Record fine over US basketball player’s wages

**Bisi Adebayo** (0:01)
US. Basketball side, The LA Clippers, are slammed with a record fine over player wages, but they're crying foul. It's World Business Express from the BBC World Service, I am Bisi Adebayo.
Also, as another central bank moves billions of dollars worth of gold out of the US., we'll ask what's going on. And as robot taxis arrive on the streets of London, why is there still a driver behind the wheel, at least for now?
US. Basketball team, the Los Angeles Clippers, have been hit with a record $30 million fine by the National Basketball Association for breaking its salary rules. The league says the basketball team funneled millions of dollars to star player Kawhi Leonard. The NBA has also suspended the Clippers owner, former Microsoft CEO Steve Barmer. Mike Vrakhanov is a basketball business reporter for The Athletic.

**Mike Vrakhanov** (0:59)
A NBA investigation into the Clippers and alleged capture convention found that the Clippers and several of its top officials, including its owner, helped their star player Kawhi Leonard earn a significant amount of off court income by facilitating and creating endorsement deals with the number of team sponsors. And so the investigation found that what they did was in violation of the NBA's rules. The NBA has a salary cap, so it limits how much teams can spend on their roster and how much players can earn. And they found that the Clippers helped Kawhi Leonard earn more money off the court, which would be in violation of those rules because it gave them an unfair advantage.

**Bisi Adebayo** (1:46)
Thirty million dollars is a record fine. So how significant a punishment is that for a franchise as valuable as the Clippers?

**Mike Vrakhanov** (1:53)
You know, it's the largest punishment in NBA history. They took five first round picks for them, which is probably the most significant part of this punishment. There's a thirty million dollar fine for the team as well. And obviously, you know, one year suspensions for Steve Ballmer and a half year suspension for its team president, the head of its basketball operations, and a one year suspension for their team president of business operations. And so it's a significant suspension that goes way more than just the money involved.

**Bisi Adebayo** (2:25)
Mike Varkinov, the Dutch Central Bank has transferred more than seven to eight tons of gold from New York to London, saying it wants to be better prepared for growing geopolitical uncertainty. It is the second European country this year to remove its gold reserves from the United States after France did the same in January. Professor of Finance and Monetary Economics at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, Immanuel Munch, explains the broader picture behind Netherlands' decision.

**Immanuel Munch** (2:53)
The Dutch Central Bank was very clear in that it said that it really wanted to improve the tradeability of its gold stock. And so geopolitical uncertainty was only one of the reasons mentioned. The tradeability of the gold stock is the primary one.

**Bisi Adebayo** (3:07)
So what are the other reasons then?

**Immanuel Munch** (3:09)
It is much easier to trade gold in London. The Bank of England allows not just foreign central banks to hold gold, but also private market participants, so basically dealers, brokers of gold. Also in London, you basically have a certain quality of gold that you need to hold. And the gold that's stored in New York is typically of poorer quality that was used traditionally and you cannot easily sell that type of gold in the marketplace.

**Bisi Adebayo** (3:40)
And I wonder whether the Netherlands could be the start of something bigger. Do you now expect Germany and other European countries to consider where they keep their gold?

**Immanuel Munch** (3:50)
I do not anticipate that many, many central banks will follow this route, but certainly the French example early in the year and now the Dutch example show that some central banks have thought about how to strategically allocate their gold reserves and have acted. I really do not want to speculate whether other central banks will follow suit.

**Bisi Adebayo** (4:14)
Emmanuel Monge there. Well, let's turn to the markets now with Nicholas Hyatt, who is Leeds Alternatives Analyst at Hargrove's Lansdowne. Nicholas, it's been reported that NVIDIA has agreed to buy AI model platform to Hugging Face for $13 billion. Tell us more about that.

**Nicholas Hyatt** (4:32)
Well, NVIDIA tried to make a large investment in the company last year at a $7 billion valuation, but Hugging Face itself actually turned that down, and that was to preserve its independence. You can see why that would matter at Hugging Face. They're a repository for open source AI models and data, so users can download the code and use it themselves.