Inside a media mogul’s 60th birthday bash

One thing to start: Jim Ratcliffe, the owner of chemicals giant Ineos, has accused Britain’s competition regulator of becoming “increasingly hostile to business” after it blocked its purchase of assets being sold by a Swiss group.

In today’s newsletter:

• Mathias Döpfner celebrates the big 6-0

• Nigel Farage’s banking woes

• Illumina faces a record fine from the EU

Ain’t no party like a Mathias Döpfner party

60th birthday parties are something of a staple for modern-day business moguls.

Who can forget the lavish scenes from Stephen Schwarzman’s birthday just as the financial crisis was setting in, or the three nights of Venetian festivities for John Studzinski’s celebration in 2016.

The latest in the genre came 10 days ago as German media boss Mathias Döpfner hosted VIPs from around the world at his villa near the Tuscan town of Lucca, the FT’s Laura Pitel and Olaf Storbeck report from Germany.

The biggest name at the fancy dress-themed bash was Elon Musk, whom the Axel Springer chief last year urged to buy Twitter and let him turn it into a “true platform of free speech”. (DD is unaware of what Döpfner makes of the Tesla boss’s handling of the $44bn acquisition and its apparent struggles post-takeover.)

Also in attendance were Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and Warner Music owner Leonard Blavatnik, on whose corporate boards Döpfner sits. Snap founder Evan Spiegel and Philipp Freise, co-head of European private equity at KKR (which owns 36 per cent of Springer) made appearances too. 

The high-flying guest list is a reminder of Döpfner’s vast international network and ambitions to expand the global clout of his media empire Axel Springer, especially in the US where it owns Politico and business news site Insider.

The Berlin-based media giant, which came close to buying the FT in 2015, also owns German tabloid Bild and its broadsheet sister Die Welt. 

Under Döpfner’s watch, Springer has built itself into a digital powerhouse with a strong presence in the online classifieds sphere, although the long-awaited listing of jobs platform StepStone will most likely be delayed until next year, DD hears.

To entertain the roughly 250 guests at his big party, Döpfner — who in the 1980s studied musicology and became a billionaire overnight in 2020 — flew in some of his favourite jazz musicians as well as the guitarist and producer Nile Rodgers (the hit machine behind Madonna’s Like A Virgin, David Bowie’s Let’s Dance and Daft Punk’s Get Lucky).

It wasn’t the first celebration this year for the former music journalist, who turned 60 in January. At an earlier party at company headquarters in Berlin, organisers created an elaborate mock-up of Döpfner’s student flat for the occasion, which came just a few weeks before the media giant announced a €100mn cost-cutting drive and the loss of several hundred jobs.

Still, one attendee at the Lucca celebration described the event as “not overly bombastic” and “actually very nice”, adding that Döpfner “did not try to show off”. He said the Axel Springer supremo had invited many local people including craftsmen who had helped him to renovate the house.

Sadly for DD readers, guests were asked to put stickers over their mobile phone cameras to prevent them from taking photographs.

The Brexiter claiming bank blacklisting

DD readers may know Nigel Farage as the beer-drinking, populist politician who put the UK on the path to Brexit.

But the man of the people has been making headlines for very different reasons this week: he’s been having trouble with his bank account at Coutts, the elite lender that has served clients from Charles Dickens to Queen Elizabeth II.

Farage said last week that an unnamed “prestigious” bank — which he confirmed on Tuesday to be Coutts — had shut down his accounts without explanation after 20 years as a customer. He suggested the banking establishment was “trying to force me out of the UK” because of his political views.

One reason behind the closure of his accounts, Farage claims, is that he’s on a list of “politically exposed people” — a regulatory regime that requires banks to carry out extra checks on elected politicians and their families in case they’re open to foreign bribery.

However, one person with knowledge of the situation told the FT on Tuesday that the repayment of a mortgage with Coutts meant he no longer qualified for an account there.

Once known as the “Queen’s bank”, Coutts requires clients to save more than £3mn or borrow or invest more than £1mn, two people close to the situation said.

Such a policy would explain why Farage’s funds have been downgraded to NatWest — a less-exclusive high street lender with no such criteria.

Asked by the FT about this, Farage, who confirmed that he’d paid off his Coutts mortgage early and declined to say whether he now met the bank’s threshold, said: “You seem to know more than me.”

DD presumes that’s not the first time that’s happened.

The bloc makes an example out of Illumina

The EU has a message for companies jumping the gun and closing a deal without Brussels’ approval: beware.

Illumina, the world’s largest gene sequencing company, is set to learn the hard way.

The group will face a record-breaking fine as early as next week because it went ahead and closed its $8bn acquisition of cancer screening start-up Grail without Brussels’ blessing.

The company has already set aside 10 per cent of its global turnover ($453mn) — the maximum penalty regulators can impose — and it is looking like the EU wants to be seen as a tough enforcer.

People with knowledge of the upcoming fine tell DD’s Javier Espinoza that it’s likely to surpass the previous record of €125.5mn imposed on telecoms group Altice in 2018 — a significant increase that will deter other dealmakers looking to do the same. 

It all dates back to August 2021, when Illumina went ahead and closed the deal despite an ongoing probe by Brussels. The deal also faces scrutiny by US regulators. Antitrust investigators are concerned the transaction will lead to less innovation and limit consumer choice in the market for cancer screening.

Illumina’s acquisition of Grail has been controversial from the start. Its former chief executive, Francis deSouza, quit the company last month after a bruising proxy battle against activist investor Carl Icahn, who criticised the deal as a “reckless decision”.

Expect the fight to continue because Illumina will almost certainly appeal against the fine.

Job moves

Deutsche Bank has hired Morgan Stanley dealmaker Samuel Kim as chair of mergers and acquisitions for the Asia-Pacific region, per Bloomberg.

Legal consulting firm Montresor Legal has hired Roger Barron, most recently Paul Hastings’ global vice-chair of M&A, and Freddie Lawson, a director at legal search firm Fox Rodney, as a senior adviser and head of its partner practice respectively.

Cleary Gottlieb has hired Shearman & Sterling’s Ryan Shores, a former associate deputy attorney-general at the US Department of Justice, as an antitrust and litigation partner.

Smart reads

Bad timing Regulators are amenable to greenlighting a wave of banking mergers following the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic. But market conditions won’t make it easy, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Adjaye under scrutiny Three women who used to work for the internationally renowned architect Sir David Adjaye have made allegations that range from sexual assault to harassment, as detailed in an FT Investigation.

Fuelling the fire The French government’s wooing of bankers could further stoke class tensions in the country, the FT’s Patrick Jenkins writes.

News round-up

Billionaires Daniel Křetínský and Xavier Niel compete for Casino (FT)

Meta poised to launch rival to Twitter (FT)

Abu Dhabi and OMV in talks to form chemicals giant (Reuters)

Chris Rokos reaches settlement with Deloitte over £40mn tax bill (FT)

Rajeev Misra’s $7bn fund scouting for India opportunities after debut investment in Shapoorji Pallonji (The Economic Times)

Let Thames Water die to teach everyone a lesson, says Citi (Alphaville)