Author: Lily Harper

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities has bought Morgan Stanley’s electronic options market making business, underscoring how high-frequency trading firms now dominate an industry once ruled by Wall Street banks. Citadel purchased both the underlying business from Morgan Stanley and a large options position, said a person familiar with the matter. The tie-up highlights how high-frequency trading firms are playing an increasingly important role on Wall Street, leveraging powerful computers to buy and sell financial products such as stocks, bonds and derivatives. Citadel executed…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the worldJPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon warned European leaders they have a competitiveness problem and that they are currently “losing” the battle to rival the US and China. “Europe has gone from 90 per cent US GDP to 65 per cent over 10 or 15 years. That’s not good,” Dimon said at an event in Dublin organised by the Irish foreign ministry. “You’re losing.” The comments from Dimon, one of the most influential voices in global finance, underscores the challenges facing the…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Once upon a time, Robinhood merely offered trading in companies with outlandish valuations. Now, the online broker has become one itself. Founder Vlad Tenev is building a fast-expanding empire whose affinity with cryptocurrencies fits the current political mood. At 72 times this year’s forecast earnings, investors are making some heroic assumptions.Shares in Robinhood have risen 150 per cent this year, buoyed not only by the seemingly irrepressible trading activity of its retail investor customers, but also by expectations that once cryptocurrencies are…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Jupiter has agreed to buy CCLA, the biggest manager of money for UK charities, in a £100mn deal as the group seeks to grow its assets after a period of poor performance and client defections.London-listed Jupiter said on Thursday that the acquisition of CCLA, which counts the Church of England as one of its biggest clients, will add £44.3bn in assets.Jupiter’s chief executive Matthew Beesley said the deal would “increase scale in our home market of the UK, where Jupiter is already…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.UK insurer Legal & General has struck a private credit partnership with Blackstone that the US alternative assets giant said could be worth up to $20bn by the end of the decade.Blackstone will source private credit deals for the FTSE 100 company’s annuities business, in the latest example of European insurance and pension groups tapping US private capital groups to increase their exposure to a fast-growing asset class.RecommendedUnder the agreement, L&G’s annuities business will use Blackstone to originate investment-grade private credit assets,…

This article is an on-site version of our Unhedged newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every weekday. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here, or explore all FT newslettersGood morning. Yesterday President Donald Trump threatened Brazil, which the US ran a trade surplus of $24bn with in 2023, with 50 per cent tariffs. The grounds for the threat are that Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro is being unfairly prosecuted for, um, attempting to stay in office after losing an election. Unhedged feels this is a little too on the nose and will be having…

Apollo has used its in-house insurer Athene to remake US private capital, using billions of dollars from retirees to feed its asset management machine. But now it is another Apollo-backed insurer, Athora, that is on the march in Europe, with a £5.7bn acquisition that heralds the private equity giant’s arrival into the continent’s largest retirement market.The biggest UK deal of the year so far relates to the obscure but lucrative insurance niche of pension risk transfers or bulk annuities. Over the next decade, British companies are expected to offload about £500bn of retirement obligations and the assets backing them to…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.UBS may have been handed an early win in its battle to moderate stringent new capital requirements imposed by the Swiss government. Who to thank? The pragmatic and slow-moving Swiss political system. The fierce debate between the Swiss lender and the government over how much more money it should hold in reserve domestically for its overseas branches has been raging for months. By Swiss standards, it has all become quite emotional.Many Swiss citizens remain rightfully angered by the collapse of Credit Suisse…

One scoop to start: Revolut is in talks to raise new funding from investors at a $65bn valuation in a transaction that would fuel global expansion for Europe’s most valuable start-up.And a sibling rivalry scoop: Grant Thornton’s UK and US businesses are vying to take over their German sister firm in a private equity-fuelled race to secure a greater share of the accounting group’s global network.Welcome to Due Diligence, your briefing on dealmaking, private equity and corporate finance. This article is an on-site version of the newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every Tuesday…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Hedge funds myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Hunterbrook Global has been valued at $100mn after a recent fundraising, as the novel US newsroom-cum-hedge fund revealed to investors that it planned to move into litigation. The new capital, raised by the parent company that oversees the hedge fund Hunterbrook Capital and the news outlet Hunterbrook Media, has come from investors, including the Ford Foundation and venture capital firm Floating Point, according to a person familiar with the fundraise.Hunterbrook was launched in 2023 by investor Nathaniel Brooks Horwitz and writer Sam…