Author: Lily Harper

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Financial services myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Investors’ “relentless” appetite for juicy returns has triggered the biggest boom on Wall Street in complex financial products since the lead-up to the global financial crisis in 2007. The global volume of structured finance transactions has hit $380bn this year, according to data from LSEG, which excludes real estate and traditional corporate loans. The figure is up by more than a fifth from the same period a year ago and about $1bn more than all of 2021, which had been the previous…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Evergrande’s liquidators are trying to sell an Airbus private jet that belonged to the collapsed property developer’s founder, as they attempt to salvage some returns for the overseas investors that bought billions of dollars of the company’s bonds. Alvarez & Marsal specialists Edward Middleton and Tiffany Wong, who were appointed to liquidate Evergrande’s Hong Kong-listed holding company in January, have taken control of the offshore entity that bought Hui Ka Yan’s jet and have put the jet up for sale, three people with…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Swiss prosecutors are seeking a four-year jail sentence for Trafigura’s former chief operating officer and $156mn in compensation and penalties from the company over an alleged “textbook” conspiracy to corrupt a public official. Trafigura and Michael Wainwright have been on trial at Switzerland’s federal criminal court for the past week, in a landmark case centred around Trafigura’s lucrative push into Angola between 2009 and 2011. The federal prosecutor alleges that the company paid more than €5mn of bribes through third parties to an Angolan…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Media myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Chelsea Football Club owner Todd Boehly is threatening to gatecrash the £550mn sale of The Telegraph with an offer to help finance a bid for the 169-year-old conservative British national newspaper. The US billionaire had held talks with RedBird IMI in recent weeks about the possibility of becoming involved in the deal, according to three people familiar with the situation.The people said that Boehly’s involvement could be alongside or instead of ongoing talks with US media executive Dovid Efune, who has been in exclusive…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldUS companies forged more than $35bn in deals on Monday, marking the clearest surge in dealmaking confidence since Donald Trump’s election victory.Four transactions worth more than $1bn were announced on Monday, including Omnicom’s $13bn all-share acquisition of rival advertising group Interpublic and Apollo Global-owned packaging manufacturer Novolex’s $7bn deal for Pactiv Evergreen.The magnitude and diversity of this week’s “merger Monday” fervour is the clearest signal that enthusiasm among US executives is beginning to return as many expect a more M&A…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Mining myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Barrick Gold’s chair said he “never” planned to appoint veteran commodities dealmaker Ian Hannam to advise on its tie-up with Randgold, after the banker sued claiming he engineered the $6bn deal but was not paid.John Thornton told the High Court in London that while he had been happy to have Hannam’s views on the merger, as there was “very little downside” to doing so, it had always been his intention to use Wall Street rainmaker Michael Klein on the 2018 deal.Thornton, one of…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Indications of potential insider trading have declined to five-year lows even though suspicious stock market moves still occurred before 30 per cent of UK takeover announcements last year, the financial watchdog said on Monday.The drop in suspicious market activity came as the Financial Conduct Authority this year secured its first two convictions for insider trading since 2019 following a crackdown by the regulator.The FCA said it detected abnormal trading volumes of shares and derivatives ahead of 5.6 per cent of price-sensitive announcements…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.UniCredit was already playing a complex chess game, with its bid for Italy’s Banco BPM and interest in Germany’s Commerzbank. Now that French rival Crédit Agricole has raised its stake in BPM to 15 per cent, acquisitive chief executive Andrea Orcel has an even bigger challenge. He can still get his hands on the €11.6bn bank — but will have to pay up to do so. Crédit Agricole isn’t interested in countering UniCredit’s bid outright. And a 15 per cent stake, comprising its…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Vanguard is carving out its $900bn wealth and advice business into a separate unit to speed investment and meet rising demand as its new chief executive sets his stamp on the world’s second-largest money manager. CEO Salim Ramji and president Greg Davis announced the $10tn asset manager’s largest restructuring in more than a decade, touting the firm’s “willingness to reinvent ourselves based on evolving needs” in a Monday email to Vanguard’s 20,000 employees.Long a dominant participant in low-cost and index funds, Vanguard has…

The Pension Protection Fund’s annual Purple Book is almost universally regarded as the authoritative “state of the nation” guide to the UK’s private sector defined benefit schemes — their assets, liabilities, sizes, number and asset allocations. And given that this class of fund commands close to one and a half trillion pounds of assets, their actions are of wide interest.The headline from last year’s almanac was that these DB schemes — in aggregate — could afford to ‘buy-out’. That is to say they could afford to hand the keys of their pension funds to insurers, and walk away from the…