Author: Lily Harper

On October 4 1819, Erste Austrian Savings Bank was signed into life with a deed written in a parsonage in Leopoldstadt — Vienna’s traditional workers and Jewish quarter.Erste Group, as the bank is now known, is proud enough of what the deed said to quote from it to this day: “No age, no gender, no class, no nation is excluded from the advantages that the savings bank offers to every investee.”And this year, Erste — one of the largest lenders in central and eastern Europe — has been placed second in the FT/Statista ranking of Europe’s diversity leaders in business.“For…

At Legal & General’s annual meeting in May 2022, a shareholder took to the floor to air some grievances — not about the performance of the FTSE 100 insurer but that of KPMG, its auditor.“Don’t we as a company with an enormous reputation deserve to have auditors of the very highest reputation too,” he asked the group’s board. Referencing press coverage of KPMG’s multiple audit failings, he also questioned whether L&G should “ditch them and get someone else to do that work”.The remarks generated applause in the room and illustrated the extent to which the reputation of the accounting and…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.With one in five residents born abroad, Ireland is fast becoming a multicultural nation. But diversity in the workplace is playing catch-up.Although the number of women on the boards of the top 20 listed companies has doubled in the past five years, only half of the country’s workers feel their companies are representative of society when it comes to senior management, says the Irish Centre for Diversity. “Ireland has come a long way in the last 25 years,” notes Caroline Cummins, ICFD…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.JPMorgan’s UK digital-only bank is rolling out its first credit card to customers, expanding into lending after amassing more than £20bn in deposits in three years.JPMorgan, which is the largest bank in the US by assets, launched Chase UK three years ago as it sought to shake up the British banking market. Chase UK initially offered only current accounts with a rewards programme before adding savings and investment products. On Tuesday, it will for the first time offer a credit card to…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.US budget carrier Spirit Airlines serves up discounted fares to college kids going to Miami for spring break. Its financial problems could create a first-class upgrade opportunity for Wall Street vultures.Spirit on Monday formally announced its anticipated Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. Its shareholders will be wiped out while creditors will swap much of their debt positions for new equity in a reorganised Spirit. Two years ago, rival JetBlue had offered to buy Spirit at a total enterprise value of $7.6bn, before regulatory…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Heightened regulatory scrutiny of deals where insurers offload some of their risk to private equity-owned companies is “welcome” to ensure the transactions do not create problems for the industry, the outgoing chief executive of insurer and wealth adviser Manulife has said.Roy Gori has been a leader in de-risking deals, including a C$13bn (US$9.3bn) deal with KKR-owned Global Atlantic. He said he expects more transactions to follow as private equity-backed groups find ways to extract more profit from managing reserves than traditional life…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the US & Canadian companies myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.An activist hedge fund manager has secured four board seats at CVS Health just weeks after the largest US drugstore operator by revenues overhauled its executive leadership. The US healthcare group said on Monday that it would expand its board of directors to 16 from 12 under a deal with Glenview Capital Management. Larry Robbins, Glenview’s chief executive, will be one of the four new board members.The board overhaul underscores that CVS’s recent replacement of its chief executive and the…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the ESG investing myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Vanguard is giving retail shareholders the chance to vote in favour of putting profits above all else as it doubles the size of its experiment with letting more investors have a say on proxy votes.Nearly 4mn people controlling up to $250bn in shares in US companies will now be able to chose one of five options, which also include letting Vanguard make the decision, voting with management, prioritising environmental, social and governance factors or in effect voting “present”. The addition of a…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.An octogenarian oil trader has been given a 17-and-a-half-year jail sentence in Singapore for defrauding HSBC, in a long-running case that sent shockwaves through the city-state’s commodity trading sector.Lim Oon Kuin, known as OK Lim and once one of Singapore’s richest men, was sentenced on Monday after being convicted in May of “cheating” HSBC and abetting forgery. The 82-year-old founder of Hin Leong Trading was accused of encouraging a company executive to forge documents that tricked the bank into disbursing nearly $112mn.Judge…

Emma Reynolds, UK pensions minister, has left the door open to forcing pension schemes to invest more in British assets if reforms fail to drive savings into domestic infrastructure and companies. The government announced this week it would create a series of “megafunds” to steer more of the UK’s £1.3tn defined contribution and local authority pension industry into productive domestic finance. Reynolds said that while ministers had not taken steps to force pension funds to invest in British assets, it could reconsider “mandation” if the measures did not boost pension investment in the UK.  “We’re not talking about it for now, but let’s see where…