Author: Lily Harper

Citadel, XTX and Jane Street have come to dominate trading on Wall Street, and not just in equities. They now run a huge proportion of trading in currency and bonds, something the banks used to own. But where did they come from, why have so few people heard of them, and how did they get so big? Today on the show, Katie Martin and Robin Wigglesworth discuss the massive growth in the algorithmic trading firms. Also, they go long honesty, and long the upcoming FT Alphaville pub quiz in New York. Read the FT’s series about the new titans of…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Deutsche Bank is resuming share buybacks after the financial hit from a long-running shareholder litigation case proved smaller than feared and as the lender reported higher than expected profits in the three months to the end of September.“We have now sought authorisation for further share repurchases,” chief executive Christian Sewing said in a statement on Wednesday morning, when Germany’s largest lender announced the highest third-quarter pre-tax profit in its 154-year history and confirmed it was on track to meet its guidance for…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Latin America’s biggest development bank will pay a group of private investors to take on some of the risk of losses on its loans, as multilateral lenders turn to securitisation to make scarce capital stretch further.The transaction insures nearly $1bn of lending by the Inter-American Development Bank, which invests in Latin America and the Caribbean. Through a so-called synthetic securitisation, the asset manager Newmarket Capital has taken up to $70mn of default risk.“The traditional buy-and-hold model of the multilaterals is obsolete and…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Investors are piling into emerging market funds that exclude China despite a recent blistering rally in Chinese stocks, amid concerns over escalating tensions between Beijing and the west.Investment firms told the Financial Times that clients increasingly see the world’s second-biggest economy as too large or risky to manage alongside other developing economies such as India, leading to one of the biggest shifts in emerging markets investing in decades.Franklin Templeton became the latest manager to launch a so-called “ex China” emerging markets vehicle…

(Very) Cheap fees to start: Management fees on private equity buyout funds have fallen to their lowest levels since records began in 2005 as fund managers fight to attract investors in a tough fundraising environment.Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.Welcome to Due Diligence, your briefing on dealmaking, private equity and corporate finance. This article is an on-site version of the newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every Tuesday to Friday. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here, or explore all FT newsletters. Get in touch with us anytime:…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Exchange traded funds myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.The approval of spot crypto exchange traded funds in the US, Hong Kong and other markets has highlighted the contrasting and conservative approach being taken by Japan’s regulators.Japan has long billed itself as a digital asset-friendly country as part of wider ambitions to become a larger asset management hub. But there is a reluctance at the policy level to take the plunge and lift the tax and regulatory restrictions needed for widespread adoption.Japan’s Ministry of Finance is widely known to be…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Deloitte has cut about 250 employees in the UK who were deemed to be underperforming, marking at least the third time in the past 13 months that the Big Four accounting and consulting firm has axed staff. The firm embarked on a round of job cuts affecting staff across its advisory divisions in recent weeks without announcing them across the business or within individual service lines, people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times. The latest cull targeted about 250 staffers,…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Private equity myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Management fees on private equity buyout funds have fallen to their lowest levels since records began in 2005 as fund managers fight to attract investors in a tough fundraising environment.According to industry specialist Preqin, the average management fee for buyout funds that closed this year or were still raising money in June was 1.74 per cent of investors’ committed capital. The previous low was 1.85 per cent in 2023.In the past two years, private equity firms have struggled to sell out of…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.HSBC’s new chief Georges Elhedery is engaging in a reshuffle. It could be the purposeful reshaping of a supertanker towards a promising new future — or it could be merely some drag-reducing furniture rearrangement. Either way it should raise questions about the bank’s broader direction of travel.     It is not hard to see why Elhedery may be looking to declutter his vessel. The bank, listed in both Hong Kong and London, is in a sweet spot: expenses consume just 50 per cent of…

Unlock the US Election Countdown newsletter for freeThe stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White HouseDoing business with the government is not all it is cracked up to be. Just ask the US health insurers. For years, the sector enjoyed record sales and profits. Ageing baby boomers meant a surge in enrolment in Medicare, the government-sponsored insurance programme for the elderly. The introduction of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, which expanded Medicaid coverage for low-income families and individuals with disabilities, brought an influx of new business. The gold rush is over. Shares in Medicare- and…