In this edition, I speak with Arash Massoudi, Corporate Finance and Deals editor with the Financial Times in London, and also the co-creator of the FT’s must-read newsletter on deal-making: Due Diligence.
I wanted to bring Arash on to get a sense of how the world’s most voracious deal-makers are viewing the global landscape: who wins and loses in a world of rising rates, deglobalization, and climate concerns.
I also wanted to chat with Arash about some of the phenomenal scoops he’s generated over the last decade, including Masa Son and SoftBank’s Vision Fund, Elon Musk and the “funding secured” fiasco, the rise of sports as an investment vertical, and many others. With his eye for a scoop, I wanted to see if we might get a bead on where the next big story might pop.
Given his role launching Due Diligence and Scoreboard — the FT’s newsletter focused on the business of sport — I wanted get into the topic of newsletters and the rise of Substack, the significant businesses that newsletters have become in their own right, and how the medium itself shapes the production and consumption of journalistic content.
Thanks, as always, for listening.
I hope you enjoy this episode — and if you do, you should subscribe to the FT and the Due Diligence newsletter, and give Arash a follow on Twitter (@ArashMassoudi). And don’t forget to share it with friends and colleagues.
This podcast was recorded in February 2023.
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Read Arash’s latest stories with the FT.
Sign up for FT’s premium newsletter Due Diligence and Scoreboard.
Follow Arash on Twitter (@ArashMassoudi).
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Music credit: Daniel Allan, “Too Close” released on Sound. You can learn more about Daniel’s community-owned DAO that underwrote his latest EP here.
(Disclosure: In addition to the “Too Close” NFT, Portico’s founder Michael Casey owns $OVERSTIM tokens, as well as many other music NFTs; his Sound collector profile is available here).