Author: Lily Harper

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.A global climate alliance of top banks is at risk of losing key European members after lenders refused to commit to remaining in the group, further weakening its position after an exodus of Wall Street firms. Barclays, which joined in 2021, declined to confirm its membership plans in a conversation with the Net-Zero Banking Alliance’s leadership in recent days, a banker familiar with the matter said. The bank had discussed dates for its possible departure and was considering investors’ responses to HSBC’s…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Cryptocurrencies myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Standard Chartered has begun allowing institutional clients to directly trade bitcoin and ether, becoming the first major bank to enable spot cryptocurrency transactions.The London-based lender said it had launched bitcoin/dollar and ether/dollar trading from Tuesday for institutional clients such as corporates, asset managers and investors, and would soon add so-called non-deliverable forwards — contracts in which no physical settlement of the currencies takes place.The move highlights how crypto is becoming increasingly entwined with mainstream finance, and comes as more traditional companies seek to…

Wall Street is wagering that BlackRock continued to draw investors in during the second quarter, with assets under management expected to eclipse $12tn.The world’s largest asset manager is in the midst of a mammoth shift engineered by chief executive Larry Fink, as he pushes the public markets giant into top rungs of the private investment industry. The $12bn takeover of private credit specialist HPS Investment Partners earlier this month closed after the quarter ended, so most of the inflows in the three months to end of June are expected to come from BlackRock’s iShares exchange traded fund business. BlackRock is…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Shares in Barratt Redrow fell more than 10 per cent on Tuesday morning after the UK housebuilder said it had sold fewer homes than forecast in the year to the end of June. The company, one of Britain’s biggest housebuilders, said it had sold 16,565 homes in the year, down from its April guidance of between 16,800 and 17,200.The company said the shortfall was “mainly due to the impact of fewer international and investor completions than expected” in its London business. Demand had…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The Bank of England has announced a one-year delay to key provisions in the post-financial crisis banking reforms as part of a raft of changes designed to ease capital requirements for UK lenders.The central bank said on Tuesday it would delay from 2027 to 2028 the application of the part of the so-called Basel III package that applies to the wholesale trading activities of investment banks, to allow more time for the US to decide how to apply them.The delay, which comes…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Fintech myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Starling Bank is examining the case for listing in New York, as the UK digital bank presses ahead with an expansion into the US.Declan Ferguson, the chief financial officer of the London-based fintech, told the Financial Times that Starling was currently weighing a US listing, where it could potentially achieve a higher valuation.“We continue to observe what is happening externally with our peers, and also what is happening on the global stage in terms of the UK versus US [stock markets],” he said.…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The writer is chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group and a member of the British Infrastructure Taskforce and the Defence & Economic Growth TaskforceThere has been some sobering news on the state of the UK economy over the past week. Weaker than expected data showed a contraction in GDP in May, the second month in a row of decline. That came after a warning by the Office for Budget Responsibility that the country’s ability to respond to future shocks has been severely weakened.…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Calpers, the largest public pension fund in the US, has signalled an appetite for more exposure to private equity despite concerns that these assets could expose retirees to too much risk. Stephen Gilmore, chief investment officer of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, said it was “reasonable to expect our private equity exposure will continue to increase somewhat”. Despite concerns about lower than expected returns from some managers and the reliability of private valuations, Calpers has already boosted its allocation to private equity…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Cryptocurrencies myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.We try, valued reader. We really do try. We want to approach all types of tokenised finance with an open mind. Maybe one day, someone will invent something to do with a blockchain that’s not crime, self-enriching grift, black-box frippery, or a distributed Ponzi scheme. We’re ready to reverse ferret a long-standing editorial line, should useful innovation ever happen, so we need to put in the work.But sometimes . . . but sometimes . . . we just want to skip all that and show you a press release. Here’s…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Sometimes — when researching other things — we come across data sets that are just too cool not to share.In this case it’s a snapshot of all the world’s financial assets held by all the world’s financial entities at the end of 2023 — all $480tn of it:Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.The data comes from the Financial Stability Board — the international body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system. It’s analysed…