HSBC hit by $400m UK fraud-related charge; Rachel Reeves ‘clashed with Scott Bessent’ over Iran war criticism – business live

Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.The bank reporting season rolls on, with HSBC revealing a drop in profits in the last quarter – partly due to a fraud-related charge in the UK.HSBC reported it had suffered a $400m “ fraud-related, secondary, securitisation exposure” in the UK, in its Corporate and Institutional Banking (‘CIB‘) business.This $400m charge is understood to involve loans made to a private equity firm, which was then exposed to private credit-related loans – at a time when concern about the opaque private credit industry is growing.The $400m charge pushed up HSBC’s estimated credit loss for the first quarter of this year, to $1

Vodafone to take full control of UK mobile operator in £4.3bn deal

Vodafone is to take full control of the UK’s biggest mobile operator in a £4.3bn buyout deal with the Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison.The billionaire Li Ka-shing’s business said it had agreed to sell its 49% stake in VodafoneThree – a network with more than 27 million subscribers – to its partner Vodafone.Vodafone will buy out CK Hutchison, paying cash, and cancel the shares.The deal is part of CK’s efforts to reshape its global portfolio, offloading major assets to boost shareholder returns

GameStop shares fall 10% after CEO skirts questions over eBay acquisition details

GameStop’s shares fell more than 10% on Monday as questions emerged about how the company would finance its surprise $55.5bn bid for eBay.In an interview with CNBC, Ryan Cohen, GameStop’s CEO, skirted repeated inquiries about how the video games retailer could afford the deal, saying he didn’t understand the questions.A letter published on GameStop’s website outlines a half-cash, half-stock proposal to acquire eBay at $125 a share, using about $9.4bn in “cash on hand”, and a $20bn in potential debt financing from TD Securities

AI platforms reference Nigel Farage more than other leaders when prompted on UK politics, study shows

AI platforms are more likely to reference Nigel Farage than any other UK leader when prompted about British politics, according to an AI search analytics firm.“We are confident in saying that Reform are showing up significantly more than you would expect,” said Malte Landwehr, an expert at Peec AI, the firm that did the research. “So they’re doing something right when it comes to LLM [large language model] visibility.”Peec’s research tested leading AI models – including ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overview – on their responses to 5,000 different structured prompts related to British politics, including the economy and jobs, immigration, healthcare and crime. These prompts were run repeatedly over the course of several weeks, generating over 280,000 data points

Carlton fined $75,000 for mishandling of Elijah Hollands’ mental health episode

The AFL has fined Carlton $75,000 for not removing Elijah Hollands from the field while he was experiencing a mental health episode during round six against Collingwood.Hollands appeared to be acting erratically during the match at the MCG, and was admitted to hospital for treatment several days later.The AFL found Carlton should have removed Hollands from the game earlier based on visual cues, performance data and the player’s previously disclosed mental health challenges, and that the club’s failure to do so brought the game into disrepute.The AFL’s chief executive, Andrew Dillon, said the “substantial sanction” was made against the club “collectively” rather than singling out any individuals.“What transpired during the game was something we haven’t seen before and while Elijah did undergo checks, he should not have been left on the field for that period of time,” Dillon said, adding that the incident had highlighted areas of improvement for the code

These are the questions I would ask the Enhanced Games … if they would let me | Sean Ingle

The plan to fly to Las Vegas to cover what the Enhanced Games claims is the “next frontier of human performance” ended with a short email sent at 7.02pm on Friday. “After careful consideration, we are unable to approve your media credential request for this year’s event,” it said. “Due to the high volume of applications and limited media capacity, we could not accommodate all requests … thank you again for your interest and understanding.”Admittedly, the rejection didn’t come entirely out of the blue