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Good Morning,

We hope you enjoyed the Juneteenth holiday in whatever capacity you could. Before we dive in, I wanted to invite you folks to the Litquidity Classic on June 28th in NYC. Whether you're signing up a team to compete or grabbing some friends and enjoying the food, drinks, and music, it'll be a weekend for the books. Thanks to our partners, we were able to make this one free! RSVP here!

While the past couple days were eventful, we've got it all summarized for you as usual. This one's packed with some interesting reports (particularly Zuckerberg standing on serious business).

A team of Zillow execs founded Pacaso to democratize co-ownership of second homes. While they've already raised over $200M from notable VCs, they're inviting individuals to invests in their new growth round. Check out the opportunity.

Let's dive in.

Before The Bell

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Markets

• US stock and bond markets were closed yesterday in observance of Juneteenth

• US stock indexes closed mostly flat on Wednesday as traders digested geo-political tensions and the Fed's decision to stand pat on rates

  • Futures markets fully priced in a first 25 bps rate cut for September, with no change in July

• Europe's Stoxx 600 fell past a one-month low brining YTD gains below 5%

• Platinum rallied to the highest since 2014 amid market tightness

• Diesel surged for a fifth-straight day to the highest since March 2024 as key spreads rip

Earnings

• Smith & Wesson missed Q4 earnings and revenue estimates as waning firearm demand, inflation, tariffs, and high rates continued to weigh (WSJ)

• What we're watching this week:  

  • Today: Kroger, Accenture, Darden Restaurants, CarMax

• Full calendar here 

Prediction Markets

• Talk about important events…

• Trade your predictions on a range of events, only on Kalshi. Sign up with code LIT and get a $20 bonus when you trade $100.

Headline Roundup

• Ohio approved the first-ever VC hospital acquisition (WSJ)

• Musk's Twitter / X will offer trading and payments in 'super app' push (FT)

• Fed held rates at 4.25%-4.5% and expects two cuts by year-end (CNBC)

• Trump slammed J Pow again after Fed held rates steady (CNBC)

• BoE held rates steady at 4.25% (RT)

• Switzerland cut rates to 0% (FT)

• Norway cut rates by 25 bps to 4.25% in surprise move (RT)

• PBOC held one-year prime rate steady at 3% (CNBC)

• PBOC governor expects new currency order to challenge dollar (FT)

• Oaktree's Howard Marks called on China to open up to foreign investors (FT)

• Investors are torn between selling equities or buying the dip (BBG)

• PE is sitting on $1T in unsold assets as M&A stalls (RT)

• Global IPO activity slumped to nine-year low as tariffs, volatility weigh (RT)

• US convertible bond deals had their best week in over four years (BBG)

• Foreign Treasury holdings hold near ATH despite tariff turmoil (BBG)

• Indian IPO market set for busy week with $1.7B in deals (BBG)

• Japan will cut super-long bond sales to calm markets (CNBC)

• Regulators warn of hidden vulnerabilities in $12T CRE market (FT)

• Global banks increase fossil-fuel funding as climate pledges crumble (WSJ)

• Goldman Sachs is leveraging a revamp to boost Asia IB share (RT)

• Meta is offering $100M signing bonuses to poach rival AI talent (TC)

• Meta failed to acquire Ilya Sutskever's $32B AI startup so Zuck poached its CEO instead (CNBC)

• HSBC named Asia veteran Christopher Chua as global head of M&A (RT)

• Ex-Credit Suisse banker dodged prison for aiding $2B fraud scheme (BBG)

• Ex-Janus Henderson analyst was found guilty of insider trading (BBG)

• Netflix will add live TV (BBG)

• Microsoft is planning thousands more job cuts (BBG)

• A SpaceX Starship exploded (BBG) 

• US home construction fell to five-year low (BBG)

• US added 379k millionaires last year (BBG)

• Surging silver prices prompt Americans to sell jewelry and coins (WSJ)

• Corporate America faces culture shift as firms resize workforces (WSJ)

A Message from Pacaso

Learn From This Investor's $100M+ Mistake

Grammy winner will.i.am passed on investing $200K in Airbnb in 2010. That stake could be worth $100+ million today.

One year later, another real estate disruptor, Zillow, went public. This time, everyday investors had regrets, missing pre-IPO gains.

Now, a new real estate innovator, Pacaso–co-created by Zillow's co-founder–is disrupting a $1.3T market. Through their current growth round, you can invest in Pacaso as a private company.

Pacaso’s co-ownership model has generated $1B+ in luxury home sales and service fees, earned $110M+ in gross profits to date, and received backing from Maveron, Greycroft, and more. They even reserved Nasdaq ticker PCSO.*

Invest in Pacaso for $2.90/share today.

*This is a paid advertisement for Pacaso’s Regulation A offering. Please read the offering circular at invest.pacaso.com. Reserving the ticker symbol is not a guarantee that the company will go public. Listing on the Nasdaq is subject to approvals.

Deal Flow

M&A / Investments

• Japan's Nippon Steel closed its $14.1B acquisition of US Steel, ending an 18-month takeover saga marked by political scrutiny and domestic opposition

• Mark Walter, the CEO of Guggenheim Partners and owner of MLB team LA Dodgers, agreed to buy a majority stake in NBA team Los Angeles Lakers from the Buss family at a $10B valuation

• Home improvement retailer Home Depot and building products distributor QXO are competing to acquire building-products distributor GMS; QXO offered $5B in cash for a ~27% premium

• Spanish lender Banco Santander and Barclays are separately exploring a takeover of UK retail bank TSB from Spanish lender Sabadell, potentially valuing the UK bank at ~$3.5B

• France will double its stake in debt-laden satellite operator Eutelsat in a state-led $1.5B capital injection amid hopes to rival Starlink

• Blackstone will acquire a 40% stake in two Bellevue office buildings leased by Meta, with the combined valuation of the properties totaling $545M

• Bank of Montreal will buy $20B AUM Canadian wealth manager Burgundy Asset Management in a $455M stock deal 

• Link Real Estate Partners, an investment platform led by BlackRock's ex-head of APAC real estate, is in talks to buy a warehouse in Sydney from Australian real assets manager Dexus for ~$100M

• Web development platform Wix acquired bootstrapped vibe-coding startup Base44 for $80M cash

• Americana Restaurants is in talks to acquire Cravia, the Middle East operator of Five Guys and Cinnabon, from PE firm Fajr Capital

• Luxembourg-based Lagfin, the controlling shareholder of distiller Campari, will acquire a ~20% stake in consumer-focused PE firm Bluegem Capital Partners

• UK VC firms Par Equity and Praetura Ventures agreed to merge to create PXN Group, a $900M VC firm

• Two of Pakistan's leading business groups and a company backed by Pakistan's military will bid for ailing national carrier Pakistan International Airlines

• Eduardo Savastano, an ex-Citigroup wealth management veteran, is preparing to acquire almost all of Banco Masventas, a small regional bank in Argentina

VC

• Nuclear innovation company TerraPower raised a $650M round from NVentures, HD Hyundai, Bill Gates, and others

• Tennr, an orchestration platform and language models for referral-based care, raised a $101M Series C led by IVP

• AI time platform Laurel raised a $100M Series C led by IVP

• Nabla, an AI assistant platform for clinicians, raised a $70M Series C led by HV Capital

• Maven AGI, an enterprise AI company unifying the full customer journey, raised a $50M Series B led by Dell Technologies Capital

• AIM, an embodied AI platform for earthmoving machinery, raised a $50M round from Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Human Capital, and more

• Pelico, a supply chain orchestration platform, raised a $40M strategic round led by General Catalyst

• HOPPR, a medical AI imaging infrastructure company, raised a $31.5M Series A led by Kivu Ventures and Greycroft

• Jet HR, a Italian cloud-based HR platform for SMBs, raised $29M in funding led by Base10 Partners

• Liquid Death, the canned water company last valued at $1.4B, is seeking to raise $20M in fresh capital

• Tadaweb, a startup building a 'small data OS,' raised $20M in funding led by Arsenal Growth and Forgepoint Capital

• German AI startup Mercanis raised a $20M Series A led by Partech and AVP

• Colosseum, a logistics tech company, raised a $19.7M Series B from Hyosung Ventures, CJ Investment, and others

• AI-native platform Sifflet raised $18M in funding from EQT Ventures, Mangrove Capital, and Capmont Technology

• Warp, a 'superhuman' for startup HR and payroll, raised an $18M Series A led by Sound Ventures

• Mealogic, a ready-to-eat meal delivery platform, raised $16M in funding from S2G Investments

• Rails, a perpetual trading platform integrating centralized order processing with on-chain custody, raised a $14M series A from Slow Ventures and others

• OrangeQS, a startup building integrated systems to make quantum computing chip testing more efficient, raised a $13.8M seed round led by Icecat Capital

• Tensec, a fintech startup providing cross-border payments, raised a $12M seed round led by Costanoa Ventures 

• Swarmia, a Finnish SaaS startup helping software engineering teams improve productivity, raised an $11.5M round led by DIG Ventures and Karma Ventures

• Grifin, an investment app that simplifies investing by automatically purchasing stocks in brands where users regularly shop, raised an $11M Series A led by Nava Ventures 

• Polar, a startup building a monetization platform for one-person startups, raised a $10M seed round led by Accel

• Thousands, a web3 protocol that transforms word of mouth marketing into a universal attribution infrastructure, raised a $9M round led by Arbitrum Gaming Ventures and Paradigm

• Space-based computing platform Aethero raised an $8.4M seed round led by Kindred Ventures

• Diskover, an AI-driven data intelligence platform, raised a $7.5M seed round from Park Partners, The Hive, Snowflake Ventures, and NetApp

• German ETF infrastructure startup NaroIQ raised a $6.6M seed round led by Magnetic and Redstone

• Project Eleven, a startup aiming to secure digital assets from quantum computers, raised a $6M round led by Variant Fund and Quantonation

• AI inference optimization startup Embedl raised a $6M pre-Series A led by Chalmers Ventures, Fairpoint Capital, SEB Greentech, and more

• Typedef, an AI startup looking to turn prototypes into scalable production workloads, raised a $5.5M seed round led by Pear V

• Superscale AI, a German AI marketing startup, raised a $5M pre-seed round led by Creandum

IPO / Direct Listings / Issuances / Block Trades

• Chinese auto parts maker Zhejiang Sanhua raised $1.2B in its upsized Hong Kong listing priced at the top of the marketed range

• Alibaba-backed AI startup MiniMax is planning a Hong Kong IPO at a potential $3B valuation in a landmark industry debut

• Danish industrial conglomerate Schouw & Co. is preparing a $2B IPO of its fish feed unit BioMar, one of the world's largest aquaculture feed producers

• Star Capital is considering an IPO of German defense tech firm Vincorion at a potential $1.2B valuation

• Once Upon a Farm, the organic baby food company co-founded by Jennifer Garner, filed confidentially for IPO that could fetch a $1B valuation

• Mexican REIT Fibra Next is looking to raise ~$525M in a Mexico IPO

• A subsidiary of South Korean home-appliance maker Cuckoo Holdings is set to IPO in Malaysia after a scaled-down offering that's expected to raise $93M

Debt

• India's largest port in the making Vadhavan Port is seeking to raise $3.5B in onshore and offshore debt

• Platinum Equity-owned Spanish waste management firm Urbaser is seeking to raise $2.7B in fresh debt in an offering that will allow it to exclusive tariffs from EBITDA

• Volkswagen's financing subsidiary Volkswagen Bank raised $1.7B in its first-ever green bond to boost EV financing

• An investment arm of insurer Prudential Financial will buy up to $500M of consumer loans from BNPL fintech Affirm 

• European PE firm CVC is seeking a $400M loan to fund a dividend recap to shareholders of streetwear brand A Bathing Ape

Bankruptcy / Restructuring / Distressed

• PIMCO, King Street Capital, and Partners Group are set to net nearly $4B from the sale of once-distressed ambulatory surgery company AmSurg to Ascension Health

• Distressed Hong Kong developer New World Development is nearing am $11.1B loan refinancing deal to secure a lifeline amid a deepening liquidity crisis

• French telecom Altice France filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy

Fundraising / Secondaries

• European tech-focused PE firm Hg is seeking to raise a combined $11.5B across its latest MM and lower MM funds

• Elevate is set to announce the creation of the Collegiate Investment Initiative, a $500M initiative backed by PE firm Velocity Capital Management and Texas Permanent School Fund

• Sports team investor ALK Capital is looking to raise $200M for its multi sports-club strategy

Crypto Sum Snapshot

• Pro-Israel hackers took credit for $90M theft from Iran's biggest crypto exchange

• Stablecoin adoption by corporates poised to grow after Senate passes key bill

Our daily Crypto Sum newsletter compiles the most relevant stories on everything crypto. Subscribe for free!

Exec’s Picks

• WSJ did a deep dive into the hedge fund talent war, with top firms offering over $100M pay packages for young stock pickers.

• Callie Cox wrote an insightful piece on how everyone's 'money story' is uniquely different and virtually inexplicable by any textbook or formula. This one gets a little personal.

• Noah Smith published an interesting take on how social media ruined America.

Financial Services Recruiting 💼

If you're a junior banker looking for your next career move, check out Litney Partners, a recruiting firm established by Litquidity and Whitney Partners (the oldest purely financial services executive search and consulting firm).

We aim to place strong candidates across private equity, hedge funds, venture capital, growth equity, credit, and investment banking.

We're currently seeking talent for some incredible roles. Head over to Litney Partners to drop your resume / create your profile and we'd love to get in touch!

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*DISCLAIMER: Investment advice provided by Autopilot Advisers, LLC ("Autopilot"), an SEC-registered investment adviser. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Investing carries risks, including loss of principal. As always, be smart out there. Litquidity is compensated to promote AutoPilot. Compensation details available upon request.