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Thứ Năm, 11 tháng 9, 2025
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Chủ Nhật, 7 tháng 9, 2025
BlackRock to run $80b for Citi as bank refocuses wealth unit
BlackRock struck a deal with Citigroup to manage about $80 billion in assets for the bank’s wealth management clients, Citi said on Thursday.
The move highlights a growing trend among big banks to partner with specialist asset managers while refocusing wealth businesses on client advice and financial planning.
Clients currently overseen by Citi Investment Management (CIM) will continue to work with their Citi private bankers for wealth advice, asset allocation and strategy selection.
BlackRock will manage and implement those strategies, and Citi will roll out BlackRock’s Aladdin Wealth platform to its private bankers and investment professionals.
Citi is “pleased with its existing BlackRock relationship and desires to pass along the remainder of its in-house assets under management,” said Christopher Marinac, director of research at Janney Montgomery Scott.
The world’s largest asset manager already oversees part of Citigroup’s $635 billion in client investments, Bloomberg News reported earlier on Thursday.
“It is also a way for Citi to get further efficiency gains very quickly since this outsourcing can drop expenses,” Marinac added.
The partnership aligns with CEO Jane Fraser’s restructuring push to streamline operations and improve profits in wealth management.
Under the agreement — which is expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2025 — some CIM employees will join BlackRock as portfolio managers for Citi clients.
For BlackRock, the deal brings a sizable inflow and, over time, access to Citi’s private‑markets investment strategies.
It is targeting $400 billion of cumulative private‑markets fundraising by 2030 as it contends with margin pressure from lower‑fee index strategies.
As part of this push, BlackRock unveiled plans in June to include private assets in its retirement plans, which account for more than half of the money the company manages.
China paves way for renminbi fundraising by Russian energy giants
Russian ‘panda bond’ sales would be first since 2017 and reflect deepening ties between Moscow and Beijing
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia’s ties with China were at an ‘unprecedentedly high level’ © Alexander Kazakov/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
China is preparing to reopen its domestic bond market to major Russian energy companies, in a shift of policy that reflects deepening diplomatic and economic ties between Beijing and Moscow.
Two people familiar with the matter said senior Chinese financial regulators told top Russian energy executives at a late August meeting in China’s southern city of Guangzhou that they would support their companies’ plans to sell renminbi “panda bonds”.
Such borrowing would be first Russian corporate fundraising in mainland China since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the first Russian debt sold on China’s public onshore market since state aluminium producer Rusal’s panda bond issue raised a total Rmb1.5bn in 2017.
Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing on Tuesday, saying strategic ties between the two countries were at an “unprecedentedly high level”.
After the talks, Moscow announced it had reached agreement with Beijing on construction of the long-discussed Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, a project led by Russian state monopoly Gazprom that analysts say could reshape global energy flows.
Gazprom hopes the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline will hugely increase the amount of gas it can sell to China © Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
Extensive US and European sanctions have closed off Russian borrowers’ access to global financial markets since 2022 and Chinese banks have shunned public financing deals involving Russian companies out of fear of being subjected to secondary sanctions.
However the tightening ties between Beijing and Moscow are now making the banks less cautious. At the same time, the renminbi is becoming an increasingly important foreign currency for the sanction-hit Russian economy.
In 2022, Russian companies began selling renminbi-denominated bonds on their domestic market. Most such bonds are issued by a small group of companies that includes Rusal and Gazprom.
The revival of Russian panda bonds was likely to be limited to two or three companies at first, the people familiar with the plans said.
Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom and its affiliates, which are not subject to broad sanctions by major western countries, were expected to be among the first borrowers to tap the world’s second-largest bond market, they said.
Lawyers warned that a successful bond sale would require Russian companies to address lingering concerns about sanctions among Chinese banks, which are the main buyers and brokers of panda bonds.
“The broker would still face the risk of secondary sanctions from the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac),” said Allen Wong, a partner at Beijing Jincheng Tongda & Neal Law Firm, adding that banks would struggle to conceal their involvement in a public market.
One potential workaround was to issue panda bonds through Russian entities not yet under sanctions, but there was a risk the entity could be targeted after the debt was sold.
“The idea is appealing,” Wong said. “But to make it work needs further study and top-down approvals.”
Electricity pylons near a Russian power station operated by a Rosatom unit © Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
More than 40 Russian business people and Chinese financial experts met at Moscow’s embassy in Beijing in July to discuss how to improve Russian companies’ creditworthiness in order to raise capital in China.
On Friday, Gazprom secured a crucial triple A rating and stable outlook from Shenzhen-based Chinese rating agency CSCI Pengyuan. A strong credit rating is a prerequisite for foreign firms to tap the domestic bond market.
The rating was based on Gazprom’s strategic importance to Russian’s oil sector and its solid financial profile despite high geopolitical risks and oil price volatility, CSCI Pengyuan said. Gazprom has been under Ofac sanctions since 2022.
An increasing number of important Russian energy firms have secured Chinese credit ratings. They include Atomenergoprom JSC, an affiliate of Rosatom; top LNG supplier Novatek, whose recently sanctioned Arctic plant supplied a cargo to China in August; and Zarubezhneft, which develops Russian energy projects overseas.
A new Russia-China gas pact could reshape global energy markets
An illustration showing the Chinese flag with its stars lit by gas flames, the largest star depicted as Russia's Kremlin star with a blue gas flame resembling the Gazprom company logo.
The People’s Bank of China, China Securities Regulatory Commission, Beijing’s National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors, Rosatom and Gazprom did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
US credit rating agency Fitch Ratings downgraded Gazprom to CC in 2022 — a level that signals default is “probable” — before withdrawing its ratings on all Russian entities to comply with EU sanctions.
An escalating sanctions regime “could impose insurmountable barriers to many corporations’ ability to make timely payments on foreign and local currency debt to certain international creditors”, Fitch said at that time.
But a project manager at one of the top Chinese rating agencies said that “one person’s trash” was “another’s treasure”.
“Fitch’s call may be true to its own clients, but for Chinese or even Indian investors, these Russian deals, if they get done, would offer the most credible assets they can find on the market.”
Additional reporting by Anastasia Stognei in Berlin
Thứ Năm, 4 tháng 9, 2025
Peter Thiel-backed fintech Brex plots European expansion in push for IPO
$12bn group seeks expansion in sign of resilience among start-ups launched in a period of ultra-low interest rates
The Brex logo is displayed on a smartphone screen.
Brex has secured a licence that allows it to serve European-headquartered businesses © Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images
Brex, the $12bn corporate card company backed by venture capitalists including Peter Thiel, is expanding into Europe as it looks to leapfrog rival Ramp and build towards an initial public offering.
The eight-year-old company secured a licence last month that allows it to serve European-headquartered businesses, and is planning to roll out its services across the continent and in the UK.
The European expansion will open up a market worth as much as $5bn a year in additional revenue, as Brex closes in on its first ever period of profitability, according to chief executive Pedro Franceschi.
“Business in Europe didn’t really have a good solution before, it was Barclays in some areas, but not really a modern solution,” said Franceschi.
Brex, which offers corporate cards and expense management to companies such as Arm, Wiz and Anthropic, is aiming to take share from massive incumbents such as American Express that dominate the multitrillion-dollar corporate card market.
It is also competing with Ramp, another US start-up founded in 2019 which has raised capital twice in the past three months, setting a new $22.5bn valuation in the process.
The European push signals the resilience of start-ups such as Brex that were born during a period of ultra-low interest rates.
The San Francisco-headquartered group was among the fastest growing financial technology start-ups during a venture capital boom, racing to a valuation of $2.3bn in 2022. But the company lost momentum as rising interest rates led to less start-up funding.
Brex undertook an aggressive turnaround plan over the past two years, which one investor described as “a torturous journey” that involved “repositioning the company, firing a bunch of people, getting people back in the office and shedding the excess from 2020/2021”.
The company’s annualised gross revenue, a forecast of annual revenue from performance over a shorter period, was $700mn in August.
Now, Brex is on the cusp of making more than it spends for the first time, according to Franceschi. “It’s going to happen in the next two quarters, at this point it’s sort of inevitable.”
Brex has been backed by some of Silicon Valley’s most high-profile investors, including Kleiner Perkins, Greenoaks Capital and IVP. Thiel personally invested in the company when it was launched, and has since also backed Ramp via his firm Founders Fund.
Brex was among a crop of fintech companies, along with Klarna, Revolut and Stripe, that shot to prominence and set new records for financial technology company valuations in the run-up to 2022.
The group’s ability to weather a period of market volatility will provide a test case for other start-ups of a similar vintage.
The turnaround has come from three things, said Franceschi — focusing on fewer products, selling them better and changing the company’s culture from the one that had developed in a zero interest rate period.
“Companies which did well in the [zero-interest rate policy] era found life harder when that changed,” said Franceschi. “We took that lesson to heart in 2023. We raised the intensity bar and returned to office, we raised the floor and the ceiling for how people are performing.”
Anthropic to stop selling AI services to majority Chinese-owned groups
Policy will also apply to US adversaries including Russia, Iran and North Korea
An illustration showing the Anthropic logo on a smartphone screen placed over a computer keyboard
The move by Anthropic comes as concerns rise in the US about China using AI for military purposes © Dado Ruvic/Reuters
Anthropic will stop selling artificial intelligence services to groups majority owned by Chinese entities, in the first such policy shift by an American AI company.
The San Francisco-based developer of Claude AI is trying to limit the ability of Beijing to use its technology to benefit China’s military and intelligence services, according to an Anthropic executive who briefed the Financial Times.
The policy, which takes effect immediately, will potentially apply to Chinese companies from ByteDance and Tencent to Alibaba.
“We are taking action to close a loophole that allows Chinese companies to access frontier AI,” said the executive, who added that the policy would also apply to US adversaries including Russia, Iran and North Korea.
The executive said the policy was designed “to align with our broader commitment that transformational AI capabilities advance democratic interests in US leadership in AI”.
The shift reflects rising concerns in the US about Chinese groups setting up subsidiaries abroad in an effort to conceal their attempts to obtain American technology.
Direct customers and groups that access Anthropic’s services via cloud services will also be affected. The executive said the impact on Anthropic’s global revenues would be in the “low hundreds of millions of dollars”.
He said Anthropic understood that it would lose some business to rivals, but said the company felt that the move was necessary to highlight that the issue was a “significant problem”.
It comes as concerns rise in the US about China using AI for military purposes ranging from hypersonic weapons to nuclear weapons modelling.
Chinese start-up DeepSeek sent shockwaves through the AI industry earlier this year when it released its open-source R1 model, which is considered comparable to leading US models. OpenAI later said it had evidence that DeepSeek had accessed its models inappropriately to train R1. DeepSeek has not commented on the claims.
The Biden administration imposed sweeping export controls in an effort to make it harder for China to obtain American AI. The Trump administration has so far implemented almost no new controls as President Donald Trump tries to secure a meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping.
One person familiar with the situation said the policy was partly aimed at the growing number of Chinese subsidiaries in Singapore that companies on the mainland are using to access US technology with less scrutiny.
It reflects the fact that groups in China must share data with the government when asked, posing a national security risk to the US. It also points to concerns about China appropriating American AI technology in ways that give it a commercial advantage over AI groups in the US.
“This move could potentially impact companies like ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent,” said one person familiar with the situation.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees who wanted to prioritise AI safety. The company on Tuesday announced that it had raised $13bn in fresh funding, valuing it at $170bn.
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Earlier this year, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei advocated for strengthening export controls on China. Anthropic’s main rival, OpenAI, has also offered support for controls to “protect” the US’s lead in AI.
Access to US chatbots — such as Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Meta’s AI — is banned in China. But users can access the technology by using virtual private networks, which is against the platforms’ terms of service.
Big Tech bosses line up to back Melania Trump’s AI initiative
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Heads of Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Apple appear at White House events in bid to court favour with the administration
Mark Zuckerberg, left, and Donald Trump during a dinner in the State Dining Room of the White House on Thursday © AFP/ Getty Images
Heads of the largest US tech companies have lined up to back an artificial intelligence initiative spearheaded by first lady Melania Trump, as the industry rushes to show support and curry favour with the administration.
Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella and other CEOs including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Apple’s Tim Cook gathered at the White House, as tech executives endorsed a plan to help America’s children learn to use AI.
Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft founder Bill Gates flanked Donald and Melania Trump at a dinner with officials and tech leaders, following a roundtable event on education earlier on Thursday.
The president praised the tech CEOs and said his administration was making it “easy” to build the data centres needed for AI, with “electric capacity and . . . getting your permits”.
The scenes were reminiscent of Trump’s inauguration in January, when powerful Silicon Valley leaders attended after donating millions of dollars to his inaugural committee.
Tech bosses have worked to ingratiate themselves with Trump since last year’s election as they seek looser regulation, greater public subsidies and relief from tariffs for their companies. Many also face the prospect of break-up in numerous antitrust lawsuits brought by the government.
Crossing the president has proved perilous, as Trump has lashed out against individual companies — and threatened targeted tariffs against groups such as Apple — to bring them in line with his agenda on issues including promoting US manufacturing and absorbing the costs of tariffs.
Sam Altman sits in the front row among other attendees during a White House Task Force on AI Education meeting.
Chief executive Sam Altman, centre, announced an OpenAI jobs platform and a certification programme working with employers at Thursday’s event © 2025 Getty Images
Microsoft on Thursday said it would support the White House’s AI initiative by offering all US college students free use of its Copilot AI. Nadella also pledged to expand the Copilot programme to primary and secondary school students and teachers as part of its commitment to donate $4bn in cash and AI services to education in the next five years.
“We are so grateful to the president, first lady and the entire administration for making it a national priority to prepare the next generation to harness AI’s power,” Nadella said in a video on X.
Altman announced an OpenAI jobs platform and a certification programme working with employers including Walmart. The company committed to accrediting 10mn Americans by 2030 after they complete AI training through its online platform.
The OpenAI co-founder has spent this year building ties with the Trump administration, after previous criticism of the president. He has showcased his company’s technology to lawmakers and White House staff and emphasised the potential impact of AI on the American economy.
“Thank you for being such a pro-business, pro-innovation president. It’s a very refreshing change. We’re very excited to see what you’re doing to make all of our companies and our entire country so successful,” Altman said at the White House dinner.
Melania Trump sits at a conference table with task force members in the East Room, addressing an audience
Google CEO Sundar Pichai, seated at the table far left, and Melania Trump, centre of table, at the White House event on Thursday © 2025 Getty Images
Google’s Pichai joined the chorus earlier on Thursday, highlighting the company’s plan to invest $1bn in AI-powered education in the next three years.
“It’s an honour for me to be here and to support the first lady’s presidential AI challenge. Through this initiative, you are inspiring young people,” he said. “We are incredibly thankful for the partnership of everyone in this room, and to the first lady and the administration for leading the way.”
Notably absent from the events was Elon Musk, who publicly fell out with Trump earlier this year after leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Musk, who owns AI company xAI, said he had been invited but sent a representative in his stead.
Other invitees included Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Oracle chief executive Safra Catz, and Palantir executive Shyam Sankar, a White House official said.
Also on the list were Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang, now working at Meta, Jared Isaacman, a former nominee to lead Nasa and investor in Musk’s SpaceX, and venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya.
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Big Tech groups are among more than a hundred signatories that have pledged to support the first lady’s AI education scheme. Melania Trump last month launched the presidential AI challenge, which seeks to foster students and educators’ interest in the technology.
“We must ensure America’s talent, our workforce, is prepared to sustain AI’s progress,” she said.
However, Melania Trump has also been an advocate of stronger controls on artificially generated images and videos, supporting the Take It Down Act that criminalises posting revenge porn or deepfakes and mandates tech companies to remove such content within 48 hours.
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