Where you should take DD to lunch

One scoop to start: Axel Springer’s senior executives are close to receiving bumper payouts as part of its break-up plan with KKR. If the group’s valuation reaches €13.6bn ($15.2bn), more than 100 top managers would receive eight times the money they’ve invested since 2021.

In today’s newsletter:

• Bring back leisurely lunches

• Europe’s great battery hope fights to survive

• An ugly boardroom brawl to oust a founder

Can the power lunch make a comeback?

The pandemic was a grim time for the institution of lunch, with many of us rummaging something out of our fridges at home between Zoom meetings.

Since then, although we’ve largely returned to downtown offices, it seems many of us have forgotten that lunchtime should be sacrosanct. Instead, we’ve reverted to sad desk salads or Pret A Manger takeaway.

It’s been too long since we had a lunch leisurely enough to persuade us to push back our 2pm. We feel so strongly, in fact, that FT Magazine has devoted an entire issue to the affair.

The stories will be published in stages, and there are all sorts of recommendations and odes to the good-old days over the course of this weekend.

First up: the FT’s Bryce Elder weighs in with a call for the return of lunchtime gossip — which he argues used to fuel the City of London — and the delicate recipe required to create the perfect spot for good chat.

This requires a bit of magic. One less obvious requirement is to have the feeling of being transported. Think of the private elevator to Coq d’Argent’s roof garden, or the sidewalk marquees that abutted New York institutions such as The Colony and La Côte Basque.

As Elder puts it: “The best restaurant entrances are like bridges between worlds, inviting you to leave the Microsoft Teams calls and Google Calendar invites behind as you pass to the other side.”

The first batch of articles also includes a review of Sweetings, the restaurant that the FT’s Tim Hayward was brought to by his editor when he asked: “Where do you chaps go for your long, champagne-lubricated lunches?”

Sweetings has been on the corner of Queen Victoria Street, just a few hundred metres from the FT’s offices, since 1889. And while there was champagne, it wasn’t your average brut.

Instead, Sweetings is famous for its Black Velvet: a drink that’s half Guinness and half champagne, served in a silver tankard. (Hayward wryly notes it tastes “distantly” of silver polish.)

So, DD readers, wherever you may be: what are your favourite restaurants in your respective cities? Where shall we go out the next time we’re in town?

Send your suggestions to [email protected].

Europe’s great battery hope battles to survive

Nestled amid a pine forest in northern Sweden, Europe’s first homegrown battery factory, owned by Northvolt, has been the glistening hope for the region’s future in electrification.

But less than a decade after it was founded and $15bn in raised capital later, Northvolt is fighting to survive, reports the FT’s Richard Milne.

The numbers are bleak: its net loss of $1.2bn last year was four times higher than in 2022, and equity on its balance sheet almost halved from the start of 2022 to the end of 2023.

Now, Northvolt is struggling to secure funds as it tries to ramp up production at its gigafactory in Skellefteå, while at the same time scaling down other projects and cutting jobs.

Although the plant technically has an annual capacity to produce 16 gigawatt hours, last year it produced less than even 1GWh, the amount needed to power a scant 17,000 cars. Northvolt needs to boost production — and quickly.

There’s a lot at stake here. The plant has become a symbol of Europe’s efforts to catch up with China and the US on their battery and electric vehicle ambitions.

If Northvolt fails to reach the grand goals it’s laid out, it would be devastating for the continent’s hopes to close that gap.

“It’s extremely difficult to get through the Valley of Death for start-ups when they’re trying to scale up. And the valley is deepest for battery cells,” said Lars Lysdahl, battery expert at consultants Rystad Energy.

Without optimising its production capacity, Northvolt can’t compete on price with Asian rivals — such as CATL and BYD of China, Panasonic of Japan and LG and Samsung of South Korea. They still dominate the industry.

Sweden’s prime minister has made it clear the state won’t bail the company out by becoming a shareholder. But major carmakers have an incentive to see the company thrive.

Not only have these companies put in huge orders with Northvolt, but they’re also shareholders.

At the end of last year, Volkswagen owned a 21 per cent stake and BMW held just under 3 per cent. (Goldman Sachs Asset Management was the second-largest shareholder with a 19 per cent stake.)

Now the company’s in a juggling act between appeasing its shareholders, boosting GWh output and soliciting new funds. 

The activist fight to kick out a billionaire founder

In late January, Joe Kiani met Quentin Koffey for dinner at the Manhattan hotspot Fasano. The two had been sparring for more than a year, but that night Kiani thought he had a deal.

Koffey, an activist investor with stints at Elliott Management and DE Shaw, had just won two board seats at Masimo, the Orange County, California-based medtech company that Kiani founded.

Masimo had been around for 35 years and publicly traded since 2007. Kiani, an electrical engineer by training, created pulse oximeter designs good enough to win a recent patent infringement case against Apple.

But after reaching a $17bn market capitalisation in 2021, its shares had fallen 60 per cent.

Enter Koffey’s hedge fund, Politan Capital. Tension between the sides never really diminished after Koffey came into the Masimo tent.

Both parties have blamed each other for attempting to undermine the other from the moment the “onboarding” process began.

After that dinner in January, Kiani believed the two sides had found a way to settle the matter. He said later that Koffey had promised him a Masimo spin-off along with super voting shares and a change in control package valued at more than $400mn.

But within weeks that deal was dead and a second proxy contest had kicked off. Now, Kiani’s board seat is imperilled with the shareholder meeting set for Thursday. DD’s Sujeet Indap has the high-drama blow-by-blow.

It’s very rare for a founder to get the boot from his company. But in an interview, Kiani reminded us of the most famous example.

“When Steve Jobs was thrown out, his company fell apart,” he said.

Job moves

• Nike chief executive John Donahoe will retire next month in an abrupt leadership change as the world’s largest sportswear maker suffers financially. Elliott Hill, previously president of consumer marketplace, is coming out of retirement to take the top job. 

• Oxford University Endowment Management’s chief executive and chief investment officer Sandra Robertson is stepping down after almost two decades. Her deputy, Neamul Mohsin, who joined the institution 12 years ago, will replace her.

• Lloyd’s of London has named UK Treasury veteran Charles Roxburgh as its new chair, starting in May 2025, replacing Bruce Carnegie-Brown in one of the insurance institution’s most senior roles. 

• BTIG has hired Michael Mylonas as head of consumer investment banking and head of investment banking coverage in Europe. He previously worked for Jefferies. 

Smart reads

‘High-water ebitda’ Private equity firms are aggressively pushing to include language in loan documents that could give them room to pay themselves larger dividends from portfolio companies, the FT reports. Lenders are up in arms.

Lounge wars Delta’s new ultra-exclusive, 39,000 sq ft luxury lounge at JFK airport is its latest attempt to win the airline lounge wars, The Wall Street Journal reports. With massage chairs and organic wellness shots, it might very well be winning.

Swipe left Activist investors are swiping right on dating apps, Lex writes. But a shift in dating culture, along with concerns over safety and romance scams, mean they may struggle to convince the broader market to do the same.

News round-up

Berlin ‘very sceptical’ about UniCredit move on Commerzbank (FT)

Close Brothers to sell wealth unit as it braces for motor finance probe (FT)

Thames Water seeks extension on debt terms to avoid renationalisation (FT)

Mining tycoon claims Swiss prosecutors acted illegally (FT)

AI risks making some people ‘uninsurable’, warns UK financial watchdog (FT)

Brazil imposes fine on Musk’s X after service returns (FT)

Hedge fund Two Sigma is in settlement talks with SEC (WSJ)