Bloomberg - Evening Briefing - After Navalny’s death

Alexey Navalny, the Russian lawyer and anti-corruption activist who became the most potent voice in opposition to Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, has died, according to the Russian government. He was 47. No cause of death was given. In December, friends and lawyers for the imprisoned Navalny raised the alarm that they had lost contact with him. He later emerged in a remote Arctic prison camp. Navalny gained initial fame for a 2011 radio interview in which he called the ruling pro-Putin party “swindlers and thieves.” By the end of that year, as suspicions of massive fraud in parliamentary elections kindled street protests, Navalny emerged as the leading opposition figure. In 2020, Navalny barely survived a nerve-agent attack that he and Western governments blamed on Putin. After being treated in Germany—and despite knowing he would be jailed—Navalny returned to Russia and was immediately imprisoned. In addition to eliminating Putin’s most charismatic and popular opponent, Navalny’s death is certain to further inflame tensions between the Kremlin and Western capitals, with relations already at their lowest point in decades due to Russia’s two-year war on Ukraine. On Friday, an outraged US President Joe Biden left no doubt about the tenor of the aftermath. Asked if Navalny was assassinated, he said “we don’t know exactly what happened.” But Biden added there was no doubt it “was a consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.” —David E. Rovella

JPMorgan expects to pay more than $350 million to settle regulatory claims that it failed to feed information on trades into market-surveillance systems. The bank will pay about that much to two US watchdogs and is in advanced talks with a third, the company said Friday in an annual filing. JPMorgan, which houses Wall Street’s largest trading shop, said in November it was cooperating with investigations into whether the firm had provided complete trading and order data as required.

Exchange-traded funds set up to profit from a Wall Street doomsday are facing their own kind of apocalypse. The consistently resilient US economy and record-setting stock market have delivered massive losses to a breed of ETFs designed to withstand so-called Black Swan events—or unexpected calamities that drive markets into a tailspin. “Tail risk strategies won’t fare well when the market is on an upward trajectory,” said Jeffrey Ptak, chief ratings officer at Morningstar Research Services. “It kind of goes with the territory.”

Goldman Sachs boosted Chief Executive Officer David Solomon’s compensation 24% to $31 million in a year when earnings slumped at the Wall Street giant. Solomon reaped his reward following a 2023 that witnessed the firm spending much of its time dousing internal rifts and pitching investors on a simplified strategy. This is what the compensation committee had to say.

David Solomon Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son is said to be seeking as much as $100 billion to bankroll a chip venture to compete with Nvidia and supply semiconductors essential for artificial intelligence. Code-named Izanagi, the project marks the billionaire’s next big endeavor as SoftBank sharply curtails startup investments. Son envisions creating a company that can complement chip design unit Arm Holdings and allow the billionaire to build an AI chip powerhouse. In one scenario being considered, SoftBank would provide $30 billion, with $70 billion possibly coming from institutions in the Middle East.

The US is once again purchasing missed mortgage payments from lenders, reopening a popular solution to fend off foreclosures on veterans who own homes. The changes will help address a spike in foreclosure actions against former members of the military who used a federal Covid-19 mortgage-forbearance program. 

With three of the four felony prosecutions of Donald Trump facing a potential delay, either by the US Supreme Court, evidentiary disputes or an attempt to remove prosecutors, speedy adjudication these days seems limited to New York state courts. The New York state accounting fraud prosecution of Trump in state court in Manhattan is now set to go to trial March 25. And on Friday, a fifth case—a lawsuit against Trump and his company in which he was found to have manipulated his net worth—yielded a massive $364 million penalty. While he’s sure to appeal, Trump may be forced to put a large chunk of the damages in an escrow or bond. 

Trump is telling allies that he supports a national 16 week abortion ban. Abortion is likely to be a key issue in the 2024 presidential election after the Republican-appointed supermajority of the Supreme Court discarded the 50-year-old federal right to end a pregnancy under Roe v. Wade. Most Americans are in favor of the right to abortion in all or some cases. 

Donald Trump leaves New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Thursday after a hearing in his criminal case there. On Friday, a New York judge in a state lawsuit ordered him to pay $364 million for inflating asset valuations. Photographer: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg

• Biden says Russia space weapon project is no nuclear threat to Earth.
• ETF firm hid the role of Barstool’s Dave Portnoy in launch, SEC says.
• How Paramount became a cautionary tale of the streaming wars.
• OpenAI’s Sam Altman seeks US blessing to raise billions for AI chips.
• Bloomberg Opinion: Mike Johnson just had the worst week ever.
• Bloomberg Opinion: Trump loved New York. Now he has to get out.
• How to book a bargain vacation to Japan while the yen is weak.

Shelter is one of humanity’s most basic needs. But as the global population grows, so too does the construction industry’s carbon and environmental footprint. How can societies rethink the way they build and the structures they create? What new technologies and old strategies can be employed to make construction less damaging to the planet and the atmosphere? In the new Bloomberg Originals series An Optimist’s Guide to the Planet, host Nikolaj Coster-Waldau seeks out the communities, startups and people quietly discovering ways to slow global warming, repair the environment and move toward a future where we’ve incorporated the lessons of our past. In this episode, Shelter, he takes his journey to where we live.

In Shelter, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau travels to Ho Chi Minh City to meet an architect who incorporates vegetation into his building designs.

The Evening Briefing will return on Tuesday, Feb. 20.

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