US markets were closed on Friday, third of July for Fourth of July 🇺🇸

US stocks closed mixed on Thursday as investors parsed through a weak jobs report

Europe's Stoxx 600 index posted a fourth-straight week of gains to hit a new ATH

What we're watching this week:  

Full calendar here

The Belgians are gonna be hearing our Fourth of July fireworks in their nightmares🇺🇸🦅

Trade event contracts on Polymarket, the world's largest prediction market

Trump made over 21,000 trades worth over $1B last year (BBG)

Goldman will match employee contributions for children's Trump accounts (RT)

US labor force participation fell to the lowest since March 2021 (CNBC)

Surging Wall Street profit forecasts fuel fears of 'earnings bubble' (FT)

Wall Street bets rallying markets will absorb every market blow (BBG)

Small caps are having their best run in decades (WSJ)

US stock funds the largest outflows since March (BBG)

Asia M&A tops $750B despite volatility (BBG)

Goldman dominates M&A in H1 as dealmaking surges in EMEA (RT)

Wall Street banks recover in China amid trading boom (FT)

Investors sought to pull $16B from private credit funds in Q2 (WSJ)

Software loans hit a rough patch even before AI SaaSpocalypse (WSJ)

Carry trade shifts away from dollar for EM bets (BBG)

Australia bond market issuance hit a record high on foreign demand (BBG)

Democratic Republic of Congo plans to open a stock market (BBG)

Zuck says AI agent tech is progressing slower than expected (RT)

Spotify challenges prediction markets after song chart rigging (BBG)

Brown University's rating outlook was lowered to negative (BBG)

JPMorgan loses battle over Charlie Javice's legal expenses (BBG)

EU will cut ESG reporting requirements for asset managers (BBG)

College students are ditching internships for startups (WSJ)

A founder was fired for ignoring his own return-to-office rules (WSJ)

Sometimes it's buried where no one sees it. Fundable surfaced a $750k seed for Leadpoet, a NYC-based AI startup, from a single Japanese Forbes article (paywalled in US) and covered nowhere else. Months later, the round still isn't on Crunchbase.

Sometimes it's a local outlet moving before the big wires. When Focused Energy closed a $240M Series A, one of the largest early-stage rounds for a fusion power startup, a German trade outlet had it nearly a week before it hit the newswires, and almost two weeks before TechCrunch.

Sometimes it never hits the press at all; just a founder's post on LinkedIn or an investor's tweet. Fundable reads those too, and turns them into structured data the moment they go up.

French lender Crédit Agricole raised its stake in $27B-listed Italian peer Banco BPM to 29.3%

$15B-listed waste management giant GFL Environmental is considering a take-private after receiving PE interest 

O'Reilly Automotive offered to acquire the auto parts unit of Genuine Parts for over $10B cash

Investment firm Castlelake will acquire UK budget airline EasyJet at a $7.3B equity valuation after its fifth bid

PE firm Lone Star Funds agreed to to acquire German manufacturing giant Continental's industrial unit ContiTech at an over $4.6B enterprise valuation 

Leading shareholders of Italian broadcast tower operators ‌Rai Way and EI Towers failed to reach a $4.6B merger agreement

Lockheed Martin is leading the race to acquire naval defense firm Ultra ​Maritime from PE firm Advent for $3.5B

Blackstone, CVC, and Japan's MUFG are among bidders for a 50% stake in Vietnamese fintech MoMo, which could fetch a $2B valuation 

Norwegian fertilizer maker Yara ​agreed to buy Gulf Coast ‌Ammonia's production plant in Texas for $1.3B

CSG founder Michal Strnad is in talks to buy a 14% stake in Italian tire giant Pirelli from its largest shareholder, China's state-backed Sinochem Holdings, for over $1.1B

Gymshark founder Ben Francis is in talks to buy back part of a 20% stake he sold to of General Atlantic for $1.3B in 2020

Industrial machinery maker Renk Group will acquire David Brown Defence for $200M-$250M

US asset manager Columbia Threadneedle and Germany's Patrizia agreed to ​merge their UK property trusts to create a $2B AUM fund

Chanel agreed to buy France's oldest shirtmaker Charvet

Volkswagen is considering selling its 8.3% stake in German soccer club Bayern Munich and its 10.4% stake in rival VfB Stuttgart via its Audi and Porsche subsidiaries

Apollo is struggling to offload Hispanic-focused grocery chain Heritage Grocers Group

OpenAI held talks with US to give the federal government a 5% stake

AI voice startup ElevenLabs held early talks for a secondary share sale at a $22B valuation

China's Kuaishou Technology raised $2.8B at a $15B pre-money valuation for its video AI subsidiary Kling AI from Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, and others

DigitalBridge-owned data center operator Switch is seeking to raise a $2B round at an over $50B enterprise valuation led by a16z

German drone startup Quantum Systems raised a $1.2B Series D at an over $8B post-money valuation co-led by Blackstone, Noteus, Airbus, and Advent

Erebor Bank, the Thiel-backed tech-focused bank of Palmer Luckey, is in talks to raise funds at an $8B valuation   

Qolab, a quantum computing hardware company, raised a $54M Series B led by UC Investments

Broccoli AI, an AI-native operations platform for multi-location and PE-backed businesses, raised a $25M round led by Khosla Ventures

LinqAlpha, an AI investment research company, is close to raising a $22M Series A from Atinum Investment, AVP, and GFT Ventures

Luxonis, a robotics and industrial automation company, raised a $14M Series A led by Denali Growth Partners 

Extended, an onchain derivatives platform, raised a $12.5M funding round led by eToro 

THEA, a predictive behavior AI for risk markets, raised an $8M round led by Maven11 Capital, Hack VC, and others

CCRAFT, a photonic chip manufacturer, raised  a $7.8M funding round led by QBIT Capital

Alsa, a payments startup enabling AI agents to transact autonomously, raised a $6.5M seed round led by Alibaba and Tribe Capital

French shipping giant CMA CGM may consider a spinoff of its $18B logistics business

India's SBI Funds Management is set to launch an India IPO seeking to raise $1.2B at a lowered $12B valuation 

Blackstone-backed sandwich chain Jersey Mike's filed for an IPO to raise $1B at an over $12B valuation

Brewer Carlsberg confidentially filed for a $700M India IPO of its India unit

Mohalla Tech, an Indian startup which operates social network ShareChat, short video platform Moj, and subscription-based micro-drama app QuickTV, is seeking to raise $400M in an India IPO

Carlyle hired banks for a $400M India IPO of an Indian RCM rollup comprising Knack RCM and EqualizeRCM

MacRitchie Investments, a unit of Singapore SWF Temasek, plans to sell $200M worth of shares in Indian online insurance and lending marketplace ‌PB Fintech at a 5% discount

EG Group-owned gas station and convenience-store operator Cumberland Farms filed for an IPO

Power producer Genneia filed for a US IPO, the first Argentine company to list in US in seven years

Chinese copper foil maker Londian Wason New Energy Tech filed for a US IPO

Finland's IQM Quantum Computers merged with Real Asset Acquisition Corp. at a $1.9B valuation 

Banks lined up enough investor demand for their $49B debt sale backing Paramount Skydance's $110B's takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery

EQT secured a $4.4B sustainability-linked loan that links interest rates to the ESG performance of portfolio companies

CVC is set to finance its LBO of Italian food ingredients maker Irca with $1.4B of high-yield bonds

Taiwan's largest brokerage Yuanta Securities is seeking to raise $1.3B via syndicated loans

Barclays pulled a $1B financing for Summit Partners-backed hospital staffing firm Sound Inpatient Physicians

India's ICICI Bank is in talks to raise over $500M in its first benchmark-sized dollar bond sale since 2017

iCON Infrastructure will acquire Northern Fiber Holding, a struggling German fiber network operator formerly owned by UBS Asset Management, with lender approval to prevent insolvency

Prison phone company Aventiv Technologies clinched an out-of court deal for lenders to take control from PE firm Platinum Equity, with creditors retaining take-back paper of over $500M

Telecom infrastructure firm Extenet Systems is seeking a reprieve on upcoming interest payments after failing to secure rescue financing from an equity backer

French authorities seized the bank accounts of Ardian-backed home medical assistance firm Santé Cie

Europe's Hayfin Capital Management raised over $17B for its latest private credit flagship fund

Starwood Capital Group raised over $10B for its latest opportunistic real estate fund

EQT-owned UK secondaries specialist Coller Capital raised $6.8B for its second credit secondaries fund

Canada's CPPIB will invest $1.75B to support EQT's AI infrastructure buildout led by subsidiary EdgeConneX

Chinese chip giants including CXMT and Alibaba launched a $577M deeptech fund

Singapore-based private markets investor Azalea launched its first evergreen PE fund with $350M in anchor commitments

European VC Seedcamp raised $320M for its seventh fund to invest in US

Behrman Capital raised a $250M CV for truck and trailer tarp provider Shurco led by Coller Capital

Dubai-based Magellan Capital launched a $250M evergreen credit fund targeting GCC ABF

Lower MM investor Altera closed a trio of private markets funds with a combined $136M in commitments

Kos Biotechnology Partners raised $123M for its debut life sciences fund

Indian climate tech VC 100×100 is aiming to raise $100M for its second fund 

Two Blue Owl private credit funds restricted withdrawals

JPMorgan says Saylor's Strategy adds new risk to Bitcoin market

Robinhood rolled out perps tied to commodities and ETFs

Tech billionaire Vinod Khosla sat down with WSJ to explain why he wants to pay MORE taxes. Even better than his takes is the top comment on the WSJ article. Worth a read.

WSJ also brought to light an interesting aspect of JPMorgan's CEO succession race. Much to do with an apparent sidelining of women.