Author: Lily Harper

Stefan Bollinger knows how to work his way up from the bottom — literally. As a teenage apprentice in Switzerland he started out in subterranean bank vaults and was repeatedly told that with no university degree, his banking career was over. Three decades later, the former Goldman Sachs banker has landed one of the top jobs in Swiss finance: chief executive of the country’s second-largest listed wealth manager, Julius Baer. But far from an easy homecoming for a novice chief executive, Bollinger’s first six months have been marred by risk management revelations that threaten to undermine his effort to move the…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Property sector myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.New non-dom rules led to a plunge in the number of deals in London’s prime housing market last month, as interest cooled from wealthy international buyers.There were 35.8 per cent fewer transactions in May for high-end properties compared with a year earlier and 33.5 per cent fewer than the pre-pandemic 2017-2019 average for the period, according to property firm LonRes. The number of under offer high-end properties — including the capital’s most expensive homes in Kensington, Knightsbridge and Belgravia — fell by…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the UK banks myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.NatWest has ruled itself out of bidding for UK high-street bank TSB, eliminating one of the leading contenders from a sale process that had been expected to draw interest from some of the country’s largest lenders.The formerly state-owned bank has decided not to pursue an acquisition of the Sabadell-owned retail lender, and is not actively bidding for it according to three people familiar with the matter. NatWest’s decision not to make an offer for TSB comes after TSB’s Spanish owner confirmed a…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Hong Kong’s property market was once seen as a financial outlier in Asia. It was defined by scarce land, strong legal safeguards and disciplined local developers. Even as mainland China’s property groups were engulfed in a chaotic storm of defaults and debt, investor confidence in Hong Kong’s developers held, thanks to the belief that pricing dynamics and balance sheets in the city were fundamentally more resilient.But that perception is under renewed scrutiny. Property transactions in Hong Kong fell 28 per cent in…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Lars Windhorst’s Tennor Holding, which borrowed billions from investors and was once at the heart of the German financier’s business empire, has been declared bankrupt at the request of Dutch tax authorities.An Amsterdam court on Tuesday appointed a liquidator for the Netherlands-based entity, according to public filings. Dutch tax authorities asked a court to wind up the company over an unpaid €5.3mn claim, according to a person familiar with the matter.Tennor was for more than a decade Windhorst’s main investment company and…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Allianz has told staff in its UK insurance arm that it will be cutting 650 jobs amid an increasingly tough market.The German insurer told employees on Wednesday morning that roles would be affected in its commercial, speciality and personal insurance business, according to two people familiar with the situation.In the UK, Allianz Insurance employs about 4,200 staff across its various brands, including Petplan.Allianz UK posted a 52 per cent increase in annual operating profits to £368mn last year, while its business volume…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Howard Marks, co-founder of $200bn alternatives manager Oaktree Capital Management, has called on China to open up more “asset classes” to foreign investors as he set out an upbeat view of the world’s second-largest economy.“I’m very optimistic about the Chinese economy in the long run,” Marks said on a panel at Shanghai’s flagship annual financial conference, citing the country’s infrastructure and the size of its middle class. He proposed that China “expand the range of investment asset classes that are open to…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the UK house prices myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.UK house prices declined at their fastest monthly pace in nearly four years in April, as demand fell after the end of a temporary stamp duty holiday.Property prices fell 2.8 per cent between March and April, the steepest month-on-month decline since July 2021, according to data from the Land Registry published on Wednesday.The fall brought the average house price down to £265,000 and pushed annual growth to 3.5 per cent, from 7 per cent the previous month, the first slowdown since…

All eyes in Builders Vision’s Chicago office, in the fashionable Fulton Market district, are trained on a large screen showing a coiled serpent eating its own tail. On a video link, the day’s keynote speaker is enthusing how, contrary to first impressions, the ouroboros’s self-destruction is actually part of its eternal recreation.From their seats in the 16th-floor office’s lounge area, the audience follows the speaker’s every word, lapping up her invocation to “rewild our imaginations”, nodding at her assertion that “every tradition was once an innovation”.The workshop participants all seem cut from the same cloth: bright-eyed, luxe sneakers and slacks,…

This article is an on-site version of our Moral Money newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered three times a week. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here, or explore all FT newsletters.Visit our Moral Money hub for all the latest ESG news, opinion and analysis from around the FT Welcome back. Climate-related lawsuits against companies have emerged at a growing pace in the past few years — including cases against European banks ING and BNP Paribas. A German court ruling last month suggested the risk of business disruption from these lawsuits might be greater…