Author: Lily Harper

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Financial & markets regulation myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Britain’s financial regulators need to learn from Singapore by ditching their “risk-averse culture”, stepping up support for economic growth, and becoming more welcoming to businesses, a House of Lords committee has said.Since the 2008 banking crisis, the Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority have introduced “unnecessary frictions” that undermine growth and innovation and “discourage new entrants”, the House of Lords Financial Regulation Committee said on Friday.The peers’ conclusion that the UK has “valuable lessons to learn from Singapore’s approach”…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Shares in mobile payments group Chime surged on the company’s debut in New York, underscoring investor optimism for fintech amid a burst of activity in the US initial public offerings market.Chime opened on Nasdaq at $43 a share on Thursday, 59 per cent above its $27 IPO price before closing at $37.11 to give the group a fully diluted market capitalisation of almost $15bn. About 32mn shares were sold, raising $864mn for the company. Chime offers no-fee banking services for Americans earning less than…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Cryptocurrencies myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Anthony Pompliano, one of America’s most prominent crypto influencers, is set to be installed as chief executive of a publicly traded company that is raising $750mn to fund a bitcoin buying spree.Pompliano, a podcast host with 1.7mn followers on X, was in talks to lead an entity that would seek to raise $750mn as part of tie-up with a blank-cheque vehicle, according to three people briefed on the talks.The proposed deal is the latest in a growing crypto investment boom fuelled by Donald…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.When the UK fintech company Wise announced last week that it would move its primary listing to New York, it sounded like more bad news for the London Stock Exchange. But the decision by its Estonian founders and board to seek growth and liquidity in the US was worse than that.Since Wise has picked America for its larger investor pool and potential for a higher valuation, so may Revolut, which started in an incubator in Canary Wharf and was valued at $45bn…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Private equity myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.General Atlantic has followed rival private equity firm Apollo Global Management in abandoning early recruitment for its junior roles, telling applicants that it will not conduct interviews this year for positions starting in 2027.So-called on-cycle recruiting — where private equity firms recruit recent graduates about to take up roles with investment banks for positions that start two years later — had pitted some of Wall Street’s biggest players against each other. JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon has been a vocal critic…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The UK accounting regulator has fined KPMG £690,000 for relying on another firm’s work during its audit of agriculture and engineering group Carr’s, in breach of rules on auditor independence.The Financial Reporting Council said on Thursday that KPMG should not have relied on the work by the smaller firm because it had sold other accounting and tax services to Carr’s and had failed to change its lead auditor at the required five-year mark. The time limit and the restrictions on selling other…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.One of the trickiest challenges for any honest investor is trying to work out whether they are lucky or smart. Is their successful trading strategy the equivalent of a coin toss coming up heads five times in a row? Or is it the result of superior insight or execution? Human nature (and fee structures) being what they are, most investors prefer the latter explanation. In truth, it is often hard to tell.In an attempt to dial up the smart factor and dial…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.BlackRock has set an ambitious $400bn fundraising target for its private investment businesses, as executives laid out a plan to almost double the market value of the world’s largest asset manager by 2030. The 2030 targets show how BlackRock and its chief executive Larry Fink hope to build the business as it moves to compete with giants of the alternative asset world, including Blackstone, Apollo Global Management and KKR.BlackRock last year agreed to spend about $28bn to buy Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP),…

Afreximbank, a pan-African trade finance institution, has accused rating agency Fitch of giving an “erroneous view” on its exposure to potential losses, as the lender faces pressure over whether it fully disclosed the riskiness of loans made to Ghana and other cash-strapped nations.Fitch Ratings last week said that the Cairo-based multilateral lender was at risk of suffering losses on an estimated $2bn in loans to Ghana, Zambia, Malawi and South Sudan, if it was not treated as a preferred creditor. It added that the bank had “weak risk management policies”, used “flexibilities” allowed by accounting standards to mark loans as…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Bangladesh has signalled it could agree financial settlements with tycoons accused by Muhammad Yunus’s interim government of funnelling money out of the country.Central bank governor Ahsan Mansur, who is leading the Bangladesh government’s asset recovery effort, told the Financial Times that settlement was “one of the options” it could pursue in less serious cases.Mansur also said he aimed to raise as much as $100mn to finance future international litigation aimed at reclaiming funds from business and political figures tied to the regime…