Author: Lily Harper

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Blackstone chief executive Stephen Schwarzman took home more than $1bn in 2024 as the private equity titan saw his income rise due to a rebound in investment activity at the world’s largest alternative investment group, according to the company’s annual report released late Friday.Schwarzman’s income marked a 9 per cent increase from the prior year, fuelled entirely by rising dividend payments from his enormous Blackstone shareholding. The Blackstone co-founder owns 19 per cent of the New York-based investment group and has for…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Ministers are examining proposals to grant banks access to all of the accounts of benefit claimants, as they try to crack down on fraud to fix a “gaping hole” in the UK welfare system.Officials in the Department for Work and Pensions have been asked to investigate the proposal as a possible means to ensure welfare recipients do not hold more funds than they claim to, according to people briefed on the matter.“We are looking at whether it would be possible to get…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the ESG investing myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.BlackRock has cancelled meetings with companies in the middle of shareholder battles because it fears that it could violate guidance on investor activism that the US Securities and Exchange Commission issued last week.BlackRock and other asset managers typically talk with companies about voting ahead of activism campaigns and also about routine proxy ballot issues at annual shareholder meetings. But that practice has been called into question by the SEC’s guidance, which has been widely interpreted as an attack on using environmental, social…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Oil & Gas industry myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Activist hedge fund Elliott Management has built a stake in struggling UK oil major BP, according to two people with knowledge of the move.The exact size of Elliott’s stake could not be learned but the $70bn assets under management hedge fund has adjusted its activist strategy in recent years to increase the size of its individual bets, while reducing the number of situations it focuses on. BP’s shares have fallen nearly 9 per cent over the past year, compared with…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldDonald Trump has told lawmakers he wants to end the special tax treatment of private equity and hedge fund profits known as “carried interest”, setting up a potential clash with America’s wealthiest financiers. The push by Trump — in a White House meeting on Thursday with Republican leaders from Capitol Hill — comes as the president intensifies talks over a broader tax cut bill he wants passed this year that is core to his domestic economic agenda. Karoline Leavitt, the…

A small Chinese artificial intelligence lab stunned the world this week by revealing the technical recipe for its cutting-edge model, turning its reclusive leader into a national hero who has defied US attempts to stop China’s high-tech ambitions. DeepSeek, founded by hedge fund manager Liang Wenfeng, released its R1 model on Monday, explaining in a detailed paper how to build a large language model on a bootstrapped budget that can automatically learn and improve itself without human supervision. US companies including OpenAI and Google DeepMind pioneered developments in reasoning models, a relatively new field of AI research that is attempting to…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.JPMorgan Chase boosted longtime chief executive Jamie Dimon’s pay 8 per cent to $39mn last year, his largest remuneration at the US bank.The pay rise for Dimon, the longest serving CEO among the biggest US banks, was roughly double the bump he received in 2023. JPMorgan notched up record annual profits last year, with the New York-based group’s trading and investment banking units posting a blockbuster performance in the fourth quarter. Shares of the bank rose 41 per cent last year, in…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Santander is reconsidering its presence in the UK two decades after its acquisition of Abbey National made it a major player on Britain’s high street, according to people familiar with the matter. The bank is exploring a number of strategic options, one of which is exiting the UK market, the people said. They added that no deal or announcement was imminent and that the review was at an early stage. The process comes as the Spanish lender contends with lower returns at…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the European companies myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.French company Bureau Veritas and its Swiss rival SGS are in talks to combine the two companies in a deal that would create a €32bn specialist in testing and certification services for industry. The negotiations are at an advanced stage, and an agreement could be announced over the coming weeks, although nothing has been finalised and the deal could still fall apart, according to people familiar with the talks. Any transaction would need the blessing of the Paris-based investment firm Wendel, Bureau Veritas’s biggest…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the US financial regulation myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Robinhood has agreed to pay fines of $45mn to cover data breach and record-keeping failures — one of a series of penalties levied by US regulators on Monday against financial firms, including units of Blackstone and KKR.The online broker paid the biggest penalty in a group of settlements announced by the Securities and Exchange Commission that totalled more than $100mn in fines. Robinhood’s failures included a 2021 data breach that exposed millions of customers’ email addresses and names as well as…