Regulatory briefings. What FCA consultations and policy statements mean in practice, from SIPP due diligence to the AIFM regime and targeted support.
Markets and strategy. What recent events and decisions tell firms about how to plan, from ITI Capital's wind-down to the MPC's split vote.
Owners and growing firms. Practical guides through Trescore Ascent, starting with selling your business.
On the 7th October, the Financial Times reported that HSBC plans to cut up to around 70% of the financial advisers in its UK wealth business, along with roughly half of its management and specialist roles, as part of a wider push to use AI to serve affluent customers. HSBC has not confirmed the numbers, saying only that it is...
A fund that offers daily dealing while holding property or other assets that take months to sell is making a promise its portfolio cannot keep under pressure.
On 1 October the 30-year gilt yield touched 6%, its highest level since 1998, and the FTSE 100 closed down 1.68% at 10,428, its worst day since May. The Chancellor, John Healey, does not deliver his first Budget until 28 October, but the bond market has already given its view on how much room he has to manoeuvre.
Targeted support went live on 6 April 2026. Six months on, the public record already tells a clearer story than any rules explainer could, with a credible slow start, a handful of firms moving in earnest, and several household names still deciding whether to bother. This piece is not another walkthrough of what targeted support is, as the law firms...
The FCA is considering whether to ease its ban on retail prediction markets. In December 2025 it asked, through discussion paper DP25/3, how consumers should access higher-risk investments. The Times reported this month that it has been talking to platforms about opening the door. Feedback is due this quarter.
On 25 September 2026 the FCA confirmed that ITI Capital Ltd had entered special administration. Duncan Perring and David Soden of Teneo Financial Advisory have been appointed special administrators. The headline is a small London brokerage failing. The real story is the 13 months before it.
Speaking at the Investor Summit in London on 18 September, the FCA's Director of Consumer Investments, Lucy Castledine, put a number on something the industry has suspected for years. Only 6% of the pre-sale disclosure documents the regulator reviewed were written in plain English, measured against the Flesch-Kincaid readability standard. Ninety...
The FCA has opened the biggest rewrite of the UK's alternative investment fund manager rules since AIFMD arrived in 2013. Two consultations, CP26/28 on the regime itself, and CP26/26 ("FRAME") on how funds report, are being sold as a proportionality exercise: less paperwork, tiered obligations, a simpler rulebook. All of that is true. It's also not...
The Bank of England held its base rate at 3.75 percent this week in a split vote that saw six members vote to hold and three vote for an immediate rise to 4 percent, a decision that landed just a day after inflation came in at 3.1 percent, a five month high. On the surface that looks like an easy...
The FCA's call for input on the contractual arrangements underpinning the UK equity consolidated tape closes tomorrow, 18 September. It covers two unglamorous but decisive points, how income sharing with data contributors will work in practice, and what operating hours the tape provider will run to. Easy to miss against the bigger headlines. But...
