Wall Street’s new battle: DSAs vs CFAs | USAEMALL.com

One scoop to start: Private equity-backed software group Visma has chosen London over Amsterdam for the planned initial public offering next year of the €19bn company, scoring a rare win for the UK’s beleaguered stock market.

And another thing: A mediator has suggested Paramount pay Donald Trump about $20mn to settle the US president’s lawsuit against CBS News as the two sides inch closer to a deal.

In today’s newsletter:

• Wall Street readies to mess with Zohran

• Bank M&A: in Trump we trust

• The new revelations at Builder.ai

The mayoral election roiling Wall Street

New York City, the heartbeat of financial capitalism, is entering a “hot commie summer”, says billionaire Dan Loeb.

That’s thanks to one of the great political upsets in American history — the swift rise of 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani, who in a few months went from relative obscurity to becoming the apparent Democratic mayoral nominee in the US’s largest city.

The Bowdoin College graduate made easy work of his establishment rival, Andrew Cuomo, a former governor who resigned in 2021, amid allegations of sexual harassment which he denies.

Loeb and many of New York’s financial elite say they’ll do anything to avoid having Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, from becoming the city’s next leader.

Hedge fund founders are set to spend tens of millions of dollars to fund a media operation to counter the Mamdani vote, DD’s James Fontanella-Khan, Amelia Pollard and Sujeet Indap report.

Bill Ackman, Loeb’s former foe but recent comrade in prominently critiquing the failures of the modern Democratic party, on Wednesday hinted on X to an unspecified legal challenge to thwart Mamdani.

The shock election result underscored a growing divide in New York between Wall Street’s elite and a younger generation who have not benefited from the city’s financial boom.

Nationally, it sends signs of generational change inside the Democratic party. It even threatens to reshape Wall Street — if large firms and their dealmakers choose to decamp to Florida or Texas due to the threat of higher taxes.  

But there’s one problem for the financiers trying to stop Mamdani: they’re short on options. 

Eric Adams, the incumbent mayor running as an independent, had a federal corruption indictment dismissed by the Trump administration. Cuomo is considering running as an independent in November’s general election, but Wall Street has lost enough money on him.

A pro-Cuomo Pac had already raised $24mn, with Michael Bloomberg donating $8.3mn, while Ackman chipped in $500,000 and Loeb added $350,000. It was the best-funded outside group in New York municipal history.

Republicans haven’t run New York City in decades. The party’s former talk show radio host candidate Curtis Sliwa, head of the Guardian Angels volunteer patrol group, has a slim chance of winning November’s mayoral general election.

Loeb and Ackman are studying third-party candidates. “Several New York City mayors have run (and won) outside traditional two-party lines,” said Loeb.

Absent another big surprise, some in the finance world are already catastrophising the future of New York with Mamdani as mayor, comparing it to the city’s flirtation with financial ruin in the 1970s, and the more recent exodus of wealthy residents from Democratic enclaves such as San Francisco and Chicago. 

“If the tax base erodes, and Jamie Dimon starts moving folks to Texas, and Citadel keeps shifting to Florida — that’s the direction we’re heading,” one banker told DD.

Bank executives lust for their own dealmaking

The leaders of America’s fragmented banking system are signalling they are ready to start dating.

Top executives across the US banking industry say that long-sought after consolidation in the sector is finally on the horizon, driven by a looser touch from regulators who had largely objected to large bank acquisitions in the years since the financial crisis.

The takeover talks between BNY and Northern Trust illustrate the jockeying that’s already under way. Before Trump took office this year, it was unclear if executives had the confidence that they could win regulatory approval. That calculus is shifting.

Robin Vince, BNY chief, is just one executive gesturing that the door could be opening.

“It’s still a very high bar . . . we will be thoughtful if we see ways to make our business get faster and better,” he says.

Discussions between the two financial services companies had yet to yield any concrete action, according to two people briefed on the matter who said BNY, launched in 1784 by US founding father and first Treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton, was working with advisers to study a prospective deal.

Industry leaders are still somewhat circumspect about their prospects for dealmaking, given the Federal Trade Commission has shown it is still sceptical of aggressive combinations. M&A activity remains cool for now. 

Bankers are biding their time as they wait for the Trump administration to relax some of the rules that have prevented consolidation.

Michelle Bowman, vice-chair of supervision at the Federal Reserve, has promised to rework the “large financial institution ratings” system, which has been obstructing big bank deals. 

The Fed may also soon announce changes to supplementary leverage ratios and adjust reserve requirements, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have rescinded guidance that obstructed bank deals. 

“The regulatory window is wide open,” said Ebrahim Poonawala, banks analyst at Bank of America. “We need the proof-point of a larger banking deal being announced and the market reacting positively. If that happens the floodgates could open.”

The new revelations inside Builder.ai

The dynamic team of DD’s Alex Heal and Robert Smith, along with FT colleagues, have been one step ahead on the UK’s big artificial intelligence debacle. 

They detailed how London-based tech unicorn Builder.ai collapsed in May while owing money to an Israeli private intelligence outfit, a high-profile crisis communications specialist and one of the world’s most feared litigation law firms — all hired after the FT started digging into the company last year.

Now they reveal that Sachin Dev Duggal, the founder and “chief wizard” of the Microsoft-backed company that promised to revolutionise app development with AI, made at least $20mn from selling shares in Builder.ai.

He had also borrowed against his stake in the business, which had to file for US bankruptcy protection earlier this month, after an internal investigation found evidence of potentially bogus sales under his tenure as chief executive and the company revised down revenues to just a quarter of prior estimates.

Duggal’s investment firm, the Mauritius-based SD Squared Ventures, started selling the shares just before Builder.ai first received venture capital funding nearly seven years ago and most of the transactions concluded before 2023.

There’s no suggestion that Duggal broke any rules in doing so.

But the revelation is likely to rile many of Duggal’s employees, almost 300 of whom were left with no wages in May, and the investors who had poured more than $500mn into his company over the years. The full story is here.

Job moves

• UBS has promoted Jeff Hinton and Nestor Paz-Galindo to lead its newly created corporate and sponsor advisory group, as the bank combines its M&A and private equity practices. Vik Hebatpuria and Stefanos Papapanagiotou were promoted to lead the financial institutions group. Simona Maellare, co-head of its alternative capital group, will leave the bank. UBS has also poached Peter Toal, a senior Barclays leveraged finance banker, to be its global head of leveraged and debt capital markets.

• Vale Base Metals has promoted Gustavo Pimenta as chair. He replaces Mark Cutifani.

• Apollo has appointed Celia Yan as head of hybrid for Asia Pacific. She joins from BlackRock.

• Revaia has appointed Jean Pierre Mustier to its board of directors. He also serves on boards of Aareal Bank, Deutsche Börse and Unigestion Holding.

Smart reads

A7A5 token A new crypto token launched by a fugitive Moldovan oligarch and Russian defence sector bank has now moved $9.3bn since its debut four months ago. The FT looked into how it is skirting sanctions on Russia. 

St Paul’s in pictures The FT climbs on the roof and descends into the inner sanctum of St Paul’s to meet the stonemasons, volunteers, and clergy who keep the cathedral alive. Prepare to time travel back to the Middle Ages. 

Big Four firms fined Hundreds of staff at the Dutch arms of Deloitte, PwC and EY shared answers on internal training exams (which included ethics tests). Now they have to pay a total of $8.5mn for the alleged cheating.

News round-up

Asda sinks to £600mn loss as it struggles to regain ground (FT)

QIA and Fiera Capital strike deal to invest in Qatari equities (FT)

Elizabeth Warren demands information on PE firms’ lobbying efforts for tax breaks (FT)

EU strikes deal on failed-lenders rules (Bloomberg) 

Trump considers naming next Fed chair early in bid to undermine Powell (WSJ)