‘Animal spirits alive’ as Wall Street bankers anticipate Trump boom

Wall Street bankers say they are at the beginning of “go mode” as they expect Donald Trump’s return to the White House to lead to a boom in the industry.Trump’s second term is expected to result in a bonfire of regulations, including across financial services, with the president having promised during his election campaign to slash 10 existing regulations for every new one created in an attempt to spur economic growth.It has buoyed spirits across the banking sector, where bosses have long bemoaned tougher rules introduced after the 2007-08 banking crisis which brought the global financial system to the brink.“Time will tell, but a lot of this is exactly what you would do to have a very pro-business environment,” JP Morgan’s head of asset and wealth management, Mary Callahan Erdoes, told a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.She said US banks were “in the beginning of go mode” and that “animal spirits are alive” across Wall Street, given that looser regulation is expected to prompt a wave of dealmaking that could benefit investment banks

Davos day one: German chancellor Scholz says Putin must not win Ukraine war, as Greenpeace protesters disrupt WEF – as it happened

Olaf Scholz, Federal Chancellor of Germany, is addressing the World Economic Forum now.Scholz has taken a break from campaigning in the German election to visit Davos.He begins by reminding delegates that the path to prosperity leads through strong and stable institutions.He hit out at “black and white thinking” that promises simple solutions, but cannot deliver them.Scholz says the world needs clarity and steadfastness, particularly on peace and security

Reeves bids to intervene in car finance case that could cut lenders’ £30bn bill

The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has launched a rare bid to intervene in a supreme court hearing in the car finance commission scandal that could reduce the £30bn-plus compensation bill lenders currently face.Shares in Lloyds and Close Brothers, two of the biggest providers of motor finance, surged on Tuesday after the Treasury submitted an application to the court arguing it should be able to contribute evidence in a case that could “cause considerable economic harm” and make car loans harder to get and more expensive.The Treasury submission on Monday added that the case might “generate a perception that regulation in the UK is uncertain”. The letter, first reported by the Financial Times, also warned judges that “any remedy should be proportionate to the loss actually suffered by the consumer and avoid conferring a windfall”.The Finance and Leasing Association, which represents car lenders ranging from large high street banks such as Barclays to the finance arms of manufacturers such as Ford and Volkswagen, also applied to intervene in the case

UK pay growth rises despite firms cutting jobs after budget

UK pay growth rose in November despite evidence of employers cutting jobs after Rachel Reeves’s tax-raising budget, underlining a dilemma for the Bank of England as it considers cutting interest rates next month.With the government under pressure on the economy, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said annual growth in average weekly earnings rose by 5.6% in the three months to the end of November, up from 5.2% in the three months to October.City economists had forecast total annual pay growth would accelerate

‘It was pure accident’: how Chase UK’s boss went from communist Poland to Wall Street banking … via linguistics

Having left the library behind, the once budding academic talks about building JP Morgan’s UK digital lender from scratchIt all started in spring 2019, in a secret office on the seventh floor of JP Morgan’s London headquarters in Canary Wharf. Tucked behind the bustling staff canteen, at the end of a corridor that snaked past the office gym and in-house doctor, future Chase UK chief executive Kuba Fast was digesting the task ahead of him: helping build a new digital bank – from scratch – for the Wall Street giant.He had been selected to join the project months earlier by fellow McKinsey alumnus Sanoke Viswanathan, who had been travelling the globe to learn from other successful digital lenders, including Fast’s former employer, Poland’s mBank. JP Morgan gave little detail about its venture, which was then known by its codename, Project Dynamo. But Fast dived headfirst into the blank-slate project

Ursula von der Leyen seeks closer economic ties across EU as new Trump era begins

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has called for a new era of EU integration to sustain growth in the face of a global economy “fracturing along new lines” as Donald Trump enters the White House.Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos while the US president prepares to press ahead with his protectionist agenda, the head of the EU executive said the bloc could no longer rely on the approach that has sustained it this century.“In the last 25 years, Europe has relied on the rising tide of global trade to drive its growth. It has relied on cheap energy from Russia, and Europe has too often outsourced its security. But those days are gone,” von der Leyen told the summit in the Swiss resort