Switzerland’s private banks are seeking to poach key staff and clients from Credit Suisse as steep job and bonus cuts force bankers into the market following the takeover by UBS. Julius Baer, Pictet, Lombard Odier, EFG and LGT are among Swiss wealth managers sounding out disgruntled Credit Suisse bankers, people familiar with ongoing conversations have
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China has significantly expanded its bailout lending as its Belt and Road Initiative blows up following a series of debt write-offs, scandal-ridden projects and allegations of corruption. A study published on Tuesday shows China granted $104bn worth of rescue loans to developing countries between 2019 and the end of 2021. The figure for these years
Israel’s president Isaac Herzog has implored the government to halt a bitterly contested judicial overhaul, warning that the polarisation it had caused had put “our security, economy, society” under threat. Mass protests erupted across the country overnight with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sacked his defence
Vladimir Putin has said Russia plans to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, marking Moscow’s latest attempt to use the threat of a nuclear war to ramp up tensions with the US and Nato over the invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s president said work would be completed on building storage units for tactical nuclear weapons in
Gordon Moore, one of the founders of US chipmaker Intel and a central figure in the history of Silicon Valley, has died at the age of 94. Moore’s early insight that the cost of electronics would plunge, turning digital technology into a part of everyday life, made his name a byword for the rapid and
China has released a top chip investor after an eight-month detention as the country battles to bolster its semiconductor industry in the face of Washington’s containment efforts. Chen Datong, head of Yuanhe Puhua (Suzhou) Investment Management, also known as Hua Capital, was released this month as Beijing seeks help from chip experts to navigate tough
Angry investors are parking metaphorical tanks on Paradeplatz in Zurich’s financial district. Holders of $17bn in Credit Suisse AT1 bonds are squaring up for a legal fight with Switzerland. This promises to be as fierce as the scrap between Argentina and US hedge funds over a 2001 debt default. Swiss authorities wiped out $17bn of
UK inflation unexpectedly accelerated in February, adding to pressure on the Bank of England to raise interest rates again at its meeting on Thursday. The annual rate of consumer price inflation rose to 10.4 per cent in February, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday. That was up from 10.1 per cent in January
Banking is a massive, complicated and delicate confidence trick. Normally it works fine. But as soon as people worry that it could fall apart, it often does, sometimes spectacularly. So when an old friend, an entrepreneur in Geneva, messaged me last week to say he had moved his money out of Credit Suisse, having already
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
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
US stocks rose and nerves around banking stocks in Europe eased on Thursday as the world’s central banks calmed investors with promises to maintain financial stability. In New York, the S&P 500 added 1.8 per cent while the Nasdaq Composite gained 2.5 per cent. The KBW Nasdaq Bank index, which has sold off heavily this
Oil prices have tumbled to their lowest levels in more than a year as crises in the banking sector unsettled financial markets and stoked fears for the broader economy. Brent crude, the global energy benchmark, slipped 5 per cent on Wednesday to settle at $73.69 a barrel. That left it down more than 10 per
Technology start-ups are scrambling to deal with tighter regulation and the influence of larger banks that are set to replace the informal financial relationships and close personal connections that have characterised Silicon Valley Bank’s dealings with the sector. Young tech companies, which account for a large part of SVB’s deposits, were making plans to take
Cryptocurrency prices have soared as investors breathed a sigh of relief that US regulators moved to bolster the US banking system after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Bitcoin and ether, the two most widely-traded coins, have surged by a fifth since their lows on Friday as traders were reassured by promises from US authorities
Circle, the operator of one of the world’s largest stablecoins, has said $3.3bn of its reserves are trapped in Silicon Valley Bank, triggering a fall in the value of its token as the crypto market reels from the failure of two US banks this week. The announcement from Circle overnight on Friday prompted the company’s
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
Here is a thought experiment. If Taiwan did not exist, would the US and China still be at loggerheads? My hunch is yes. Antagonism between top dogs and rising powers is part of the human story. The follow-up is whether such tensions would persist if China were a democracy rather than a one-party state. That
Wall Street stocks declined and the yield on short-term US government debt soared after Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell warned that the central bank could more aggressively raise interest rates if the economy grows too quickly. Powell’s comments sent the yield on the policy-sensitive two-year US Treasury above 5 per cent for the first time
History shows that heavy spending on armaments may reduce rather than increase stability. Still, the two goals align nicely for delegates at China’s annual National People’s Congress. Within Chinese business, this will create winners among defence companies and losers across many other sectors. Chinese premier Li Keqiang mentioned the word “stability” 33 times in his