Author: Lily Harper

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Singapore has hit banks and wealth managers including UBS, Citi and Julius Baer with its second-largest collective penalty ever in relation to a money-laundering case that hit the city-state’s clean reputation and cast a pall over its wealth management sector.Nine financial institutions received a collective penalty of S$27.45mn (US$21.5mn), the largest figure since penalties in the 1MDB case, over what Singapore’s regulator called “poor and inconsistent implementation” of controls in a US$2bn money-laundering scandal.The case, which was linked to online gambling in…

In Paris, “nobody is content to be a spectator”, wrote Jean Cocteau. The great avant-garde dramatist and poet might have thought differently if he’d stood on the spacious terrace of a particular apartment on the city’s Rive Gauche.From this rooftop eyrie in the exclusive 7th arrondissement, a single gaze takes in some of the city’s best-known landmarks. There’s the gilded dome of Hôtel des Invalides, final resting place of Napoleon Bonaparte; the ornate allegorical “Fames” on Pont Alexandre III; the shimmering glass roof of the Grand Palais — and the Eiffel Tower. The terrace itself is planted with lavender, sculpted boxwood and an avenue…

One scoop to start: Christopher Hohn’s activist hedge fund has risen 21 per cent this year as bets on jet engine manufacturer GE Aerospace, Visa and Microsoft came good.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 to Friday. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here, or explore all FT newsletters. Get in touch with us anytime: Due.Diligence@ft.comIn today’s newsletter:Ireland’s ‘Cooler’ tries to pull off one last scoreWhy would bondholders offer to pay hundreds…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The writer is chair of Société Générale and a former member of the executive board of the European Central BankStablecoins are fast emerging as a disruptive force in global finance — and central banks are rightly paying attention. The Bank for International Settlements recently warned that a loss of confidence in stablecoin issuers could lead different coins to diverge from trading at par. This would threaten monetary stability, particularly if the issuers’ reserves lose value or are insufficiently liquid to meet redemption…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Workplace pensions myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to announce a shake-up of UK pensions in her Mansion House speech on July 15, including plans to look at the amount companies and their staff set aside for retirement. Two executives familiar with her plans said Reeves would appoint a commission to lead the long-awaited review into pensions adequacy, looking at auto-enrolment rates alongside the state pension and retirement savings of the self-employed. The review was first announced by Reeves in July last year and was supposed to…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.When design software company Figma revealed its plans for a stock market listing this week, it felt like a throwback to an earlier era in the tech financing markets.Chief executive Dylan Field listed the reasons why an initial public offering would be good for his company, which turned to the stock market after an acquisition by larger rival Adobe was blocked by regulators. It was the kind of paean to going public that is rarely heard these days from tech company founders,…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Stablecoins are pretty cool in theory. They promise near-to-instant transfers of any value across any border, at transaction costs that could be far below what’s currently charged. Smart contracts might take the counterparty risk out of escrow and look useful for stuff like subscriptions, insurance and sports betting. And since everything happens in realtime on a public blockchain, there’s full transparency.In practice, in the more than 10 years since their invention, stablecoins have carved out a few real-world niches but have not…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Guaranty Trust Holding Company, the parent of Nigeria’s biggest bank by market value, will list in London after selling $100mn in shares to investors, as lenders rush to complete the country’s largest bank recapitalisation in decades.Segun Agbaje, GTCO’s chief executive, told the Financial Times that a sale launched on Monday would meet a central bank target for all banks to raise capital by March next year, as the Nigerian economy recovers from a series of currency devaluations.Lagos-listed GTCO, which has a market…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Sir Christopher Hohn’s activist hedge fund TCI has risen 21 per cent so far this year, according to two people who have seen the numbers, as bets on jet engine manufacturer GE Aerospace, Visa and Microsoft came good. The gains for The Children’s Investment Fund, which manages just over $70bn in assets, are more than triple the returns of the US S&P 500 index, and reinforce Hohn’s status as one of the world’s most successful equity hedge fund managers. TCI has held…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.At my girls’ grammar school in the 90s, our maths teacher introduced us to trigonometry by saying that female brains often found it hard. At least half the class promptly switched off and probably never took an interest in maths again. I am reminded of this episode when studies from the wealth management industry find that women lack confidence about finance. As a result, we are told, women are less likely to invest. The gender investment gap is real. Boring Money, a consumer investment…