Author: Vitaliy Dadalyan

A 28-Year Old Billionaire Wins the SPAC Lottery

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- After the troubles at Nikola Corp. you’d think stock market investors would have had their fill of startups that promise to revolutionize the trucking world.Yet this week another Texas-based truck electrification business, whose founder is even younger than Nikola’s, is poised to go public. And once again a special-purpose acquisition vehicle (or SPAC) is in the driving seat and making piles of money.Hyliion Inc.’s 28-year-old chief executive officer, Thomas Healy, will become a paper billionaire — a fact that’s sure to capture plenty of attention — as long as the shareholders of cash shell Tortoise Acquisition Corp. vote on Monday in favor of a merger with his company.A Carnegie Mellon mechanical engineering graduate, Healy doesn’t spend a lot of time on Twitter and seems more modest than Nikola’s boastful chairman Trevor Milton, who resigned last week after a scathing short-seller report raised awkward questions about his company.Unlike Milton, Healy isn’t trying...

'Take home' lawsuits over COVID infections could be costly for U.S. employers

The daughter of Esperanza Ugalde of Illinois filed in August what lawyers believe is the first wrongful death "take home" lawsuit, alleging her mother died of COVID-19 that her father contracted at Aurora Packing Co's meat processing plant. The cases borrow elements from "take home" asbestos litigation and avoid caps on liability for workplace injuries, exposing business to costly pain and suffering damages, even though the plaintiff never set foot on their premises. "Businesses should be very concerned about these cases," said labor and employment attorney Tom Gies of Crowell & Moring, which defends employers....

Nikola Founder Milton’s Fall Reveals What His Backers Feared

(Bloomberg) -- Back in March, long before a short seller would raise questions about electric-truck company Nikola Corp. and hasten its founder’s exit, early investors in the company were expressing concerns of their own.Those investors, led by mutual-fund giant Fidelity Investments, were worried that Trevor Milton, for all his brash visionary talk and Twitter braggadocio, lacked the ability that Elon Musk possesses to deliver these sorts of newfangled products to market. They lobbied successfully to remove him as CEO before the company’s June IPO and for Milton’s father to leave the board, according to people familiar with the matter. When the deal was done, Milton only held the title of chairman, the post he resigned this month.The back-room negotiations show that Milton’s past was a concern to investors months before General Motors Co. executives placed a bet on the company in a $2 billion deal carved out after the IPO. They...

HSBC Posts Biggest Jump Since 2009 as China’s Ping An Buys

(Bloomberg) -- HSBC Holdings Plc rose the most since 2009, recovering from a 25-year low, as its biggest shareholder raised its stake in a bet the embattled lender will return to paying dividends.China’s Ping An Insurance Group Co., which last week bought 10.8 million shares to boost its stake to 8%, remains confident in HSBC’s long-term prospects, a spokesperson said. The recent slump in the share and the valuation only increases HSBC’s appeal, the spokesperson said.“Ping An believes HSBC’s suspension of dividend payments is a short-term issue and has been actively communicating with the lender about the possibility of restoring dividends in the future,” the spokesperson said.HSBC shares in Hong Kong on Monday rose 9.2%, the biggest gain since April 2009, clawing back most of last week’s tumble and adding $6.8 billion to its market capitalization. In London, HSBC rose as much as 11.5% -- also the most since April 2009....