bought

They have bought their first Porsche

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In 1956, Antonio Molina and Joselito were playing on Spanish radio stations. But life was very different outside our borders. Then, Elvis Presley launched Heartbreak Hotel and the newspapers of the time reported that in London they had to stop traffic because “dozens of boys, parked in the middle of the street, began to dance to the rhythm of the rock and roll“. It is very likely that that rock and roll will be danced at the wedding Derek Evans and Audrey Evanstwo young people who said yes to each other 70 years ago. Since then, the Evans couple has remained together for seven decades together. And for their platinum weddings, the Evans couple have said another “I do.” This time to get his first Porsche. An electric Porsche “Neither of us are running people but we like the feeling of power and comfort.” The one who expresses herself in these terms is Audrey Evans, who at 94 years old, of which 70 have been by her husband’s side, explains why they have chosen a Porsche as a wedding gift for these seven decades together. “I have always thought that Porsche was unique, so reliable and different from any other brand. We had always fantasized about oneand then we thought: ‘why not now?”, says Mr. Evans in an article that the company itself has published. The Evans couple receiving their first Porsche And from their words, they don’t seem to regret it. “It’s a great feeling when you have a Porsche. It feels like you’re part of an incredible club,” he reaffirms. And with a laugh he tells what happened when a delivery man saw him arrive home with a Porsche 911 that they had borrowed from the dealership: “his mouth almost fell to the floor.” But the brand new Porsche they have bought has been a Macanthe company’s electric SUV, in Cray color. The company has shared photos of the day they picked up the car in Bournemouth, in the south of the United Kingdom. Are they happy? “It’s wonderful fun,” explains Mr. Evans, who drove a Ford 8. His wife took the first wheel with a austin 7. Unlike that delivery man, his children were not in the least surprised that a man and a woman over 90 years old opened the doors of a Porsche dealership and ordered a Macan. “There isn’t a 19-year-old in Dorset (next to Bournemouth) that Dad hasn’t left behind at the traffic lights. They’ve never lived a conventional life, so When they told us they were going to buy a Porsche, we just smiled“explains one of his children. And that passion for leaving behind everything in his path has not died within Derek Evans. If you ask him, he’s clear which Porsche will be next: “a Taycan. It takes me a while to get out of it but… you know, it’s amazing!” What more can be said? Simply, I hope Mr. and Mrs. Evans enjoy their new Porsche Macan very much and intensely. Because here we will always defend buying a car that you simply like. Without further reasons. Photo | porsche In Xataka | Porsche Macan, analysis: there was a day when this car had a gasoline V6, and that’s what Porsche wants you to forget

Madrid has bought so many electric cars that the DGT has ended one of its great incentives

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Electric cars and plug-in hybrids will not be able to circulate in the Bus-HOV lane unless the signs indicate so. The DGT has confirmed that it was one of the most attractive measures for the potential customer of a car with a Zero Emissions label to take the leap. Now, so many cars of this type have been sold in Madrid that they have ended up putting an end to this advantage. What has happened? The DGT has sent a statement announcing the “Resolution on special traffic regulation measures for 2026.” Nothing very juicy except for one detail: the announcement that the Zero Emission cars they have run out of taking advantage the Bus-HOV lane to avoid traffic jams. The DGT explains that from now on, drivers of a Zero Emissions car (electric or plug-in hybrid with more than 40 kilometers of autonomy) will only be able to circulate on this special lane when it is specifically signposted. By default, they will not be able to enter it. Because? According to the DGT, the decision “responds both to the demand of the citizens and to the requests of the public transport companies and the Ombudsman who have conveyed to the DGT their concern about the progressive loss of effectiveness of the HOV lanes that directly affects the regularity and punctuality of the service, discouraging its use and harming thousands of daily users who opt for public transport.” And they provide data: traffic jams on the main roads have increased by 10%, while in the Bus-HOV lanes they have increased by 22%. But the data skyrockets in Madrid. According to their accounts, traffic jams are 20% more frequent on the main road of the A-6 entering and exiting Madrid. In its Bus-HOV lane, traffic jams have increased by 90%. Madrid, absolute leader. According to ANFAC data, Madrid was the Autonomous Community where the most electrified cars (electric and plug-in hybrids because the data also discriminate by non-plug-in hybrids) were purchased. In total, at the end of 2025, 102,245 cars of this type were recorded. Across Spain, 245,629 Zero Emission cars were purchased. The next region in which the most Zero Emission cars were purchased was Catalonia but it remained at 33,309 units. Behind them, only the Valencian Community and Andalusia exceeded 20,000 units. Goodbye to one of the great incentives. Until now, switching to the Bus-HOV lane despite only having one passenger traveling in an electric or plug-in hybrid car was one of the great incentives to get a vehicle of this type. The HOV Bus on the A-6 in Madrid, the only one for which the DGT offers data, is a relief for a road that is clogged daily. Beyond the driving comfort (absence of noise or vibrations) and the savings if we recharge at home, the Zero Emissions cars had two great incentives that were considered “political”. One is the purchasing aid that until now was collected in the MOVES III Plan but that have been frozen waiting for a Auto+ Plan that has not yet materialized. The second was this use of the Bus-HOV lane, since the time saved per day was considerable. However, advantages applied by each municipality such as unlimited access to ZBEsexemptions in the payment of road taxes or free parking in regulated parking areas. These aids are of municipal application and, therefore, vary from one city to another. Goodbye, goodbye. The loss of the unlimited pass for the VAO Bus is only a reminder that Zero Emission cars continue to enjoy some aid that, it is hoped, will end up disappearing. This is what has happened, for example, in Norway, where the exemption from paying taxes has caused a hole of 1.8 billion euros. The solution that has been proposed is to tax the weight of vehicles to alleviate this problem. In other cities, like parisit is also ignored whether the car is electric or not and a similar mechanism is also used to charge in regulated parking areas. Photo | DGT In Xataka | Guide to know if your car will be able to circulate in the ZBEs of Madrid in 2026: labels, registrations and areas

Decathlon has just bought Intersport in Spain. And with this, a business model closes: multi-brand sports retail.

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Decathlon has notified the CNMC the acquisition of Intersport CCS in Spain. The operation would add some 120 stores (30 owned and 90 franchised) to the 176 stores that Decathlon already operates in the country. Now the regulator You have one month to make a statement in first phase. Why is it important. This purchase closes one business model and consolidates another: Intersport represented the retail traditional sports: multi-brand, with Nike, Adidas, Puma and company on its shelves. Decathlon is the opposite: the own brand (Van Rysel, Quechua, Kiprun…) is what dominates, with mainly low prices, or at least lower than those of the big brands, and total control of the value chain. The first has gone bankrupt and the second keeps its locations. The background. Intersport entered bankruptcy in March 2025 with a debt of between 14 and 30 million euros. Tried to get 70% cuts with banks like BBVA and Sabadell, and with suppliers like Nike and Puma, but it didn’t work. In November, Intersport France bought the business for 300,000 euros and now it is Decathlon who takes it entirely. Between the lines. The battle of retail sports is no longer so much about what brands you sell as about how many square meters you control and what you sell within. The big sports brands have opted for direct sales to the consumer (Nike closing distributors, for example, although he got a frog). Intersport was trapped selling brands that no longer needed it to reach the customer, without great differentiation of its own and with very high inventory costs. Nike and Asics are not Kalenji and Artengo. Yes, but. Decathlon buys Intersport largely because it buys key locations before they are occupied by Amazon, Shein (which is about to physically disembark in Europe) or any other e-commerce actor that needs a physical presence at least to facilitate returns and collections. In it retail 2026, the physical store continues to be differential, but only if you sell products that cannot be easily purchased online. A Van Rysel cycling set is not on Amazon. Some Nikes, yes. The contrast. This is not very different from what happens in the food sector: Mercadona dominates because it sells its few own brands and controls the chain. Multi-brand supermarkets (those that only distribute) are in a more complicated position. He retail sports follows the same pattern: consolidate or die. Stores without their own identity tend to disappear. And now what. If the CNMC approves the operation, Decathlon will reinforce its hegemony in Spain. But the news is not so much the number of stores as the model that remains standing. In 2026, those who control what they produce, how they sell it, and where they distribute it survive survive. The rest is noise. In Xataka | Wallapop taught us how to sell used things. Decathlon has learned to make money with it Featured image | Decathlon, Intersport

Agentic AI was the new race for Big Tech and Meta was far behind. It has bought the company most capable of recovering

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Meta has closed the purchase of manusa Singapore-based artificial intelligence startup, for more than $2 billion. Throughout this year, Meta has reinforced its AI operations by acquiring several companies focused on different specialties. In July bought Play AIfocused on voice with AI. In August acquired WaveFormsan audio-focused startup. And in September was done with Rivosa company specialized in the design of semiconductors and RISC-V chips. Manus’s is already the fourth major purchase this year, and it is his hope not to be diluted in the race to dominate AI when all this time he has focused his efforts on Llama and his open weights approach. Why it is important. The Agentic AI (agents capable of performing complex tasks with minimal human supervision) has long become the new battlefield for big technology companies. Although companies like Microsoft or OpenAI had sufficient resources to develop in this field, Meta needed to strengthen its position in this segment if it did not want to be left behind. Manus came to reach 100 million dollars in annual recurring revenue just eight months after its launch, which offers Meta a product that generates money right away, something not very common in this sector. What does Manus do? The startup rose to fame in March with a video demo that went viral, showing how its AI agent was able to produce detailed research reports, build custom web pages, filter job candidates, plan vacations, and analyze investment portfolios. All using AI models developed by companies such as Anthropic and Alibaba. At the time, Manus even claimed to surpass OpenAI’s Deep Research. Currently, the company has around 100 employees, mainly in Singapore, offers subscriptions of $20 to $200 per month and already has a user base of millions. Initial success. Manus emerged a few months after the debut of DeepSeekthe Chinese model that shook the foundations of the industry due to its capabilities supposedly developed with less computing power than its American rivals. Just like account WSJ, the startup secured a $75 million funding round led by Benchmark in April, which valued the company at $500 million. Among its investors are firms such as Tencent, ZhenFund or HSG. Untying ties in China. The parent company behind Manus, Butterfly Effect, was founded in 2022 in Beijing by two Chinese entrepreneurs, including its CEO Xiao Hong, known as ‘Red’. Although most of its researchers and engineers were located in China, Manus launched outside the country because it used American AI models that are not available there. Shortly after securing its investment with Benchmark, the company officially moved its headquarters to Singapore. According to account WSJ, Manus has ruled out developing a version for the Chinese market. Goal declared to Nikkei Asia that, following the acquisition, Manus will have no ties to Chinese investors and will no longer operate in China. All existing investors have been excluded from the operation, according to they count from Bloomberg. What’s coming now? Meta plans to keep Manus running independently while integrating its agents into Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, platforms where Meta AI is available. According to WSJManus CEO Xiao Hong will report directly to Javier Olivan, Meta’s chief operating officer. “Joining Meta allows us to build on a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus works or how decisions are made,” Xiao stated in the official announcement. No return guarantees. Mark Zuckerberg continues his mission to prove that AI can deliver tangible returns. Goal plans to spend $600 billion in American infrastructure over the next three years, much of it related to AI. Just like assures Bloomberg, it is an amount that causes some skepticism in some investors, since there are no guarantees that this expense will generate significant income soon. Cover image | TechCrunch In Xataka | NVIDIA has paid $20 billion to “license” Groq’s technology. He actually bought it

Imoo turned the children’s smartwatch into its own genre. Now all the parents who bought it are stuck

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According to CounterPoint Research estimate for the global smartwatch market in 2025… Apple grew 12%. Samsung fell 6%. Imoo grew by 17%. Action replay: A Chinese brand that exclusively sells children’s watches is growing more than Appleand definitely more than Samsung, which is going down. Imoo, what The year has already started growing in quotaalready has 7% of the global smartwatch market. And it doesn’t really compete against the Apple Watch Ultra or the current Galaxy Watch: compete against the anguish of not knowing where your child is when he leaves school. Or rather: against the fear of not knowing if one day something happens. Counterpoint Research projects that the global smartwatch market will grow 7% in 2025 after first falling in 2024. That rebound is partly explained by Apple launching the cheap SE 3 and recovering after seven consecutive quarters of declines. But there is another factor: China went from 25% global share in 2024 to 31% in 2025. And within that jump, Imoo has a specific role that perhaps we are not looking at closely enough. Huawei is reinforcing its focus on health and sports, Apple maintains its inertia, Xiaomi focuses on the watch as part of a domestic ecosystem… and Imoo has turned parental fear into a product category. Their watches have GPS, calls, SOS button or alerts when the child leaves an area geofenced by his parents. As a watch it is not very smart and perhaps fits better in the category of surveillance and emergency aid device. Imoo hasn’t invented parental fear, but it has built a great machine to monetize it. Besides, It is a device that creates functional dependency: Once a parent puts it on their child’s wrist, they get used to the peace of mind it provides. So it is difficult not to renew it when the child stamps it or when it becomes obsolete. This success of Imoo goes beyond technology: when you grow 17% a year selling this type of watches, you do not measure adoption, but rather the number of parents who have decided that the anxiety that would cause them not knowing where their child is (understandable, of course) is worse than the inconvenience of constantly tracking them. Once you cross that threshold, there is no turning back. Previous generations had opaque spacesmoments of disappearance for a few hours before returning to dinner. These spaces are closed with this type of products, colorful and gamified, with a branding questionable but an unquestionable commercial success. Parents do not feel that they “control”, but rather that they protect. And kids don’t feel tracked, at least until they get acne and the bomb goes off, until then they just feel like they have a cool watch. And there is an advantage for parents: if suddenly almost all of your child’s classmates have one, the fact that your child does not have one becomes an anomaly. Imoo’s 7% share (and counting) measures how many children are growing up knowing that their parents can track them at any time. It measures a generation that normalizes permanent connectivity as a default state from the age of six. Counterpoint speaks of the smart watch market with “China-driven growth” and “different strategies to sustain the engagement of the consumer”, but it does not mention that One of those strategies is to redefine a part of childhood. The next son will also wear the watch. And the next one too. Imoo doesn’t need to grow faster than Apple to win. It just requires that each generation of parents find it more unthinkable than the previous one to leave a child unaccounted for. In Xataka | After almost a decade with the Apple Watch, I have switched to a Garmin. And I understood what I was missing Featured image | Xataka

NVIDIA has paid $20 billion to “license” Groq’s technology. He actually bought it

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NVIDIA has reached an agreement to “license” assets from Groq and will pay 20 billion dollars for said assets. The company—not to be confused with Elon Musk’s chatbot, Grok—has been designing and manufacturing AI chips for model inference for years. The quotes around “licensing” are important, because this is not a deal: it is a stealth acquisition. what has happened. on Wednesday the news appeared that NVIDIA had agreed to sign a licensing agreement with AI startup Groq. This news was confirmed by those responsible for Groq themselves. on your blogin which they talked about a “non-exclusive license agreement for inference technology to accelerate AI inference on a global scale.” But what both companies say is one thing and what this really is is quite another. How to buy a company without buying it. As part of the agreement, the company’s CEO and co-founder, Jonathan Ross, will go to work for NVIDIA, as will Sunny Madra – its current president – and other senior executives who “will join NVIDIA to help NVIDIA advance and scale this licensed technology.” At Groq they point out that they will continue to operate as an “independent company” led by Simon Edwards, who was their chief financial officer (CFO) and will now become the CEO. NVIDIA keeps (almost) everything. In September Groq raised a financing round of 750 million dollarswhich placed its valuation at $6.9 billion. Disruptive, Blackrock and other companies participated. Alex Davis, CEO of Disruptive, indicated on CNBC that NVIDIA will keep all of Groq’s assets except for one: Groq’s newly launched cloud business. NVIDIA’s biggest “pseudo-acquisition”. This operation is by far the most important for NVIDIA, which bought the Israeli company Mellanox —which designs chips—for $6.9 billion in 2019. In an internal email obtained by CNBC, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang explained that “although we are adding talented employees to our ranks and licensing Groq’s intellectual property, we are not acquiring Groq as a company.” The phrase is significant but sensitive, and NVIDIA may want to escape regulators’ scrutiny with this type of pseudo-acquisition. They already made another pseudo-acquisition before. Last September NVIDIA made an identical move by “betting” 900 million dollars by server startup Enfabrica. As in this case, they called to that operation a licensing agreement for its technology, but as in this case what happened is that the CEO of Enfabrica, Rochan Sankar, and other employees, ended up being part of the NVIDIA staff. What is Groq?. Although the name is confused with that of the xAI chatbot, this AI startup does something very different from that model. Groq was founded in 2016 by a group of former Google engineers led by Jonathan Ross and Douglas Wightman. Ross was one of the designers of Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), and Wightman was part of the Google X team and would end up becoming Groq’s first CEO until his departure in 2016. What Groq does. The company has designed AI chips that are specifically specialized in inferring AI models, or in other words, accelerating the execution of those models. While NVIDIA and other companies are especially focused on chips for model training, an equally critical phase, they are not as prepared for inference. Chatbots at full speed. That’s where Groq comes in, who allows extraordinary acceleration of inference and ensure that when we chat with models they “write” at very high speeds. This is when very high token/s speeds are obtained, far above other infrastructures. Not only that, Groq is also cheaper thanks to its specialized chips, so if you want your chatbot to respond at full speed, Groq chips are a fantastic option. How to be a monopoly without saying it. This investment by NVIDIA demonstrates its intention to diversify its business and not stay stuck in its own solutions. The huge operation gives it a major competitive advantage because none of the big AI companies today had focused specifically on inference chips. Groq did from the beginning, and with this “deal” it seems clear that NVIDIA’s dominance in this sector can be strengthened. Is, some analysts saya defensive move rather than a strategic one, and they may be right: Google is getting stronger and stronger with its TPUsand that now Groq is basically part of NVIDIA – although they don’t want to say it that way – will allow it to compete better against the aforementioned Google and the rest of the rivals that are beginning to challenge that dominance. Image | Groq | NVIDIA In Xataka | AMD’s problem is not that it doesn’t make good GPUs for AI. It’s not even close to NVIDIA

A man bought Lambo.com to ask for 75 million from Lamborghini: justice has taken it from him and his problems do not end there

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In 2018, an Arizona domain investor thought he had found a four leaf clover digital by taking control of the “Lambo.com” domain for $10,000. The man was convinced that one day he could resell it for a huge amount thanks to Lamborghini’s fame. Years later, the judges have given him bad news: not only will he not get that money, but he will be left without the domain and with a considerable legal bill. I am “Lambo” for life According to the documents In the case, Richard Blair bought the Lambo.com domain in February 2018 for $10,000, seeing in it a business opportunity linked to the enormous popularity of the Italian car manufacturer and the colloquial name by which its supercars were known: lambos. In Xataka Lamborghini will only manufacture 29 units of its latest supercar but don’t be in a hurry: they were already sold before being presented Shortly after the purchase, Blair began using “Lambo” as a nickname online, although until then there was no sign of him identifying himself that way. Blair maintained that this nickname was not related to the Italian brand, but rather was a play on the English word “Lamb“, that is, lamb, trying to present an alternative explanation that would distance it from the universe of supercars. At the same time, he redirected Lambo.com to another page where he published personal content and from which he presented the domain as an asset for sale, trying to show that the use of the name It was linked to its own identity and not to an attempt to take advantage of the car manufacturer’s reputation. In Xataka Buying a Lamborghini is a luxury reserved for a few: building one with used parts and an Ikea sink is another level Lambo’s price escalation The case records show that Blair soon set a very high price for the Lambo.com domain. The domain was first listed for sale on August 6, 2020 for $1,129,298. On December 23, 2020, the figure already tripled, rising to 1.5 million dollars and on January 27, 2021, it already reached 3.3 million dollars. Far from stopping, the owner continued to increase expectations and on September 23, 2021 the price rose to $12 million, on August 11, 2022 it made a considerable jump to $58 million, and on September 7, 2023 the figure reached $75 million. According to pointed Road&Track, during that period Blair received several offers for the domain but rejected them, because his objective was not to sell it to any buyer, but to get Lamborghini to pay an exorbitant amount for an address that fits the colloquial form of his name. Blair’s move did not go unnoticed by the Italian manufacturer, which in April 2022 filed a lawsuit with the Arbitration and Mediation Center of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), under the protection of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy UDRP), requesting the transfer of the Lambo.com domain to the company considering that it was trying to profit from a name clearly linked to its trademark registered by the supercar manufacturer. In August 2022, WIPO concluded that Blair acted in bad faith and ordered the transfer of the domain to Lamborghini, understanding that he had no prior rights to the term “Lambo”, that he only began using that alias after purchasing the domain, and that he was trying take advantage of brand awareness to profit. Despite that decision, Blair decided to go to federal courts to appeal the WIPO resolution and maintain control over Lambo.com, prolonging the conflict and thus assuming new legal costs. The final blow of the courts As the conflict progressed, Blair redirected the domain to a personal website where he published a text in which he warned that he would be confronted by those who tried to take away his domains. “I AM LAMBO of LAMBO.com and I will defend, defeat and humiliate those who try to steal any of the trademarks from my domain name, including my nickname,” a statement attributed to Richard Blair himself. {“videoId”:”x957t4e”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”Lamborghini Countach”, “tag”:”Lamborghini”, “duration”:”163″} The litigation ended up in district court of the United States, which supported the WIPO resolution and concluded that Blair had no rights to the name, demonstrating that he did not carry out any real activity on the page and that he attempted to benefit from the reputation of the Lamborghini brand. The result is that the manufacturer has obtained the Lambo.com domain without paying a single cent, while Blair has lost both his initial investment of $10,000 and the sales opportunities. In addition, the court has ordered him to pay legal costs, so buying Lambo.com not only has not brought him the expected benefits, but he has had to put money out of his pocket. Greed broke the bag. In this case, one that came loaded with money. In Xataka | In Dubai they don’t know what to do with so many abandoned luxury supercars: the less shiny side of getting rich Image | Lamborghini (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news A man bought Lambo.com to ask for 75 million from Lamborghini: justice has taken it from him and his problems do not end there was originally published in Xataka by Ruben Andres .

AI doesn’t just live on chips, it also requires massive energy, so Google has bought an energy company

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The AI needs a lot of energy and technology companies are already planning how to power their huge data centers. On the table there are such creative ideas as take them to space either submerge them in the sea to reduce its consumption. Google has opted for a more immediate solution: it has purchased an electricity company for data centers. The agreement. Google has purchased Intersect Powera company dedicated to developing energy infrastructure, including renewable energy sources, for data centers. Google has paid $4.75 billion for the San Francisco-based company, in addition to assuming its debt. According to Sundar Pichai: “Intersect will help us expand our capacity, operate with greater agility in the construction of new power generation facilities in line with the new load of data centers, and reinvent energy solutions to drive innovation and American leadership” Why it is important. The agreements of AI companies are usually focused on computing capacity, not energy. This agreement underscores the importance of energy in AI infrastructure, putting it on the same level as the very chips it powers. Data centers are being developed at a brutal pace and energy is presenting itself as a bottleneck. Satya Nadella already said it: there is no power for so many chips. It’s Google ensuring enough “food” for its chips. Yontersec. Google’s relationship with Intersect began just a year ago, when big tech acquired a minority stake in the company. Under this collaboration, several projects have come to light in their data centers. Both these projects and all Intersect personnel are part of the agreement. What the agreement does not include are other company assets, mainly located in Texas and California, worth 15 billion. These will continue to operate under the Intersect brand. Energy. In 2023, data centers already accounted for 4% of the energy consumption of the entire United States, and at the rate at which they are being built, the figure will continue to increase (there is talk of 12% by 2028). The problem is that US electrical infrastructure cannot support that pace and is having consequences for consumers through price increases in electricity. Google assures that with this agreement it will be able to guarantee “an abundant, reliable and affordable energy supply that allows the construction of data center infrastructures without passing on costs to network customers.” Image | Wikipedia, Intersect In Xataka | Talking about artificial intelligence is talking about energy, and the fashionable term is ‘bragawatts’

Mercadona has bought the company that has been supplying pallets and boxes for decades. And there is a very simple reason

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Let Mercadona monopolize 30% of the supermarket business is no coincidence. The success of Juan Roig’s chain responds to a cocktail in which, among other issues, its bet on white labelsthe ready to eat dishes and geographic dispersion. Another key to that equation is your supplierswho are responsible for supplying you from cheeses or kebabs to services. Now the chain has decided take the reins from one of those external firms, Logifruitthe same one that has been supplying it with boxes and pallets for decades. There is a word that explains it: logistics. What has happened? That Mercadona has decided to take over the Valencian company Logifruitone of the key suppliers of its logistics, since it supplies it with the boxes and pallets it uses to transport goods. It has been the Valencian chain itself that has been in charge to announce the acquisition, although without revealing the amount or the dates. In your statement Juan Roig’s company simply emphasizes the importance of the purchase for its internal operations and advances an important piece of information: the 1,600 Logifruit employees will join Mercadona’s team directly. What is Logifruit? A crucial piece in the functioning of the Valencian chain. The company was founded in 1996, has 16 logistics platforms and manages more than 18 million of boxes, boxes and reusable pallets designed for the transport of goods. Its network of facilities is spread across a good part of the peninsula, with 14 nodes distributed throughout Spain and two others in Portugal. Is it just another supplier? No. And not only because your rental model of reusable packaging has earned it a strategic role in Mercadona’s structure. Unlike other suppliers of Juan Roig’s company, which maintain extra business avenues (even if they are minority), the history and work of Logifruit is closely linked to that of the supermarket chain. The company itself explains on his website which started in 1996 as a “logistics operator to provide service to Mercadona’s fruit and vegetable suppliers.” Almost 30 years later, that link remains key for both companies. Why’s that? By defining your “interest groups” in the sustainability report 2023, Logifruit identifies the five major actors that shape its business: the workforce, the companies that supply materials, machinery and services, society as a whole, capital and customers. And among the latter he specifically cites two: Mercadona and its suppliers. In fact, although Logifruit talks on its website about “more than 1,095 clients”that ecosystem seems to basically pivot around Roig’s chain. The diary Five Days assures that, in its latest financial report, the box and pallet company recognizes that it did not have “other clients outside of the pool of services established for Mercadona and its suppliers”. At least by the end of 2024. Do we know anything more about the company? Yes. And it helps to better understand the movement that Mercadona has just made. Last year Logifruit invoiced around 164 million of euros (7% more) and obtained a net profit of 5.2 million. Its assets amount to 22.3 million and its liabilities include debts with financial entities, although most of them mature in the long term. The other piece of information that helps understand Roig’s movement is that in 2024 the company rented packaging worth 54 million euros to Mercadona and its suppliers, according to the documentation consulted by Five Days. What does Mercadona say? That the purchase will help it achieve two of its “objectives”: “unify all its logistics processes” and “continue consolidating the efficiency and sustainability of its distribution network.” “The agreement, pending approval by the Competition agencies and the corresponding administrative authorizations usual in this type of operations, will allow Mercadona to capture important synergies and further optimize its resources,” the Valencian firm stands outwhich hopes to “strengthen” its assembly line. And Logifruit? Logifruit also highlights the historical link between both companies. “When we began our collaboration with Mercadona, in 1996, we took on the challenge of offering a service that met their needs and gave them competitive advantages. Three decades later, I am proud to be able to say that Logifruit has overcome that challenge,” celebrates its president. In its financial report the company itself recognized that it would be “complicated” for Mercadona to find a substitute capable of supplying boxes and pallets in the short term and that this operation would also require a high investment. Is it something exceptional? Yes. And no. In addition to his commitment to the white label, the prepared food and geographical dispersion, Mercadona’s commercial success relies heavily on its network of suppliers. Although it is not common, this is not the first time that he has decided to integrate into his structure one of those companies that help him articulate his business. It already happened in 2010 with the Caladero packaged fish company, although years later he sold it to Profand. Images | Logifruit 1 and 2 and Andalusian Government (Flickr) In Xataka | Mercadona has grown so much in Spain that for the US it is no longer just a supermarket chain: it is a “cultural phenomenon”

In 1965, a notary bought an apartment of bare ownership from a 90-year-old owner. The old woman was already living her second life

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In 1965, in the picturesque city of Arles, in the south of France, the notary André-François Raffray believed he had found a bargain to invest. Jeanne Calment, a 90-year-old widow and no heirs owner of a large apartment in the historic center of the town, was willing to reach an agreement to sell her housing in exchange for a life annuity and to be able to live in it until his death. With the statistical data in hand, the purchase of the apartment was going to be a bargain for the notary, so he did not hesitate to reach an agreement with the elderly owner. What the young notary did not expect is that it was going to be the worst deal of his life: the old woman had a bombproof geneticsor at least that’s what everyone thought. The deal was a bargain, but not for who it seemed The purchase agreement was simple in its approach: Raffray would pay 2,500 francs per month to Calment (an amount equivalent to about 380 euros per month). until the death of the old woman (who we remember was already 90 years old), after which the property would be fully his. This type of contract (known in France as traveler) is based on the bare property. This legal concept establishes that the buyer acquires the right to property without enjoy the usufruct until an uncertain event occurs, in this case the death of the saleswoman. That is, it is like a deferred purchase in which a certain immediate payment is established and the seller can use the property until his death. The buyer then takes possession of the property. Given this condition, the price of the investment is considerably lower than the market value, since it is not available immediately. That reduction in the initial price has shot the number of operations that have been growing at a double-digit rate since the pandemic. According to published data by Expansionin 2021, this type of operations grew by 22.6%, 23.7% in 2022 and 11.3% in 2023. For a 47-year-old buyer like Raffray, that seemed like a smart move and a very low-risk investment. In 1965 and with the life expectancy statistics much smaller than the current ones, Raffray assumed that Calment would live perhaps a few more years and that the total amount he would pay would be less than the market price of the apartment. A saleswoman with a lot of attachment to life However, what seemed like an operation with few unknowns turned into a financial nightmare for Raffray. Jeanne Calment, the elderly nonagenarian, not only lived beyond any reasonable expectation at that time, but his longevity surpassed all calculations. Officially, Calment died in 1997 at the age of 122 years and 164 days. as he collected The New York Times. That is why he entered the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest person recorded to date, It’s also bad luck for Raffay. Raffray, in turn, died in 1995 at the age of 77, 30 years after signing the contract with Calment. Until that moment, the notary had paid fees that, together, They far exceeded the value of the property. However, after his death, his widow was forced to continue with payments to Calment, because the obligation agreed in the annuity contract only disappeared with the death of Calment, not Raffray. There was no escape. The result was that Raffray’s family ended up spending much more money than it would have cost to buy the apartment through conventional methods, without ever moving in. Calment herself, with irony, even commented in an article for The New York Times that “in life, sometimes bad deals are made.” A life worth two As expected, such remarkable longevity did not go unnoticed by science and medicine, with much interest being shown in investigating the details about the life and habits de Calment to try to reveal their secret…and boy did they do it. In 2018, a research team formed by the Russian mathematician Nikolay Zak and the gerontologist Valery Novoselov proposed a radical hypothesis: Jeanne Calment could have died in 1934. The Calment who had signed the bare ownership contract with André-François Raffray could be Yvonne Marie Nicolle Calment, daughter of Jeanne Calment who, supposedly, had died of pleurisy on January 19, 1934. The hypothesis was that Yvonne would have impersonated his mother’s identity to avoid paying inheritance taxes. That artificially “extended” the longevity of his mother, who was actually living two lives under the same name. This theory was supported by discrepancies in ancient documents, such as differences in physical characteristics between historical records and by comparing photographs of Yvonne and the supposed elderly Calment. So it was not only a fraud to avoid paying taxes, Raffay was also victim of deception. However, there is no scientific consensus on this version. Subsequent research by a team of Swiss and French demographers and historians, published in it Journal of Gerontologythey discard the hypothesis of fraud and maintain that, statistically, Calment could live to be 122 years old. In Xataka | There is a ‘good’ fat that hides a secret to aging better and being in shape. All that remains is to get the pill Image | Wikimedia Commons (Emilien Barral), grg.orgUnsplash (Jakub Zerdzicki)

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