Author: Lily Harper

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Instead of a bonus, a steep pay cut is wrapping up the year for the chief executive of Nomura. Japan’s largest investment bank has announced measures to calm investors after a former wealth management employee was charged with attempting to murder and rob a client. But pay cuts and apologies won’t cut it: the reputational damage Nomura has sustained on Kentaro Okuda’s watch will not be easy to overcome.Okuda, also president of Nomura’s domestic securities unit, will return 30 per cent of…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.BlackRock has agreed to buy HPS Investment Partners in a $12bn deal, as the world’s largest money manager races to expand its share of the fast-growing and lucrative market for alternative assets.New York-based HPS is one of a handful of groups that dominate private credit, a market that has taken over swaths of corporate lending from traditional banks. BlackRock has agreed to pay $9.3bn in stock when the deal closes and a further 2.9mn shares, now worth $3bn, in five years’ time,…

Critics of the US audit regulator see an opportunity to defang and perhaps close down the agency after Donald Trump returns to the White House and installs officials committed to his deregulatory agenda. US accounting firms are calling for a change of direction at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board after four years of record fines and new rules that have irked the industry.While the accounting board survived an attempt by the first Trump administration to dissolve it and hand its work to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees the agency, the idea has resurfaced after complaints it has…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Japanese business & finance myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Nomura’s chief executive has apologised and taken a voluntary pay cut after one of the bank’s former wealth management employees was charged with attempting to murder and rob customers.“I would like to offer my deepest apologies to the victims and the many people involved for the great inconvenience and concern that have been caused,” said Kentaro Okuda, who will take a three-month pay cut of 30 per cent.“This incident is something that should never have happened for a financial institution…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.NatWest chief executive Paul Thwaite has said the bank is likely to return to full private ownership next year.“It is reasonable to expect that absent some big dislocation or economic event we’ll be back in private ownership next year, maybe as early as first half of the year,” said Thwaite, speaking at the FT global banking summit in London on Tuesday.The UK government has cut its stake in the bank to less than 11 per cent, down from 38 per cent a…

After a series of scandals at the height of the Covid pandemic, Singapore’s efforts to rein in its commodity trading sector have culminated in a lengthy prison sentence for a former oil trader now in his 80s.Lim Oon Kuin — known as OK Lim, and once one of Singapore’s richest men — was found guilty in May of defrauding HSBC and abetting forgery. The 82-year-old was sentenced in November to 17-and-a-half years in jail in a ruling the judge said was designed to act as a “deterrent”. Lim’s defence lawyer has appealed, citing his wheelchair-bound client’s age and poor health.…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the UK tax myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Institutional investors are pressing the Scottish government to reform the country’s “inequitable” equivalent of stamp duty, which they say could generate growth by unlocking billions of pounds of capital into property.Ahead of the Scottish Budget on December 4, asset managers say they are choosing not to invest in Scotland because of the lack of relief from land and buildings transaction tax (LBTT), the Scottish equivalent of stamp duty, on some collective investment funds.Abrdn, an Edinburgh-based UK asset manager, said the current rules made…

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 toolsBlackRock has rolled out an actively managed short-term money market exchange traded fund.The iShares € Cash Ucits ETF offers investors “the quality and liquidity of regulated money market funds within the convenience of the ETF wrapper”, according to the world’s largest asset manager.The product was the first actively managed short-term money market fund regulated ETF in Europe, the company said.It provided access…

My first City job was at Grenfell & Colegrave stockbrokers in the mid-1980s. Nobody seemed to be using the early IBM computer, so I had fun typing the green characters of C++ code. Used like an oversized calculator, it could eventually value the investment trust debentures that were traded on the exchange.Fortunately, the computer priced the debentures a little more accurately than the market makers. As a result, this piece of kit made small profits and kept doing so for many years. We thought we were very sophisticated indeed.I then did some investment trust broking and deals at BZW before…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The UK’s top financial watchdog has opened the door to China’s fast-fashion group Shein joining the London Stock Exchange by saying its decisions on whether companies can list in the UK are based only on their disclosures — not “every aspect of their corporate behaviour”. Nikhil Rathi, chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, told the Financial Times that it was “not unusual” for UK-listed companies to carry legal risks around the world and “what’s important is that they disclose it, the investors…