Why Statues Taken Down in 2020 Are Coming Back

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Danny Lewis (0:18)

Turmoil and private credit continues, with investors wanting more of their money back from the industry's biggest fund. Plus, some members of the Russian establishment have started calling for President Vladimir Putin to end the war with Ukraine.

Yaroslav Trofimov (0:31)

There's people who have very little love for the Ukrainian government. However, they're speaking out now just because it's clear that the momentum of the war has changed.

Danny Lewis (0:42)

And a wave of cities across the US took down contentious statues in 2020

Now, some of them are getting put back up. It's Thursday, June 4th. I'm Danny Lewis for The Wall Street Journal, filling in for Alex Ossola. This is the PM Edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that moved the world today.

Investors are trying to pull billions of dollars out of the biggest private credit fund in the world, Blackstone's B-Cred. The fund's investors asked to redeem 10% of their shares in the second quarter. That amounts to $4.4 billion, up from the first quarter, when investors asked for 8% of their shares.

Matt Wirtz (1:19)

Blackstone says everything's fine. They are saying they have plenty of money, that investors that want their money will get it back, just not as quickly as they want.

And that the overall performance of their loans that they invest in, that those loans are doing fine. You know, in general, I think that's right. However, on the margin, what we're seeing is that more of those loans are starting to default.

Danny Lewis (1:40)

That's Matt Wirtz, who covers credit for the WSJ's finance bureau. He says managers of large private credit funds face growing financial strain from their investors.

Matt Wirtz (1:49)

Blackstone is like the blue chip name. Like if JP Morgan is like the blue chip of banks, like Blackstone is the benchmark for private credit and private equity funds. So if the number of their investors that are asking for their money back is going up, if the best in the industry is facing this, then it's only a bigger risk for everybody else.

Danny Lewis (2:10)

In stock markets, a rally in healthcare and financial stocks helped push the Dow sharply higher today. The index closed up almost 900 points, or about 1.7 percent. Meanwhile, tech stocks lagged after chip and software maker Broadcom's guidance on AI demand fell short of investor expectations. It dropped 12.6 percent and the NASDAQ ended the day slightly lower, while the S&P rose 0.4 percent.

We go now to Russia, which has fallen into a long stalemate on the front lines of the war in Ukraine. Significant voices in the Russian political establishment are now starting to publicly call for an end to the conflict. But there's a big question here. Will President Vladimir Putin listen?

We're joined now by the Journal's Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Yaroslav Trofimov. Yarov, who are some of the people in the Russian establishment now calling for an end to the war?

Yaroslav Trofimov (3:03)

So you hear it from people like Oleg Tsarev, who used to be a parliament member in Ukraine before fleeing to Russia, and then he was President Putin's top candidate to lead a puppet regime that Russia planned to install in Ukraine. Or you have people like Vasily Kashin, who is a top analyst and a prominent think tanker in Russia, so he wrote a piece in Russia's foremost foreign policy journal, also arguing that Russia really has no path to victory in Ukraine. These are people who have very little love for the Ukrainian government. However, they are speaking out now just because it's clear that the momentum of the war has changed.

Ukraine has been able to stop Russian advances by and large, and at the same time, Ukraine's drones and missiles have been able to strike throughout Russia. We saw the strike on the port of St. Petersburg this week. Justice, Russia's main economic conference with lots of foreign guests, was about to start. A lot of people that I talk to, who are watching Russia very closely, are very skeptical that President Putin will actually listen, because for this regime, war is really a modus vivendi. As a former Ukrainian foreign minister, Pavlo Klimkin told me, it's like riding a bicycle, if you stop, you fall.

Danny Lewis (4:18)

Have there been any repercussions for the people, who are arguing to end the war in Ukraine?

Yaroslav Trofimov (4:22)

Well, not really, because they are all couching this in very patriotic language, and they are all saying, we supported the war, it's just, we understand that now it's going to be difficult.