BlackRock-backed Securitize to raise $400 million nearing public debut; CEPT jumps 8%

Cryptocurrency & Free Speech Finance

Securitize, one of the largest providers of tokenization infrastructure for Wall Street, expects to raise about $400 million as it prepares to go public through a merger with a Cantor Fitzgerald-backed special purpose acquisition company.The company said Friday that, following lower-than-expected shareholder redemptions, the business combination with Cantor Equity Partners II (CEPT) is expected to generate roughly $400 million in gross proceeds, including private investment in private equity (PIPE) financing.CEPT was 8% higher following the news.The transaction is scheduled to close on July 1, pending shareholder approval on June 29 and other customary closing conditions. The combined company is expected…

Media & Culture

Revisiting My Authorship Predictions And Making More Predictions

Today the Court decided four more cases, including three opinions by Justice Alito. How did my predictions from Tuesday fare? There were no cases decided today from December. I still think the Chief Justice has Trump v. Slaughter. Now that Alito has six opinions for the term, I think he is done. Justice Kavanaugh almost certainly has NRSC v. FEC. But if Alito has NRSC, then my theory about his losing the majority in Hamm fails. Today the Court decided Wolford from the January sitting. Alito wrote the majority opinion. Outstanding are the two transgender sports cases and Cook. So far, Roberts, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh…

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Politics

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Photo by: Stephen Barnes/Medical/Alamy UK news this week is dominated by a damning report led by senior midwife Donna Ockenden that reveals how more than 500 mothers and babies were harmed or died at maternity units in Nottingham. This isn’t the first scandal Ockenden has investigated. A few years back terrible failings were revealed in Shropshire hospitals run by the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust where 201 babies and nine mothers died.  We spoke to Ockenden for the magazine and she repeated this: “women aren’t listened to”. Another common thread was cover-up. Secrecy is not a one-off, it’s a pattern, wrote Martin Bright when he reported on the Shropshire scandal for Index. As Bright said, “this is not a historical story; it is an ongoing crisis”. Maternity scandals happen not only in Britain but all over the world. Last year’s protests in Morocco were ignited after eight women died in a maternity ward in Agadir because of severe medical neglect. In Egypt last week Omnia Sweidan, a former resident physician in obstetrics and gynaecology at Alexandria’s El-Shatby University Hospital, wrote a Facebook post detailing a series of abusive incidents faced by women at Alexandria’s Al-Shatby Hospital. It was read and shared by tens of thousands. Within 24 hours of posting, instead of the government declaring an investigation, security forces arrested Sweidan. While she was apparently later released, she’s been accused of spreading false news and misusing social media. She could end up in jail. Meanwhile, Afghanistan has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world – the figures of deaths and injuries are rising, but to what no one really knows. The Taliban won’t publish the data, probably to cover-up the true numbers. I’ve navigated maternity services myself in the UK. I’ve generally had good experiences and I’m very grateful to the NHS. But my experiences have not been uncomplicated – my daughter very nearly died. What saved her, I’ve been told, were a few factors – my race (white), my class (middle), where I live (London) and the fact that I relentlessly badgered those at my local hospital for weeks on end saying things didn’t feel right. Let me be clear here though: one shouldn’t have to be a dogged white Londoner to get good medical care. And a recent health committee report revealed terrible inequalities faced by people who are members of ethnic minorities, stating that “[B]abies that are Black or Black British Asian or Asian British have a more than 50% higher risk of perinatal mortality”. At Index we typically work on stories where dissidents take on the powerful: leaders, oligarchs and tech bros. The victims of maternity care scandals might not appear the same. But there is much that unites them. At the end of the day if the response you get from a doctor or nurse to a basic medical request is a shrug or a sneer, your free speech is being violated. If the systems view calls for accountability as dissent that must be silenced, then they are censoring. We grew up being told we’re lucky, that childbirth was one of the leading causes of death before the advent of modern medicine. For many of us that’s true. Just not all of us. That’s a travesty demanding urgent attention – in Nottingham and beyond. READ MORE