Tom Powdrill

In the Oscar Mayer example it was clear interest costs increased significantly at an unhelpful time which must have been a factor in attempted fire & rehire. The private credit firm took ownership it did restructure the lending to give it breathing space. But all that debt focuses minds on… the debt

Four reasons why private credit isn’t actually a systemic risk Courtesy of Goldman Sachs

GS counter arguments to systemic risk in private credit. Personal view is investors having the hots for the asset class & proliferation of asset manager products makes it feel bubbly. And easy to see how floating rate notes can push costs up sharply+quickly for borrowers.
www.ft.com/content/75d8...

BlackRock, other fund managers lose bid to dismiss Texas climate collusion lawsuit A U.S. judge on Friday largely rejected a request by top asset managers including BlackRock to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Texas and 12 other Republican-led states that said the companies violated antitrust law through climate activism that reduced coal production and boosted energy prices.

Huh, this could get interesting
www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

I wonder if this road is now closed off.
www.ft.com/content/539d...

Residual loyalty towards Labour is evaporating everywhere it seems. Probably any government would have struggled, but personally think some of this is self inflicted

Private credit, public interest Oscar Mayer workers win reinstatement, compensation and union recognition

Also interesting in this one was that the owner is a private credit manager - Pemberton. Its clients included local authority pension funds, one of which (Clwyd) covers Wrexham where the strikes took place.
Anyway, I wrote a bit about it

open.substack.com/pub/tompowdr...

Interesting point was that in challenging the recognition application at the CAC the company argued that the fire & rehire process itself would have a disproportionate impact on union members / supporters.
www.gov.uk/government/p...

A **win** for Oscar Mayer workers. Fire and rehire needs to be tackled politically but in the meantime can be fought industrially.
There was no union recognised at this site previously, now there is one. Bargaining unit of around 500.
www.unitetheunion.org/news-events/...

Labour must create green jobs or lose voters to parties who oppose net zero, unions warn GMB and Prospect say government needs greater focus on green energy amid political shift away from net zero commitments

Yep
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

If there’s an upside to the anti-ESG stuff, there’s a lot less people posting on LinkedIn these days about being ‘passionate’ and ‘proud’ because the asset manager they work for has signed some bollox statement.

Can see a couple of bits of BlackRock are shorting Greencore - could be as a merger arbitrage trade around the Bakkavor takeover. (I think there’s a sandwich spread joke in here somewhere)
It also runs a bit of money for the Greencore pension fund by the looks of it.
It gets everywhere.

I don’t underestimate what a crap hand the government was dealt, but I am surprised by some of the choices it makes in playing it.

I suspect the default position of many people will be ‘why were they getting bonuses in the first place?’ so blocking them is not a positive and the bills still go up anyway. Just seems like a recipe for frustration.
Meanwhile Farage can say “nationalise Thames” knowing it’s Labour’s problem for now

I think many punters are low-level annoyed about water, and some are really pissed off. The govt is making a lot of noise about it now, so increasing the salience of the topic. But then doing stuff that no-one really feels a benefit from - bonus bashing, regulatory reform.

I’m not a political comms expert but what the government seems to keep doing is increasing the salience of issues where it’s a) hard to deliver (growth) b) delivery might not be nice (cuts) c) it reinforces the strengths of other parties (immigration).
I think it’s doing something bad with water too

wtf is this?

Pension Commission to look at why four-in-ten fail to save enough Future pensioners are set to be worse off than today's with four-in-10 not saving enough for retirement, says the DWP.

Future pensioners forecast to be worse off than current retirees
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

What messages might Reform be vulnerable to? Exploring weaknesses in the Farage brand - an experiment.

Really interesting

strongmessagehere.substack.com/p/what-messa...

Yeah another terrible one. The guitar solo is both showpony and… err… pony

Was just looking at pension fund demand for gilts this week and whatever I was reading (OBR or DMO doc, can’t remember) was forecasting a big drop off coming up because of DB to DC shift. Going to be a small % of overall gilt holdings in future

Not at all important, but I fckin hate Chain Reaction so much. Wasn’t it written by one of the BeeGees?

👀

Maybe the internet is the marketplace for idea-lemons
Really crap ideas (racist, misogynistic, conspiracies etc) persist despite being regularly repeated / debated, so bad ones clearly don’t get driven out by good ones.
Seems more likely many people have no good way of distinguishing good from bad

BlackRock: A Case Study in Finance Capital (Part 1) [This post may appear clipped in your inbox.

This is a great (part 1) analysis of BlackRock - this part focuses on how it makes money & wants to do so in future.
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 @newjawnfades.bsky.social
open.substack.com/pub/thisisfi...

Think this was a zugzwang for Reeves. Got to say something growthy / anti-red tape for the audience but then get flak for being deregulatory/ soft on the Citu

People put too much weight on polling that says people want action on climate change in the abstract. I don’t think that survives contact with Reform saying “it will put your bills up in the UK and China is the problem”.
Just transition is critical but still feels like rhetoric over reality.

Seems I’m much less confident than many people on here that Reform have made a mistake defining themselves against Net Zero / renewables.
this stuff has to be presented in terms of energy costs/security and jobs and fronted by people who don’t look like they are rich enough to not care about bills.

Tom's fundraiser for Labour Behind the Label Help Tom Powdrill raise money to support Labour Behind the Label

I’m running a 50k ultra along the Suffolk coast in September and using this as an opportunity to raise money for Labour Behind the Label.
They advocate on behalf of garment workers - a cause close to my heart.
Any support much appreciated!
www.justgiving.com/page/tom-pow...

Reform council leader urges Labour to reconsider curbs on care worker visas Kent’s Linden Kemkaran writes to government to express ‘grave concern’ about possible exodus of overseas care staff

Great story from @peterwalker99.bsky.social

The leader of a Reform-run county council has written to the government to express “grave concern” about tightening of visas for health and care workers, despite the party’s aim to significantly reduce net migration.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Reeves to say cuts to City red tape will bring trickle-down benefits to households Chancellor to announce raft of deregulation changes as City regulators move to pare back transparency rules

Reading the tea leaves here, there’s v little of substance in the ‘reforms’ and she doesn’t use ‘trickle down’ (there is a ‘ripple effect’). So I think Rachel Reeves is going to be giving a pretty meh speech but wants to say something positive to the audience.
www.theguardian.com/business/202...