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Market For Luxury Watches Flooded With Supply!

The era of cheap money and rising markets is over. The stock markets have noticed this, as have the cryptocurrencies. In times of rising interest rates and restrictive monetary policy, investors are withdrawing from speculative markets. In Q2/Q3 2022, the market for luxury watches has also been impacted. The WatchChart Overall Market Index for the secondary market of luxury watches has slumped by almost 25% since its peak in March 2022 and has fallen back to the level of October 2021.

Prices for the most popular pre-owned Rolex, Patek Philippe, or Audemars Piguet watches continue to fall as the market has been flooded with supply, analysts at Morgan Stanley said in a report. After surging in 2021 and during the first quarter of 2022, an index of the most popular models from Daytona chronograph maker Rolex tracked by WatchCharts has fallen by 21% since the market peak in April 2022.

Elon Musk’s Friendship With Sergey Brin Terminated Over Alleged Affair!

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Elon Musk engaged in a brief affair last fall with the wife of Sergey Brin, Nicole Shanahan. Consequently, the Google co-founder filed for divorce earlier this year, ending the tech billionaires’ long friendship. Brin filed for divorce from Nicole Shanahan in January 2022, citing “irreconcilable differences.” Several weeks after Brin learned of the brief affair, the divorce filing was made.

Their falling out is one of a string of personal issues Mr. Musk has faced even as he juggles business challenges, including manufacturing disruptions at Tesla Inc. TSLA 0.20% and a court fight over his desire to withdraw his $44 billion bid for Twitter Inc.

According to WSJ, Sergey Brin provided Elon Musk with about $500,000 for Tesla during the 2008 financial crisis, when the company struggled to increase production. In 2015, Musk delivered Brin one of the first of Tesla’s all-electric sport-utility vehicles. There has been growing tension between the two men and their teams in recent months, according to the people familiar with the matter. Allegedly, Brin has ordered his financial advisers to sell his personal investments in Musk’s companies.

Twitter And Elon Musk Lawyer Up On Their $44 Billion Court Case!

In April of this year, Elon Musk made of to buy Twitter for $44 billion. The Twitter board accepted the offer. But then the High-Tech Billionaire got out of the contract because Twitter would have concealed bad company figures. Twitter now sues Musk to hold him to the $44 billion deal. The first court meeting is scheduled for July 19 to discuss Twitter’s motion to expedite the case.

Twitter has hired New York-based Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, with a team led by a litigator William Savitt. Elon Musk is armed with a group from Skadden, Arps, Slate Meagher & Flom LLP, led by Palo Alto, Calif.-based mergers-and-acquisitions attorney Mike Ringler.

Twitter said it has “bent over backwards” to provide Musk with the requested information and is suing Musk to enforce the consummation of the deal. The company also said Musk repeatedly breached the terms of the agreement, such as by tweeting in May that the deal was “on hold.”

The entire tech and legal community is watching this case with great interest worldwide. How it will end is currently open. Is it possible to force someone to carry out an unwanted takeover in court? That is the question!

Ex-Wife of Donald Trump, Ivana Trump, Dies At 73!

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Ivana Trump, former US President Donald Trump’s first wife, died at the age of 73. She was well-known for decades in New York social circles after she married the real-estate entrepreneur Trump in the late 1970s. She was born in Czechoslovakia and moved to New York, where she found fame as a New York socialite and an executive in the Trump Organization.

Police officers in New York found her unconscious and unresponsive in her flat on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and she was pronounced dead at the scene. A cause of death wasn’t given, but the NYPD said her death doesn’t appear to result from a crime.

The former model and Donald Trump had three children: Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric. The couple divorced in the early 1990s in a messy public drama.

Donald Trump wrote in a statement on Truth Social: “She was a wonderful, beautiful, and amazing woman, who led a great and inspirational life,” he wrote, saying that her three children were her pride and joy.

Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, And The Gates Foundation!

According to a recent WSJ report, Microsoft founder Bill Gates is giving another $20 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (www.gatesfoundation.org). Although it is named the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, basically half of its resources to date have come from gifts from Warren Buffett.

Bill Gates’s latest donation would increase the Gates Foundation’s endowment to roughly $50 billion. The Gates Foundation said Wednesday it would increase its payout by 50% over pre-pandemic levels, to about $9 billion annually by 2026 compared with about $6 billion pre-Covid 19.

As I look to the future, my plan is to give all my wealth to the foundation other than what I spend on myself and my family,Bill Gates wrote in a blog post on GatesNotes. He also detailed the billions his friend Warren Buffett gave to the Gates Foundation. Basically, half of our foundation’s resources to date have come from Warren Buffett’s gifts. Since 2006, he has gifted the foundation $35.7 billion, including his most recent gift of $3.1 billion in June.

Rotterdam Bridge Won’t Be Destroyed For Jeff Bezos’ Yacht

The masts of the 127 Meters long sailing yacht of the billionaire and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will be too high for the bridge. So at the beginning of the year, the Dutch shipyard Oceanco wanted the Koningshaven-Bridge, also called ‘De Hef,’ to be dismantled.

The company has withdrawn the application because they feared society’s anger. The employees felt threatened, and Oceanco was afraid of possible Vandalism. That was declared by the documents of the city Rotterdam, which were able to be sighted by the Dutch newspaper ‘Trouw.’

What will happen to the sailing Yacht isn’t declared yet, even though ‘Trouw’ says the shipyard could plan to finish the yacht at a shipyard that is closer to the ocean. But the company has not yet explained its new plans.

Legendary Italian Ray-Ban Owner Leonardo Del Vecchio Dies at 87

Leonardo Del Vecchio, the Italian industrialist and billionaire has diedat the age of 87. His company, the eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica SA, announced his death Monday. Del Vecchio was one of Italy’s last captains of industry and the architect of the €50B merger of his sunglasses empire Luxottica with French lens maker Essilor.

Del Vecchio served as executive chairman of the combined company until December 2020, when he handed over day-to-day operations to a chief executive. EssilorLuxuttica is the world’s biggest eyewear maker, with a market value of €65B and more than 180,000 employees. Leonardo Del Vecchio died as the company’s single largest investor with a more than 30% stake.

In 1999, Del Vecchio bought the then-struggling Ray-Ban owner Bausch & Lomb. Luxottica turned it around, improving the quality of its frames and restricting sales to higher-end retailers.

Britain’s Inflation Rate Climbs To 9.1%, A New 40-Years High!

Prices in Britain edged up 9.1 percent in May from a year earlier. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 9.1% in the 12 months to May 2022, up from 9.0% in April. This is the highest CPI 12-month inflation rate in the National Statistic series, which began in January 1997. The UK government has warned against employers handing out big increases in salaries over fears of a 1970s-style “inflationary spiral”, where prices continued to rise as wages went up.

The inflation rate was pushed to a fresh 40-year high, the nation’s statistics agency said on Wednesday, by rising food prices in particular. In Britain, a cost of living crisis has intensified as wage growth hasn’t kept up with rising prices. Pandemic-related supply chain disruptions and the war in Ukraine have caused the price of essentials such as food and fuel to soar, squeezing household budgets.

Currently, UK inflation is at the highest level since March 1982, when it also stood at 9.1% and the Bank of England has warned it will reach 11% this year. In May, bread, cereal, and meat prices were 10 percent higher than a year ago, according to the Office for National Statistics.

PornHub Troubles – MindGeek CEO And COO Resign!

According to WSJ, MindGeek CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo are leaving the parent company of major pornography site Pornhub amid scrutiny of alleged nonconsensual sexually explicit videos hosted on the site. The leadership changes have been in the works since early 2022, MindGeek said. However, Antoon and Tassillo will remain shareholders, the company said.

Investigations by several news organizations, including the New Yorker earlier this month, reported that Pornhub allegedly hosted videos that included nonconsensual and underage sex.

A company spokesman said the departures aren’t related to the accusations against MindGeek. The company said it has enacted safeguards and that it removes incidents of child sexual-abuse material. “MindGeek has more comprehensive and effective policies than any other major platform on the internet,” the company said. 

MindGeek has more than 1,000 employees and its network of sites attracts over 150 million daily visitors, according to the company. Besides PornHub, the company also owns other popular porn sites such as RedTube and YouPorn.

The Binance Kraken Continues With Nasdaq-Listed EQONEX!

Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao is certainly a very clever and super-rich guy. In March 2022, his Binance Group entered into a strategic partnership with the Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange operator EQONEX Limited, making it a sort of subsidiary. Binance Group provided a $36 million loan facility and has the right to nominate key management positions and Board members. Consequently, Jonathan Farnell has been appointed CEO, Almira Cemmell Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, and Daniel Ling was appointed Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

The New Management

Under the terms of the strategic partnership announced last week, Bifinity retained the right to nominate key appointments, including the CEO and two new Board members. Before joining EQONEX in March 2022, Jonathan Farnell served as Head of Binance UK and CEO of Bifinity. Helen Hai, President of Bifinity, has also been appointed to the EQONEX board. Daniel Ling served as the Strategy Director for Bifinity before becoming EQONEX’s CFO.

Regulatory Worries

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said that it would be concerned about the announcement made by the Eqonex Group and the Binance Group. The FCA said it did not have powers to assess the fitness and propriety of the new beneficial owners or the change in control before the transaction was completed. However, the regulator previously published its concerns about Binance. The Binance Group includes Binance Markets Limited. The FCA regulates Binance Markets Limited with reference number 688849 for a limited set of activities.

Binance US

BAM Trading Services Inc. d/b/a Binance.US, the US branch of the Binance Group raised over $200 million in its first external funding round in April this year, just before the markets took a nosedive. The company was valued at $4.5 billion at the time. Binance.US CEO Brian Shroder recently said that the company is “in the strongest position possible to not only successfully weather this downturn but also emerge as the leading crypto platform in the U.S.

Binance.US is tied to Binance through its founder, Changpeng Zhao, and its licensing agreements with Binance Group that cover its core technology and naming rights.