Author: Lily Harper

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.PwC’s new UK boss has lined up managing partner Laura Hinton as the frontrunner to replace the head of its crucial Middle East business next year, as the Big Four firm seeks to move on from a clash with a major Saudi client.Marco Amitrano, PwC’s UK senior partner, is considering Hinton — one of his former rivals for the top job — as the lead candidate to succeed Hani Ashkar, according to people familiar with the matter. Ashkar informed colleagues in May…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Red flags were raised over Wood Group’s financial statements as far back as 2017, according to corporate and regulatory records that indicate persistent questions over its accounting practices.The London-listed company — which the UK’s financial markets regulator is now investigating as £242mn takeover talks languish — had to restate an income statement after being questioned over its 2022 annual report by the country’s accounting watchdog. It was the second time the Financial Reporting Council had found problems with Wood’s accounts.The energy engineering…

Investors wondering what to do with their pensions, investments and savings face an uncertain environment on various fronts as the unpredictability of Donald Trump, the US president, shakes up the markets. Equities have been volatile and the dollar has had its worst start to the year since the 1970s due to uncertainty around Trump’s tariffs and geopolitical events. Fixed income is not playing its usual “stabilising” role in a portfolio to counter inflation concerns, with some wealth managers saying they no longer believe in the traditional 60-40 model of equities versus bonds. Gold is still seen as a haven but…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.This week, Nationwide building society reported that the average UK house price was £271,619 in June, as it dropped by an unexpected 0.8 per cent compared with May — the biggest monthly fall in two years. But how useful is this, given that, in the words of my late friend Charles Fairhurst, “all residential is local”? What he meant was that the price or rent of a home — and whether it is bought, let, or even built — is determined as…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The writer is co-head of private equity at KKRThe private equity naysayers are out in force in 2025. Underlying the latest predictions of the industry’s demise is a notable mis-step many firms made by over-deploying capital during 2021 and the first half of 2022, a period characterised by high valuations.Many of those investments will probably be underperformers. Consequently, private equity funds overexposed to these vintages may struggle to raise more capital. But is it the beginning of the industry’s downfall as some claim?While…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.There are few industries with a more “old world” feel than European insurers. The average age among the continent’s 10 largest listed players is almost 170. Yet quietly, these old-timers have been racking up the sort of market gains that would make many tech start-ups jealous.The Stoxx 600 insurance sub-index, which tracks 30 large European insurance groups, climbed 15 per cent in the first half of 2025 for its best half-year since 2019. And the performance is no flash in the pan:…

Trillions of pounds worth of assets are managed by London’s listed investment houses. Their purpose is to deliver financial security for clients by growing and preserving the value of their capital. Larger managers, such as Legal & General, Aberdeen, M&G and Schroders, offer access to a wide range of asset classes and geographies, can handle the largest mandates and tend to focus on mainstream markets. Smaller players offer distinctive investment approaches and niche and specialist options for diversification, often catering to wealthy individuals with an appetite for impact investing or risk, or who carry tax burdens that are suitable for…

When the Covid-19 pandemic forced the UK into lockdown in 2020, people up and down the country turned to baking sourdough bread and yoga. For Redinel and Oerta Korfuzi, the restrictions gave cover for a different pursuit: insider trading.As a result, the Albanian siblings are now facing a new form of lockdown. On Friday, a London judge sentenced former Janus Henderson research analyst Redinel Korfuzi, 38, to six years in prison and his sister Oerta Korfuzi, 36, to five years.“This case has elements akin to a Greek tragedy where an individual of some standing is brought crashing down by a…

Happy Friday! We’re going to try to shift this Q&A feature a bit earlier in the week in the future, but here’s an interview with Rob Gardner, a veteran of the UK investment industry with lots of interesting jobs under his belt.Gardner co-founded the investment consultancy Redington in 2006, before he left to become investment director of St James’s Place in 2019, and chair of the investment manager Rowan Dartington in 2021. Gardner then left those roles to found Rebalance Earth — a natural capital firm — where he is currently CEO. He also co-founded RedSTART, a financial education charity…

This article is an on-site version of our Moral Money newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered three times a week. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here, or explore all FT newsletters.Visit our Moral Money hub for all the latest ESG news, opinion and analysis from around the FT Welcome back.Delegates at this week’s UN Financing for Development conference in Seville, as I discussed in the last newsletter, have been focused on how to “do more with less” following cuts to foreign aid budgets. That might sound like a desperate attempt to put on…