Shein prices its IPO at a third of peak value

Shein is offering 280 million shares at HK$47.60 to HK$49.50, targeting up to US$1.8 billion and a valuation near $27 billion when trading starts September 1, according to the terms disclosed in its Hong Kong filing. That is roughly a quarter of the near-$100 billion private valuation investors paid in 2022. The route here matters more than the number: after New York and London both stalled over Xinjiang cotton and forced-labour disclosures, Shein's Hong Kong prospectus drops explicit references to Uyghur forced labour and instead cites generic reputational risk, a wording change that reflects what China's CSRC would actually approve, as Reuters reported. Beijing gets a listing it controls the narrative on; Western regulators get nothing resolved, since the FTC investigation and EU cases proceed regardless of where Shein's stock trades.

Kamoa-Kakula's 2026 guidance has now been cut twice, from an original 600,000 tonnes down to 380,000-420,000 and then again to 290,000-330,000 tonnes, after the May 2025 flood at the Kakula underground section never fully resolved, as Zijin's own disclosures show. Zijin owns roughly 44% of the complex and had built its 1.2 million tonne group target for 2026 around Kamoa delivering at scale. The 500,000-tonne annual milestone, once expected imminently, is now pushed to 2027. Copper is trading near record highs precisely because supply keeps disappearing this way, at Kamoa, at Cobre Panama, at Anglo American, one mine at a time rather than one shock.

Thirty-year Treasury yields hit 5.25% this month, the highest since 2007, and Pepperstone strategist Dilin Wu argues that level has nothing to do with what Kevin Warsh says at the podium. It reflects the IMF's estimate that US gross financing needs have jumped from 26% of GDP in 2010 to around 45% now, heading toward 60% by the early 2030s. Cut rates and you risk confirming inflation is entrenched. Hold, and debt service costs, already running near the Pentagon's budget, keep compounding against a Treasury that has to refinance maturing debt at today's rates regardless. Barclays reckons the one tool that could cap yields decisively, outright long-bond purchases, is politically off the table, which is why Warsh's dovish press conference in July was met with yields going up, not down, as Axios noted.

Barclays says its hedge fund clients have been selling dollars all August, with the pace accelerating after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent doubled long-bond buybacks to roughly $4 billion per operation, a move Bloomberg's FX desk flagged as effectively quasi-QE. The mechanism is straightforward: buying back 10- to 30-year Treasuries pushes yields down and floods the system with dollars, and options markets now show the richest premium for dollar puts over calls since February. The dollar index has already dropped to its lowest since mid-May. Bessent designed the buybacks to fix the bond market. Hedge funds are betting he broke the currency instead.

Nearly 2.98 million Tesla vehicles are covered by China's 4.3 million-car recall over flush door handles that regulators say can trap occupants after a crash if the electrical system fails, according to Reuters' reporting on the SAMR order. Tesla's remedy is a warning label plus an over-the-air update, not a hardware redesign, starting September 25. Eight other automakers are in the same recall, including Xiaomi at 390,435 units and XPeng at 264,842, which confirms this is now an industry-wide design flaw rather than a Tesla problem. China has already banned hidden handles outright from 2027 for new models and 2029 for existing ones, meaning today's software fix buys Tesla time, not a permanent exemption.

Spot gold touched $4,631.99 this week, its highest since mid-May, in direct response to the Treasury's decision to double long-bond buybacks after 30-year yields hit 5.31%, the highest since 2007. The mechanics are simple: buybacks pull yields down and weaken the dollar, and both moves make non-yielding gold more attractive. Bitcoin rallied alongside it, confirming this is a broader flight from dollar assets rather than a gold-specific move. Gold is already up roughly 65% since the debasement trade took hold in 2025, and this week adds another 5% on top of that base.

PLS's average realised price jumped 13% to about $2,107 a tonne in the June quarter, a sharp bounce from the $672 a tonne that produced an A$196 million loss in the last full year, and management is using that recovery to justify doubling Pilgangoora's capacity to 2 million tonnes a year. The P2000 project needs a final investment decision by December and won't produce ore until mid-2029, so this is a wager that today's price signal holds for three more years, not a reaction to it. Benchmark Mineral Intelligence has already lifted its long-term spodumene forecast from $1,235 to $2,465 a tonne, backing the bet. Total capex is set to nearly double toward A$620-685 million, which only pays off if the shortfall PLS is calling actually arrives.

Caitong Securities analyst Sun Binbin says the 800 billion yuan New Policy-Backed Financing Instruments program, announced back in early 2026, has only just opened for local governments to pitch projects, and disbursement is still at least a month away, according to Bloomberg's reporting. That is roughly six months of lag between announcement and actual money moving, during which private investment has reportedly fallen 9.4% and loan demand has hit a record slump. The program sits inside a larger 1.3 trillion yuan bond package, of which the first 119 billion yuan tranche has already gone out. Beijing wanted stimulus that outruns the slowdown; instead it is chasing it.

August is on pace for a record $10 billion month of Indian equity issuance, yet the Nifty 50 sits little changed from two years ago, according to Bloomberg's reporting. Domestic mutual funds now outrank foreign investors as IPO anchor buyers for the first time, contributing 14.89% of issue amounts against FPIs' 13.38%, while FPIs pulled a record $18.4 billion out of the secondary market in 2025. The split is structural: 25 straight months of domestic institutional buying, totalling 11.4 trillion rupees, has replaced foreign capital as the market's marginal buyer. Retail investors and SIPs now own 18.5% of India's $5.1 trillion market, more than five times their share in March 2020, which explains why new listings command rich valuations even as the broader index refuses to move.

Shein bought Everlane from L Catterton in May for roughly $80-100 million, absorbing about $90 million of debt including a $25 million Gordon Brothers loan, and common shareholders got nothing out of it, according to Bloomberg's reporting. Three months later, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is reviewing the deal, focused on what Everlane's US customer data means in Chinese hands. Reviewing a transaction after close rather than before is unusual and suggests Shein filed voluntarily, likely to get ahead of scrutiny before its Hong Kong listing draws even more attention to its US footprint. If CFIUS decides the risk is real, it has the power to force a full unwind, not just impose conditions.

The Wall Street Journal reports Trump personally called a senior Justice Department official and said 'settle it' after talent agent Ari Emanuel, a former Live Nation board member, raised the case with him, then convened two White House meetings that produced a deal keeping Ticketmaster intact. The government had been trying to force a breakup of the 2010 merger; instead it got fee caps on a small subset of Live Nation's own amphitheaters and an extended consent decree, terms consumer advocates have called a capitulation. Live Nation's own disclosures confirm CEO Michael Rapino spoke with Trump in February, weeks before the March 5 settlement meeting. For anyone assessing antitrust risk against politically connected companies, the price of a relationship with this White House just became visible.

Under the tie-up, Axis Bank issues standby letters of credit that let Citigroup lend against non-resident Indians' dollar deposits, so a client putting down $1 million can reportedly walk away with a $10 million FCNR(B) deposit and an annual return near 13%, according to industry sourcing cited by the Economic Times. The scramble makes sense given the clock: the RBI's concessional swap window, which made this whole trade profitable, closes August 31, a month earlier than originally planned, after banks had already raised $65.4 billion under it. Axis alone grew its FCNR(B) book from $3.08 billion to $4.67 billion in under two months. What happens to this leverage once the swap subsidy disappears is the open question nobody in the arrangement has answered publicly.

India's markets regulator rejected settlement bids from foreign portfolio investors under scrutiny since October 2020 for holding suspiciously concentrated stakes in Adani Group stocks, after its High-Powered Advisory Committee found the funds' proposed terms didn't match what SEBI wanted, according to the Economic Times report picked up by Bloomberg. This is the same regulator that rejected Anil Ambani's settlement bid in June over a case involving alleged diversion of 65.26 billion rupees, so the pattern looks less like a one-off and more like a policy of refusing to let large, well-connected players buy silence cheaply. Five offshore funds tied to the same Adani probe have already withdrawn appeals at the Securities Appellate Tribunal this month to refile with amendments. Full adjudication now looks likely, which means the underlying beneficial-ownership questions raised by Hindenburg back in 2023 finally get tested in a formal hearing rather than settled behind closed doors.

The UK is allowing defence firm MBDA to hand over classified British component data so France and Ukraine can set up local SCALP cruise missile assembly lines, timed to Andy Burnham's first overseas visit as prime minister, according to reporting on the trip. That is a shift from supplying finished weapons to transferring the industrial base itself, embedding Ukraine permanently in a Western defence supply chain rather than leaving it dependent on shipments. The Kremlin has already called similar moves 'irresponsible' and warned of consequences, language it used earlier this month after British-made drones showed up in strikes inside Russia. For UK defence contractors, the signal is a government now willing to trade sensitive IP for strategic depth, not just export credit.

Deere offered 4% annual raises and a $3,000 bonus to lock in labour peace until 2029; the union's own counter would have cost Deere roughly $500 million more, and members chose to fight in 2027 instead.