The Swiss markets regulator has closed its investigation into comments made by Credit Suisse chair Axel Lehmann about customer outflows, saying there are no sufficient grounds for supervisory proceedings. Finma said on Friday that it had concluded a probe it began last month into possible violations of financial market law over remarks made by Lehmann
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In a rain-sodden stretch of wasteland on the edge of Dunkirk, the groups of people waiting for small boats to try and reach Britain from the northern French coast have thinned in recent days. Inclement weather, which has brought snow and choppy seas, has proved a deterrent for the regular crossings. But Britain’s newest legislative
Silicon Valley Bank was shuttered by US regulators on Friday after a rush of deposit outflows and a failed effort to raise new capital called into question the future of the tech-focused lender. With about $209bn in assets, SVB has become the second-largest bank failure in US history after the 2008 collapse of Washington Mutual,
Well, it’s over. A bank that was the 16th largest in the US by assets has been shuttered and taken over by regulators, just two days after it announced a $2.25bn capital raise after selling nearly all of its available-for-sale bond portfolio. From the FDIC just now: WASHINGTON – Silicon Valley Bank, Santa Clara, California,
The writer is the author of ‘Two Hundred Years of Muddling Through: The Surprising Story of the British Economy’ Last autumn, during the short-lived terms of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, British fiscal policy became exciting. The pair rejected what they considered to be “stale Treasury orthodoxy” and made the largest package of discretionary tax
US jobs growth slowed in February from the breakneck pace of the previous month, but remained elevated enough to keep pressure on the Federal Reserve to consider switching back to bigger interest rate rises. The world’s largest economy added 311,000 jobs last month, higher than the 225,000 jobs forecast by economists but less than January’s
The UK tax authority is missing out on about £600mn a year as a result of a longstanding perk applied to private equity executive payouts, according to an analysis by a leading tax lawyer. Most private equity funds should be treated as “trading” for tax purposes, argued Dan Neidle, former head of tax at law
You can tell how much someone loved something by how upset they are to lose it. When Mondelez announced this week that it was replacing the Matterhorn symbol on its Toblerone chocolate bars with “a modernised and streamlined mountain logo”, it did not sound that bothered. The US confectionery and snacks group has to change
The $52.4bn sell-off in US bank shares spread to Europe on Friday, with Deutsche Bank stock falling 8 per cent and Société Générale and HSBC both dropping 5 per cent. Investors dumped shares in the biggest US banks on Thursday on the back of difficulties at Silicon Valley Bank, a small, technology-focused lender that revealed
As I slide out of the Uber that has dropped me off at the little art deco block of flats in Cape Town where Nuruddin Farah lives by himself, and where he is to cook me lunch, I catch a friendly face peering from above. “I’ll come down and let you in,” the great Somali
The UK economy rebounded by more than expected in January, driven by growth in the services sector, according to official statistics published ahead of the Budget next week. Gross domestic product rose 0.3 per cent between December and January, following a contraction the previous month, the Office for National Statistics said on Friday. This was
Good morning. Welcome to jobs day. Forecasters think there were 205,000 jobs added in February. They thought something similar last month, before the real January number, more than half a million jobs, blew everyone away. Since then, many have taken to waving away strong January data as a warm-winter fluke. Another bumper payrolls report today
Asian equities followed the US sharply lower on Friday, after investors on Wall Street sold off stocks over concerns about the health of the US banking sector. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down 2.2 per cent, China’s CSI 300 shed 1 per cent, South Korea’s Kospi declined 1.1 per cent and Japan’s Topix lost
The tired metaphor is that the chancellor will try to pull a rabbit out of the hat on Budget day. The sleight of hand is usually less delightful: he’ll stuff some frozen prawns behind the radiator and a turd underneath the sofa, and hope to make a getaway before anyone notices the stink. The game
Something is going very wrong for teenagers. Between 1994 and 2010, the share of British teens who do not consider themselves likeable fell slightly from 6 per cent to 4 per cent; since 2010 it has more than doubled. The share who think of themselves as a failure, who worry a lot and who are
Xi Jinping began an unprecedented third term as China’s president on Friday, cementing the Chinese leader’s unchallenged grip on power amid growing tensions with the US and deepening economic challenges at home. In a solemn ceremony at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong was sworn in as head
When Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon in March 2017 demanded a second referendum on independence from the UK, her Scottish National party launched an online drive to raise funds for the coming campaign. Six years later, that fundraising effort — and a police investigation into what happened to the money it brought in — are
The writer is a former global head of asset allocation at a fund manager Time and time again, betting against Japanese government bonds has cost traders untold fortunes. The pay-off for going short on JGBs has always looked tempting and risks asymmetric. Potential losses appear limited given that yields, which move inversely to prices, cannot
Silicon Valley Bank shares plunged 60 per cent on Thursday, a day after launching a $2.25bn stock sale to shore up its balance sheet as it grapples with declining deposits from technology start-ups. Shares of SVB Financial Group, Silicon Valley Bank’s parent company, registered their biggest-ever decline, wiping $9.6bn from the banking group’s market capitalisation,
New applicants for unemployment aid in the US rose above 200,000 for the first time in eight weeks, running slightly counter to a recent string of strong labour market data. There were 211,000 initial jobless claims in the week ended March 4, up from 190,000 a week earlier, according to US labour department data released
The financial sector has been, uh, thoroughly spooked by a 60-per-cent single-day slide in the shares of SVB Financial, the holding company for Silicon Valley Bank. SVB hasn’t done much better in after-hours trading, sliding more than 20 per cent after reports that venture capital firms such as Founders Fund (co-founded by Peter Thiel) are