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➚ BUY: Rallies. The Dow hit a new record this morning and the S&P 500 is 1% away. The Fed’s dovish turn, now forecasting three interest-rate cuts in 2024, seems not to have been priced in after all.

➘ SELL: Allies. Central bankers in Europe and the U.K. signaled they won’t be cutting rates anytime soon, and one-third of the Bank of England’s policy committee disagreed with today’s decision to hold them steady rather than raise them again. Meanwhile, the Fed says its work is almost done.

GM reboots without Buffett... BP claws back $40M from CEO fired over affair… Citi offers bankers early bonuses to leave… Pfizer’s Covid boost is officially over… Palantir CEO: “I’ve screamed at people in Europe”... Clean-energy financing is falling… Hedge funds’ favorite trade comes out of the shadows…

777’s cash dash

THE SCOOP

777 Partners, the sports investor whose finances are under scrutiny as it tries to pull off its biggest deal yet, the purchase of Premier League’s Everton, is scrambling to sell businesses it owns to raise cash and reassure regulators.

The firm has been unable to produce audited financial statements and is facing a cash crunch in several of its businesses. In recent weeks, it has tried to restructure a €100 million Italian tax bill, seen airplanes at a budget carrier it owns seized by creditors, and failed to fund employees’ pension contributions at a London professional basketball team it owns, according to people familiar with the matter.

777 has been shopping its mortgage business, a pile of legal settlement claims, and Boeing aircraft owned by a Canadian budget carrier it operates, according to people familiar with the matter and presentations viewed by Semafor.

The effort will also help disentangle 777’s captive insurance company, which has bankrolled many of its investments. Authorities in Bermuda have warned the insurer that it’s too heavily invested in 777’s deals, people familiar with the matter said. Those financial ties also sparked a downgrade last month from a credit-rating agency.

“With a portfolio featuring more than 60 businesses, evaluating businesses for sale is a regular part of the private investment model,” a 777 spokesman said. “We regularly entertain offers for various assets and strategically refinance debt to achieve more favorable terms.”

Semafor’s 2024 World Economy Summit, on April 17-18, will feature conversations with global policymakers and power brokers in Washington, against the backdrop of the IMF and World Bank meetings.

Chaired by former U.S Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein, and in partnership with BCG, the summit will feature 150 speakers across two days and three different stages. Join me and my Semafor colleagues for conversations with the people shaping the global economy.

Concerns about economic competition with China are growing, with the Biden White House and a Republican-led House both pushing to limit U.S. investments in the mainland.

But U.S. money is deeply invested in China, much of it through private-equity firms channeling pension dollars. Future Union, a nonpartisan group with a hawkish security bent, combed through public filings to find out just how much: at least $70 billion, through funds such as Legend Capital and Hony Capital.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says in remarks prepared for a speech tonight that the U.S. “will deploy our economic tools when needed to secure our country’s national security interests.” The White House, in trying to limit U.S. investments into China’s high-tech sector, has deemed private-equity capital — two-thirds of which come from big pensions — to be one of those tools.

CalPERS’ chief investment officer said recently that the pension giant, which has 3% of its $460 billion invested in China, was pulling back in case “we were to be told overnight to divest.”

China’s economic growth has been tempting for public pensions, which have an obligation to maximize returns and are underfunded as it is.

“We are talking about nonmarket actors that do not comply with the rule of law,” said Andrew King, a venture capitalist and executive director of Future Union. Pensions investing in China “risk retirees’ capital when all returns and assets can be seized by the state at a moment’s notice.”

All of Wall Street has been watching Bill Ackman’s broadsides against Harvard over its handling of antisemitism on campus. In a lengthy tweet this week, he laid out a compelling backstory: a dispute over his donation of shares in a hot e-commerce startup, Coupang.

The short version, according to Ackman, is that Harvard’s endowment got twitchy in 2020 and sold the shares for a fraction of what they would be worth when Coupang went public a year later. Harvard thinks Ackman owes it $5 million in cash; Ackman thinks Harvard owes him $70 million in directed donations. The long version is worth reading because it’s a) relevant to the current controversy b) seriously dents Harvard’s reputation as a smart investor, and c) not the first time this has happened to Bill Ackman.

Buyers and sellers who disagree about what something is worth sometimes agree to split future gains or losses. This “schmuck insurance” is meant to save one side or the other from embarrassment. Ackman has the high ground here — even in the panic, a then-$40 billion endowment selling $10 million of illiquid stock is a strange choice — but all insurance policies rest on the fine print.

Roast beef: Federal regulators accused Starbucks of illegally closing 23 stores to suppress a burgeoning union and is trying to force the company to reopen them. It’s an unusual step by the National Labor Relations Board to meddle in a company’s day-to-day management decisions, and follows more than 100 complaints by the agency accusing Starbucks of illegally trying to thwart organizing efforts.

Retail rumble: The battle between two giant online retailers is heating up. Temu sued its fellow Chinese rival, Shein, accusing it of “mafia-style intimidation” of merchants who sell on Temu’s site. Shein already faces political scrutiny as it works toward a U.S. listing that could value it at $90 billion.

• The White House believes it is closing in on a border-Ukraine deal. But many Democrats are already outraged that Biden may accept restrictive immigration reforms in exchange for Ukraine funding.
• Ghana’s goal for 2024: Go from containing Malaria to eliminating it. A newly-approved vaccine has raised hopes of stopping local transmission altogether.
• Beijing makes plans to revive China’s flagging economy. The country has struggled with weak demand, a deepening housing crisis, and widespread youth unemployment.