FTSE 100 takes £75bn hit as Europe becomes new focus of Silicon Valley Bank fallout

Published

2 years ago

March 15, 2023

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The FTSE 100 and other major European stock markets have taken a beating as concern over the health of US banks crosses the Atlantic.

London’s blue chip index lost £75bn in combined market value by the close after suffering its deepest fall, on a points basis, since the early days of the COVID crisis.

Sentiment soured across the continent when the top shareholder at troubled Credit Suisse declared that it could not provide the Swiss bank with more financial assistance.

That sent its shares down by almost a third at one stage to new record lows and prompted a hit to wider financial stocks, market analysts said.

Switzerland’s second-largest bank, no stranger to crisis over the past few years, like others has seen concerns for its financial health come into sharper focus since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last week.

The attention of investors has mostly been on the ability of lenders to absorb the aggressive tightening of interest rates since last year which has made it more difficult to service their debts.

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Adding to the early selling mood was speculation that the European Central Bank (ECB) planned to raise its core deposit rate by 0.5 percentage points this Thursday as part of its continued efforts to tackle inflation.

A source close to the ECB Governing Council said the ECB was unlikely to ditch plans for a big rate move this week because that would damage its credibility, the Reuters news agency reported.

Markets on Wednesday morning were pricing in a 90% chance of a 0.5 percentage point hike.

However, given the scale of the market mayhem facing financial services firms, the probability had dropped to 20% by late Wednesday afternoon.

Credit Suisse shares closed the day 24% lower. It appealed for a statement of support from the Swiss National Bank, the Financial Times reported.

Other European banking stocks also fell sharply, albeit not as badly.

Spain’s IBEX and the Italian MIB were more than 4% down.

Market Mayhem has no link to budget day

Ian King

Business presenter

@iankingsky

While the chancellor was speaking in the Commons, the stock market fell out of bed.

But it is important to note that it had nothing to do with Mr Hunt’s announcements and everything to do with events elsewhere around the world.

Markets have fallen right across Europe and, once again, it is the accident-prone Swiss lender Credit Suisse which is at the eye of the hurricane.

The concerns centre on the problems that have afflicted regional banks in the US over recent days – concerns that are now also cropping up in Europe.

Credit Suisse had already rattled the markets by admitting on Tuesday that it had found “material weaknesses” in its financial reporting processes for 2021 and 2022.

Its shares took another leg down, by up to 30%, when its biggest shareholder, Saudi National Bank, said on Wednesday it would not provide any further financial assistance because rules prevent it raising its equity stake above 10% – close to where it currently sits.

For financial markets, the debacle in Credit Suisse shares may well be the more important story of the day.

In London, the FTSE 100 closed the day 3.8% lower at 7,344, leaving it more than 1% down on where it had started the year.

Insurers and asset managers were all big losers.

Barclays, the worst of the UK bank performers, ended the day 9% lower.

US equity markets also opened lower with financial stocks leading the way. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was 2% down.

Other significant market moves caught the eye as Brent crude oil tumbled to its lowest level in more than a year, falling 6% to $72 dollars a barrel, with market analysts citing the uncertainty gripping financial stocks.

Attention, however, was firmly focused on Credit Suisse.

Its largest shareholder, Saudi National Bank (SNB), said it would not buy more shares on regulatory grounds as it would take its stake above 10%.

A string of scandals have undermined the confidence of its investors and clients, with Credit Suisse customer outflows in the fourth quarter rising to more than 110 billion Swiss francs (£100bn)

SNB said it was happy with Credit Suisse’s turnaround plan and did not think it would need more money.

That was despite its annual report for 2022, released earlier this week, admitting that “material weaknesses” in controls over financial reporting had been identified and customer outflows had not yet been stemmed.

Business

O2 arena lease snapped up by pensions giant Rothesay

Published

5 hours ago

August 10, 2025

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O2 arena lease snapped up by pensions giant Rothesay

The long-term lease to the O2, London’s best-known live entertainment venue, has been sold to Britain’s biggest pensions insurance specialist.

Sky News understands a deal was signed last week for Rothesay, the title sponsor of England’s home Test cricket matches, to acquire the landmark’s 999-year lease for about £90m.

The agreement, which is likely to be announced within days, comes more than two months after Sky News reported that Rothesay was the frontrunner to clinch a deal.

Rothesay has become one of Britain’s most successful specialist insurers, having been established in 2007.

It now protects the pensions of more than one million people in Britain and makes more than £300m in pension payouts every month.

The auction of the O2 lease kicked off several months ago, when Cambridge University’s wealthiest college, Trinity, instructed advisers to launch a sale process.

Trinity College, which ranks among Britain’s biggest landowners, acquired the site in 2009 for a reported £24m.

The O2, which shrugged off its ‘white elephant’ status in the aftermath of its disastrous debut as the Millennium Dome in 2000, has since become one of the world’s leading entertainment venues.

Operated by Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), it has played host to a wide array of music, theatrical, and sporting events over nearly a quarter of a century.

Trinity College, which was founded by Henry VIII in 1546, bought the O2 lease from Lend Lease and Quintain, the property companies that had taken control of the Millennium Dome site in 2002 for nothing.

In a joint statement issued in response to an enquiry from Sky News, Rothesay and Trinity College Cambridge said they were “pleased to confirm that Rothesay will be the long-term owner of The O2 arena, following a competitive auction process for the lease of this London landmark”.

A spokesperson for Rothesay said separately: “Prestigious and high-quality property assets like the O2 form an important part of Rothesay’s investment strategy, providing the predictable and dependable returns which create real security for the one million-plus pensions we protect.”

Business

Advertising mogul Sorrell approached about S4 Capital deal

Published

1 day ago

August 9, 2025

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Advertising mogul Sorrell approached about S4 Capital deal

Sir Martin Sorrell, the advertising mogul, has received a number of merger approaches for S4 Capital, the London-listed marketing services group he founded seven years ago.

Sky News can reveal that Sir Martin has been contacted in recent weeks by potential suitors including One Equity Partners, a US-based private equity firm which focuses on acquiring companies in the healthcare, industrials, and technology sectors.

This weekend, analysts suggested that One Equity would seek to combine S4 Capital with MSQ, a creative and technology agency group it bought in 2023.

Further details of the possible tie-up were unclear on Saturday, including whether a formal proposal had been made or whether S4 Capital might remain listed on the London Stock Exchange if a deal were to be completed.

S4 Capital is also understood to have attracted recent interest from other parties, the identities of which could not be immediately established.

In March 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported that Sir Martin had rebuffed several offers from Stagwell, an advertising group led by Mark Penn, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton.

New Mountain Capital, another American private equity firm, was also said at the time to have held talks about buying parts or all of S4 Capital.

News of One Equity’s approach puts the venture founded by one of Britain’s most prominent business figures firmly in play after a torrid period in which it has been buffeted by macroeconomic headwinds and a number of accounting issues.

Sir Martin founded S4 Capital in 2018, months after his unexpected and acrimonious departure from WPP, the group he transformed from a manufacturer of wire baskets into the world’s largest provider of marketing services.

The businessman, who has voting control at S4 Capital, used his deep network of institutional relationships to raise money for an acquisition spree at S4, which included technology-focused agencies such as MediaMonks and MightyHive.

S4’s clients now include Alphabet, Amazon, General Motors, Meta, T-Mobile, and Walmart.

Sir Martin’s decision to target acquisitions in the digital content and programmatic media arenas reflected the priorities of what he described as a marketing services group for a new era.

At WPP, he was the architect of a now-widely replicated strategy to assemble hundreds of agency brands under one holding company.

By the time he stepped down, WPP was the owner of creative agency networks such as JWT and Ogilvy, while its media-buying muscle was channelled through the global subsidiary GroupM.

The latest approaches for S4 Capital come during a period of profound change in the global marketing services industry, as artificial intelligence dismantles practices and creative processes that had evolved over decades.

Sir Martin has spurned few opportunities to criticise his successor at WPP, Mark Read, as well as the wider advertising industry, in the seven years since he established S4 Capital.

Last month, WPP announced that Mr Read would be replaced by Cindy Rose, a senior Microsoft executive who has sat on the company’s board as a non-executive director since 2019.

“Cindy has supported the digital transformation of large enterprises around the world – including embracing AI to create new customer experiences, business models and revenue streams,” the WPP chairman, Philip Jansen, said.

“Her expertise in this landscape will be hugely valuable to WPP as the industry navigates fundamental changes and macroeconomic uncertainty.”

WPP has also forfeited its status as the world’s largest marketing services empire to Publicis, and will be shunted even further behind the sector’s biggest players once Omnicom Group’s $13.25bn (£9.85bn) takeover of Interpublic Group is completed.

At the time of Sir Martin’s exit from WPP in April 2018, the company had a market capitalisation of more than £16bn.

On Friday, its market value at its closing share price of 367.5p was just £4.23bn.

Last month, the advertising industry news outlet Campaign reported that WPP had held tentative discussions with the consulting firm Accenture about a potential combination or partnership, underscoring the pressure on legacy marketing services groups.

This weekend, it remained unclear how likely it was that Sir Martin would consummate a deal to combine S4 Capital with another industry player such as One Equity-owned MSQ.

Shares in S4 Capital closed on Friday at 21.2p, giving the company a market capitalisation of £140m.

The stock has fallen by nearly 60% during the last 12 months, and is more than 90% lower than its peak in 2022.

At one point, Sir Martin’s stake in S4 Capital was valued at close to £500m.

A spokeswoman for S4 declined to comment, while a spokesman for One Equity Partners said by email: “OEP is not commenting on this matter.”

Business

Visma owners close to picking banks for £16bn London float

Published

2 days ago

August 8, 2025

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Visma owners close to picking banks for £16bn London float

The owners of Visma, one of Europe’s biggest software companies, are close to hiring bankers for a £16bn flotation that would rank among the London market’s biggest for years.

Sky News understands that Visma’s board and shareholders have convened a beauty parade of investment banks in the last fortnight ahead of an initial public offering (IPO) likely to take place in 2026.

Citi, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are understood to be among those in contention for the top roles on the deal, City insiders said on Friday.

Several banks are expected to be appointed as global coordinators on the IPO as soon as this month.

Visma is a Norwegian company which supplies accounting, payroll, HR and other business software to well over one million small business customers.

It has grown at a rapid rate in recent years, both organically and through scores of acquisitions, and has seen its profitability and valuation rise substantially during that period.

The business is now valued at about €19bn (£16.4bn) and is partly owned by a number of sovereign wealth funds and other private equity firms.

The majority of the company is owned by Hg, the London-based private equity firm which has backed a string of spectacularly successful companies in the software industry.

Visma’s owners’ decision to pick the UK ahead of competition from Amsterdam represents a welcome boost to the City amid ongoing questions about the attractiveness of the London stock market to international companies.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, used last month’s speech at Mansion House to launch a taskforce aimed at generating additional IPO activity in the UK.

Spokespeople claiming to represent Visma at Kekst, a communications firm, did not respond to a series of enquiries about the IPO appointments.

Hg also failed to respond to a request for comment.