ON THE MONEY

On the Money On the Money

Apervasive suspicion that the global motorcycle industry and its premier sporting apparitions are busy going to hell in a handcart has become harder to ignore. And there are certainly plenty of idiots around who seem willing to push us towards the inferno. Time for a rant!

Starting on a lighter angle, latest crackpot notion to land on my desktop was a missive from those Spanish fat-cats at MotoGP promoter Dorna Sports about how they are now “racing towards a smoke-free era”.

Henceforth, there will be extensive nosmoking zones at MotoGP race circuits. Thus demonised, the dastardly dregs of fans who still like to suck on an unwholesome ciggie while watching the almost equally dangerous gladiatorial entertainment on offer will be herded into ghettos. And tab-ends filling ashtrays therein will merit disposal in an “environmentally responsible way” – presumably employing personnel protected by haz-chem suits and respirators.

Leaving aside the bleedin’ obvious, that spectators at race tracks are pursuing an outdoor activity, with little chance of being subjected to passive smoking in enclosed spaces, this woke rubbish displays monumental hypocrisy and not a slightest hint of the irony one would assume was unavoidable. A clue comes from the fact dorks at Dorna concocted their smoke-free initiative with funding from beloved MotoGP “partner” Philip Morris International.

The world’s best-known tobacco baron, American-owned but Swiss-domiciled Philip Morris sells more than 850 billion cigarettes annually. Its premium global brand is Marlboro. Other leading Philip Morris brands include Chesterfield (to which I admit an ongoing personal addiction), L&M and Benson & Hedges. The company declared a useful net profit of £8.473bn last year.

The incestuous relationship between cigarette purveyors like Philip Morris and Dorna, along with members of its pitlane facilitator IRTA and their respective antecedents, has a history stretching back for decades, mainly focused on the latter trousering squillions in sponsorship revenue from the former. Indeed, the MotoGP paddock and lavish team hospitality rigs were still awash with nicotine-flavoured loot long after fag logos were banned from fairing flanks. Ducati maintained covert ties with a Marlboro money connection until very recently, and that may continue in some form.

The disguise behind which Philip Morris hides during new-wave promotional excursions is its Foundation for a Smoke-free World, established with a billion-buck budget in 2017. The World Health Organisation promptly pointed out “conflicts of interest involved with a tobacco company funding a purported health foundation”, advising governments and other concerned bodies to boycott it. Most took note. Dorna evidently didn’t agree, or didn’t give a rat’s arse.

FUEL FOR THE FIRE

Moving on to the motorcycle industry’s generally chaotic state in the face of batteryelectrification’s threat to its functionality, yet another amusing Dorna initiative with some relevance has surfaced. Recognising that a bunch of lardy short-range MotoE machines are never going to replace its main sucksqueeze-bang-blow attraction, the Spaniards have chosen alternative combustion methods instead.

Dorna has pledged that fuel used in all MotoGP classes will be of minimum 40% nonfossil origin by 2024. And, by 2027, it must be of 100% non-fossil origin. Apparently, go-go juice replacements for petrol will be either “laboratory-created, using components sourced from a carbon-capture scheme, or derived from municipal waste or non-food biomass”. The target is carbon neutrality rather than carbon elimination, “with suppliers progressively introducing the use of renewable energy in the production of their fuel”.

Thinking behind this gobbledygook is similar to glib rationalisation by leading UK electricity generator Drax. Its vast power station near Selby in Yorkshire has a theoretically carbon-neutral 2.9 gigawatt capacity (allegedly 6% of Britain’s entire required sparkiness) from burning biomass – wood pellets imported from the US and Canada. Trees are regarded as a renewable energy resource, because more can be grown, recapturing the flamed-off carbon.

A recent stance by European motorcycle manufacturers group ACEM followed the same direction, as indicated by its decision to join and support the eFuel Alliance’s campaign for much wider use of carbonneutral combustible fuels made from renewable biomass. Brazilian bikers have been familiar with carbon-neutral (and incidentally low-carbon) biofuel for decades, a spirit produced by fermenting and distilling sugarcane juice and molasses. However, motivation was unrelated to ecological correctness. Brazil simply lacked indigenous hydro-carbon access and imports were excruciatingly expensive.

And we have to ask ourselves, why have these abrupt swerves away from full commitment to battery-electric bikes and cars emerged? The answer is geo-political, in as much as sole dependence on batteryelectric presents a chillingly dystopian

International Share Prices

USA – IGNORING THE OBVIOUS

US investors kept on swerving around Federal Reserve warnings of further interest rate increases in the pipeline. But their attempts to kickstart equity value were to no avail. Trading on Wall Street saw more extreme shareprice volatility, with wild swings back and forth.

Market indices reflected this chaos. The S&P 500, S&P’s Midcap 400 and Dow Jones Industrial Average ploughed erratic furrows, finishing on respective -1.6%, -1% and +1% weekly changes. The NASDAQ Composite closed 3.1% down.

Harley-Davidson shares were busy going nowhere on this roller-coaster ride. Gains at the beginning of the week were cancelled out by later losses, adding up to a gestural weekly price increase of 0.3%. Harley’s majority-owned LiveWire electric bike subsidiary suffered an altogether more torrid time in only its third week of stand-alone trading finishing 23.4% down.

EUROPE – NORTH/SOUTH DIVIDE

A north-south divide is developing in European markets. Germany’s lavish energy bail-out for indigenous industrial titans, described as “selfish” by other EU countries, is naturally well-received on home turf. And its breadth helped to maintain positivity for Teutonic equity investors through October to date.

Frankfurt’s Xetra Dax made a second consecutive 1.3% weekly advance. However, motorcycle-related stocks were mixed. Italian problems were purely political, with nerves jangling in relation to Italy’s new government. In response, the FTSE MIB market index in Milan flatlined, staying shiny side up by just 0.1%. JAPAN – WEAK YEN ADDS TO RISK

A stand-off between the Bank of Japan and Japanese politicians over monetary policy came to the fore once again, as the yen plunged to its weakest level against the US dollar in 32 years. The previous week’s muscular 4.5% rebound for Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 completely dissolved and the index closed 0.1% in arrears. Japan’s big-four bike producers, all on the cusp of releasing quarterly corporate results, felt varying degrees of investor reserve.

INDIA – LOSING THE PLOT

As the crescendo of Diwali approached, desultory equity trading highlighted that the party was in full swing – the BSE Sensex 30 stock index in Mumbai rising by just 0.3%.

But another back story was in play for the www.britishdealernews.co.uk