FirstFT: Trump protected after suspected assassination try at golf membership

Good morning. We now have a number of banking tales to begin the week, together with extra updates on UniCredit’s controversial transfer on Commerzbank, Russia’s state lenders increasing into occupied components of Ukraine and European governments promoting billions of euros of shares in bailed-out banks.

However first, we flip to Florida, the place Donald Trump was the goal of a suspected try on his life, simply two months after a gunman tried to kill him at a Pennsylvania rally.

Trump is protected after what the FBI is investigating as a possible assassination try on the previous US president, who was on the golf membership close to his Mar-a-Lago resort yesterday.

Legislation enforcement officers have detained a person who they mentioned had been hiding in bushes bordering the Trump Worldwide Golf Membership. They discovered an AK-47 type rifle with a scope, two backpacks and a GoPro digital camera within the bushes.

The potential assassination comes little greater than seven weeks earlier than he faces vice-president Kamala Harris in a tense and carefully fought presidential election. Right here’s what we all know to date.

• Harris leads on financial system: The Democratic nominee has consolidated her polling lead over Trump on financial points, based on the newest FT-Michigan Ross ballot.

The White Home race is within the residence straight. Join for our US Election Countdown publication so that you don’t miss any updates. And right here’s what else I’m protecting tabs on right this moment:

• Starmer in Rome: The UK prime minister will meet his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni for recommendation on tackling small-boat migration.

• Murdoch succession: Court docket hearings over the tycoon’s try to wrest management of his empire away from three of his youngsters are set to start right this moment.

• UN Safety Council: The physique meets for a briefing on the Center East, together with the humanitarian state of affairs in Gaza. Israeli air strikes killed six UN employees at a faculty within the territory on Wednesday.

5 extra high tales

1. Prime German officers weren’t briefed upfront about an invite for UniCredit to bid for a authorities stake in Commerzbank, based on individuals accustomed to the occasions, regardless of the transfer opening the door to a full takeover. JPMorgan Chase bankers who suggested Berlin invited UniCredit, creating an impression that the Italian financial institution’s curiosity was welcome.

2. Russia is consolidating its maintain on newly occupied areas of Ukraine by opening branches of its largest state banks in cities equivalent to Mariupol. Defying western sanctions, Vladimir Putin instructed state corporations this 12 months there was “nothing to fear” by establishing store in occupied areas, and Sberbank and VTB have begun to heed the decision.

• Army briefing: Kyiv’s gamble in Kursk is in query as Russia begins its counteroffensive, with the strategic rewards of the incursion nonetheless elusive.

3. Economists anticipate the US financial system to succeed in a mushy touchdown, based on the newest Monetary Instances-Chicago Sales space survey. The findings come simply days earlier than the Federal Reserve is predicted to begin chopping rates of interest, and recommend the nation’s financial system is headed for strong progress, low inflation and wholesome employment.

• Fed milestone: After greater than a 12 months of protecting borrowing prices excessive, the financial institution is about to begin a cycle of easing in its momentous assembly this week.

• Gen Z spending: Regardless of weaknesses, how is the US financial system nonetheless so robust? A uniquely subsidised generation could also be a vital driver of consumption, writes analyst Meredith Whitney.

4. The pinnacle of the World Commerce Group has careworn the necessity for international carbon pricing to stop “difficult and problematic” commerce disputes from environmental measures. The WTO is taking the lead in working for a world carbon pricing system with the IMF, OECD and UN, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala instructed the FT.

5. Asking costs for UK houses rose at twice their long-term common tempo this month, as post-election stability and declining mortgage charges helped to gasoline a rebound in purchaser demand and draw extra sellers to the market. Learn the total story.

The Huge Learn

Since returning to workplace final 12 months, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has already achieved a big drop in Amazon deforestation and outlined wide-ranging inexperienced financial system plans for Brazil. However his authorities’s plan to spice up financial progress has created an uneasy rigidity with the president’s aspirations for international local weather management, summed up in a single phrase: oil.

We’re additionally studying . . . 

• Copper crunch: BHP, the world’s largest miner, has warned that the factitious intelligence growth will exacerbate a looming international scarcity of the purple steel.

• Apollo vs banks: Led by a onetime seller in loss of life profit settlements, the asset supervisor is taking over the largest conventional lenders in funding extremely rated multinationals.

• US chips: Business is greatest positioned to tell American semiconductor technique and “outcompete” China, writes former Nationwide Safety Council official Meghan Harris.

• Rachel Reeves: Crucial factor the UK chancellor has to do is clarify how her plan for quicker progress goes to work, writes Martin Wolf.

Chart of the day

European governments have offloaded greater than €16bn of bailed-out financial institution shares over the previous 12 months, based on an FT evaluation, as they search to attract a line beneath the long-running results of the worldwide monetary disaster.

Take a break from the information

For 30 years, Lunch with the FT has featured a who’s who of our occasions: dictators and dissidents, CEOs and communists, philosophers and fraudsters. Henry Mance, the FT’s chief options author, explains its magic.

Extra contributions from Benjamin Wilhelm