Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic One mega potential tax bill to start: Yesterday we wrote about how Coca-Cola’s facing as much as $16bn in back taxes. We have an update: The beverage giant is selling €1bn of new debt that it may use to help pay potential charges arising from the decade-long dispute with US tax authorities.In today’s newsletter:Anduril Industries’s $14bn valuationThe grand life of tech financier Sandy RobertsonOhio retirement system’s big shortfallVenture capital’s defence darlingSilicon Valley is re-embracing its roots in military innovation, and the blistering growth of defence technology start-up Anduril Industries is one of the trend’s clearest signals.The Orange County, California company has raised $1.5bn to speed up production of autonomous weapons for the US military and its allies, DD’s George Hammond and Tabby Kinder report.Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm Founders Fund and Virginia-based investor Sands Capital co-led the latest round, which values Anduril at $14bn — double its valuation in December 2022.Other major investors are backing the company, too: Fidelity Management, Baillie Gifford and Franklin Venture Partners, the venture capital arm of Franklin Templeton, all participated in the round.The huge funding round is the latest sign of a vibe shift in venture capital, which has warmed to defence investing in recent years as geopolitical tensions between the US and China have heightened and since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.Venture investment into defence tech doubled to $33bn between 2019 and 2023, even while there was a broader downturn in venture funding overall.The defence industry has long been dominated by a small group of listed prime contractors — Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Boeing have had a stranglehold on lucrative government contracts for decades.But Anduril, which was co-founded by Oculus VR inventor Palmer Luckey, is starting to make serious inroads. Earlier this year, it beat out Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing for a large US Air Force contract for collaborative combat aircraft.Of course, for venture capitalists, it’s not just about providing the US and its allies with the most high-tech weaponry out there.They’re gambling that the US will open up its mammoth defence budget to smaller and edgier providers, meaning there could be a ton of money to be made.The US spends more on defence than any other country in the world — its budget being $842bn this year. Silicon Valley is determined to get a cut of that allotment.Sandy Robertson: pioneering tech financierBelieve it or not, Steve Jobs could be picky.A few years ago, Sandy Robertson, the Silicon Valley investment banker extraordinaire, sat for a comprehensive 2019 interview with the Computer History Museum in San Francisco.He recalled as a young banker helping Warren Buffett buy into American Express in the early 1960s. Later in life, he became close with Marc Benioff, the Salesforce co-founder.And in between was the chance to work with the likes of Jobs whom Robertson got to know when his firm, Robertson Stephens, led the IPO of Pixar in 1995.Robertson recalled that the Apple co-founder — who by then had taken the helm of the animation studio — had constant feedback on the design of the prospectus and insisted that roadshow meals remained vegetarian.Robertson died last week at age 93. An obituary from DD’s Sujeet Indap recounts Robertson’s grand life of financing the California tech industry.Robertson Stephens along with Montgomery Securities, Hambrecht & Quist and Alex. Brown underwrote Silicon Valley when Wall Street banks had no interest in computers or semiconductors.Robertson happened to later find success in private equity, Broadway shows and horseracing. “He loved winners”, Benioff told the FT.The $94bn pension fund in a dire stateOversight of the $94bn pension fund for retired teachers in Ohio has plunged into chaos, as the US crisis in underfunded benefits for retired civil servants has started to hit home.The State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio has raised cost-of-living adjustments by a mere 4 per cent for nearly 157,000 retirees over the past seven years to bridge a $20bn funding gap. During that same period, inflation has surged by 30 per cent.Retirees are furious. The pension fund’s board has briefly blocked performance bonuses for its investment staff. It’s also considered a proposal to steer as much as 70 per cent of fund assets to a firm with no record — which prompted the state attorney-general to launch a lawsuit to remove two board members on self-dealing charges.The turmoil at STRS Ohio has led to an open battle rarely seen in the governance of US public pension funds, an extreme outgrowth of the massive unfunded liabilities facing retirement plans across the country.The shortfall has created a time bomb prompted by a combination of demographic shifts and risky policy choices, as the largest and longest-living generation in US history retires with pension plans that have overpromised benefits and mediocre returns to pay for them.Trying to shrink the funding gap has come at the expense of retirees who had to forgo cost-of-living adjustments. Robin Rayfield, a retired member of STRS and executive director of the advocacy group Ohio Retirement for Teachers Association, said he lost $38,000 because of the cutbacks.“It’s a big piece of change,” said Rayfield, 67, who makes a pension of $70,000 a year. “It’s a new car every five or six years, and I’ve been driving the same car for 12 years.”Job movesCoutts’ head of asset management Mohammad Kamal Syed has resigned after more than a decade at the NatWest-owned elite private bank. He was recently the bank’s interim chief executive until Emma Crystal took on the role in July.Lazard has hired Will Thompson as a managing director overseeing healthcare deals in London, Bloomberg reports. He most recently worked for Barclays, where he was the head of European healthcare investment banking.Paul Weiss has hired David Hepp and Matthew Collin as partners in the firm’s corporate group. Both specialise in advising asset managers on M&A and other deals and previously worked at Skadden. Houlihan Lokey has agreed to acquire Waller Helms Advisors, which provides investment banking services to insurance and wealth management clients. The deal is expected to be completed before the end of the year. Prosus and Naspers chief financial officer Basil Sgourdos will retire in November. He has worked for the company for almost three decades.Smart readsLeaving Hong Kong Years ago, high-end retailers such as L’Occitane, Prada and Samsonite chose to go public in the territory. Getting out is tricky, DD’s Kaye Wiggins writes.Targeting teens Google and Meta struck secret ad deals to target users under age 18, flying in the face of the search giant’s own safeguards for young users, an FT investigation reveals.Hiring spree The talent war between multi-strategy hedge funds has ramped up, with Balyasny Asset Management spending more than $200mn to recruit senior managers from rivals, including Citadel and Point72, Bloomberg reports.News round-upBarclays becomes first UK bank to scrap EU bonus cap (FT)Apple makes further App Store changes in bid to avoid EU fines (FT)Paramount writes down $6bn on cable TV assets (FT)Goldman Sachs is giving select clients access to one of its hottest businesses (WSJ)What Apple stands to lose in landmark Google antitrust verdict (FT)UK regulator launches formal probe into Amazon’s $4bn Anthropic deal (FT)Kremlin rejects Budweiser owner AB InBev’s plan to exit Russia (FT)
