Author: Lily Harper

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.This article is an on-site version of our Unhedged newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every weekday. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here, or explore all FT newslettersGood morning. A question for readers: will we see a significant shift in consumer sentiment now that a change in presidential administrations is coming? As a reminder, the University of Michigan sentiment index, at 70, is 40 per cent off of its 2022 lows, but still well below…

As Lehman Brothers hurtled towards bankruptcy in September 2008, the executives at the world’s largest derivatives exchange found themselves in a race against time: find a new home for the failed bank’s trading book or face more cascading chaos.In an early harbinger of a new era for markets, the winner of the bidding war for Lehman’s bets on currencies, agricultural commodities and interest rates was not one of Wall Street’s big banks, but a secretive Chicago trading firm called DRW whose founder exuded a quiet but unshakeable confidence.“Call me any time, any day or night, I will give you a…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Exchange traded funds myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Latest news on ETFsVisit our ETF Hub to find out more and to explore our in-depth data and comparison toolsJPMorgan Asset Management has added two US equity income-focused strategies to its range of actively managed exchange traded funds in Europe.The US asset management giant has listed the JPMorgan US Equity Premium Income Active (JEPI) and JPMorgan Nasdaq Equity Premium Income Active Ucits ETFs (JEPQ) in London, Frankfurt and Zurich.The company has three equity premium income ETFs available to European investors following…

In the race to unite the UK’s sprawling local government pension funds, Simon Radford is a frontrunner. As chair of Barnet’s £1.4bn council pension scheme, he is willing to cede investment control of the London borough’s retirement pool in order to boost returns. “It’s natural as a local councillor when you get elected and have a big pot of money to run to pump your chest and get very excited about what you do,” he says. “But there’s a question mark: are four or five local councillors really the best people to invest billions of pounds of money?” But Radford is in the…

Asset managers have not always crowned themselves in glory when it comes to sustainable investing.At best, they have been accused by environmental campaigners of an indifference towards using their influence as investors to save the planet. And, at worst, they have been called out for falsely marketing their funds as ‘green’ to tap into the burgeoning demand for sustainable investing when, in truth, many of those products were stuffed full of companies that pollute. This became such a problem that financial regulators around the world had to step in to protect consumers from being misled. In 2023, for example, DWS, the investment…

In spring this year, Elliott Management, the $70bn US hedge fund known for circling distressed assets, alighted on a new target: Britain’s largest water company.After scooping up hundreds of millions of pounds of Thames Water’s debt from panicked asset managers willing to sell at a discount, Paul Singer’s Elliott is now one of several hedge funds engaged in a tussle over the future of the troubled utility.  Elliott, which earned notoriety for seizing a Argentine naval ship during a 15-year skirmish with the Latin American nation over its defaulted debt, is in the vanguard of a group of Thames Water’s…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Carl Icahn’s efforts to stabilise his corporate empire rest in part on a small Midwestern refinery and a scrapyard on the outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee. The billionaire activist investor slashed the dividend of his publicly listed holding company in half on Friday, sending its stock tumbling and adding to a litany of financial troubles for the 88-year-old financier. Icahn Enterprises, his listed conglomerate, has seen its shares plunge this year due to losses in its investment portfolio and operational problems across its…

The drawn-out downturn in private market returns is hitting one group of investors especially hard: Ivy League university endowments. Leading US university endowments, many of which allocate outsized portions of their portfolios to private equity and venture capital, have underperformed the university average for the second year in a row, with prominent ones like Yale and Princeton lagging far behind their smaller peers, as the once lucrative asset class suffers from a plunge in dealmaking and stock listings. Top endowments have long used aggressive exposure to private investments in pursuit of excess returns they believe are out of reach through public…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldIt’s been a giddy week on Wall Street. Donald Trump’s thumping victory in the US presidential race has bankers and private equity titans dreaming that he will loosen the regulatory reins while driving up demand for dealmaking and financing of many sorts.More immediately, the results have all but doomed the Biden administration’s efforts to impose higher bank capital requirements as well as looming new rules on everything from climate disclosure to outsourcing. You can almost hear “ding-dong the witch is…

Peter Hargreaves does not mince his words. Shortly after arriving at Cafe Murano, a stylish Italian restaurant on St James’s Street in the West End of London, he tells me that he rarely ventures this far for business meetings, preferring instead to make Zoom calls from the comfort of his home in Bristol.“People would say, ‘Peter why don’t you come to London and have lunch in our boardroom?’” He pauses, then says emphatically, “Why the bloody hell do I want to do that? I’d say if you want to see me, come and see me.”I’m honoured that Hargreaves, who has…