Author: Lily Harper

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Individuals should be able to invest in private assets within Isas, according to the chief executive of the Investment Association, even as some of the UK’s largest wealth managers express concerns over their suitability for retail. Chris Cummings, chief executive of the IA, which represents fund groups, wealth managers and private equity firms overseeing £9.1tn, told the Financial Times that semi-liquid private asset funds should be made more widely available in tax-efficient wrappers.This could have a “profound” effect on improving people’s retirement…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Deutsche Bank has laid out a steeper than expected capital hit from new rules on how banks calculate risk, as European lenders begin to reveal the impact of Basel IV reforms.Under the new rules, which will be fully implemented by 2033 and limit the extent to which banks can use internal models to calculate their risk-weighted assets, Deutsche’s RWAs would increase by one-third, based on figures from the lender’s latest Pillar 3 report which includes key information required from banks under the…

One scoop to start: Matthew Freud is looking at options to sell his eponymous PR consultancy after 40 years as one of London’s top spin-doctors and corporate fixers.And another scoop: Ken Griffin’s hedge fund Citadel has been outshone by smaller rivals so far this year, as the firm was stung by the market volatility unleashed by Donald Trump’s trade war.And one more scoop: A two-year-old Swedish artificial intelligence start-up that promises to make programming an app as easy as writing a few sentences is nearing a valuation of almost $2bn, in the latest sign of investor fervour for AI coding…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Ministers should ditch the pensions “triple lock” as part of a wider overhaul that is needed to prevent millions of private sector workers experiencing a sharp fall in living standards when they retire, a new study has found. Some 39 per cent of company workers will face a financial cliff-edge in retirement under current arrangements, a two-and-a-half-year study between the Institute for Fiscal Studies and asset manager Aberdeen’s financial fairness charity found. The study projected half of middle and high-earning private sector…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Financial services myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Palmer Luckey, the billionaire co-founder of military tech group Anduril, is preparing to launch a US bank intended to fill the gap left by Silicon Valley Bank serving start-ups, including cryptocurrency businesses. To be named Erebor, the bank would be backed by high-profile tech investors including Joe Lonsdale, the founder of venture capital firm 8VC and a co-founder of Peter Thiel’s defence group Palantir, according to people familiar with the matter. Thiel’s venture capital fund, Founders Fund, would also be among the…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the US banks myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Investors reaped the rewards of looser bank supervision as Wall Street’s biggest banks announced a flood of shareholder payouts on Tuesday after passing regulatory “stress tests” that imposed easier conditions than in years past. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and others said they would raise quarterly dividend payments to shareholders, and JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley also said they would buy back billions of dollars’ worth of their shares. Goldman said it would raise its dividend 33 per cent to…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the UK banks myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Santander has agreed to buy British high street lender TSB for £2.65bn, in a move that underlines the Spanish lender’s commitment to its UK retail business just months after it entertained bids for the unit. The bank beat British rival Barclays which also put in a formal bid for the Sabadell-owned unit, according to people familiar with the matter. It comes as Sabadell, which bought TSB in 2015 for £1.7bn, is seeking to fend off an €11bn hostile approach from its domestic rival…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Hedge funds myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Ken Griffin’s hedge fund Citadel has been outshone by smaller rivals so far this year, as the firm was stung by the market volatility unleashed by Donald Trump’s trade war. Citadel’s flagship Wellington fund gained 2.5 per cent in the first half of 2025, according to a person familiar with the matter. Balyasny and ExodusPoint were up 7.3 per cent and 9.3 per cent respectively, according to people who have seen the figures. Citadel, which manages around $66bn, is one of the…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Global Economy myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Invest long, borrow short and leverage up as much as possible. That is the way to make money in finance. It is how banks have always made their living. But we also know very well that this story can end in panic-stricken runs for the exit and financial crises. That is what happened in the great financial crisis (GFC) of 2007-09. Since then, as the Bank for International Settlements explains in its latest Annual Economic Report, the financial system has changed a…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.If water always finds a way, as the saying goes, then the same is true for financial ingenuity. A UK fund launched this week aims to generate returns for its pension fund backers from restoring natural resources and getting the companies who benefit to pay. There’s something to this idea, if it can navigate the problems that tend to vex green finance, such as fuzzy definitions and fears of dirty data. So-called nature positive finance — the preserving and restoring of nature…