UBS has offered to buy Credit Suisse for up to $1bn, with Swiss authorities planning to change the country’s laws to bypass a shareholder vote on the transaction as they rush to finalise a deal before Monday. The all-share deal between Switzerland’s two biggest banks is set to be signed as soon as Sunday evening
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Cash is no longer trash. Assets invested in US money market funds hit a record $5tn last week. Investors rattled by the collapse of three US banks and a crisis of confidence in smaller regional lenders scrambled for safe, liquid alternatives to park their assets. About $120bn flooded into US money market funds in the
Vladimir Putin has made a surprise visit to Mariupol, the Ukrainian city all but destroyed by his invading army last year, in an apparent show of defiance after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant accusing the Russian president of war crimes. State television showed Putin arriving at the port city by helicopter in
A week after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, a group of venture capital firms wrote to the shell-shocked start-ups they had put their money into. It was time, they said, to talk about the “admittedly not so sexy” function of treasury management. Days of scrambling to account for their companies’ funds presented a generation of founders
The Federal Reserve will keep raising its benchmark policy rate, holding it above 5.5 per cent for the rest of the year, despite turmoil across the US banking sector, according to a majority of leading academic economists polled by the Financial Times. The latest survey, conducted in partnership with the Initiative on Global Markets at
Europe’s push to make arms for Ukraine has been hobbled by a shortage of explosives, which industry insiders fear will delay efforts to boost shell production by as much as three years. Scarce supplies of gunpowder, plastic explosives and TNT have left industry unable to rapidly meet expected EU orders for Ukraine, regardless of how
BlackRock’s consulting arm warned Silicon Valley Bank, the California-based lender whose failure helped spark a banking crisis, that its risk controls were “substantially below” its peers in early 2022, several people with direct knowledge of the assessment said. SVB hired BlackRock’s Financial Markets Advisory Group in October 2020 to analyse the potential impact of various
Donald Trump has said that he expects to be arrested on Tuesday and called on supporters to protest, as Manhattan prosecutors continue to investigate allegations that the ex-president paid hush money to buy a porn star’s silence. Trump, who is campaigning as a Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential election, on Saturday wrote on his
A deal allowing Ukraine to export grain to world markets by ship despite Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea has been extended, the UN and the Ukrainian and Turkish governments said on Saturday. The Black Sea grain initiative, agreed in July under the auspices of the UN and with Turkish mediation, has enabled Ukraine to
The crosses on top of the Refectory Church in Kyiv’s Pechersk Lavra holy site have turned from gold to black. Or so said Metropolitan Onufriy, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, after its priests and monks — deemed by Kyiv to be stooges of Moscow — were ordered by the government to vacate the
Credit Suisse, UBS and their key regulators are racing to thrash out a deal on the historic merger of Switzerland’s two biggest banks as soon as Saturday evening, people familiar with the situation told the Financial Times. The Swiss National Bank and regulator Finma have told international counterparts that they regard a deal with UBS
BlackRock drew up a rival bid for Credit Suisse that would trump a plan blessed by the Swiss central bank for UBS to acquire its struggling rival, five people with knowledge of the matter told the Financial Times. The US investment giant evaluated a number of options and talked to other potential investors, said people
The cost of buying insurance to protect against Credit Suisse defaulting on its debt soared to a record high this week, in a sign of growing jitters about the lender’s financial position after the failure of two US banks sent shockwaves through global markets. As Credit Suisse’s stock and bond prices have whipsawed in recent
David Tepper has snapped up bonds of SVB Financial Group, the parent company of Silicon Valley Bank, in a bet that the value of the debt will rise as parts of the group are auctioned off, said people briefed on the matter. Tepper acquired the bonds along with preferred stock via Appaloosa, which for the
UBS is in discussions to take over all or part of Credit Suisse, with the boards of Switzerland’s two biggest lenders set to meet separately over the weekend to consider Europe’s most consequential banking combination since the financial crisis, according to multiple people briefed on the talks. The Swiss National Bank and regulator Finma are
Top Democrats in Congress have called for a federal investigation into the role Goldman Sachs played in the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, and urged regulators to examine whether the investment bank’s profits handling a $21bn trade for SVB should be repossessed. “As Goldman Sachs is poised to profit from SVB’s failure, we strongly urge
An explosion of volatility in US Treasuries following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has provided the sternest test of a market that underpins much of the global financial system since a dramatic meltdown in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. But while the $22tn market for US government debt this week suffered its
First Republic Bank stock tumbled yet again on Friday after a financial lifeline from large US banks that deposited $30bn into its accounts failed to calm investor fears. Shares in the San Francisco-based lender closed down 32.8 per cent in the first session after 11 of the largest US banks, spearheaded by JPMorgan Chase, said
In another life, Ulrich Körner would be best known for trying to save a different Swiss bank from collapse. In September 2011, UBS was in disarray after rogue trader Kweku Adoboli lost $2.3bn and chief executive Oswald Grübel was forced to resign. As the board scrambled to find a replacement, early press release drafts had
On Monday this week, the most important market in the world went, to use the technical term, completely bananas. Government bonds have a habit of rallying when the going gets tough, which it indisputably did when Silicon Valley Bank imploded. So a jump in US Treasury debt prices off the back of this makes sense.
The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for the war crime of deporting children from Ukraine to Russia. Pre-trial judges of The Hague-based International Criminal Court said the Russian president was “allegedly responsible” for the forced transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia during the two countries’