To describe the world of cryptocurrency trading as being like the Wild West is probably doing the cowboy era something of a disservice, since even in its fruitiest moments there was always a chance that some rough and ready lawman might summon a posse to dish out a spot of summary justice. Regulators are finding the sector to be slipperier than a well-lubricated eel, and scams abound, such as the exploits of one ambitious 28-year-old who set up the exchange Thodex and promptly vanished into the back end of Albania last April with $2.6bn in his back pocket.
But the money keeps rolling in, and there are now about 16,000 cryptocurrencies in circulation with a combined "worth" of more than $2-trillion. Mentions of the South Sea Bubble or Dutch tulip mania do nothing to cool the ardour of the legions of small investors aiming to get rich quick from the comfort of their darkened basements, and sitting on top of all the excitement is Binance and its enigmatic CEO, Changpeng Zhao, or CZ to his mates.
Binance is estimated to be handling as much trade as the next four largest exchanges combined, and in a recent 24-hour period it completed $170bn of transactions. Bloomberg estimates CZ’s net worth to be $96bn, though it admits that’s low because it excludes his personal holdings of crypto, but either way it’s not a bad effort given that he only set up the company in 2017. Regulators are going after the company in numerous jurisdictions, but with revenues at an estimated $20bn last year, it’s keeping its nose ahead.
Cineworld: Panic! at the movies
Experts agree that timing is everything, whether you’re boiling an egg, enjoying the hurly-burly of the chaise longue, attempting to maintain your dignity in a Test series in Australia, or making a heavily leveraged $2.1bn acquisition. Clearly, in December 2019, when Cineworld CEO Mooky Greidinger was crowing about the "unrivalled scale and opportunity" provided by his swooping in on Canadian operator Cineplex under the nose of rival Vue Cinemas, which had been in takeover talks with Cineplex for months, he had failed to look into his crystal ball.
Greidinger was looking to become the biggest cinema operator in the world, having built up the business started by his grandfather in 1929 with a single screen into a powerhouse of more than 11,000 screens. Nobody could have predicted the scale of the pandemic and the extent of its impact on the business, and Greidinger did all he could to wriggle out of the deal, hoping that Cineplex’s debt would balloon to $725m and trigger a break clause, but the Canadians did everything to ensure that it never got there.
Cineplex launched a claim on Cineworld, and the court found in its favour and ordered Cineworld to cough up C$1.2bn, a number that it may be unable to pay. Cineworld is appealing the judgment, but if it loses again it could be forced into a restructuring that could involve selling off great chunks of the business. The good news for the sector is that box office revenues are bouncing back strongly, and if there were an Oscar given for best accidental bullet-dodging, Vue Cinemas would be a hot favourite.
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