Category: 3. Business

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HSBC’s board is at odds over who should progress as a candidate to become its next chair, as Europe’s largest lender tries to find a replacement for Mark Tucker following his surprise exit earlier this year. 

The bank’s leadership is struggling to agree on whether certain candidates are qualified enough to take on one of the industry’s most challenging roles, according to people familiar with the conversations, as it returns to names that have previously been rejected or declined the job. 

Board members, all of whom joined after Tucker began his tenure as chair in 2017, have differing opinions on who satisfies two crucial requirements of the role: financial services experience and in-depth knowledge of Asia. 

“There is a bit of a delay in vetting the candidates,” said a person familiar with the process. “The board can’t decide whether or not to advance candidates because there are disagreements about who fits the profile,” they added. 

HSBC has approached a number of candidates it previously discounted as pressure mounts on the bank to name a permanent chair, said two people familiar with the process. Among them is former UK chancellor George Osborne, who has emerged as a contender for the role after he was initially passed over by the board, according to two people familiar with the process.

The bank also renewed its approach to Goldman Sachs executive Kevin Sneader and HSBC’s former chief executive Stuart Gulliver. Naguib Kheraj, a former Barclays executive and chair of Goldman Sachs’ Petershill Partners, has also been considered for the role. 

HSBC said the process to appoint a new chair continued and it would provide an update “in due course”.

Osborne had advised HSBC while a partner at boutique advisory firm Robey Warshaw, including on its £1 acquisition of Silicon Valley Bank UK, said a third person with knowledge of the matter. US investment bank Evercore agreed to buy the Mayfair firm earlier this year with Osborne continuing as a senior managing director.

The former chancellor is also among the names floated for BBC director-general as well as UK ambassador to the US. Asked by the Financial Times on Monday whether he could see himself in either of those two roles or as HSBC chair, a notoriously demanding position, Osborne said: “I have absolutely no idea, as none of those things are in my gift.”

Osborne’s statecraft, which he displayed in 2016 when as chancellor he intervened on behalf of HSBC to help the bank escape US criminal charges for money laundering, is likely to help navigate competing interests across three jurisdictions.

HSBC’s key business are in Asia and the UK but its dollar clearing licence comes from the US.

However, Osborne arguably lacks enough financial services experience to run a systemically important bank.  

Gulliver, a popular figure among the bank’s top ranks, has also divided the board with some reluctant to name an insider to the role, after breaking with a 150-year old preference for internal candidates when it appointed former AIA and Prudential executive Tucker in 2017.

HSBC’s inability to find a replacement for Tucker, a hard-charging executive who resigned as chair earlier than expected, has created uncertainty for the UK’s second-largest listed company and raised eyebrows about its succession planning.

UK regulators have questioned the bank’s leadership over why it was not better prepared for Tucker’s departure and forced to take the unusual step of naming an interim chair, said two of the people. 

Tucker stepped down in September to take up the chair at Asian insurer AIA Group, leaving former KPMG executive Brendan Nelson to take over as interim chair.

Those involved in the process say part of the problem is HSBC — on the basis that Tucker was expected to stay until September next year — kicked off the search too late, which left the bank with a limited pool of candidates who have the right experience and are available to take on what is in essence a full-time job. 

Pay may also have deterred some potential candidates for the role, according to people familiar with the process. Tucker received £1.6mn in pay and benefits in 2024, far below what many of the candidates would receive for their current roles. 

Nov 17 (Reuters) – The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission cleared the way for Dimensional Fund Advisors to launch an exchange-traded fund share class on 13 of its existing mutual funds, according to a notice on the regulator’s website late on Monday afternoon.

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DFA had sought the green light to offer a share class option on 13 of its existing mutual funds, although an individual familiar with the application said the firm is not likely to forge ahead with all of these at once and that the first launches may not happen until early 2026.

The move will “deliver meaningful benefits to mutual fund shareholders,” said Eric Pan, president and chairman of the Investment Company Institute, an industry group.

“Share classes allow investors to choose the investment strategy that best suits their needs as a first-order consideration, and then select their ideal wrapper to access that strategy,” Gerard O’Reilly, co-CEO and co-CIO of DFA, said in a press release.

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The company wants to add 30 million metric tons per annum (mtpa) of additional LNG capacity to the previously approved 28 mtpa. Plaquemines is already the second-largest LNG facility in the U.S. and last month was responsible for 22% of total exports from the country, according to data from financial firm LSEG.

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“Our decision to significantly increase the project’s permitted capacity reflects the strong market demand we continue to see and this expansion will play a vital role in meeting that demand,” Venture Global CEO Mike Sabel said in a statement.

A mere startup three years ago, Venture Global quickly became the second-largest U.S. LNG exporter with a business model that lets it export cargoes while construction and commissioning phases are still underway.

The Plaquemines expansion will be built incrementally in three phases and consist of 32 modular liquefaction trains, the company said.

Venture Global has also filed an application with the U.S. Department of Energy for the export authorizations associated with the additional planned capacity, the company said.

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News highlights:

• Arm–NVIDIA partnership continues to grow, driving new levels of co-design and collaboration in the AI era
• Ecosystem partners can integrate efficient Arm-based compute into NVIDIA NVLink Fusion ecosystem with full coherency and high bandwidth
• As demand for Neoverse continues to grow in the AI data center, customers now have greater choice in connecting workload acceleration to the Arm platform

AI is transforming data center computing in what we see as a once-in-a-generation architectural transformation. As AI models and workloads scale exponentially, power has become the rate limiter — making energy-efficient compute the key to unlocking the next wave of AI innovation. In this new era, success is no longer measured by raw performance alone, but by intelligence per watt: how much useful AI compute you can deliver for every unit of energy consumed.

At the center of this transformation is Arm Neoverse, the compute platform purpose-built for power-efficient, high-performance scaling. Today, Neoverse has been deployed in more than one billion cores and is on track to reach 50 percent market share across the top hyperscalers worldwide in 2025. Every major provider — AWS, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and Meta—is building on Neoverse, and next-generation AI data center sites such as the Stargate project are anchored on Arm as the compute platform, underscoring Arm’s central role in powering AI at scale.

To meet this accelerating demand, Arm is extending the Neoverse platform with NVIDIA NVLink Fusion, bringing the same performance, bandwidth, and efficiency first pioneered with NVIDIA Grace Hopper and Grace Blackwell platforms to the entire ecosystem. 

“Arm and NVIDIA are working together to set a new standard for AI infrastructure,” said Rene Haas, CEO, Arm. “Extending the Arm Neoverse platform with NVIDIA NVLink Fusion brings Grace Blackwell-class performance to every partner building on Arm — a milestone that reflects the incredible momentum we’re seeing in the data center.”

“NVLink Fusion is the connective fabric of the AI era — linking every CPU, GPU and accelerator into one unified rack-scale architecture,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Together with Arm, we’re extending this vision across Neoverse to empower innovators everywhere to design the next generation of specialized AI infrastructure.”

Two years ago, Arm and NVIDIA achieved an industry first with the NVIDIA Grace Hopper platform, and NVIDIA NVLink, delivering coherent CPU–GPU integration that redefined high-performance computing. To continue innovating at this pace, the ecosystem needs choice and flexibility — and NVLink Fusion gives partners the ability to connect Arm-based compute with their preferred accelerators through a coherent, high-bandwidth interface.

The strong momentum and sustained customer demand for Grace Blackwell are now fueling expansion of NVLink Fusion across the full Neoverse ecosystem, enabling partners to build differentiated, energy-efficient AI systems on Arm that meet the performance and scalability demands of the AI era.

Ecosystem partners are adopting NVLink Fusion to remove memory and bandwidth bottlenecks that limit AI system performance. NVIDIA NVLink Fusion was built to interface with AMBA CHI C2C (Coherent Hub Interface Chip-to-Chip) — a technology invented by Arm that provides the critical protocol definition for a coherent, high-bandwidth connection between CPUs and accelerators.

Building on this foundation, Arm is enabling the Neoverse platform with the latest edition of the AMBA CHI C2C protocol — ensuring C2C compatibility with NVIDIA NVLink Fusion — so that Neoverse-based SoCs can move data seamlessly between Arm-based CPUs and partners’ preferred accelerators. The result is quicker integration, faster time to market, higher-bandwidth accelerated compute, and greater flexibility for ecosystem partners building next-generation AI systems.

The Arm–NVIDIA partnership continues to grow, driving new levels of co-design and collaboration that deliver intelligence per watt, shaping the architecture of the AI era.

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Funds run by HPS began lending to companies tied to Brahmbhatt in 2020, with the loans backed by receivables the firms claimed were owed by major telecom groups, according to the report.

In a Delaware court filing earlier in the year, funds managed by HPS accused Brahmbhatt and his controlled companies of “an extraordinarily brazen and widespread fraud” alleging the documents to verify the receivables were fabricated, as per the report.

Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York (EDNY) in Brooklyn are leading the probe, the report said.

Of the $430 million HPS lent to Brahmbhatt-linked firms, roughly half was funded with leverage from BNP Paribas, the report added, citing a person with knowledge of the matter.

BlackRock, EDNY, and BNP Paribas declined to comment. Brahmbhatt did not respond immediately.

The report says that the HPS funds were specialist asset-backed finance vehicles – a niche segment of the private credit market, which has seen some recent risks emerge.

Recent bankruptcies of First Brands, a major U.S. auto-parts supplier, and subprime lender Tricolor have intensified concerns over the stability of the U.S.’s vast private credit market.

The fallout, which includes billions in undisclosed debt and losses for high-profile banks and funds, has prompted scrutiny of aggressive lending structures and opaque finance practices.

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This story was adapted from a version published by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Read the original here.

The Department of Energy (DOE) has renewed funding for the Quantum Systems Accelerator (QSA), a DOE National Quantum Information Science Research Center led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) in partnership with Sandia National Laboratories. CU Boulder is one of 15 partner institutions on the research center.

QSA builds and demonstrates quantum technologies and computing prototypes to transform quantum information science into breakthroughs for society. These advances will enable scientists to use quantum computers to design new materials, discover new chemicals and reactions, and accelerate breakthroughs in energy, physics, biology, and chemistry.

The total planned funding for QSA is $125 million over five years, with $25 million in year one and out-year funding contingent on congressional appropriations.

“This renewed funding is a vital investment in advancing quantum technology for our nation,” said Massimo Ruzzene, senior vice chancellor for research and innovation and dean of the institutes at CU Boulder. “Together with other key initiatives like the National Quantum Nanofab facility and the Quantum Systems through Entangled Science and Engineering (Q-SEnSE) Quantum Leap Challenge Institute, the QSA strengthens CU Boulder’s rapidly expanding capacity to translate quantum advances into real-world solutions benefitting society.”

QSA is one of five National Quantum Information Science (QIS) Research Centers established by DOE in 2020 to expand the frontier of what’s possible in quantum computing, communication, sensing, and materials in ways that will advance basic science for energy, security, communication, and logistics. Together, the centers have strengthened the national quantum information science ecosystem, achieving scientific and technological breakthroughs as well as training the next-generation quantum workforce. DOE has renewed funding for all five centers.

The center combines world-leading expertise and capabilities across national labs, academia, and industry. QSA will also partner with industry, such as Nobel Prize winner John Martinis’ Qolab, to advance quantum technology for DOE and commercial applications. These public-private partnerships will ensure that QSA’s science and technology advances are industry-relevant at every stage.

CU Boulder participates in QSA through the Q-SEnSE research institute. Q-SEnSE, which is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, launched in 2020 and focuses on, among other goals, exploring how advanced quantum sensing can discover new fundamental physics.

“With the renewal of DOE funding for the Quantum Systems Accelerator, we at CU Boulder are in a great position to deepen our contributions to national quantum innovation by connecting QSA efforts with the NSF-funded Q-SEnSE Institute and our CUbit Quantum Initiative,” said Inese Berzina-Pitcher, executive director of Q-SEnSE. “I am excited for what the next five years will bring as we work with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and our QSA partners to advance quantum science and technology.”

Among QSA’s many achievements in its first five years, the center made world-leading advancements on three promising qubit technologies: trapped ions, neutral atoms, and superconducting circuits. These achievements are laying the foundation for building practical quantum systems that can tackle real-world scientific and energy challenges and have strengthened QSA’s role in keeping the U.S. at the forefront of transformative quantum technologies.

“QSA plays a vital role in advancing QIS across the U.S. by bridging the gap between national labs, academia, and industry. By fostering collaboration, QSA ensures that breakthroughs can move from experimental stages to practical applications, benefiting the nation,” said QSA Director and Berkeley Lab scientist Bert de Jong.