Mysterious trades, Suez Canal ripples, Amazon union vote
FT News Briefing
Forhecz Topher
4.4 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 29 March 2021
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
The private investment firm Archegos Capital was behind billions of dollars worth of share sales that captivated Wall Street on Friday, the head of the Suez Canal Authority has warned that there is no timeline for freeing the 220,000-tonne container ship that has blocked one of the main arteries of global trade, and Amazon workers in Bessemer wrap up a potentially historic unionization vote.
Traders brace after fire sale of stocks linked to Archegos
https://www.ft.com/content/2542af81-9e93-4d05-a0b9-26c0f6aab6f3
Suez Canal head warns stricken cargo ship may need unloading
https://www.ft.com/content/d452362c-b38d-4786-a2fb-14254df49dec
The ultimate David and Goliath story: the fight to open a union at Amazon
https://www.ft.com/content/a7ee3ec0-f59d-4188-899f-34ceecf7f026?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Monday, March 29th. This is your FT news briefing. |
| 0:08.4 | The giant shipping container in the Suez Canal still stuck. We'll take a look at the ripple |
| 0:13.0 | effect that it's having on supply chains and markets. Plus, we'll have the latest on the |
| 0:17.1 | mystery fire sale in the US stock market Friday. It's linked to a private investment firm. |
| 0:22.3 | Plus, workers at an Amazon plant in Bessemer, Alabama could make history. If they vote to unionize. |
| 0:29.6 | But I think that Amazon is really going to pay attention to what works for them and what |
| 0:34.0 | didn't and come down even harder on other workers. I'm Mark Filipino and here's the news you |
| 0:39.9 | need to start your day. |
| 0:46.3 | Traders have been wondering who was behind the unusually large block trades on Friday that rattled |
| 0:52.2 | and mystified Wall Street. It was like a fire sale that sent the share price of big media companies, |
| 0:57.5 | Biacom and Discovery, down nearly 50% from their record highs. The trades ultimately totaled |
| 1:03.5 | about $19 billion. And behind these trades, we now know, was a private investment firm called |
| 1:09.6 | Archegos Capital. The FTs or Tensa Aliye has been digging into the details. |
| 1:15.9 | We're still in the process of figuring this out. What we do know is Archegos is a family office |
| 1:21.5 | and family offices typically only manage the wealth of the person who has set it up and the people |
| 1:26.8 | inside it. So to our knowledge, there are no external clients who are affected by this. |
| 1:32.2 | Archegos, it seemed, was extremely levied, which tends to mean that they borrowed a lot of money |
| 1:37.6 | to put positions on. And one of the banks, I believe it has several prime brokers, but one of |
| 1:42.8 | its prime brokers issued something called a margin call, which essentially means the firm has to |
| 1:49.2 | provide a sort of backup for the shares that they have or that they hold. It appears that |
| 1:54.3 | Archegos couldn't match or couldn't meet this margin call. And that triggered calls across some |
| 2:00.3 | of its other prime brokers, which means that it was essentially forced to liquidate its holdings. |
... |
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