink are top-ranked. “They need to be allocating some of their money to bitcoin,” he said. “We need to push back on them.”

Thiel co-founded PayPal in 1998 with Elon Musk, then departed to run a series of investment firms, including Founders Fund. Forbes noted that his enemy list was the most striking moment in an otherwise straightforwardly Bitcoin 2022. Thiel also criticized central banks worldwide, slamming them for their slow uptake of digital technology. The increase in bitcoin’s value over the last several years is “telling us that the central banks are bankrupt,” he said. It’s “telling us that we’re at the end of the fiat money regime.”

Read the full story here on Forbes.

New SEC Rules May Stop The SPAC Boom!

Adrian Fuller
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New SEC Rules May Stop The SPAC Boom!

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) voted yesterday to propose new rules for special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), casting a big shadow over the booming market. If adopted, these public shell companies — formed to acquire a business and take it public without the fuss of the traditional IPO process — would have to provide more investor disclosures, especially about their ownership and performance forecasts. In some cases, SPACs may have to register as investment companies, subjecting them to stricter rules.

More than 600 SPACs raised some $160 billion last year, according to SPAC Research, but activity has slowed down recently. About 50 SPACs have raised $10 billion in the first quarter of this year. A fund that tracks hundreds of SPACs has lost about half its value since its peak in early 2021, as investors sour on many of the companies that have gone public this way.

The rules would give SPAC and IPO investors a similar level of protection. “A few years ago, people would say, well, you could maybe use a SPAC transaction because it might be a more efficient way to bring a company public,” Gary Gensler, the agency’s chair, told reporters after yesterday’s meeting. “Study after study has shown us that, in fact, these are very costly mechanisms.”

Read the full story on The New York Times

The Unknown Crypto Billionaire And Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao

Charlene Lensburg
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The Unknown Crypto Billionaire And Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao

Binance is the largest crypto exchange by trading volume. Changpeng Zhao founded Binance in 2017. He is an experienced tech entrepreneur and founded Fusion Systems in 2005 in Shanghai; the company built high-frequency trading systems for stockbrokers. In 2013, he joined Blockchain.info as the third team member and worked at OKCoin as CTO for less than a year.

Changpeng Zhao, unlike Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, is almost unknown outside his industry. However, the 44-year-old founder and CEO of Binance is worth about as much as Zuckerberg.

Bloomberg estimates that Zhao’s net worth has reached as high as $96 billion. Though that figure fluctuates wildly with the crypto market, it still makes him one of the planet’s richest people. For his part, Zhao seems bemused by the idea that his wealth should impress anyone. “If they think I am worth that much, that is what they think,” he tells me. “It’s fictitious pricing.” 

Economic War! Superyachts Are Terrible Assets!

bluechipper
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Economic War! Superyachts Are Terrible Assets!

The term superyacht refers to crewed yachts, ranging from 40 meters to more than 180 meters in length. A superyacht with over 90 meters is called a gigayacht, only a half-dozen of them launch every year. The Financial Times published an interesting article calling superyachts a terrible asset. They need permanent maintenance. Saltwater is a harsh environment. Only with constant maintenance and repair, you can keep a vessel alive.

A superyacht is indeed a terrible asset, which cannot be hidden! On the contrary! A superyacht is included in public recordings and can be tracked. The bigger the yacht, the worse. The yearly maintenance cost is so high that a superyacht only makes sense for people who need a hard, reasonably liquid asset in their portfolio and don’t have any better options. The Ukraine War is a significant blow to the superyacht industry, booming over the last two years, with demand soaring higher than ever. According to Boat International, in Dec 2021, the 2022 Global Order Book recorded 1,024 projects in build or on order, a rise of 24.7 percent compared to 2021.

Russian superyachts and their crew

The Superyacht Agency has found that Russians own around 370 superyachts over 30m in length, equating to about 8.8 percent of the superyacht fleet. However, Russians own just over 29 percent of all superyachts over 90m in length.

According to a report by The Superyacht Group, Russians own 18 gigayachts. There is a gigayacht for every 34 billionaires on the Forbes list in the US. In the UK, there’s one for every 19. But in Russia, there’s a gigayacht for every seven billionaires.

The Superyacht Agency estimates that there is over 4,500 crew who have been affected by the Western sanctions. This roughly equates to about 11 percent of all superyacht crew across the entire fleet. The Russian-owned superyachts over 90 meters in length actually employ more crew overall than the yachts in the 30-40m range.

The Russian oligarchs may already regret their decision to invest in the prestigious superyachts asset.

Blackrock CEO Sees The End Of The World As We know it!

Charlene Lensburg
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Blackrock CEO Sees The End Of The World As We know it!

Blackrock is the world’s largest asset manager and one of the most powerful companies on this planet. Its CEO Larry Fink provides his view about the ramifications of the Ukraine War in his traditional letter to shareholders. He even sees the end of globalization. “Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine has upended the world order that had been in place since the end of the Cold War” the Blackrock CEO elaborated. He said Russia’s inclusion in the global financial system had provided a peace dividend. That, he said, is now over.

The Economic War

He said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would reshape the global economy. It will further drive up inflation as companies pull out of their global supply chains. “The Russian invasion of Ukraine has ended the globalization we’ve seen over the last three decades.” Capital markets, financial institutions, and companies have gone even further beyond government-imposed sanctions.

The speed and magnitude of company actions to amplify sanctions have been incredible. “Iconic American consumer brands have suspended their operations of non-essential products.” And financial services companies have taken similar steps to further isolate the Russian economy from the global financial system.es.

Russia has been essentially cut off from global capital markets, demonstrating the commitment of major companies to operate consistent with core values. This “economic war” shows what we can achieve when companies, supported by their stakeholders, come together in the face of violence and aggression.

The ramifications of the Ukraine War would not be limited to Eastern Europe. They are layered on top of a pandemic that has already had profound effects on political, economic, and social trends. The impact will reverberate for decades to come in ways we can’t yet predict.

The rise of digital currencies

The Ukraine War would potentially accelerate the rise of digital currencies as it prompts countries to re-evaluate their currency dependencies. Even before the war, several governments were looking to play a more active role in digital currencies and define the regulatory frameworks under which they operate.

Digital currencies can also help bring down the costs of cross-border payments. As Blackrock sees increasing interest from their clients, they would evaluate digital currencies, stablecoins, and the underlying technologies to understand how they can help us serve our clients.

Accelerating the shift toward a green planet

Longer-term, Fink believes that Covid 19 and the Ukraine War will accelerate the shift toward greener sources of energy. The search for alternatives to Russian oil and natural gas “will inevitably slow the world’s progress toward net-zero emissions in the short term.” Higher energy prices will also meaningfully reduce the green premium for clean technologies and enable renewables, EVs, and other clean technologies to be much more competitive economically.

The Russian invasion of corporate Europe!

Charlene Lensburg
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The Russian invasion of corporate Europe!

Long before Russia invaded Ukraine, its entrepreneurs and oligarchs have invaded corporate Europe. According to the Italian report Inside the matrioska, almost 44,000 Russian individuals are beneficial owners of companies registered in the EU, in the UK, and in Switzerland. The highest number can be observed in the Czech Republic, followed by the United Kingdom, Latvia, Germany, Bulgaria, and Cyprus. In terms of corporate value owned by Russian oligarchs, Cyprus is the #1 in Europe! The Russian invasion of corporate Europe is a fact!

Data source: Inside the matrioska: the firms controlled by sanctioned ‘oligarchs’ across European regions and sectors. This analysis is part of TOM – The Ownership Monitor, a joint initiative by Transcrime and its spin-off Crime&tech.

Corporate value of companies owned by Russian oligarchs

According to DATACROS tool and Bureau van Dijk data 33 oligarchs own (declared) shares in firms in the European Union, United Kingdom, and Switzerland. They control at least 5% of the shares in 1,402 European companies directly or indirectly. The estimated value of these companies reaches nearly $440 billion.

Most of the firms owned by the identified oligarchs are located in Germany, followed by Austria, the UK, Cyprus, and, the Netherlands. Looking at total assets, Cyprus ranks first with $106 billion, followed by Luxembourg with $95 billion, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Roman Abramovich And His Rocky Mountain Properties!

bluechipper
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Roman Abramovich And His Rocky Mountain Properties!

The Rocky Mountain mansion owned by Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch targeted by the Western sanctions, could be among the first assets frozen by the U.S. government under the U.S. KleptoCapture initiative. The 14,000-square-foot modern mega-home on 200 acres in Snowmass, Colorado, is just outside the glamorous Aspen. He bought the property in 2008 for $36.5 million and would likely sell for well over $50 million given soaring prices. It is the second most expensive home ever sold in the Aspen area.

Abramovich also owns a 5,500-square-foot chalet-style home in Snowmass Village, which he purchased in 2008 for $11.8 million. Local brokers say that the property likely serves as a guest house, caretaker’s house, or ski house since it’s next to the slopes. The properties are prime targets for an asset freeze if Abramovich is sanctioned. According to local property records, both Snowmass properties were purchased and remain in Abramovich’s name.

The U.K., the European Union, Canada, and Australia have subjected him to travel restrictions and have frozen his assets in those jurisdictions. U.S. officials, too, are readying sanctions against Roman Abramovich, according to people familiar with the matter, but the timing remains uncertain, and Washington may ultimately decide not to target him.

Ukraine War! Hunting Oligarches And Their Stolen Assets!

Charlene Lensburg
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Ukraine War! Hunting Oligarches And Their Stolen Assets!

The U.S. Government started to call out Russian oligarchs as kleptocrats. On 2 March 2022, the U.S. Government announced the multilateral enforcement taskforce KleptoCapture, FinTelegram reported. As part of the effort to target the Oligarchs a/k/a kleptocrats, the U.S. Treasury also launched the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Rewards Program (KARP).

The program offers up to $5 million rewards for information leading to seizure, restraint, or forfeiture of assets linked to foreign government corruption, including the Government of the Russian Federation. The U.S. government has also provided 28 names of Russians that they are particularly interested in receiving information. On 16 March 2022, the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a second alert on the importance of identifying and quickly reporting suspicious transactions involving real estate, luxury goods, and other high-value assets of sanctioned Russian elites and their family members and those through which they act (collectively, “sanctioned Russian elites and their proxies”).

Individuals with information are encouraged to contact Kleptocracy_Rewards@Treasury.gov or call +1 202-622-2050.  

The U.S. Congress established KARP to fight foreign government corruption, identifying and recovering stolen assets, forfeiting proceeds of corruption, and, where appropriate and feasible, returning those stolen assets or proceeds to the country harmed by the acts of corruption.

The U.S. Treasury Department manages KARP in close cooperation with the Departments of Justice with the mission to serve as a force-multiplier for existing rewards programs targeted at a variety of illicit finance threats.

Arnold Schwarzenegger Sends Message To Russian People

bluechipper
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Arnold Schwarzenegger Sends Message To Russian People

The former Californian governor and Terminator lead actor Arnold Schwarzenegger is known for his action films in which violence takes up a considerable part of the dramaturgy. He is more of a peace-loving, cigar-smoking man in his private life. And like most people inside and outside Russia, he is against the war in Ukraine. In a video message, he addresses the Russian people directly. Vladimir Putin will not like the message! However, it seems essential to let the Russian people know how the rest of the world sees the Ukraine War.

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