Latest news with #Oligarchs
Al Arabiya
3 days ago
- Business
- Al Arabiya
UK threatens to sue Russian businessman Abramovich over use of money from Chelsea sale
Britain has threatened to take Russian businessman Roman Abramovich to court over the frozen 2.5 billion pounds ($3.4 billion) in proceeds from his sale of Chelsea soccer club that he wanted to go to victims of Russia's war in Ukraine. Britain sanctioned Abramovich in a crackdown on Russian oligarchs after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, triggering a rushed sale of the Premier League club and freezing of the proceeds. Britain wants the funds spent only in Ukraine in line with a wider European push for Moscow to foot the bill for the deaths and destruction triggered by its invasion. Abramovich is seeking more flexibility and wants the money to go to all victims. In a rare joint statement, British finance minister Rachel Reeves and foreign minister David Lammy said on Tuesday the government was ready to step up efforts to secure the money. 'The government is determined to see the proceeds from the sale of Chelsea Football Club reach humanitarian causes in Ukraine, following Russia's illegal full-scale invasion. We are deeply frustrated that it has not been possible to reach agreement on this with Mr Abramovich so far,' they said. They said the door for negotiations would remain open but that they were 'fully prepared to pursue this through the courts if required.' A lawyer for Abramovich in Britain did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reuters reported in March that Britain was considering legal action over the issue. Under Abramovich, Chelsea enjoyed the most successful run in its history before the club was sold to a consortium led by US investor Todd Boehly and private equity firm Clearlake Capital in May 2022. Proceeds from the sale are frozen in a British bank account. They cannot be moved or used without a license from the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, the agency in the finance ministry that enforces sanctions.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Tech-bro satire Mountainhead is an insufferable disappointment
Picture this: a group of very rich people gather at an ostentatiously large, secluded retreat. The SUVs are black, tinted, sleek. The jets are private. The egos are large, the staff sprawling and mostly unseen, the decor both sterile and unimaginably expensive. This is the distinctive milieu of Succession, the HBO juggernaut which turned the pitiful exploits of a bunch of media mogul failsons into Shakespearean drama for four critically acclaimed seasons. It is also the now familiar aesthetic of a range of eat-the-rich satires plumbing our oligarchic times for heady ridicule, if increasingly futile insight – The Menu, Triangle of Sadness, Knives Out: Glass Onion, Parasite, The White Lotus and the recent A24 disappointment Death of a Unicorn to name a few. (That's not to mention countless mediocre shows on the foibles of the wealthy, such as this month's The Better Sister and Sirens.) So suffice to say, I approached Mountainhead, Succession creator Jesse Armstrong's first post-series project about four tech billionaire friends gathering for poker as one's AI innovation wreaks havoc on the globe, with a sense of pre-existing fatigue. The market of ultra-rich satire is, to use the logic of Armstrong's characters, saturated. (Or, to use their language: 'I would seriously rather fix sub-Saharan Africa than launch a Sweetgreen challenger in the current market.') There's more than a whiff of Argestes, the second-season Succession episode at a billionaire mountain retreat, to these shots of private cars pulling up to a huge chalet hugged by snowcapped peaks. And though Armstrong, who solely wrote and directed the film, continues his avoidance of easy one-to-ones, there's more than a whiff of Elon Musk to Venis (Cory Michael Smith), an AI company CEO and the richest person in the world with a tenuous grasp on reality, a stupendous sense of nihilism and unrepentant need to assert his own virility (the landscape, he notes, is 'so beautiful you can fuck it'). In some ways, it's a relief to see tech bros, especially AI entrepreneurs, reach full, unambiguous movie-villain status. Already, there is a competently made movie for the Doge era, and Armstrong, as ever, can nail hairpin turns of phrase on the sentence level. But as much as I hate to contribute to the 'anti anti-rich content' discourse, on which much ink has already been spilled, I can't say Mountainhead refuted any expectations of reality fatigue; watching Venis, host Soup (Jason Schwartzman, playing the least rich of the group, and thus nicknamed after a soup kitchen), Marc Andreessen-esque venture capitalist Randall (a miscast Steve Carell), and fellow AI wunderkind Jeff (Ramy Youssef) brainstorm plans for the post-human future as more of a slog than if I were high-altitude hiking with them. To be honest, I'm not sure any classic satire – as in, using irony or exaggeration to highlight hypocrisies, vices and stupidity – could work for the second Trump administration, at once dumber and more destructive than the first, nor the release of generative AI on the public. Both require a level of hypernormalization and devaluing of reality that make the idea of enlightening ridiculousness feel, well, ridiculous. Even the most inventive writers and performers will struggle to craft humor out of beyond farcical political figures and norms degraded beyond recognition (see: Mark Ruffalo's effete and grating parody of Trump in Bong Joon-Ho's Mickey 17). Succession, which ran from 2018 to 2023, soared on its 'ludicrosity', to borrow a made-up term from its billionaire patriarch Logan Roy, with a precise critical distance from reality. The deeply cynical, psychically fragile, acid-tongued media conglomerate family loosely based on the Murdochs were just far enough removed from the real Fox News timeline. Its inverted morals, barren decadence and high irony the right angle of fun-house mirror to become, in my view, the defining show of the Trump era, without ever mentioning his name. But we are in a different era now, and the same tools feel too blunt to meet it. Mountainhead shares much of the same DNA as Succession, from Armstrong to producers to crew, to trademark euphemisms (why say 'murdered' when you can say 'placeholdered'?) It was completed on an extraordinarily fast timeline – pitched in December 2024, written (partly in the back of cars while scouting locations) this winter, filmed in Park City in March and released by end of May – giving it the feel of a streaming experiment for the second, more transparently oligarchic Trump term. How fast can you make an HBO movie? How can you satirize current events moving at a speed too fast for any ordinary citizen to keep up, let alone be reasonably informed? 'The way it was shot naturally simulated Adderall,' Youssef told the Atlantic, and it shows. Mountainhead plays out less like a drama between four tenuously connected, very rich friends, and more like a random word generator of tech and finance bro jargon – decel (deceleration, as in AI), p(doom) (the probability of an AI apocalypse), first principles. (Armstrong, by his own admission, binged episodes of the All-In podcast, which features prominent investors and Trump's AI/crypto czar David Sacks.) The backgroup of this billionaire conclave are series of escalating crises from Venis's guardrail-less AI that feel themselves AI generated – women and children burned alive in a mosque, a deluge of deepfakes that imperils governments in Armenia, Uzbekistan, Japan, Ohio. Italy defaults on its debt. Should they take over Argentina? Buy Haiti? 'Are we the bolsheviks of a new techno world order that starts tonight?' The deluge of contextless, characterless chaos – Succession's Kendall would call this dialogue 'complicated airflow' – succeeds in highlighting the depersonalizing effect of Silicon Valley's many innovations. None of this feels real, because none of this is real to these characters. Millions of No Real Persons Involved. But that is undercut by a pervasive sense of self-importance. Like the irksome climate-change satire Don't Look Up, directed by Succession executive producer Adam McKay, the exaggerated hijinks of Mountainhead reveal a deep self-assurance of its politics that border on smug. It's not that it doesn't, like Succession, attempt to humanize these figures – each billionaire has an Achilles heel of morality or mortality, though by now the fallibility of Musk-like figures is far from a revelation. It's that the drama between these billionaires felt frictionless – mostly unchallenged by secondary figures and impervious to other perspectives, at once predictable and insufferable to watch. Every human has their unique foibles and contradictions, but Mountainhead found itself too enthralled by figures who are no longer interesting, if they ever were. I found myself longing for more than two minutes with the girlfriend, the ex-wife, the assistant, the board member, let alone one of the many staff at the house – anyone to de-center a perspective that has already claimed far too much oxygen in the public sphere. For a Real Person to get involved. But that may be beyond this flavor of satire, now in an era of diminishing returns.
Daily Mail
13-05-2025
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Why those who cherish the soul and magic of the FA Cup will be cheering for Crystal Palace to beat mighty Man City at Wembley, writes IAN HERBERT
There have been times these past nine months when the FA Cup has seemed to be breathing its last: devalued, diminished and crushed into virtual irrelevance by football's high-and-mighty elite. The abolition of replays, fourth-round matches spread over five days and the setting of this Saturday's final amid the penultimate instalment of the Premier League season. We didn't even get a kick-off time for the final until early May. Yet despite the myriad betrayals, the unquenchable prospect of romance is still there for Saturday. In finalists Crystal Palace, we have a thread back through some of the old competition's most heady days. The agonies of 1990, when Manchester United 's Mark Hughes equalised in that unforgettable 3-3 final and, after Palace had lost the replay, the same heartbreak to the same opponents in extra time, 26 years later. It's the way that Palace have survived in the jungle of clubs owned by self-selecting oligarchs, sheiks and hedge-fund traders with the odd half a billion to spare which most contributes to the sense that to see them beat Abu Dhabi's Manchester City on Saturday would be so special. In many ways, they are a gravity-defying miracle: one of four Premier League sides, with Southampton, Ipswich and Brentford, never to have spent more than £30million on a player. A club who have only twice sold a player for more than £30m. They are about to complete a 12th consecutive season in the Premier League. To go with their extraordinary consistency — they've always finished between 10th and 15th — is an acceptance among fans that joy must be found in something other than fabulous winning runs and a gorgeous football aesthetic. The presence, for example, of young men such as Eberechi Eze, Wilfried Zaha, Nathaniel Clyne and others, many long gone, who have bound the club to its south London community and deconstructed the idea that 'Premier League' and 'local team' are mutually exclusive. Much of that is down to Steve Parish, who rescued the club from near liquidation 15 years ago and really is a supporter — desperate, in a way that the sheiks and the investment guys never will be, to make the club the beating heart of its community. He has challenged the Premier League's self-styled elite, who have patronised and looked down on clubs like his own. He fought their European Super League breakaway tooth and nail and found the backlash to it a source of liberation; the point which seemed to cut the grasping, spiritually remote 'Big Six' down to size. 'It's like emerging from a slightly abusive relationship,' he told me then. Parish was struck, a few years back, by the cup exploits of Villarreal, the ceramics town with a 50,000 population near Valencia who had beaten Manchester United in the final of the Europa League. He felt the outcome gave belief to every fan outside of the supposed elite. It reminded us that cups had a way of transcending the hierarchies, he told me. It is an instructive comparison because Villarreal's philosophy does mirror Palace's. Around the time that Parish was buying Palace, the Spanish club were beset by a recessionary chill which hit their owner's ceramics business. The club released or sold nine established players, including Robert Pires, to reduce the wage bill by 15 per cent and promoted 10 of the club's 'B' side to the first team. And gradually the 'Yellow Submarine', who train down a stone track at a former olive grove called La Ciudad Deportiva, began to thrive, initially under Manuel Pellegrini. The philosophy has been the same ever since: buy individuals on modest salaries whom you can move on, and build a production line of players by investing heavily in a cantera (academy). Villarreal take £54m in La Liga TV income, compared with Real Madrid's £127m, yet they still sit fifth in the table today. Their motto is Endavant — Forward. This weekend is the chance for Oliver Glasner's side to become club heroes For City, the FA Cup will be a matter of routine this Saturday. Seven successive semi-finals and the chance to compensate for a bad league season. No vast excitement in east Manchester. For Palace, it is the chance to make history and win a first ever trophy. 'In your life, something has to matter,' Parish told me a few years ago, when an Amazon documentary on the club, When Eagles Dare, was screened. 'What actually matters, after your family? What matters? Your football team.' For all who cherish the soul and the magic of the FA Cup — the eternal optimism it engenders about modest teams being winners, too — there can only be one team at Wembley to root for. Tough questions need answers after Superbikes tragedy The need for sensitivity was obvious after the tragedy at Oulton Park a week ago left two families in mourning. But the grief and loss did not justify the deliberate evasion by race organisers of the British Superbikes Championship, who refused my request for any kind of discussion about some of the questions which the deaths of young Briton Owen Jenner and New Zealander Shane Richardson had raised. If a high-profile sport shut the door on a legitimate inquiry in that way, there would certainly be outrage. Arsenal fall short again Arsenal might feel they've done their best without a serviceable striker this season, but by calculations I've done to establish where the best value resides in the Premier League, they've failed. I've divided the cost of each club's cheapest season ticket by the number of points each side has secured at home and Arsenal fans, based on a £1,073 cheapest season ticket, are paying out £29.81 per point. That's fifth from bottom of the table. Manchester City are way out ahead for value, at £10.08 per point. The top five in descending order: City, Liverpool, Brentford, Forest and West Ham. And from the bottom up: Southampton, Ipswich, Tottenham, Leicester and Arsenal. I'll look at other leagues in more detail next week. Ashworth to flourish with the FA after Man United horror show The return of Dan Ashworth to the FA is shrewd for all concerned, given the role he played in building the framework which allowed Gareth Southgate to thrive. Thomas Tuchel appears less wedded to the idea of an England for the future. We can only hope that the outlook of Ashworth — mercifully free of Sir Jim Ratcliffe's car-crash strategies at Manchester United — will prevail. Test cricket worse off without Kohli It is Test cricket's loss that the great Virat Kohli has retired, because the most beautiful form of the game, which so badly needs its crusaders, has lost one of its best. 'There's something deeply personal about playing in whites,' he said on Monday. 'The quiet grind, the long days, the small moments that no one sees but that stay with you for ever.' Exquisite words.
