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Good Morning,

Several large cap tech companies report earnings this week, Musk is beefing with Bill Gates due to his Tesla short, Musk is also in talks with Thoma Bravo about partnering on his Twitter bid, Macron won the French election, and Lockheed Martin reached a deal with its union.

Back on the grind after a weekend in Miami. Tech week was *lit* (pun intended) 🤝

Let's dive in.

Before The Bell

If you want to learn more about crypto trading strategies and the world of DeFi, check out our Foot Guns newsletter.

Markets

• All three major averages closed down lower last week with the Dow posting its fourth straight weekly decline and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq posting their third

• With the threat of rising rates at the forefront of investors minds, it will be interesting to see how Wall Street reacts to this week’s big tech earnings

  • Names like Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft will be releasing their reports throughout the week

• ~160 companies in the S&P 500 are expected to report this week

Earnings

• What we’re watching this week:

  • Mon: Coca-Cola, Activision

  • Tuesday: UPS, Pepsico, JetBlue, GE, Microsoft, GM, Alphabet, Visa, Chipotle

  • Wednesday: Boeing, Spotify, Harley-Davidson, Meta, PayPal, Ford, Hertz

  • Thursday: Twitter, Southwest, Mastercard, McDonald’s, Apple, Amazon, Intel, Robinhood

  • Friday: ExxonMobil, Chevron 

• Full calendar here

Headline Roundup

• Macron beats Le Pen to win second term as French president (BBG)

• Lockheed Martin, union reach deal at Fort Worth F-35 plant (BBG)

• Credit Suisse may replace top lawyer as legal battles mount (BBG)

• Pakistan seeks to extend IMF loan for one year, minister says (BBG)

• Elon Musk, Twitter are said to be meeting over acquisition offer (BBG)

• BuzzFeed sues to to block arbitration claims over IPO (BBG)

• Top US officials meet with Zelensky in Kyiv (WSJ)

• Saudi royals are selling homes, yachts, and art as Crown Prince cuts income (WSJ)

• Nestlé rejiggers operations to keep supplying food in Ukraine (​​WSJ)

• Piers Morgan set for on-air revival with Trump interview (WSJ)

• Elon Musk says he confronted Bill Gates about shorting Tesla (CNBC)

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Deal Flow

M&A / Investments

• Elon Musk is in talks with Thoma Bravo about partnering on a possible takeover bid for Twitter (RT)

• Semiconductor firm Silicon Motion is exploring a potential sale amid takeover interest; they have a current market value of ~$2.7B (BBG)

• Carmaker Renault is considering selling part of its Nissan Motor stake to raise money for its EV shift (BBG)

• Property firm Carlyle Group (A California-based company with the same name as the asset manager) is exploring a sale of a $500M portfolio of US mobile-home parks (BBG)

VC

• Agility, a robotics startup creating shipping and warehouse robots, raised a $150M Series B led by DCVC and Playground Global (TC)

• Web3 security firm CertiK raised $60M from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Tiger Global (BW)

• Enervee, a climate tech company, raised $35M in financing from Kerogen Capital and JP Morgan (BW)

• NFT ticketing platform Afterparty raised a $4M round from ParisHilton’s 11.11 Media, Jason Calacanis, Blockchange Ventures, Acrew Capital, and more (BW)

IPO / Direct Listings / Issuances / Block Trades

• India is looking to raise $3.9B through an IPO of state-owned Life Insurance Corp (BBG)

• Abu Dhabi National Oil and Borealis are seeking to raise ~$2B from an IPO of their plastics JV Borouge (BBG)

Crypto Corner

• Grayscale renews push with SEC for Bitcoin Spot ETF (DC)

• Coinbase stock slides to all-time low amid NFT marketplace beta rollout (TBC)

Exec's Picks

• Take your investment portfolio on vacation. Need a drink? Maybe a margarita? We don’t blame you–the stock market’s crazy these days! Here’s something different. reAlpha’s next-level tech platform unlocks vacation rental investing for everyone, and now you can own shares directly in the company. Join them early in the game. 

• Last week, Mario Gabriele wrote a great deep-dive article on crypto's leading analytics platform: Dune. Check out "Dune: the Data Must Flow" here.

The Hiring Block

If you're looking to break into finance, lateral, or move out, check out our job board on Pallet, where we curate highly relevant roles for you. We've got 40+ jobs spanning IB, S&T, VC, tech, private equity, DeFi, crypto, CorpDev and more. We sift through all the noise on LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, etc. so you don't have to.

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