Alvotech(NASDAQ: ALVO), a global biotech company specializing in the development and manufacture of biosimilar medicines for patients worldwide, today announced the successful arrangement of a strategic refinancing transaction. The financing, led by GoldenTree Asset Management, with participation from other institutional investors (collectively, the “Lenders”), will enable Alvotech (the “Company”) to improve cost of capital, address upcoming debt maturities in 2025 and enhance its financial flexibility by adding incremental cash to the balance sheet.
With the transaction, Alvotech obtains financing from experienced healthcare investors who share the Company’s confidence in its expected near-term product launches and pipeline progress.
Alvotech has entered into an agreement with the Lenders for a senior secured first lien term loan facility (the “Facility”) of up to $965 million, in two tranches. The first tranche, a first lien $900 million term loan bears an interest rate of SOFR plus 6.5% per annum. The Lenders have also committed to an optional second tranche, a $65 million first lien, second out term loan drawable at Alvotech’s discretion, which bears an interest rate of SOFR plus 10.5% per annum. The Facility matures in June 2029 and is expected to fund in July 2024. The Company intends to use the proceeds from the Facility to refinance various outstanding debt obligations, including those maturing in 2025. The remaining proceeds from this transaction will be allocated towards supporting Alvotech’s working capital requirements for ongoing and expected launches in the near term.
“This facility aligns with our commitment to enhance financial flexibility and sustain Alvotech’s long-term growth. We expect significant revenue growth and diversification as we launch our biosimilars in multiple markets around the world and advance our pipeline of biosimilar candidates. Refinancing near-term maturing debt will help us execute our growth plans over the near and mid-term,” said Joel Morales, Chief Finance Officer of Alvotech.
The boom in artificial intelligence will increase banks' dependence on big U.S. tech firms, creating new risks for the industry, European banking executives said.
Excitement around using artificial intelligence (AI) in financial services - widely used already for detecting fraud and money-laundering - has soared since the launch of OpenAI's viral chatbot ChatGPT in late 2022 as banks examine ways to deploy generative AI.
But at a gathering of fintech executives in Amsterdam this week, some expressed concerns that the amount of computing power needed to develop AI capabilities would make banks rely even more on small number of tech providers.
ING's chief analytics officer, Bahadir Yilmaz, who is in charge of the Dutch bank's AI work, told Reuters he expected to rely on Big Tech companies "more and more going forward", for infrastructure and machinery.
"You will always need them because sometimes the machine power that is needed for these technologies is huge. It's also not really feasible for a bank to build this tech," he said.
Banks' dependency on a small number of tech companies was "one of the biggest risks", ING's Yilmaz said, emphasising that European banks in particular needed to ensure they could move between different tech providers and avoid what he called "vendor lock-in".
Britain last year proposed rules to regulate financial firms' heavy reliance on external technology companies, such as Microsoft, Google, IBM and Amazon. Regulators are worried that problems at a single cloud computing company could potentially bring down services across many financial institutions.
"AI requires huge amounts of compute and really the only way that you're going to be able to access that compute (computing power) sensibly is from Big Tech," Joanne Hannaford, who leads technology strategy at Deutsche Bank's corporate bank, told an audience at the Money20/20 conference earlier this week.
AI was top of the agenda at the Amsterdam conference.
The CEO of French AI startup Mistral AI, seen as France's answer to OpenAI, told attendees there were "synergies" between its GenAI products and financial services.
"We see a lot of opportunities in creating analysis and monitoring information ... which is really something that bankers like to do," Arthur Mensch said.
ING is testing an AI chatbot currently used for 2.5% of incoming customer service chats. Asked how long it would be until the chatbot could handle half or more of customer service conversations, Yilmaz said within a year.
With no sign of progress in mediators' efforts to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza war, Israeli forces pounded Rafah from the air and ground overnight as tanks tried to advance further west, residents said.
Fierce gun battles between Israeli troops and Hamas-led Palestinian fighters were also taking place.
Residents said tanks that have taken control along the borderline with Egypt made several raids towards the west and the center of the southern city, wounding several residents who had been trapped inside their homes and were taken by surprise.
"I think the occupation forces are trying to reach the beach area of Rafah, the raids and the bombing overnight were tactical, they entered under heavy fire before they retreated," said one Palestinian man.
"It was one of the worst nights, some people were wounded inside their homes, before being evacuated this morning," he told Reuters via a chat app.
Israeli forces have also operated inside the Al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip on the ground, while it kept two other camps and a city nearby under heavy bombardment from planes and tanks, killing and wounding several Palestinians, medics said.
The armed wings of Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and smaller other groups reported their fighters carried out attacks against invading Israeli forces in several areas in central and southern the enclave.
Qatari and Egyptian mediators, backed by the United States, have stepped up efforts to reach a ceasefire deal, that will halt hostilities and see the release of Israeli hostages and a number of Palestinians jailed by Israel, but sources close to the talks said there were no signs of a breakthrough.
Since a brief week-long truce in November, all attempts to arrange a ceasefire have failed, with Hamas insisting on its demand for a permanent end to the conflict. Israel says it is prepared to discuss only temporary pauses until the militant group is defeated.
"We have shown all the flexibility needed to reach a deal but the Israeli occupation continues to refuse any commitment to end the aggression and pull its forces from the Gaza Strip," a Hamas official told Reuters.
"The occupation and the Americans are to blame for the absence of a deal so far because they don't want this war on our people to end," he said.
Hamas precipitated the war by attacking Israeli territory last Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. About half the hostages were freed in the November truce.
Israel's military assault on Gaza has killed more than 36,000 people, according to health officials in the territory, who say thousands more dead are feared buried under the rubble.
U.S. and Israeli officials have told Reuters about half of Hamas's forces have been killed in the conflict. Hamas does not disclose fatalities among its fighters and some officials say Israel exaggerated the figures. Israel's own military death toll is almost 300.
Geron Corporation announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved RYTELO™ for the treatment of adult patients with low- to intermediate-1 risk myelodysplastic syndromes with transfusion-dependent anemia requiring four or more red blood cell units over eight weeks who have not responded to or have lost response to or are ineligible for erythropoiesis-stimulating agents.
Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas is considered one of the most hawkish anti-Russian figures in the West, yet it was none other than her who just redefined this bloc’s terms for victory in Ukraine. She recently told the BBC that “Victory in Ukraine is not just about territory. If Ukraine joins Nato, even without some territory, then that’s a victory because it will be placed under the Nato umbrella." This is a far cry from restoring Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders like the West hitherto claimed is its goal.
Here are several background briefings concerning the lead-up to what she just said:
They’ll now be summarized for the reader’s convenience.
Basically, the West fears Russia achieving a military breakthrough across the front lines (particularly around Kharkov Region), so it’s now more openly allowing Ukraine to use their arms to strike targets inside its neighbor’s universally recognized territory. Poland is also flirting with shooting down Russian missiles over Western Ukraine and commencing a conventional intervention there too. All the while, Ukraine started attacking Russia’s early nuclear warning systems, which is unprecedentedly dangerous.
The NATO-Russianproxy war in Ukraine is therefore poised to intensify, though the West’s intent appears to be to “escalate to de-escalate” in order to then freeze the conflict afterwards on comparatively better terms for their side, provided of course that the escalation remains manageable. The upcoming Swiss “peace talks” are doomed to fail, but a parallel joint Sino-Brazilian peace process might arise in their wake as explained here and culminate in a grand diplomatic gathering during November’s G20 in Rio.
Kallas’ latest comment should be interpreted in this context as signaling an interest in compromising via the Korean-like armistice scenario that was prominently floated by former NATO Supreme Commander Admiral James Stavridis in November in his op-ed about this for Bloomberg. Ukraine’s bilateral “security guarantees” with NATO members, especially the ones that it’s negotiating with the US and Poland, could be spun as de facto membership that importantly doesn’t cross Russia’s red line of formal membership.
As for Article 5, Kallas recently told the Financial Times that those who dispatch troops to Ukraine on their own as members of implied ‘coalitions of the willing’ do so at their own risk, arguing that the bloc’s mutual defense clause wouldn’t automatically be triggered in that scenario. That said, it’s unlikely that the US would hang its allies out to dry if Russia pulverizes their forces, so this sequence of events would likely provoke a crisis that could only realistically be defused through Ukraine’s asymmetricalpartition.
Depending on if or when this happens, there might be a several-month-long gap between freezing the conflict in that way and the potentially planned grand diplomatic gathering in Rio this winter, during which time bilateral negotiations could take place between Russia and the US to hash out the details. To be clear, Russia might not achieve a military breakthrough, NATO members might not conventionally intervene, no brinksmanship might occur, and the conflict might continue raging at its present tempo.
Nevertheless, the significance of Kallas’ statement is that it represents the first signal from the West’s most hawkish anti-Russian faction that they might be willing to freeze the conflict instead of continuing to fight until the last Ukrainian at the risk of sparking World War III by miscalculation. The only reason why she’d do this is because she knows that Russia has already won the “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with NATO byfar and that the West’s planned maximum victory is thus unattainable.
Considering the military-strategic dynamics that were earlier described in this analysis, everything is likely about to get a lot worse before it gets any better, but the incipient Sino-Brazilian peace process leaves hope that a compromise is possible by November’s G20. For that to happen, the impending NATO-Russian escalation in Ukraine must remain manageable, but that can’t be taken for granted given how desperate some Western hawks still are to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia despite the odds.
Hollywood superstar George Clooney rang up the White House last month to grumble about President Biden’s criticism of the International Criminal Court’s effort to issuearrest warrantsagainst top Israeli officials, according to a report.
The Academy Award-winning actor’s wife, Amal Clooney, played an instrumental role in making the case for the ICC to prosecute Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes in Israel and Gaza — and she could face US sanctions if Biden, 81, were to sign legislation recently passed by the House of Representatives.
George Clooney is expected to headline a Biden campaign fundraiser later this month.Getty Images for MGM's Seattle Community
During the call, George Clooney expressed concern to Counselor to the President Steve Ricchetti that his wife could face penalties under the sanctions bill and took issue with Biden’s comments related to the arrest warrants and his administration’s initial openness to slapping sanctions on ICC officials, according to the Washington Post.
The “Ocean’s Eleven” star was particularly peeved with Biden’s characterization of his wife’s work as “outrageous,” the outlet noted.
“The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous,” the president said in a May 20 statement.
“And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”
That same day, Amal Clooney announced on the Clooney Foundation for Justice website – an organization co-founded by her and her husband – that she was among the experts asked by the ICC to evaluate evidence of suspected war crimes in the Israel-Hamas war.
“We unanimously conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity including starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution and extermination,” the 46-year-old human rights lawyer wrote.
She added that the panel also determined “there are reasonable grounds to believe that Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including hostage-taking, murder and crimes of sexual violence.”
Amal Clooney was on the panel that determined it was reasonable to conclude that Netanyahu committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.AFP via Getty Images
On Tuesday, the House passed the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act – backed by 42 Democrats and all but two Republicans – which would force Biden to deny entry into the US, revoke visas and impose financial sanctions on members of the ICC involved in the effort to issue the arrest warrants.
It’s unclear if the Senate will take up the legislation, which the White House announced Monday that it “strongly opposes.”
“This legislation could require sanctions against court staff, judges, witnesses, and US allies and partners who provide even limited, targeted support to the court in a range of aspects of its work,” the Biden administration argued.
“There are more effective ways to defend Israel,” the statement of administration policy said.
The notorious Deborah Birx has apparently never heard the term “let the dust settle,” because mere days after her partner-in-pandemic-crime, Anthony Fauci, appeared for a congressional hearing in which he confirmed that his Covid-19 mandates were not science-based, sending much of the “normie” world into a fit of hysterics because they’ve just discovered what we knew all along, Birx decided to announce newmandates for the American public regarding the “Bird Flu” virus; from Jordan Schachtel of The Dossier:
First, and I must get this out of the way because it’s a critical piece of the puzzle and it’s seemingly been overlooked by the entire media except American Thinker—I’ve written on this twice before, once in December of 2022 and once in January of this year, and I’ve yet to see another outlet or platform pick up on it. When Fauci admits social-distancing policies “sort of just appeared,” he’s not saying he made them up, the conclusion to which people and the media jump, because he didn’t. They came to him directly from the Chinese Communist Party and the World Health Organization, via Fauci’s own delegate, a Mr. Clifford Lane.
Fauci’s sworn testimony in a November 2022 deposition alleges that once Lane returned from a WHO-sponsored envoy to China, the two men discussed “pandemic” measures, and it was Lane who brought back the idea of “social distancing” from the Chinese. So Fauci isn’t exactly lying that these measures “sort of just appeared” but he is misleading everyone when he pretends that he doesn’t know from where they sort of just appeared.
(For all the details please see both of my previous blogs here, and here; for the deposition transcript, which seems to keep disappearing off of the internet, please see this archived link here.)
Anyway, back to Birx, who has the gall to tell us what we “should be” doing, after participating in one of the most egregious crimes against humanity in history—not only is her credibility utterly shot, her plan is completely illegal, and a grossly invasive suggestion.
When she declares what “we” should be doing, she’s of course talking about the federal bureaucracy, in this case it would be the CDC, the USDA, the FDA, or any other alphabet swamper that has nothing to do but trample on American farmers—but what legal authority do unconstitutional federal agencies have? Well I say none, and if your county has a good, constitutionally-minded sheriff, then your local law enforcement would concur.
Secondly, this “testing” scheme would either be, a) government-funded, AKA taxpayer-funded or, b) mandated on the farms via the federal agencies, which just means that dairy and beef prices would surge beyond what they already are. Here’s a word for the wise: make every conceivable effort to adjust your spending to prioritize sourcing your beef and dairy from small local farms instead of supporting the big operations where disease spreads much easier.
As Schachtel also noted, Birx is intimately involved with the pharmaceutical industry, sitting on a number of advisory boards—which makes me wonder how much she personally stands to (financially) gain if mandated dairy testing were to materialize. Former governor of Arizona Doug Ducey previously sat on the board of TGen, a non-profit company which led much of Arizona’s Covid-19 testing and tracking programs during the scamdemic, making who knows how much money in the process; would you be surprised to learn that “Republican” Ducey repeatedly extended the “state of emergency” for more than two years in Arizona, which kept TGen’s testing and contact-tracing programs in business?
Again, none of this has ever been about following the science, but about following the money.
