Today’s need-to-know storiesBoE deputy governor warns on stock market valuations
A senior Bank of England official has warned that surging market valuations may be underestimating the risks facing the global economy.
Sarah Breeden, deputy governor for financial stability, told the BBC in an interview that current share prices appeared stretched despite mounting economic pressures facing markets.
“There’s a lot of risk out there and yet asset prices are at all-time highs,” Breeden said. “We expect there will be an adjustment at some point.
“The thing that really keeps me awake at night is the likelihood of a number of risks crystallising at the same time — a major macroeconomic shock, confidence in private credit goes, AI and other risky valuations readjust — what happens in that environment and are we prepared for it?”
Anthropic talks with UK over wider Claude Mythos access for banks
Anthropic is in talks with the UK government about widening access for UK companies to Claude Mythos, its new AI model, which has raised concerns over its ability to expose cyber security vulnerabilities.
According to an FT report citing people familiar with the matter, Anthropic is discussing an expedited rollout of the model to key UK-based organisations, including banks and other financial institutions.
Mythos has so far been released gradually to around 40 organisations, mostly in the US, including JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Amazon and Microsoft.
One executive at a large UK company told the FT they had been discussing vulnerabilities detected by Mythos with US companies that already have access.
Claude Mythos: a new AI model banks cannot ignore
They added that some companies are also seeking software updates from Microsoft to improve their security before Mythos becomes widely available.
The UK’s AI Security Institute is the only known government body outside the US to have previewed Mythos. The institute has said Mythos could exploit weaknesses “that would take human professionals days of work”.
EBA finds banks still behind on gender parity
Women remain heavily under-represented in the top ranks of Europe’s banking and investment sector, and many companies are still failing to meet diversity expectations set by regulators, according to recent data from the European Banking Authority.
In its latest survey of 850 financial institutions, the EBA found that women accounted for just one-fifth of executive directors and earned, on average, 17 per cent less than their male counterparts.
Only 12 per cent of these companies had a female chief executive, while nearly 46 per cent had no women at all in executive director roles.
The EBA’s analysis found that companies with mixed-gender leadership teams were more profitable, achieving average returns on equity of 12.8 per cent, compared with 7.4 per cent at firms lacking diversity.
Despite EU rules requiring gender diversity policies and targets, one-fifth of the companies assessed by the EBA had no such policies, while a third had set no measurable goals.
“The gender balance of newly recruited directors has improved over time but is still insufficient, in particular with regard to the management body,” the EBA said.
The authority recommended that regulators “consider taking appropriate supervisory measures” against institutions that fail to comply.
Trump targets banks over California wildfire aftermath
US President Donald Trump has said his administration will examine banks’ treatment of customers affected by the Los Angeles wildfires, singling out Wells Fargo over its handling of payments and debt during the aftermath of the disaster.
“Wells Fargo, in particular, has been very difficult to deal with,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “The Banks must treat those people, who so horribly lost their Homes in this tragic fire, very fairly and well.”
His comments followed a meeting with Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass and Los Angeles County supervisor Kathryn Barger.
In a joint statement, Bass and Barger said they had discussed funding for reconstruction, as well as applying pressure on insurers to pay claims and on banks to ease financial strain on affected families.
In January last year, the Palisades and Eaton fires killed 22 people, destroyed around 12,000 homes and caused more than $50bn in property damage.