FirstFT: Consultations begin on ‘Edinburgh reforms’

Andrew Griffith, the City minister, has pledged that the “Edinburgh” package of post-Brexit reforms for the UK’s financial services industry will make the sector “as internationally competitive as possible”.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will today launch wide-ranging consultations on the rules for financial services in order to discard EU standards and make the City more competitive against global rivals.

The reforms, at first dubbed Big Bang 2.0 by ministers, include loosening insurance rules under the Solvency II regime, freeing some retail banks from ringfencing their operations and loosening EU-imposed Mifid 2 curbs on analyst research, which restricted coverage of companies and deterred investors.

In an interview with the Financial Times before the announcement, Griffith said the proposed changes would allow the UK to “hold or take advantage of new opportunities, new innovations, new ways of making markets more liquid and effective”.

He promised that the reforms would be the “first out of the block taking advantage of Brexit freedoms”. Other sectors, such as life sciences, will follow.

• Further reading: Jeremy Hunt’s plan to redraw the financial services rule book aims to boost the City of London, but it could also make the UK a riskier place to do business.

Five more stories in the news

1. FTC sues to block Microsoft’s $75bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard The US Federal Trade Commission will sue to block Microsoft’s $75bn acquisition of video game maker Activision Blizzard over concerns it could harm competitors to its Xbox consoles and cloud-gaming business. The deal is also being scrutinised by the UK Competition and Markets Authority and the European Commission.

2. Ministers blamed for blocking possible rail strikes deal UK ministers blocked a possible deal to call off this month’s rail strikes, according to people familiar with the matter. Employers had planned to offer a 10 per cent pay rise over two years to the RMT union but were blocked by the government, which controls the industry’s finances.

3. UK, Japan and Italy agree to build joint advanced fighter jet The three countries will jointly build one of the world’s most advanced fighter jets by 2035, expanding their defence capabilities to address increasing security threats from China and Russia. They will share the development costs, estimated at tens of billions of dollars.

4. Airlines feel squeeze as plane leasing groups raise rents Airlines are flying back into profitability, but one cloud remains on the horizon: sharp increases in rental costs. More than half of the world’s commercial aircraft are owned or managed by leasing companies, and their fees are going up, another consequence of rising interest rates.

5. Temasek-backed crypto shop Amber halts expansion plans Singapore-based Amber Group has raised just half of a planned $100mn funding round and halted expansion plans as the Temasek-backed crypto group fights concerns that it will be pulled into the market turmoil sparked by the collapse of FTX.

How well did you keep up with the news this week? Take our quiz.

The days ahead

Economic data Russia publishes November inflation rate today, while the US releases its producer price index for the same month.

Corporate earnings Carl Zeiss Meditec reports annual results.

World Cup The quarter-finals kick off in Qatar today with Croatia playing Brazil at 3pm GMT, followed by the Netherlands versus Argentina at 7pm.

Cricket The second of three Pakistan-England Test series matches starts in Multan today.

Milestones Today is UN Genocide Prevention Day and the 74th anniversary of the 1948 Genocide Convention, as well as Independence Day in Tanzania. Tomorrow is International Human Rights Day.

Nobel Prize Day Awards will be presented to recipients tomorrow, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.

What else we’re reading

‘Hell. Just hell’: The war of attrition over Bakhmut With Russia desperate for a victory, wave after wave of its infantry is being thrown at the frontline city of Bakhmut in Donetsk province, only to be mown down by its Ukrainian defenders. “They are just meat to Putin,” said Kostyantyn, an exhausted Ukrainian machine-gunner, “and Bakhmut is a meat grinder”.

Dutch ditch tradition as winning trumps beauty in World Cup When Simon Kuper was growing up in the Netherlands in the 1970s, Dutch football had a moral mission: defending was evil, so they attacked, and “beauty trumped winning”. No longer, though the Dutch insistence on “footballing intelligence” remains a force for potential sporting glory.

Can Just Stop Oil make the case for protest? Like the suffragettes, climate protesters are not loved, with British voters opposing Just Stop Oil’s actions by a margin of 64 to 21, one YouGov poll found. But “the argument over Just Stop Oil is an argument over how change happens”, writes Henry Mance. “Our society loves civil disobedience — as long as it happens in the past or somewhere else.”

Is there no shame anymore? Sam Bankman-Fried’s mere “embarrassment” at the collapse of FTX is a symptom of our inability to find shared moral values, writes Jemima Kelly. Not only does he appear to be lacking in shame; he seems almost contemptuous towards those who feel complex moral emotions.

‘We need an honest east-west discussion about industrial policy’ Western pushes in industrial policy have come about not as a “grand crescendo towards modernisation”, as in China, but in “loud and quiet cycles”, writes Yuan Yang. With fears of China’s rise and concerns about supply-chain security, the discussion is now set on loud, with industrial policy perceived as urgent by western governments.

Film

The FT’s pick of six films to watch this week sees Will Smith starring in controversial slavery drama Emancipation, while Mr Bachmann and His Class takes us inside a multicultural German school and Eva Green gets hysterical in high-concept horror Nocebo.