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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Friday, June 12th, and this is your FT News Briefing. SpaceX's blockbuster IPO debuts today, and interest rates are back up in the Eurozone. Plus, there might be some empty seats at the World Cup.
The real fans are the fans that really can't get in because of the ticket prices. But the ticket price is now for the people who have money.
I'm Mark Filippino, and here's the news you need to start your day. Today's the big day.
Chapter 2: What is the significance of SpaceX's $75 billion IPO?
Elon Musk's SpaceX is going public, and here are the three numbers you need to know. The rocket-slash-AI company raised $75 billion. The group is releasing 555.6 million shares, and here's the big one, they'll be worth $135 a piece. SpaceX plans to pour the capital into projects ranging from AI infrastructure to new satellite constellations.
Now, to put this all into context, Alibaba had the most valuable IPO prior to this one. It went public in 2014, and shares were worth almost $86 in today's money. Compare that with the $135 share price for SpaceX. The listing comes during a volatile week for U.S. markets, and other blockbuster IPOs are gearing up too. Anthropic and OpenAI are all racing to go public.
The European Central Bank raised interest rates yesterday for the first time since 2023. It was just a quarter percentage point, and it brings interest rates back to the level from a year ago. But it's big news.
The war in the Middle East is generating inflation pressures, and the decision to raise rates is mapping out how the shock might evolve.
That was ECB President Christine Lagarde yesterday. A lot of people were watching her words carefully. The ECB is the first central bank in the G7 to increase borrowing costs since the war in Iran began. Chris Giles is the FT's economics commentator. He writes our weekly newsletter on central banks, and he's here to give us some broader context. Hey, Chris. Hey, Mark.
So, Chris, let's start with the why. Why did the ECB say it's raising rates?
Well, it's all to do with energy prices. Energy prices have pushed up both headline inflation across the Eurozone, but most importantly, there's been a broadening of inflation. So that goes into food, into restaurants, all of that sort of stuff. Those prices have been rising as well.
So the ECB said that however they did the forecasts, they needed an interest rate rise to ensure that they got inflation back to their 2% target in 2020. two years or so. Is this the beginning of a tightening cycle, do you think? I think we don't know yet.
Where the European Central Bank is right at the moment is that it is likely they will raise again because their forecasts they produced were consistent with two rate rises. So we're expecting another rate rise sometime this year. They didn't want to do anything forceful and do a half point in one go because... they're not entirely sure that is going to be necessary, the second rate rise.
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Chapter 3: How does the European Central Bank's rate hike impact the economy?
It's kind of disappointing how like resellers kind of kill the fan experience in a way. I wanted to know more about why this year's World Cup is just so expensive. So I'm joined now by the FT's Chris Cook. He's been reporting on this for us. Hey, Chris. Hiya. So how expensive are tickets this year relative to past World Cups?
So the short answer is that this World Cup is the most expensive World Cup ever. So group stage tickets are up to about three times the price of those for the last World Cup held in Qatar in 2022. Some of the prices, if you're like a European football fan that are being quoted, are absolutely wild. I am delighted to say that I'm a season ticket holder at Qatar.
Crystal Palace, a sort of mid-size Premier League team. And it cost me about $1,000 a year to have a season ticket. That's 19 games across the whole season. That's roughly how much it would cost at the moment to get a ticket to see the USA versus Paraguay, a rather undersubscribed game happening in Los Angeles.
Wow. With how high these ticket prices are, are any tickets selling? No.
Yeah, so the way that FIFA released the tickets is actually another thing that's slightly baffling. So FIFA allowed people to buy up to 40 tickets so you could amass quite a big box office of your own. And then it allowed them to resell them at basically whatever price they wanted. So one of the slightly odd things about this tournament is...
At the beginning of this week, there are about 180,000 tickets to the group games, which are available from people who clearly bought those tickets with the intention of reselling them at a profit. But one of the things that's been happening over the last week is those resellers have managed to shift a load of those tickets by massively slashing their prices.
That means a load of those people are losing money on their ticket scalping.
So there could be over 100,000 potentially empty seats if those tickets don't sell. And this is all coming at the same time as a pretty severe affordability crisis in the U.S. too. What has the reaction from local politicians been like?
So the first politician to really put the FIFA prices on the agenda in the U.S. was Zoran Mamdani, the recently elected mayor of New York, who campaigned against FIFA's pricing.
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Chapter 4: What factors led to the decision to raise interest rates?
Thanks for having me.
You can read more on all these stories for free when you click the links in our show notes. The FT News Briefing was produced this week by Safiya Ahmed, Sonia Hudson, Katya Kumkova, Fiona Simon, and Victoria Craig. I'm your editor, Mark Filippino. Our show is mixed by Alex Higgins and Kelly Gary. We had help this week from Peter Barber, Michael Lello, David Da Silva, and Gavin Kalman.
Our intern is Colvin Miltenberg. Our executive producer is Topher Forges. Flo Phillips is the FT's global head of audio. And our theme song is by Metaphor Music.
Criticise me if I'm doing a really bad job. I have no problem with that. But not for being a woman. That's just crazy.
That's Amanda Blank, the CEO of Aviva, on what she did when her own shareholders crossed the line. Every episode of Executive Decisions goes inside the moments that define a leader's career. Executive Decisions with me, Steve Sedgwick. Listen and watch now, wherever you get your podcasts.
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