Le Studio Weekly
🧮 Numbers of the Week
$886 million— The amount that the Federal Communications Commission is rescinding from SpaceX’s Starlink satellite service in rural broadband subsidies after the agency found that SpaceX and another firm, LTD Broadband, failed to meet the requirements for government funding in its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program.
$3 billion—The amount the Biden administration will put into two federal programs to help fund projects that protect people and infrastructure from natural hazards and the effects of climate change.
👥 Venture Capital
Many of our predictions for US private equity this year were made amid several tailwinds at the end of 2021:
Dealmaking had eclipsed $1 trillion in total deal value.
Sponsors listed companies at a record rate and at high valuations.
Capital quickly flowed back into newly launched PE funds.
Needless to say, the global macroeconomic backdrop in 2022 has experienced a sharp turn.
Inflation is raging as supply chains adjust to pandemic-related shocks, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine further exasperates these issues.
Significant market volatility has disrupted PE's previously fervent pace. Thus, many of the predictions we had previously made are not expected to come true in the changed PE landscape.
For example, we had expected PE firms to close at least 400 middle-market software deals during the year. While PE appetite for tech during the first half of the year remained healthy despite numerous headwinds, deal activity has likely slowed down enough to fall short of the prediction.
🏛️ Culture & Trends
These Groups Want Disruptive Climate Protests. Oil Heirs Are Funding Them.
Beneficiaries of two American oil fortunes are supporting groups trying to block fossil fuel projects. One donor said he felt a “moral obligation.”
Two relatively new nonprofit organizations, which the oil scions helped found, are funding dozens of protest groups dedicated to interrupting business as usual through civil disobedience, mostly in the United States, Canada and Europe. While volunteers with established environmental groups like Greenpeace International have long used disruptive tactics to call attention to ecological threats, the new organizations are funding grass-roots activists.
The California-based Climate Emergency Fund was founded in 2019 on the ethos that civil resistance is integral to achieving the rapid widespread social and political changes needed to tackle the climate crisis.
Margaret Klein Salamon, the fund’s executive director, pointed to social movements of the past — suffragists, civil rights and gay rights activists — that achieved success after protesters took nonviolent demonstrations to the streets.
“Action moves public opinion and what the media covers, and moves the realm of what’s politically possible,” Ms. Salamon said. “The normal systems have failed. It’s time for every person to realize that we need to take this on.”
So far, the fund has given away just over $7 million, with the goal of pushing society into emergency mode, she said. Even though the United States is on the cusp of enacting historic climate legislation, the bill allows more oil and gas expansion, which scientists sayneeds to stop immediately to avert planetary catastrophe.
Getty to Return Three Major Sculptures to Italy
“Orpheus and the Sirens” will be sent back in September, with other ancient artworks to follow.
A beautifully preserved grouping of three life-size terra-cotta figures dating to 300 B.C. that was seized from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles by the Manhattan district attorney’s office will be sent back to Italy after the museum agreed that it had been illegally excavated, museum and law enforcement officials said.
The three objects were confiscated in April as part of an investigation into an accused Italian antiquities smuggler, Gianfranco Becchina, 83, who has been convicted of receiving stolen antiquities by Greece, officials said. The warrant listed its current value at $8 million. The Getty Museum announced the return on Thursday.
“Once we notified the museum of the investigation and the evidence we had, they cooperated fully,” said Matthew Bogdanos, the head of the district attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit. Mr. Bogdanos said his office was able to reach across state lines with the help of federal Homeland Security agents because the investigation is in his jurisdiction.
🙌🏼 Thanks for reading ! See you next week!
⭐ We'd also love to hear more of your feedback. Tell us what you think and what you want to see in the future in this digest at m.plata@tamar.capital - cheers!