Author: Lily Harper

This article is an on-site version of our Europe Express newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every weekday and Saturday morning. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here, or explore all FT newslettersGood morning. If you haven’t yet read that story of how senior US officials, including the vice-president and defence secretary, accidentally shared classified details about last week’s bombing of Yemen with a journalist in an unofficial messaging group, it’s an absolute marmalade-dropper. Sticking to the standard Trumpworld script, they accused Europeans of being “freeloaders” who should be sent the bill for keeping…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the UK financial regulation myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.More than 100 pages of regulations covering consumer finance, investments and mortgage lending will be “retired” by the UK financial watchdog in response to calls from businesses and the government to streamline its rules.The Financial Conduct Authority said it would also withdraw hundreds of supervisory publications and review its “prescriptive disclosure rules” to give firms more flexibility in areas such as online transactions.The announcement, which is rare for a regulator better known for creating new rules than destroying them, came after…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.When a company announces a big acquisition, a share price fall of more than 15 per cent rather suggests it is based on shaky foundations. That’s the situation Dublin-headquartered, Chicago-based and Australia-listed building materials provider James Hardie Industries finds itself in, following its $8.75bn cash-and-shares deal for US decking maker Azek. In part, that’s because James Hardie is offering its target the best room in the house. Under the proposed deal, Azek shareholders get $3.8bn of cash, plus 26 per cent of a…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Wealthy Americans both in the US and abroad are drawing up contingency plans to move assets to Switzerland over uncertainty caused by the Trump administration. Private bankers, multi-family offices and asset management groups said they had seen a large increase in clients wanting to set up Swiss-based bank and investment accounts, especially ones that are compliant with US tax rules. Josh Matthews, UK-based co-founder of Maseco, which provides wealth management for Americans abroad, said that the last time he had seen this…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Exchange traded funds myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.GraniteShares, a $10.6bn manager of high-risk leveraged and inverse exchange traded products, has been suspended from selling new units in its European range.The base prospectus for the company’s 65 European ETPs expired on Friday, and a regulatory note posted on its website said an updated prospectus had not been approved “at the date of this announcement”.“As a result, issuance of new tranches of ETP securities will be suspended from March 22 2025” until regulators have signed off the revised prospectus, the…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the UK house prices myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Housing affordability in England and Wales returned to its pre-pandemic levels last year after wages rose much faster than house prices, official figures show. The median average home in England last year cost £290,000 — 7.7 times the median average earnings of a full-time employee. This was below the 7.9 reported in 2019, and down from a peak of 9.0 in 2021, figures from the Office for National Statistics showed. The ratio of house prices to earnings rose sharply between 2020…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Exchange traded funds myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Earlier this year, Morningstar collated the data on which US investment funds have created the most wealth for investors over the past decade. Booring. The list was naturally dominated by big index funds. The only outliers were a medley of Capital Group funds and Fidelity’s Contrafund, and they were in the mix simply because of their sheer size. Even a modest percentage return on a massive amount of AUM will produce a large nominal number of dollars of wealth. However, yesterday…

Two of Wall Street’s most aggressive investment firms are battling over the control of a troubled ecommerce start-up, underlining how even companies buckling under high interest rates and a weakening economy remain prime targets for creative financiers. Vacasa, a publicly traded vacation rental marketplace once worth billions, last week accepted a sweetened buyout offer worth around $200mn from Casago, a small competitor whose bid is in partnership with Vacasa’s longtime private equity backer, Silver Lake.But the Casago deal price of $5.30 per Vacasa share in cash is far less than the $5.75 now on offer from Davidson Kempner, a well-known credit…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Exchange traded funds myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Latest news on ETFsVisit our ETF Hub to find out more and to explore our in-depth data and comparison toolsHANetf is set to launch a Europe-focused defence exchange traded fund to provide investors with exposure to “one of the fastest growing and most strategically important sectors”.The new ETF will use a similar methodology to the white-label provider’s Future of Defence Ucits ETF (NATO), which has gained “significant traction” among investors and recently surpassed $1.8bn in assets, the company said.In contrast to…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Europe’s drive to simplify and streamline financial regulation is making top supervisors nervous about the risk of key safeguards being watered down. Two of the EU’s most senior financial supervisors told the Financial Times they were determined to avoid crisis prevention measures being swept away in the push to revive the region’s sluggish economic growth.“If it is about deregulating and lowering the bar on financial protections, we will not be ready to tackle volatility.’’ said Dominique Laboureix, head of the Single Resolution Board…