Today’s briefing:
— Is India the world’s hot trade again?
— Why Canada is out of liquid gold
— Can the UAE pull off a UN surprise?
Your Insider’s briefing:
— Is India the world’s hot trade again?
— Why Canada is out of liquid gold
— Can the UAE pull off a UN surprise?
Good morning {{first_name | Intriguer}}. Our universe is governed by unbreakable laws: gravity holds the planets, thermodynamics makes your coffee go cold, and I will (without fail) absolutely greet any Indian diplomat with my one line of Hindi: 'Hum tumse pyar karte hain.'
It’s a climactic kind of “I love you” phrase in Bollywood, guaranteed to get a chuckle.
So… after a few cautious years backstage, are global investors (fresh off a high-energy dance sequence, synth beats swelling) now stepping out from behind a vibrant silk curtain to whisper, 'Hum tumse pyar karte hain' right back at India?
As we’ll see in India’s biggest-ever IPO, the romance might be back on, but if there’s one thing I know about the Bollywood greats, it’s always right as the music hits its crescendo that the villain steps out from behind the pillar.
 | Managing Editor Jeremy Dicker |
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Flex of the day
“Last month, we demonstrated high-rate alchemy: turning mercury into real, stable gold”
That’s part of an announcement by San Francisco-based nuclear startup Marathon Fusion, though even if verifiable, we’re still talking high-cost, microscopic amounts.
IP-oh?!
Mukesh Ambani, chair of Reliance Industries.
India doesn’t really ✌️do✌️ small. Weddings run for days, cricket matches shut down cities, and a quick “drop by for tea” quickly becomes a full-blown buffet.
So naturally when the country’s tech-and-telco juggernaut, with more users than the entire population of South America, decides to go public? Yeah it’s a big deal.
Here’s what you need to know:
Jio Platforms, India’s biggest mobile network, just absolutely cannon-balled onto India’s two main stock exchanges (National and Bombay), soaking us spectators with four points of intrigue, starting with…
It’s India’s biggest-ever
Raising a cool $3.2B, Jio’s offering has now officially leapfrogged Hyundai India’s 2024 record ($2.9B) to become India’s biggest-ever IPO.
Institutional and retail investors alike both frothed at the chance to get a slice: the institutional tranche was gone in 10 minutes, while the public maxed out its shares in 90, driving an overall oversubscription rate of 3.13x on Day 1 — that’s a rare threshold and speed combo, signalling intense FOMO.
Why the rush? The firm’s 2016-era bet on ultra-cheap data plans has earned it 530 million customers, meaning it now manages ~60% of India’s entire data traffic.
That’s why the giant is now aiming for a ~$110B valuation when shares start trading on 28 October, making it one of India’s biggest companies by market cap.
We also couldn’t help but notice…
The mixed signals
It’s a wild time for India’s markets. You’ve got the flagship Nifty 50 benchmark recently posting eight straight weeks in the red, its longest loss streak in a quarter century. But then Jio comes along and smashes records, just a month after the National Stock Exchange itself listed (on rival Bombay) at a sectoral record $47B market cap!
What — and we cannot stress this enough — is going on?
International investors have become uneasy at India’s eye-watering valuations, heavy oil import reliance, and the pull of rising US yields. That’s why they’ve dumped ~$27B in Indian equities this year alone.
But you know what can get everyone excited again? A digital monopoly backed by Silicon Valley, controlled by India’s richest family, and practically woven into India’s DNA, both political (PM Modi attended the son’s mega-wedding in 2024) and economic (the broader family conglomerate spans every major sector).
And that might explain some of the ritzy names among…
The investors
It’s now a veritable Davos VIP lounge right there on the cap table, featuring everyone from BlackRock and JPMorgan to Google and Meta and even the sovereign funds of Singapore, Norway, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar.
When you get Wall Street and Silicon Valley and Gulf monarchies all in such furious agreement, they’re probably sniffing out a) one of the emerging world’s few indispensable growth stories right now, protected by b) a moat (monopolistic, political, technological) too wide for any cyclical jitters to meaningfully cross.
And as we’ve flagged above, a big part of that impenetrable moat is thanks to…
The dynasty
It’s all controlled by the squillionaire Ambani family that somehow started in 1958 with a small textile firm. Fast forward six decades and they’re now controlling an empire worth a third of a trillion dollars, or ~8% of India’s entire GDP.
That’s how Jio’s boss (Mukesh) can afford Antilia, his $2B, 27-story Mumbai residence with three helipads, a 168-car garage, and 600 staff (for a family of five).
It’s also how he could afford to throw a $600M wedding for his son, rocking an absolute ‘French Laundry’ guestlist of Kardashians, Trumps, Blairs, Zuckerbergs, and Gates (singular). Annoyingly even FIFA’s Infantino somehow scored an invite; dude is like a power Beetlejuice.
So you can see why some (including Elon Musk) have publicly wondered who holds more power in India: the sitting PM or the Ambanis.
But don’t expect Mukesh to take a victory lap: he’s already pouring billions straight into AI data centres (via a giant Nvidia partnership), ensuring that whenever India’s 1.4 billion shop, stream, or prompt, an Ambani server gets a slice.
Intrigue’s Take
As geopolitics nerds we can’t help but see this IPO as a broader mirror to modern India in all its dizzying complexity.
On the plus side, it points to…
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Intrigue’s Take
As geopolitics nerds we can’t help but see this IPO as a broader mirror to modern India in all its dizzying complexity.
On the plus side, it points to India’s unmatched demographics: you’ve got 700 million active internet users and 690 million smartphone owners, now chewing through ~6% of Claude’s entire global AI usage (second only to the US). And if you’ve got this vast, tech-savvy population hungry to climb the ladder, why wouldn’t you bet on the local ladder monopoly?
But you can also see right there some of India’s tricky structural dilemmas: so much of India’s economy is now anchored by a handful of powerful families, often dubbed the ‘Billionaire Raj’: whether it’s the Ambanis, the Adanis, the Tatas, the Birlas, or the Bajajs, they own the ports, mills, towers, grids, markets, factories, and pretty much anything else helping modern India run. It’s hardly alone, btw: South Korea has its chaebols, Indonesia its ‘Nine Dragons’, and so on. And any good diplomat will work hard at ingratiating themselves with these core networks, btw.
But what really sets India apart is both the concentration’s sheer scale (1% of folks now hold 40% of all wealth) and its acceleration (they held just ~12% in 1991) — so the picture now looks worse by some measures than during British colonial rule.
Then again the Brits also left behind a counterweight: India’s famously noisy, combative democracy, with a proven knack for surprising elites right when they feel most entrenched. And longer-term, it’s hard to see how this strange coexistence between a raucous democracy and ultra-rich monopolists can continue without at least a few populist wobbles, whether in the form of antitrust breakups, tax shifts, or just raw people power in the streets.
That’s a tricky tightrope not just for Delhi, but the families themselves, who risk learning how quickly symbols of national pride can become lightning rods for heat. So it might be worth spending a little less time building 27-story palaces with indoor snow rooms, and more time tending to their social license.
Sound even smarter:
Delhi has denied Elon Musk’s allegations that it’s slow-walking Starlink’s approvals under pressure from Jio’s Mukesh Ambani.
Watch Jio’s stock price in the coming weeks: a 2024 study suggests retail investors typically sell 50% of their shares within a month from listing.
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Meanwhile, elsewhere…
🇯🇵 JAPAN — Code red.
Several world leaders, including Japan’s Takaichi, have issued urgent global warnings over a pair of critical vulnerabilities found in PHP, aka the programming language underpinning 70% of the internet. (BBC)
Comment: No surprises how this vulnerability came to light: AI models found it while scanning legacy web infrastructure. But the sudden rush is because someone leaked the details via GitHub ahead of Wednesday’s patch release. So it’s a case of AI finding the vulnerability, then humans exploiting it (there’ve already been a bunch of hacks). To give you a sense of how seriously cyber nerds are taking this, the NSA itself is urging folks to even disconnect servers if you can’t patch them. Pure speculation, but we also wonder how many SIGINT agencies long knew about (and exploited) this vulnerability before it got sprung.
🇺🇳 UNITED NATIONS — It’s a Hail Lana.
The UAE has now nominated diplomat Lana Nusseibeh to join the (already crowded) race to replace António Guterres when he steps down as UN chief at the end of this year. (France24)
Comment: Why now? The UN’s latest secret straw poll revealed that two unknown permanent Security Council members are effectively threatening to veto the frontrunning candidacy of Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan. Our best guess is it’s probably the US (rumoured to oppose all initial contenders as too weak on UN reforms and cost-cutting) and Russia (given Grynspan’s role in the Black Sea grain deal). So then okay, if there’s a gap in the race, why the UAE rather than (per the regional rotation) Latin America? Mostly because, after years of assiduously cultivating functional ties with all the permanent five (🇺🇸🇬🇧🇫🇷🇨🇳🇷🇺), the UAE *can* have a crack. Though perhaps it also means Nusseibeh might now answer the claims that her Gulf petrostate is backing RSF war criminals in Sudan? Meanwhile, the prospect of an Emirati at the top of the UN will also drive the rival Saudis nuts. Speaking of whom…
🇸🇦 SAUDI ARABIA — Embassy ouster.
DC has ordered all non-emergency embassy personnel and family members to leave Saudi Arabia amid the continued Houthi hits on critical infrastructure and airports across the kingdom. (Guardian)
Comment: We see this less as a hint of something worse over the horizon (though there’s word of a resumption in US strikes after the midterms), and more an example of how it can take a bureaucracy a week to respond to the Houthi escalation that’s now already well underway.
🇫🇯 FIJI — Distant friend?
The key Pacific Islands Forum regional bloc has officially accepted Israel as a dialogue partner, alongside long-running partners like the US, China, and the EU all jostling for influence in the strategically located zone. (RNZ)
Comment: Israel’s interest here is less in the geography and more the solidarity it enjoys from several Pacific Island nations that link modern Israel to a widely-held Christian faith. You can see those ties not only via UN votes (where Pacific Islands routinely feature among Israel’s few backers), but also on the streets of Jerusalem, now home (over Palestinian objections) to the embassies of PNG, Fiji, Nauru, and (soon) Samoa.
🇷🇺 RUSSIA — Running circles.
Following a three-hour St Petersburg sit-down with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, President Putin has now agreed to resume US-sponsored trilateral ceasefire talks with Ukraine, and has also released 74-year-old US citizen Stephen Hubbard, held on mercenary charges since 2022. (CNN)
Comment: Putin is handing Witkoff a cheap win here, not because Witkoff is a genius negotiator, but because Witkoff is Putin’s *preferred* negotiator (big difference). It’s about strengthening the malleable diplomatic track Putin wants, while weakening DC’s traditional natsec establishment: recall when Trump sent CIA Director Ratcliffe, Putin wouldn’t even see the guy. For his part, Ukraine’s Zelensky has welcomed the possibility of new sit-down talks, but is voicing scepticism Putin will show; it’s more likely Moscow’s dictator will (again) blame Ukraine for talks collapsing. Meanwhile, with President Trump’s open hunger for a deal and historic sympathy for Moscow’s position, it’s easy for Putin to milk US concessions while offering little of real value in return.
🇸🇻 EL SALVADOR — Haiti showdown.
In a remarkable turn, President Bukele has announced a direct military operation in Haiti to rescue four Salvadoran aviation technicians kidnapped by armed gangs over the weekend. (AP)
Comment: We flagged on Monday how this kidnapping risked disrupting Bukele’s victory lap after his own stunning (if controversial) gang suppression back home. It’s still unclear whether there’s an actual military operation now underway or if it’s just a threat to jolt their release, though absent any proof of life or gang demands, there’s a real chance they won’t be returned alive. So the whole ordeal risks dragging El Salvador deeper into a Haitian quagmire that’s humbled far bigger powers over the decades.
🇱🇾 LIBYA — Maritime boundaries.
Commander Haftar’s unrecognised eastern government has endorsed a controversial 2019 maritime border deal with Turkey, years after Libya’s UN-backed Tripoli administration first signed. It’s drawn swift condemnation from Greece and Cyprus, who have overlapping claims. (Reuters)
Comment: This is a stunning 180, given Turkey actually intervened in Libya’s civil war *against* Haftar’s forces. But through years of steady economic outreach and pragmatism, Ankara has now effectively co-opted its former foe, displaced Haftar’s long-time Egyptian and Emirati backers, and now further bolstered its own posture across the eastern Med.
Extra Intrigue
Meanwhile, in other worlds…
Science: Researchers in Australia just cracked the 178-year-old mystery surrounding a British train delayed by a solar storm, revealing the famous incident actually happened in 1848, not 1841.
Business: Claude-creator Anthropic is still targeting a $2T IPO, though its leaked prospectus has dropped a few more jaws on Wall Street, whether via its $80B H1 net loss, or its ~$750B in long-term cloud compute commitments.
Space: A Minnesota corn farmer has stumbled upon an 11-foot charred metallic ring, which turns out to have been the surviving upper-stage hardware from a China-launched satellite rocket.
Tech: A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay a record $25B fine for deceiving Facebook users on its privacy policy (Meta says it’ll appeal).
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Strategic reserve of the day
Actual pic courtesy of the PPAQ
If we told you Canada has a heavily-guarded Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve, the non-Canucks among you might understandably assume we’re just joking.
But dear Intriguer? We are deadly, stickily serious.
Managed out of several nondescript, high-security warehouses in Quebec (home to ~70% of the world’s syrup), Canada’s cartel-like Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers (PPAQ) hoards tens of millions of litres of amber gold in steel barrels.
Why? It turns out those maple trees can be finicky climate divas, meaning a warm spring or unseasonal frost can tank a harvest overnight. So, much like an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, the PPAQ stockpiles in the good years then releases in the bad, in hopes of smoothing out those sweet sweet prices and maybe inspiring a Broadway musical 2,500 years later.
But you know what? The head of the PPAQ just revealed that the entire Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve is now empty / committed! It’s likely the result of panicky US buyers (IHOP®?) trying to front-run Trump’s tariffs, plus a couple of erratic winters.
Hollywood, if you’re reading (and we know you are), please immediately write a heist comedy starring both Canadian Ryans (Reynolds and Gosling) as two rogue sap-smugglers pulling off one last high-stakes, sticky job to save the reserve from an evil, cigar-chomping pancake chain executive played by JK Simmons.
Today’s poll
How do you feel about India's future?
Yesterday’s poll: What do you think was Huang Qifan's main sin?
💵 Past corruption (7%)
🎙️ Bro mouthed off too much (54%)
🔨 Xi sending a pre-Plenum warning (37%)
✍️ Other (write us!) (2%)
Your two cents:
🎙️E.A: “If Jack Ma is a barometer for how the CCP feel about embarrassment, mouthing off too much seems a pretty tried-and-true road to an early retirement.”
💵 E.B: “Corruption in any government can't be tolerated if the government is expected to function as designed.”
✍️ L.Z: “Perhaps any one of these things in a vacuum would not have triggered a crackdown, but sins compound.”