Good morning,
Like many organizations these days, the Oakland International Airport wants a rebrand. Officials want to rename it the “San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport,” because they say many people aren’t aware of the airport’s close proximity to San Francisco.
The potential name change isn’t just aimed at traveler awareness. City officials hope airlines will pay attention, too, and that it will help the airport secure more direct flights to additional locations.
There’s been some pushback to the idea of there being two airports in the area whose names contain San Francisco, but it wouldn’t be the first—there’s Washington Dulles International Airport and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (neither of which are actually in Washington, D.C.) along with Chicago, London, Paris and more.
Australian minerals billionaire Andrew Forrest faced a major setback in a legal fight against Meta on Friday after government prosecutors dropped his criminal case against the social media giant over scam cryptocurrency ads he said featured his face. The case comes amid ongoing concerns tech companies are failing to do enough to combat the dubious schemes that still plague their platforms.
Severe rain brought floods to the Pittsburgh area Thursday night, prompting emergency personnel to carry out water rescues, while some residents in the region were urged to evacuate their homes. The National Weather Service said a large and growing low-pressure system moving across from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast is “the driving force behind active weather throughout the eastern United States until early this weekend.”
Amazon hit a new record share price Thursday and is now less than 2% away from achieving a $2 trillion market cap for the first time, a dramatic recovery from the company’s 2022 crash. Jeff Bezos, the world’s second-richest man, added another $3.3 billion to his $207 billion fortune Thursday, according to Forbes estimates.
After years of losses, the nonprofit behind the ACT, a standardized test used in college admissions, has agreed to move the test business into a for-profit company that will be majority owned by a private equity investment firm. The news comes as a number of prestigious colleges and universities have announced plans to reinstate test requirements for admissions that were dropped during the pandemic, but it’s unclear how many institutions will follow their lead.
The “Flex Index” from Scoop Technologies launched early last year and is now a widely cited database of companies’ remote work policies. Now, CEO and cofounder Rob Sadow has launched a benchmarking subscription tool that offers aggregate data for executives who face increasingly complicated questions about how to efficiently use office space in a world where hybrid work is here to stay—and many workers fight the idea of full-time office attendance.
A court in Vietnam sentenced property tycoon Truong My Lan to death for her role in the nation’s $12.5 billion fraud case, the nation’s largest-ever, an unusually severe punishment capping a dramatic trial amid a sweeping government crackdown on corruption. The $12.5 billion amounts to nearly 3% of Vietnam’s GDP in 2022.
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried appealed the 25-year prison sentence and fraud conviction he was handed two weeks ago, which included an order to pay $11 billion in forfeiture for his fraudulent schemes. Bankman-Fried was found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy last November before last month’s sentence.
TECH + INNOVATION
Backed by tech VIPs like Jeff Bezos, Perplexity is an AI-based conversational search engine used by about 15 million people to source and summarize information on any topic on the internet. But the startup, now valued at $1 billion, still faces the trillion-dollar behemoth that is Google—which has a two-decade head start on indexing and scraping the web.
Toyota Ventures, the venture capital arm of the Japanese automaker, announced $300 million in funding Wednesday for early-stage startups in fields such as AI, robotics and renewable energy. The newly committed capital brings California-based Toyota Ventures’ assets under management to over $800 million.
MLB superstar Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, has been charged with bank fraud, with federal prosecutors alleging Thursday he stole $16 million from Ohtani to finance his “voracious appetite” for illegal sports betting, the latest development in a scandal that has rocked the baseball world. The federal investigation found no evidence Ohtani was aware of the transfers, U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said.
As part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, there’s a new one percent excise tax on stock repurchases by certain corporations. Now, the IRS has issued proposed regulations that would provide new guidance related to the tax.
DAILY COVER STORY
The runaway success of weight loss drugs took the markets by storm last year, spurring huge stock gains for drugmakers like Novo Nordisk, which makes Wegovy and Ozempic. Most patients take them at home in weekly injections, using plastic, pen-like devices known as autoinjectors, filled with the liquid medication and fitted with a tiny needle as wide as two human hairs.
As demand for the drugs soars, so does the need for those devices. That growth has now minted a new billionaire: Roger Samuelsson, the 60-year-old Swedish cofounder of Switzerland-based SHL Medical, the world’s largest manufacturer of autoinjectors. Forbes estimates he’s worth $3 billion, largely thanks to his 69% stake in the company he cofounded in 1989. The remaining 31% is held by Swedish private equity firm EQT and Athos, the family office of the billionaire Struengmann brothers.
SHL Medical makes injectors for drugs treating everything from multiple sclerosis to asthma to psoriasis. Twenty of the world’s 25 largest pharma companies—including giants Novo Nordisk, Amgen and Pfizer—use the firm’s products, as well as a host of smaller biotech startups; 90% of the firm’s revenues come from autoinjectors, where it controls 25% of the global market.
When EQT first invested in SHL Medical in 2020, it valued the company at $2.1 billion. At the end of 2022, that jumped to $3.4 billion—a 61% return in just two years.
The market for autoinjectors is about to grow much larger thanks to rocketing sales of Ozempic and Wegovy, part of a category called GLP-1 agonists, named after the hormone they target. Ulrich Fässler, SHL Medical’s CEO, estimates that by 2027, those drugs will make up nearly a third of SHL Medical’s total revenues and almost 50% of its production volume, up from less than a third now.
WHY IT MATTERS The market for drug delivery systems—including autoinjectors, pens and inhalers—was worth $2.1 billion (revenues) at the end of 2022 and is expected to grow 10% each year to $3.2 billion by 2027, according to an analysis by publicly traded Stevanato Group. Drugs like Ozempic will drive that growth even higher. In 2023, 61% of all therapies newly approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration required injectors, up from 46% in 2014.
MORE: Ozempic Maker Novo Nordisk More Valuable Than Tesla
FACTS AND COMMENTS
The Justice Department announced new rules that would force unlicensed gun sellers who primarily sell firearms at gun shows and online marketplaces to register with the federal government. It’s a significant change that could end one of the primary ways guns are sold without background checks in the U.S.:
68,388: The number of illegally trafficked firearms traced back to unlicensed dealers between 2017 and 2021, according to a study from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
1993: The year former President Bill Clinton signed a law that required all federally licensed firearm vendors to conduct background checks before purchases—but the rule did not apply to private sellers
30 days: Once the new rules are published by the Federal Register, they will go into effect 30 days later
STRATEGY AND SUCCESS
If you’re still working on your taxes before Monday (we’ve all been there), there are still a few things you can do to maximize your savings. You can contribute to an individual retirement account like a Roth IRA up until tax day for the prior year, and you also have until then to max out your health savings account. While the standard deduction makes sense for many people, it’s worth looking into itemizing your deductions if you have high amounts of charitable contributions, medical and dental expenses, home mortgage interest, among other categories.
QUIZ
This year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival kicks off Friday for two consecutive weekends. Which of the following bands will be reuniting for their first performance in nearly a decade at the festival?
A. R.E.M.
B. No Doubt
C. Oasis
D. One Direction
ACROSS THE NEWSROOM
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