Author: Lily Harper

When the Las Vegas race weekend gets under way, scores of fans will inevitably be lured in by the city’s bright lights to gamble their money away in its many casinos. Nico Rosberg, in contrast, will be looking to create wealth.The 2016 Formula One champion will host around two dozen guests in the hospitality suite of Mercedes — his former team — to discuss their plans for investment. The 39-year-old German, who shocked fans when he retired from the sport only days after winning the title ahead of teammate Sir Lewis Hamilton, has built a career outside the sport as…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Three Bank of America dealmakers in India have left amid an ongoing investigation into allegations of wrongdoing in the US financial group’s Asian unit, according to three sources familiar with the matter.The bankers resigned on Thursday and their departures were tied to the investigation, according to two sources familiar with the matter.The internal investigation, which was launched earlier this year following a whistleblower complaint, is probing whether BofA and bankers in its Asian operations had tipped off certain investors of upcoming secondary…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldKen Griffin has warned Donald Trump’s plan to raise tariffs would put the US “on a slippery slope to crony capitalism” and offered other harsh critiques of the incoming president’s agenda, in surprisingly sharp criticism from a major Republican donor. The billionaire founder of hedge fund Citadel also signalled on Thursday that he would be “open to the possibility of selling a minority stake” in his firm for the first time.In an interview at the Economic Club of New York,…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldThe US has imposed sanctions on Gazprombank, one of the few major Russian lenders not already blacklisted over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, in a move aimed at restricting the Kremlin’s ability to finance its war effort.The listing announced on Thursday in effect bans state-owned Gazprombank, the main conduit for Russian energy payments, and its six international subsidiaries from the US-dominated global finance system.Russia has used Gazprombank as a conduit to buy military equipment for the war in Ukraine, as well…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the UK property myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.MainFT yesterday:UK rent growth accelerated in October with London registering the largest increase, according to official data that suggests more pain for tenants after two years of rising costs.Here, via the Office for National Statistics, is the relevant chart:Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.Rental inflation is especially important right now, not least because another ONS release on Wednesday — the UK’s headline consumer price inflation figure — found rising rents to represent almost a exactly of…

Interest rates are coming down, but only after one of the most brutal monetary tightening periods in modern history. And they’re probably coming down too late, too little and too slowly for a lot of smaller companies and the investment funds that chucked money at them over the past few years. Private credit — basically, bilateral corporate loans made by specialist investment funds rather than banks — has been one of the hottest asset classes over the past decade. Possibly the hottest. Depending on who you believe, there’s somewhere between $2tn and $3tn of money in private credit funds.The problem…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Tikehau, one of Europe’s fastest-growing investment managers, is considering moving its listing to New York from Paris, making it the latest in a series of European and UK companies looking beyond the exchanges in their home countries.The €47.1bn alternative asset manager, which is particularly strong in private credit, was founded in 2004 and has been listed on Euronext Paris since 2017. Founders Mathieu Chabran and Antoine Flamarion have long expressed ambitions to build a “Blackstone of Europe”.They told the Financial Times on…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Bank of America is drawing up plans to structure risk transfer deals for smaller lenders, a move that could turbocharge the nascent market at a time of heightened scrutiny. So-called synthetic risk transfers — or SRTs — have quickly become one of the fastest-growing corners of financial markets for banks and private capital investors. Banks use SRTs to obtain protection against losses on a pool of loans by selling a slice of the credit risk to investors, paying the investors regular fees for…

As OpenAI raced to raise almost $7bn last month, one investor was always on hand. Thrive Capital stayed close to the AI start-up’s co-founder and chief executive Sam Altman and contributed over $1bn to a funding round that valued the artificial intelligence group at $150bn.The bet is the boldest yet for the New York-based firm founded by Josh Kushner, adding to the $130mn Thrive invested in OpenAI last year, on top of an undisclosed amount of stock it has bought from employees plus an option to invest a further $1bn by the end of 2025.It also typifies the approach Kushner…

One major prison sentence to start: Former Wall Street trader Bill Hwang has been sentenced to 18 years in prison, capping an extraordinary fall from grace for the Archegos founder who was earlier this year found guilty of orchestrating a massive market deception that cost big banks billions of dollars.And a scoop: Unilever has shelved plans to run a sales process for its €15bn ice cream division to private equity groups and will instead focus on a push to spin off the unit in an independent listing.Welcome to Due Diligence, your briefing on dealmaking, private equity and corporate finance. This…