The big money backing Kamala

One ‘dolce vita’ thing to start: Returning Italians and rich foreigners lured by tax breaks are bringing newfound energy — and strains — to Milan. Go deeper here.

And a big fundraise by an OpenAI rival: Artificial intelligence developer Cohere has raised $500mn in a new funding round, making it one of the world’s most valuable start-ups in the field and boosting the Canadian company’s efforts to take on rivals including OpenAI and Anthropic.

In today’s newsletter:

• Wall Street loves Kamala Harris

• Behind Altice’s more than £1bn margin loan

• Cravath’s CEO whisperer

Big money backs Kamala

It’s been less than 48 hours since Kamala Harris announced she’s running for president — and big money’s already pouring into her campaign’s coffers: the US vice-president has raised $81mn in the first 24 hours after announcing her candidacy.

Democratic heavyweights from Wall Street to Hollywood have swept behind her bid shortly after Joe Biden withdrew from the race on Sunday, with some voicing their hopes that Harris would lean more moderate on financial and business regulation.

Some of the biggest names from Wall Street backing her: George and Alex Soros, Evercore founder Roger Altman, Centerview Partners co-founder Blair Effron and BlackRock co-founder (and Evercore emeritus chair) Ralph Schlosstein.

“Vice-president Harris is a moderate who has spent her life enforcing the law respecting precedent,” said one top dealmaker. “While she would be tough on enforcement, it will be rational enforcement.”

Schlosstein told the FT that he supports Harris because he thought she could “execute a vigorous campaign” against Donald Trump — who he sees as a “genuine threat to our democracy”.

As a former prosecutor, Harris has some big fans in the legal world. Brad Karp, a prominent Wall Street fundraiser and chair of the New York-based corporate law firm Paul Weiss, swiftly endorsed Harris, whom he backed during her 2020 run.

“Kamala Harris would be a formidable nominee and make a superb president,” Karp told the FT.

With the Democratic convention still four weeks away, Harris will probably spend from now until then canvassing her party’s sceptics.

One question Harris will probably have to address again and again is what her stance will be on big business, and whether Biden’s hardline on antitrust would carry through to her administration.

Several M&A advisers are convinced Harris would replace Lina Khan, the Federal Trade Commission chair — one of the most feared people on Wall Street — with somebody more deal friendly.

“Nobody is expecting her to be a cheerleader for M&A but she will be constructive,” said a senior banker.

Altice’s big fat margin loan

There are few things in life that Patrick Drahi loves more than debt.

The Franco-Israeli tycoon’s Altice borrowed more than $60bn back when interest rates were low and money was cheap, fuelling an epic buying spree that transformed the group from a niche cable company into a global telecoms empire stretching from the US to Portugal.

But that $60bn number only represents the debt across Altice’s three main business silos.

Drahi has further leverage at his personal investment vehicles, along with a separate silo of borrowing against Sotheby’s — the storied auction house he took private in a swashbuckling buyout half a decade ago.

The figure also does not encompass any borrowing against Altice’s 24.5 per cent stake in BT.

Exactly how Drahi financed his stake-building exercise in the British telecoms company has long been shrouded in mystery. That is until DD’s Rob Smith and the FT’s Yasemin Craggs Mersinoglu over the weekend revealed the layers of debt raised against the shares.

Most eye-catchingly: Drahi’s Altice UK investment vehicle took out a more than £1bn margin loan from a group of international banks in 2022.

In contrast to the more stable “equity collars” Altice also has used to borrow against the stake, margin loans are deemed risky for borrowers because banks can demand margin calls if the underlying shares fall in value.

With BT shares down since the loan was first raised, and bondholders across the wider Altice group braced for restructuring talks, it all looks a little precarious.

It’s also worth noting that Altice UK also borrowed money from elsewhere in the group to fund the deal, taking a €581mn loan from Altice International towards the end of 2021.

As such, DD imagines that bondholders at this entity — which houses Altice’s subsidiaries in Israel, Portugal and the Dominican Republic — will also be running the slide rule over the economics of Drahi’s BT position.

Sitting down with Cravath’s CEO whisperer

Over the past three decades, Faiza Saeed, presiding partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, has been a power behind the scenes at virtually every media mega-deal you can think of.

She recently sat down for lunch with the FT’s Brooke Masters at Saeed’s favourite Manhattan power restaurant: Le Bernardin.

She shared the lessons learned while standing beside Disney’s Bob Iger, Starbucks’ Howard Schultz and DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, among others, at moments of high corporate drama.

She not only soothes their anxieties and solves their legal problems but also gives them straight talk as they do deals and fight off activist investors.

That’s a lesson she learned early on as a junior partner on Time Warner’s $350bn merger with America Online (AOL), often considered the worst corporate deal of all time.

“When we were in negotiations with them you could feel, wow these are very different cultures trying to come together,” she told Masters. “But you’re the outside adviser and you’re told to try and put the deal together.”

These days she no longer keeps silent about troubles ahead: “I always say, you know, I think this is going to be challenging.”

Over halibut and red burgundy, Saeed wades through what it’s been like with a front-row seat to some of the most notorious corporate events over the past three decades.

Job moves

• Sir Keir Starmer’s government has brought on Varun Chandra as its special adviser on business and investment. Chandra was most recently managing partner of consultancy Hakluyt, a role that deputy managing partner Holly Morrow will take on until the company elects a permanent replacement.

• Entain, which owns Ladbrokes, has named Gavin Isaacs as its new chief executive. He was most recently chair of game development company Games Global.

• Centerview Partners has hired Kathryn Hembree Night for its activism defence business, Bloomberg reports. She most recently worked for Lazard as a managing director.

• Walt Disney board member Safra Catz is leaving the position after six years. She is the chief executive of Oracle.

• Bessemer Venture Partners has hired Lauri Moore as a partner, where she’ll focus on early-stage data science, developer tools and related infrastructure investments. She most recently worked for Foundation Capital.

Smart reads

Billionaire criminal Xiao Jianhua, a billionaire criminal with ties to China’s political elite, made money for years by secretly backing Jack Ma’s deals, The New York Times reveals.

Zombie empire Jamie Salter has quietly built an empire off of dead brands such as Brooks Brothers and Elvis Presley. Now, Authentic Brands is gearing up for its next act, Bloomberg writes.

Seized superyachts After Russia invaded Ukraine, western governments swept in to seize superyachts from Russian oligarchs, the FT reports. The costs are piling up.

News round-up

How to tax private equity properly (FT) 

LVMH-backed fund buys £1.5bn stake in Bicester Village owner (FT)

Nippon Steel hires Mike Pompeo in lobbying push for $15bn US Steel bid (FT)

Mubadala buys majority stake in buggy brand Bugaboo (FT)

Google co-founder backs biotech studying psychedelic African shrub (FT)

Vodafone sells further €1.3bn stake in European phone masts business (FT)

French TV group Canal+ to list in London as part of Vivendi break-up (FT)

Ratcliffe’s race to reboot Man Utd extends beyond the pitch (FT)