Author: Lily Harper

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Franklin Templeton is predicting a slowdown in consolidation in the investment management industry as traditional asset managers with slumping public valuations struggle to acquire faster-growing but more highly valued private capital rivals. Jenny Johnson, chief executive of the $1.6tn in assets investment group, said a growing gap in valuations was making large mergers harder to pull off.“I think it’s hard for anybody who hasn’t made their move already because traditional asset managers don’t trade at particularly rich multiples,” she told the Financial…

Earlier this year, a Tokyo-based compliance officer was ready to call it quits. A job at an asset manager entering the country had fallen through after two months of painful negotiation.Within two weeks, however, he was swamped with offers from a hedge fund, a cryptocurrency outfit and another investment firm offering base salaries of close to ¥30mn ($204,000). He was 69 years old.The compliance officer’s experience underlines both the frenzy of interest Tokyo is attracting from global financial institutions, which could finally transform it into one of the world’s pre-eminent financial capitals — and the stumbling blocks that remain. Japan…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Almost everyone needs to borrow money at some point in their lives — it could be to buy a car or house, to pay for education or to cover an unexpected expense. This might seem scary — after all, borrowing sometimes has a bad reputation. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” is a famous line from Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. And some religions object to the practice of charging interest on borrowed money.Mastering MoneyThis article is part of Mastering Money, an FT…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Where do you go for advice about how to manage your money? For a lot of people social media might be the first stop — it’s quick, it’s convenient and it’s available whenever you want it. And there is some good information there. Worthwhile posts from creators who know what they are talking about. Mastering MoneyThis article is part of Mastering Money, an FT Schools report for students and teens on how to make good financial decisions. Other articles cover budgeting, investing,…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Your grandparents might have worked for the same company for their whole career, while your parents might have stayed in the same industry for theirs, but many young people know they are going to need to be more adaptable and creative in today’s working world. For some, this means starting a business, and anyone can have a go. This may require skills that school did not teach you, such as financial management and negotiation. It also comes with risks: you could lose…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Australian bank ANZ has been hit with a record A$240mn (US$160mn) penalty by the country’s corporate watchdog for a range of issues including its handling of a government bond sale and failing to refund fees charged against the accounts of deceased customers. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission said on Monday that the total penalty was the largest announced by the regulator against one entity and reflected the seriousness of ANZ’s actions and its repeated failure to rectify those issues. “Time and time again…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Medline Industries, a medical supply group backed by Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Carlyle, could go public as soon as this year in a bellwether test of investor appetite for large companies owned by private capital.The biggest privately owned US distributor of medical products, Medline confidentially refiled its draft prospectus for an initial public offering with the US Securities and Exchange Commission last week, putting it on pace to go public in the coming months, according to three people familiar with the…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.ANZ has issued an apology and offered psychological counselling to more than 100 senior bankers after they received an email sent in error instructing them to return their computers, ahead of the news that they were going to be fired. The Australian bank sent out the automated emails ahead of schedule on Wednesday. It held an online call with the staff later that day to confirm that those who had received them would be losing their jobs. “Unfortunately, these emails indicate an…

In the dog days of summer, the nearest you might get to an adrenaline rush is when you click on a square in Minesweeper and see a surprising number of blocks suddenly free up. But this kind of cascade has an interesting analogy in financial market crises.  As well as the immediately adjacent pattern of exposures, it’s been known for a while that banks and shadow banks can be brought down by “indirect” exposures. Whether or not you’ve directly lent to a counterparty, if that counterparty has a similar portfolio to you, then you’re at risk. If they get into trouble…

“I was in such shock that Alex was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer, the last thing I wanted to learn was about our finances,” says Jean Trebek.When Trebek became a widow in 2020, on top of the shock and grief, she was suddenly responsible for managing her family’s money. While she had worked in real estate and run a floristry business, it was her husband Alex, the genial host of US quiz show Jeopardy!, who had taken care of longer-term financial planning and investments.Alex’s strategy had been “more aggressive” than Trebek now felt comfortable with, given that his salary…