Arman Eshraghi

Professor of Finance: Cardiff, Cambridge, Macau; Almunus: Edinburgh, Manchester, Aryamehr. Researching financial technology and behaviour. Personal views only.

[ايران اينترنشنال @IranIntl]

آرمان اشراقی، استاد اقتصاد مالی، به ایران‌اینترنشنال گفت منافع بلندمدت اقتصادی چین با ادامه تنش‌های جمهوری اسلامی در خاورمیانه همخوانی ندارد.

[Reza Pahlavi Communications @PahlaviComms]

در ایران آزاد فردا، بازار بورس ما می‌تواند با جذب سرمایه‌گذاری‌های داخلی و خارجی یکی از بزرگترین و توسعه‌یافته‌ترین بورس‌های منطقه و جهان باشد.

تحلیل دکتر آرمان اشراقی، اقتصاددان مالی، از وضعیت کنونی بورس ایران و چشم‌انداز آینده

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

At midnight on February 6th, earlier this year, the doorbell to our apartment rang. The doorbell was followed by a pounding on the door. I answered the door and a security person in our building handed me his phone. It was my oldest daughter Eloise. She had found my 26-year-old daughter unconscious on the floor of her apartment and had called 911. The EMT team was already there, but they did not know what was wrong with Lucy or to which hospital they would take her.

I threw on some clothes and jumped in an Uber heading east toward Brooklyn. (Lucy lived alone in Williamsburg.) On the way, I learned that they were taking her to Elmhurst, a City trauma hospital in Queens. I arrived about five minutes after the ambulance to join Eloise, Lucy’s mom, and a friend, and waited to learn what was wrong.

After about 15 minutes, I asked a nurse where she was. I looked over his shoulder to his computer. Next to her name, it said “non-responsive.” I walked into the emergency room and wandered around looking for her until I found her unconscious on a gurney surrounded by several doctors and nurses.

By about 2:30am with the results from a CAT scan, Lucy’s doctors had determined that she had a massive brain hemorrhage and would need an emergency hemicraniectomy to release the pressure on her brain and remove the blood from the hemorrhage. I called our wonderful friend and family doctor Eddie Fisher and explained what was going on. He woke up Josh Bederson, Chairman of Neurosurgery at Mount Sinai, to find out more about Zach Hickman, the neurosurgeon on call that night. Dr. Bederson said Hickman was an excellent surgeon, which was comforting as we had no choice.

The surgery to save Lucy’s life began around 3:15am and finished around 5:30am. It was successful.

The following day, I joined Lucy in an ambulance while she was being transferred to Mount Sinai on Madison Avenue. Later that day, we determined from Lucy’s Oura ring that her hemorrhage had occurred around 9am, which meant that more than 19 hours had passed from the time of the hemorrhage to the completion of the surgery to release the pressure on her brain (I only wish @ouraring had an alert for this kind of a medical event. Imagine it could call a family member if the wearer doesn’t cancel the alert).

I later learned that the standard of care is not to do surgery to save a patient with a large brain bleed if more than five hours have passed since the hemorrhage. Even when the surgery is done, I was told that the likely outcome for the patient is a few months in a nursing home and death from pneumonia.

When I met Lucy’s doctors, I did my best to inspire them: “Let’s see what can be accomplished if we give her the best care possible and we invest unlimited resources to restore her to life.” And I promised that whatever we learned we would make available to everyone.

Dr. Chris Kellner, her neurosurgeon, and Dr. David Putrino, Director of Rehabilitation Innovation for the Mount Sinai Health System have led Lucy’s care team since that day. Words cannot describe the remarkable and compassionate care that she has received beginning with the EMT team and then from nurses, doctors, therapists, and the army of people who have worked to save her and return her to life. To this day, we have a daily Zoom where we discuss her progress and make adjustments to her care. While her care and oversight have been incredible, the learnings for the Mount Sinai team have also been elucidating and will assist in the care of many others.

Lucy began in a bad place. She was in a coma for several weeks and then awoke not being able to breathe on her own, unable to walk, see or speak.

Over the last six months, she has recovered her cognition – she understands everything including her circumstance – is able to walk a hundred or more steps at a time with assistance, is making progress with sounds, vowels and consonants and the beginnings of speech, but she remains unable to see.

Each day, she makes a little progress, and daily progress compounds. Every day I tell her that she just needs to make a little progress and it won’t be long before she is back.

We remain optimistic that Lucy will return to normal function. It will likely take years, but I believe it is only a matter of time, hard work, and technological progress, along with some, and perhaps a lot, of divine intervention.

Many people have been praying for Lucy and we are incredibly grateful for the prayers and remarkable support she has received. Lucy’s friends have been with her every day since the beginning, and their presence and friendship have saved her life and helped to rebuild and maintain her spirit. And on a very positive note, Lucy’s challenge has brought together our entire modern family who have all been incredibly devoted to her care and recovery.

Lucy's vision and other faculties may require some form of brain computer interface, work that is underway at Neuralink, Precision Neuroscience, Science, Synchron, Nudge, and other companies in the space.

If you are going to have a devastating brain injury, now is the best time in history for that to happen. We are living in a world when you can be confident that the blind will soon see again. We are going to do everything we can to help make that happen, including by assisting existing companies in the space.

With respect to our promise to make Lucy’s care available to others, we have made good progress. In May, a real estate colleague made me aware of a 93% vacant, brand new, 400,000 square foot Class A+ purpose-built biotech facility on West End Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets that missed the market and was available for sale. The Pershing Square Foundation acquired the building 60 days later.

We also put under contract an adjoining 130,000 square foot building at 320 West 66th Street that is currently being used by Saturday Night Live for studio space. The building has 35-foot ceilings with massive column-free spaces that can be converted into superb rehabilitation facilities. We will close on the SNL building in December.

We are also acquiring an adjoining vacant lot with additional air rights. With just the existing zoning rights, we can add a 150,000 square feet for a total of 680,000 square feet, a lab footprint larger than Rockefeller University, and that’s without including the potential for an upzoning that would allow for substantially more buildable area on the site’s 3.4 acres with spectacular views of the Hudson.

Our goal is to build the world’s greatest brain research, rehabilitation, recovery, human optimization, and longevity institute. We have named it The Ackman Oxman Institute or the AOI for lack of a better name, but also to reinforce the point that Neri and I and our family are all-in on the mission.

The AOI will be patient-centric. It will not be an academic research institute that produces lots of papers, a Nobel Prize winner or two, but little if any results for patients. We will be laser-focused on cures, treatments, devices, rehabilitation and exercise equipment, and targeted and basic research with a goal of massively accelerating the time from idea to innovation to production to helping a patient.

While the AOI will be a non-profit, it will have highly commercial instincts. The AOI will have its own venture funding and will work to develop innovations to create companies that we will seed, assist, and spinout to ensure technologies, treatments, techniques, and drugs get to patients as promptly as possible.

On one 3.4 acre campus in what is still the greatest city in the world, we will do neurosurgery, neuroscience, rehabilitation, nutrition, BCI and device development, human trials, hyperbaric oxygen treatments, and life extension programs, and we will mandate and incentivize collaboration among the teams with no silos, politics, bureaucracy, or any other constraint that is inconsistent with the mission.

Mount Sinai will be an important partner and deservedly so, but it won’t be our only hospital or medical school partner as we don’t believe any institution has a monopoly on the best ideas or the best talent. We don’t believe in exclusive relationships because that is not in the best interest of patients.

Five years ago, we considered launching a brain institute inspired by Neri’s mom who sadly died from Alzheimer’s. We couldn’t make the math work as the real estate was too expensive and we believed it would be too difficult to recruit the best talent from universities to our effort.

Since then, the real estate became available at a 70% discount, universities became a much less attractive place to work due to politics outweighing meritocracy, protests that disrupt learning, the curse of antisemitism, and a decline in funding. Fortunately, during the same time, I made sufficient personal economic progress to make the AOI possible.

The advance of AI in the last few years will also enable us to greatly accelerate our mission. AI still has a lot to learn about human intelligence and the brain, and the AOI should be at the forefront of the interplay between the brain and AI.

Today, I am making a public filing disclosing a gift from Neri and me of ~$400 million or 10,000,000 shares of Pershing Square Inc. (PS) to the AOI. It is very early days for Pershing Square so these shares are intended to anchor the long-term work of the AOI as the shares compound over time while generating what we expect will be a growing stream of quarterly dividends to fund the Institute.

We will also be announcing an additional gift of similar and potentially greater size which won’t be in the form of Pershing Square stock to provide the AOI with the short- and intermediate-term runway necessary to enable it to achieve its goal of becoming a self-sustaining institute, which reinvests all of its revenues, royalties, and the economic rewards of company formation to advance the fields of brain health and human longevity.

Neri and I have chosen to anchor the funding of the AOI to maintain vision alignment and limit the need for the organization to focus on fundraising. We expect the AOI to be the best-resourced brain, rehab, recovery, and longevity institute in the world.

We are grateful to have been able to form a board which includes Dean Kamen (our generation’s Thomas Edison), George Yancopoulus (CEO of Regeneron), James Rothman (Nobel Laureate), Bernardo Sabatini (neuroscientist), Chris Kellner (neurosurgeon), Olivia Flatto (CEO Pershing Square Foundation), Neri Oxman, and myself.

We have recently identified a CEO who we expect to announce by October along with other key hires, and are beginning searches for a Chief Scientific Officer, a Chief AI/Technology Officer, a Chief Operating Officer, a Chief Financial Officer, and other key leadership roles.

If you find what we are building compelling and want to be part of the leadership team that creates and builds the AOI from a standing start, please send an email to: [email protected] with a short note as to why you believe you can help. Please include your best three ideas for the AOI along with a summary of your background and your most important accomplishments.

We promise strict confidentiality to those expressing interest in working with us.

We have learned from Lucy that the brain can recover from even catastrophic injury. There is so much more work to be done as the mind is a terrible thing to waste.

For details from my Pershing Square SEC filing see:

https://t.co/gZKafCw6Ia

[Reza Pahlavi Communications @PahlaviComms]

For more than 82 days, the regime has cut off Iranians from the internet, silencing their voices and replacing them with its own fabricated narrative.

Our duty is to bring the true voice of the Iranian nation to the world.
https://t.co/CrMc4BVpdc

[The Iran Watcher @TheIranWatcher]

Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, wore the Lion and Sun Iranian flag at the Met Gala yesterday.

Thank you Sergey! 🇮🇷

[Reza Pahlavi @PahlaviReza]

Whether or not Europe stands with us, whether or not your journalists do their jobs, whether or not your politicians demonstrate the courage to act, I will fight for my people and my country.

[Miad Maleki @miadmaleki]

1/10 The U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would cost Iran approximately $276M/day in lost exports and disrupt $159M/day in imports, a combined economic damage of ~$435M/day, or $13B/month.

Over 90% of Iran's $109.7B in annual trade transits the Persian Gulf. Oil/gas accounts for 80% of government export earnings and 23.7% of GDP. Kharg Island alone generates ~$53B/year, or as I noted to @TIME, "$78 billion a year in energy revenue.

[NASA @NASA]

Hello, Moon. It’s great to be back.

Here’s a taste of what the Artemis II astronauts photographed during their flight around the Moon. Check out more photos from the mission: https://t.co/rzM1P0QbOl

[Reza Pahlavi @PahlaviReza]

Dear compatriots,

Our nation is wealthy, talented, and proud, yet our people have been impoverished due to the corruption, incompetence, and reckless adventurism of the Islamic Republic.

This must come to an end.

Today, I present to you five economic goals of the transitional system. These are clear and honest commitments based on the Iran Prosperity Project, aimed at restoring Iran's wealth to its people. This program will be implemented by drawing on the talent and expertise of Iranians.

First, the transitional system will free our country's economy from the grip of military and paramilitary forces and economic criminals and return it to citizens and stakeholders.

Second, the transitional system will reclaim Iran's wealth that is frozen abroad and return it to Iranian citizens.

Third, the Transitional System is committed to spend Iran's wealth for Iranians, instead of spending it for terrorists. This includes rebuilding and modernizing infrastructure, especially the water supply, electricity, and fuel networks across the country.

Fourth, the transitional system will dismantle the structures of rent-seeking, institutionalized corruption, and monopolies, and will direct national wealth toward healthcare, education, and the eradication of poverty.

And finally, Iran's greatest asset is not oil and gas, it is you. The transitional system will invest in Iran's human capital, connect Iran to the global economy, and restore economic stability, growth, and prosperity to our homeland.

These are not empty promises, but commitments of the transitional system for implementation. My pledge to you is that I will stand alongside you in pursuing the realization of this program.

Long live Iran,
Reza Pahlavi

[Mark R. Levin @marklevinshow]

Don’t look away. This is what Khamenei has done and is doing!

[Lord Walney @LordWalney]

Launching my report this morning. Undue Influence: the Iranian Regime’s Abuse of the UK Charity System. Download it here ⬇️

https://t.co/wwG2nVbEMV

[NetBlocks @netblocks]

⚠️ Update: It's Sunday morning in #Iran where the internet blackout continues into its second week, with the incident entering its ninth day at hour 192.

Though technical infrastructure remains operational, only a heavily controlled domestic intranet is available to residents.

[Saeed Ghasseminejad @SGhasseminejad]

“One week into this conflict, and there is no mass exodus from Iran. Iranian are not fleeing. A destabilized nation of 90 million could trigger a refugee crisis far larger than Syria's. Yet, the people are staying.

They stay because they have profound hope. They believe the Islamic Republic will finally fall, allowing them to reclaim and rebuild their nation.

But this hope is fragile.”

[Alicia Kearns MP @aliciakearns]

Britain is being exploited as a financial lifeline for one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist organisations, and this Government has allowed it to happen.

Two British-registered companies are laundering billions of dollars, around $1 billion directly to the IRGC.

This is not weakness by accident.

These companies must be sanctioned immediately. The IRGC must be proscribed as Starmer promised, and in solidarity with the people of Iran.
https://t.co/iXgMk7zrZ0

[Amjad Taha أمجد طه @amjadt25]

History will never forgive Starmer for how he let Britain down, before the United States and before the Middle East, simply because he was too afraid of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the political pressure of Islamist groups at home. This may go down as one of the weakest prime ministers Britain has ever had. @elonmusk was warning about Starmer long before most people paid attention. But at the time, no one listened.

[The Telegraph @Telegraph]

🔴 REVEALED: Two British companies are at the centre of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) global shadow banking operations

Read our investigation in more detail here 👇
https://t.co/38qjXPH6O5

[Emily Schrader - אמילי שריידר امیلی شریدر @emilykschrader]

Hours after Masoud Pezeshkian apologised to neighboring countries the regime has bombed and promised to stop, the IRGC carried out an attack on Dubai International Airport.

A situation that indicates a serious crisis and division within the power structure of the Islamic Republic.

The entire command and control systems have collapsed and contradictory orders are reaching the forces. This has caused everyone to blindly shoot wherever they can reach.

[Mark Dubowitz @mdubowitz]

It makes me so happy to see Iranians celebrating the elimination of Khamenei.

May they soon be blessed with a free Iran.

[Arman Eshraghi @ArmanEsh]

@carlbildt Shameful stance reeking of moral bankruptcy.