Author: Lily Harper

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Metro Bank has been approached by investment firm Pollen Street Capital about a potential takeover that could see the UK high street lender taken private after a turbulent period as a listed company.The London-based private equity group, which focuses on investing in financial services, made an informal approach to Metro Bank in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the matter. They cautioned that talks were at an early stage and there is no certainty of a deal. Metro Bank, which has…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Regardless of ideological parti pris, politicians have an uncanny knack of misconstruing the dynamics of the financial services sector as they seek to bend it to their cause. Consider, first, UK Labour chancellor Rachel Reeves who, like her Tory predecessor Jeremy Hunt, wants more growth-friendly financial regulation, a demand widely echoed by policymakers around the world.Reeves and Hunt have also urged UK pension funds to allocate more capital to growth opportunities in domestic private markets. Both join in the global hand-wringing over…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The author has written several books about the City and Wall StreetAccording to the law of financial cycles, a rule invented by the veteran City journalist Christopher Fildes, disasters happen when the final person able to remember the last one has retired. It is an aphorism that the board of NatWest might consider as they plan for a future newly free of state ownership.NatWest is the rebranded name for RBS, which took it over in 2000. The enlarged bank embarked on a…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Jane Street has struck one of Hong Kong’s largest prime office leases since before the Covid-19 pandemic, underlining how the New York-based trading firm has emerged as a challenger to Wall Street’s biggest banks.Under the deal, which relates to a central business district complex still under development, Jane Street will pay an estimated rent of more than HK$30mn per month ($3.8mn) for a five-year lease of six floors starting in 2028.Jane Street, which already has modest office space in Hong Kong, will…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Wealth managers have issued a “health warning” over the costs and complexities of investment vehicles designed to reduce inheritance tax.It follows a flood of inquiries from affluent clients over setting up family investment companies, or Fics, to cut IHT after chancellor Rachel Reeves expanded the regime in the Autumn Budget last year. “There are many clients for whom these will be too costly and complex, or where the assets under discussion are incompatible,” said Hazel Bowen, a senior wealth planner at Canaccord…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the European banks myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.French bank BPCE has acquired a majority stake in Portuguese lender Novo Banco that values the business at €6.4bn, in one of the largest recent cross-border banking deals in Europe.The US private equity firm Lone Star has sold its 75 per cent stake in Novo Bank to BPCE. The French bank is in discussions with the Portuguese government about buying the remaining 25 per cent of the business. Nicolas Namias, BPCE’s chief executive, told the Financial Times: “This is the biggest operation…

Morning! After some dabbling in the genre, FT Alphaville is starting an informal series of simple Q&A interviews.The basic premise is that we’ll have a hopefully interesting chat with hopefully interesting people doing hopefully interesting things in and around finance, economics and business (sometimes they may be boring people doing interesting things, or interesting people doing boring things as well), and publish a lightly-edited Q&A afterwards. No promises, but we’ll try to do one a week.We’re kicking things off with a conversation with Guiseppe “Gappy” Paleologo, head of quantitative research at Balyasny Asset Management. We have some ideas for future…

One scoop to start: A $35bn US semiconductor industry merger is being delayed by Beijing’s antitrust regulator, after Donald Trump tightened chip export controls against China in a move that exacerbated trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.A crypto scoop: Anthony Pompliano, one of America’s most prominent crypto influencers, is set to be installed as chief executive of a new publicly traded company that is seeking to raise $750mn to fund a bitcoin buying spree.And another scoop: Thermo Fisher Scientific has put part of its diagnostics unit up for sale for about $4bn in the latest move by a…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Back in his college days, UBS chair Colm Kelleher used to enjoy playing Diplomacy, a negotiation-based board game that is notorious for ruining friendships. Those old skills might come in handy as his bank fights to avoid being saddled with up to $26bn in new capital requirements.Switzerland’s Federal Department of Finance has proposed a suite of measures to avoid a repeat of the 2023 collapse of Credit Suisse. Central among them, systemically important banks must keep more equity capital free to absorb…

Credit Suisse may be gone but it is far from forgotten. London’s High Court is the latest venue to unearth failings at the venerable Swiss bank before its emergency takeover in 2023 by arch-rival UBS.London’s Rolls Building is where a $440mn legal battle is being waged between a Credit Suisse investment fund, SoftBank, and a subsidiary of Greensill Capital, the group founded by Australian financier Lex Greensill. The fund brought the lawsuit in an attempt to recover hundreds of millions of dollars that it says investors lost following the 2021 collapse of Greensill, which was in turn backed by SoftBank.…