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Low-cost airline flags £25mn hit as it reports quarterly profits one-fifth higher than the same period last year

EasyJet has warned that “worsening” air traffic control delays and a rise in fuel prices will hit its full-year profits, even as it reported strong demand for travel this summer.

The low-cost airline on Thursday said it expected to take a £25mn hit from the two headwinds in its current financial year, which runs to the end of September.

The EU has warned that airline delays could be at their worst ever this summer as understaffed air traffic controllers battle strikes, wildfires and high demand.

This month, a strike by French air traffic controllers caused disruption in the skies across Europe, leading to the cancellation of hundreds of flights.

“We are extremely unhappy with the strike action by the French ATC in early July,” said Kenton Jarvis, easyJet’s chief executive.

“As well as presenting unacceptable challenges for customers and crew, [the strikes] also created unexpected and significant costs for all airlines,” said Jarvis.

EasyJet reported pre-tax profits of £286mn in the three months to the end of June, a 21 per cent year-on-year rise and in line with analyst estimates.

Passenger numbers climbed 2 per cent, and the airline said it had benefited from the timing of Easter, which this year fell in the third quarter.

The carrier was also upbeat about the prospects for the peak summer months.

It said the outlook for the rest of its financial year “remains positive”, and forecast “good profit growth” year on year.

Still, with 67 per cent of seats sold for the July to September quarter, easyJet said it remained reliant on late summer bookings.

Analysts at Bernstein said the earnings report left easyJet “broadly on track” to report record pre-tax profits of £700mn for the full year. That result would beat its previous record of £686mn in 2015.

Jain Global’s first year showcases the huge barriers to entry of starting a new multi-strategy hedge fund

Even hedge fund royalty Bobby Jain is having a hard time starting a firm to compete with the industry’s giants.

The former co-chief investment officer at Millennium Management tried to pull off the world’s largest hedge fund launch last year. He had to settle for the largest launch since 2018 with $5.3bn in commitments from investors, after falling short of the initial fundraising target of $8bn-$10bn.

A year on from the start of trading, high costs and a slow build-up mean Jain Global is at the bottom of the pack of so-called multi-managers that it is seeking to challenge.

“This is a Darwinian world,” said one investor. “It tells you how hard it is.”

Jain Global declined to comment.

Investors said the fund had gained just 2.7 per cent in the past 12 months, a figure that puts it far behind the dominant duo of Citadel and Millennium on 9.3 per cent and 9.9 per cent, respectively.

However, people close to Jain say the hedge fund is still early in its innings, performance is in line with expectations and it had been no small feat to raise as much as he did.

“The first year for us was about setting the firm up for the future. We didn’t expect them to put up results that were similar to an established firm,” said another investor. “The real race is starting for them now.”

When Jain set out on his own, he modelled his new firm on the “pod shops” that have become the industry’s dominant forces.

The combination of multiple trading strategies, star portfolio managers, tight risk management and high leverage delivered steady returns year after year — and secured Ken Griffin’s Citadel and Izzy Englander’s Millennium $66bn and $75bn under management, respectively.

However, multi-manager platforms are also incredibly expensive businesses to run, with cutting-edge infrastructure needed to support trading and risk controls, plus intense competition for talent. Millennium this year offered one trader a $100mn package to lure him from rival Balyasny.

Jain Global’s humdrum performance illustrates the height of the barriers to entry.

Other new entrants — Balyasny in the early 2000s, or ExodusPoint in 2018 — had clear specialisms and used those as a base on which to add new trading strategies over time. Jain took the opposite approach. Instead of getting off the ground slowly, it began with seven different divisions on launch day last year: fundamental equities; equity arbitrage; commodities; computer-driven systematic; Asia-Pacific; credit; and macro and interest rates.

It was an ambitious and distinctive pitch, but it also came at a time when upstart firms across the industry were having difficulty fundraising, which brought its own challenges.

While Jain secured investor commitments of $5.3bn, the hedge fund did not have that full sum available to trade from the start. Instead, the firm has a drawdown capital structure, similar to that of a private equity firm. This means that it has called capital from investors in stages: one consequence of a competitive environment that handed early investors bargaining power.

The hedge fund also sweetened terms and slashed performance fees for investors willing to write big cheques. Some of its largest commitments came from the likes of sovereign wealth fund Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and a big US university endowment.

At the same time, Jain had to secure the talent necessary to run the firm at full capacity while near two-year, non-compete agreements have meant some new recruits have yet to begin trading, according to people familiar with the firm.

“The firm’s running the cost base of a $5bn firm but the capital deployment is about half that,” said one person close to the firm’s strategy. (The firm is now closer to 75 per cent deployment). “You have all the drag without the performance benefits.”

Other teething problems have hit. The firm has suffered a handful of departures in recent months. Paul Jefferys — who previously worked at Citadel and was responsible for risk rebalancing among other things at Jain — left at the end of June to pursue a career in artificial intelligence, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Chief technology officer Matt Croy and a team focused on event-driven strategies led by portfolio manager Josh Klaff have also left, they added. However, the departures are a small proportion of the overall firm’s ranks, which has grown to around 380 employees.

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It also does not yet have the culture it wants, with two people familiar with the firm describing it as more akin to that of a bank. The seven different businesses have largely operated independently, according to two people close to the business, in large part because they have been focusing on deploying their own capital and making a profit.

But the firm has some breathing room. It has continued to recruit new portfolio managers, including credit specialists Niall Playfair from ExodusPoint and Herbert Filho from Morgan Stanley, and equity arbitrage traders Kevin Salmon from Bank of America and Michael Wong from Mountain Creek.

Its performance has been improving. Since the start of 2025, it has returned 2.2 per cent, according to two investors — right around the returns of Citadel and Millennium — despite not deploying all of its capital and although its traders are still to reach full velocity.

ExodusPoint, the last big launch with more than $8bn in 2018, took years to perform. It trailed its biggest rivals Millennium and Citadel until 2024, but over the past year appears to have finally hit its stride. In the past 12 months, it has returned 18.1 per cent. Balyasny, which sits between ExodusPoint and Millennium and Citadel in terms of size, returned 15.6 per cent in that time.

“Obviously, everyone wants to hit the lights out year one,” said one person familiar with Jain Global’s performance so far. “But given how Bobby structured everything, he never expected to be much further along than he was at the end of June.”

Jain has also structured its terms in a way that gives an element of stability to the business. Investors can only pull their money over the course of two years after an initial lock-up period, according to two people familiar with the terms.

That is not nearly as long as Citadel and Millennium which insist on four and five years, respectively. However, it is still much longer than most hedge funds which tend to offer monthly, quarterly or at most annual redemptions.

Investors keen to access the steady, through-the-cycle returns that the multi-managers have historically offered also have limited options. Both Citadel and Millennium are in large part closed to new investors, a restriction that may help second-tier firms raise new money.

Jain received the last tranche of the original capital commitments this month, heralding the end of the beginning for the new multi-manager.

“There has to be a ‘grace period’ to allow for scale and getting their feet under them,” said one big hedge fund investor. “The issue with Jain is perhaps just how big it is already and the expectations.”

Politicians, activists and diplomats accuse Ukraine’s leader of favouring loyalists and using wartime powers against critics

Anti-corruption raids on prominent Ukrainian figures and moves to favour loyalists in senior positions have led to accusations that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government is sliding into authoritarianism.

Zelenskyy and his top aides face allegations from politicians, activists and diplomats that they are using extraordinary powers granted under martial law to sideline critics, muzzle civil society leaders and consolidate control.

The outcry has grown since masked, heavily armed officers from Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) forced their way into the home of prominent anti-corruption campaigner Vitaliy Shabunin in Kharkiv last Friday, seizing phones, laptops and tablets.

Around the same time, SBI investigators and armed agents raided the home of former infrastructure minister Oleksandr Kubrakov in Kyiv, taking his mobile and other devices. Authorities said the searches were connected to corruption investigations.

Shabunin and Kubrakov labelled the raids as politically motivated, adding that the SBI had presented no court-issued warrants and would not allow time for their lawyers to be present for the searches.

Shabunin told the Financial Times: “Zelenskyy is using my case to send a message to two groups that could pose a threat to him. The message is this: if I can go after Shabunin publicly — under the scrutiny of the media and despite public support — then I can go after any one of you.”

“The first group are journalists or activists exposing corruption,” he added. “The second group is military personnel. Because the charges against me relate to my military service.”

Political allies and even detractors of Shabunin and Kubrakov, along with much of Ukraine’s civil society, condemned the raids and warned they appear to be part of a campaign by Zelenskyy’s office against critics.

“This is a straight-up, Russian-style scenario of dividing society, which could lead to protests in the streets,” said MP Oleksandra Ustinova, chair of the Ukrainian parliament’s commission on arms control and an adviser to the defence minister.

The raids followed sanctions against several prominent politicians, including former president Petro Poroshenko, who lost a re-election campaign to Zelenskyy in 2019 and has been a staunch critic since.

Earlier this month, Zelenskyy’s cabinet opted not to appoint Oleksandr Tsyvinsky, a detective with the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu), to lead the Economic Security Bureau, which investigates economic crimes. Tsyvinsky had been independently selected, but the cabinet claimed he was “not suitable”.

Anastasia Radina, an MP from Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party and head of parliament’s anti-corruption committee, said the government had “no authority” to reject Tsyvinsky and the move did “not comply with the law”.

Also this month, the president nominated first deputy prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko to lead his cabinet, replacing long-serving premier Denys Shmyhal. Svyrydenko is considered a close ally of Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff.

The shift comes at a precarious time for Ukraine, which is trying to fight off an escalating Russian air and ground offensive, shore up US military support and reboot its government.

Ukrainian activists, independent media and western officials in Kyiv have warned that what began as a defence of sovereignty risks sliding into a crusade to reshape the state in the ruling circle’s image. They say this threatens to undermine progress on reform since Ukraine’s 2014 democratic revolution.

Zelenskyy’s office declined to comment.

Shabunin and Kubrakov, whose cases are not directly connected, have both vehemently denied the charges against them.

The case of Shabunin, a co-founder and head of the board of the Kyiv-based Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC), is focused on accusations of draft evasion and fraud. The SBI accused him of dodging the draft and misusing military funds, crimes punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Shabunin’s lawyer, Olena Shcherban, said the case was built on a distortion of his military record. She maintained the investigation was illegal and designed to smear an activist who has exposed corruption in the government. 

After Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Shabunin volunteered for the Territorial Defence Forces. From September 2022 to February 2023 he was seconded to the National Agency for Corruption Prevention. AntAC said his deployment was formally approved and fully legal.

Shcherban maintains Shabunin’s pay matched government guidelines for mobilised troops and that he never received combat bonuses. She condemned the seizure of electronics belonging to his wife and children, calling the raid a coercive and extrajudicial act.

“These weren’t searches,” said Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of AntAC. “They were intimidation tactics. This wasn’t about justice. It was about pressure.”

Shabunin and his supporters believe the move is retribution for AntAC’s investigations into high-level corruption and its criticism of Zelenskyy’s cabinet after it rejected Tsyvinsky’s appointment at the ESB.

A longtime anti-corruption campaigner, Shabunin has been a thorn in the side of several administrations. Some in Zelenskyy’s office have accused AntAC of being “grant eaters”, a term used to smear non-profit groups that accept funding from western governments.

The case against Shabunin ignited outrage across Ukraine’s pro-reform community. Leading independent media published scathing editorials.

“Taking advantage of the war, Zelenskyy is making his first, yet confident, steps towards corrupt authoritarianism,” wrote the editorial board of Ukrainian Truth, Ukraine’s most-read online news outlet.

“A crackdown on the country’s most famous anti-corruption crusader can’t be happening without at least the silent approval from President Zelenskyy, if not active permission,” the English-language Kyiv Independent said.

The president’s top political rivals followed suit. Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko warned that “under the guise of war, the authorities persecute those deemed inconvenient: political opponents, local governments, experts, journalists and activists”.

Kubrakov’s case centres on allegations that he helped a Ukrainian lawmaker embezzle about $350,000 in a scheme to purchase fertilisers in Belarus. He said he has “absolutely no connection” with the lawmaker and was fully co-operating with law enforcement.

A person close to Kubrakov said they believed the searches of his home amounted to “revenge” for a criminal corruption probe opened this month into a close Zelenskyy ally, deputy prime minister Oleksiy Chernyshov.

Investigators believe Kubrakov may have blown the whistle on Chernyshov, which the former has denied. Chernyshov has denied accusations of taking part in a $24mn land fraud.

Shabunin also cited the case as a reason for the authorities going after him. “Zelenskyy feels vulnerable. We blocked their top-priority draft law — an amnesty for corruption-related crimes committed by arms suppliers,” he said. “And Nabu issued a notice of suspicion to deputy prime minister Chernyshov, who belongs to Zelenskyy’s inner circle.”

At the same time, the government reshuffle, which began on Wednesday, has prompted critics to accuse the administration of concentrating power in the hands of a few.

“This is revenge,” Kaleniuk of AntAC said. “They’re using the mobilisation law and wartime secrecy to crush critics, assuming the west is too distracted to notice.”

The moves also come as relations between Zelenskyy and US President Donald Trump appear back on track after a dispute in the Oval Office in February and a temporary halt to US military assistance and intelligence sharing.

Trump recently announced he would sell arms to Nato countries which would pass them to Ukraine. But the US leader has abruptly changed his position on Ukraine and Russia before, and few in Kyiv believe he has pivoted to their side for good.

G7 ambassadors have previously publicly warned Zelenskyy’s administration over governance. But this time, the ambassadors in Kyiv have maintained a public silence, including about the raids on Shabunin and Kubrakov.

US ambassador Bridget Brink resigned in protest against Trump’s policies in April this year. An interim envoy has split time between Kyiv and her permanent post in Cyprus.

“It’s really difficult to be critical of Ukraine” when it is under relentless Russian attack, one ambassador said. Others noted the delicate balance of being critical while also showing support as the war-torn country relies on billions of dollars of western financial and military aid.

A western diplomat in Kyiv who has worked closely with Ukraine’s civil society said the cases of Shabunin and Kubrakov “aren’t isolated events”. “They fit a pattern: critics are being pushed aside, loyalists are shielded.”

“There’s a sense inside Bankova [Ukraine’s presidential office] that the west and especially the US has shifted its focus,” the diplomat said. “That rule of law and good governance no longer matter as much.”

Ukraine’s commitment to democratic reform has been central to securing western backing. But with US political attention turning inward and military aid becoming more transactional, some officials in Kyiv appear willing to test the limits.

Kaleniuk said: “If the institutions meant to enforce checks and balances are turned into political tools, Ukraine risks losing the democratic core it fought to build after 2014.”

The (near) impossible task of starting a multi-strat fund

In the world of hedge funds, Bobby Jain is near royalty. 

Jain first made his name as one of the best-connected bankers at Credit Suisse, and most recently worked as the co-chief investment officer of Millennium Management besides Izzy Englander.

So when Jain set out to launch a new multi-strategy hedge fund last year, he was well placed to succeed.

Even at a tough time for fundraising, Jain Global was able to pull in $5.3bn in the biggest hedge fund launch since 2018 (though well short of an initial target of $8bn-$10bn).

One year on though, Jain’s results show just how hard it is to launch a rival to hedge fund giants such as Millennium and Citadel, DD’s Amelia Pollard and the FT’s Costas Mourselas report.

The fund has gained just 2.7 per cent in the past 12 months. That puts it behind the dominant duo of Citadel and Millennium on 9.3 per cent and 9.9 per cent, respectively. 

But since the start of the year, it’s done better, raking in as much as Citadel with 2.2 per cent and falling just slightly behind Millennium. 

Jain gave himself an uphill climb by launching with seven strategies on day one.

Multi-manager platforms are extremely expensive businesses to run: you need cutting-edge infrastructure to support trading and risk controls, plus there’s intense competition for talent. 

Even when Jain found the right portfolio managers, they were sometimes locked up in two-year non-compete agreements, keeping them on the sidelines for the firm’s first months of trading.

Drawing and investing all of its $5bn also took a year, which burned a hole in Jain’s pocket. 

It bore the costs of a $5bn firm, without having invested all of its capital. “You have all the drag without the performance benefits,” said one person close to the firm’s strategy.

Investors don’t seem concerned. “The first year for us was about setting the firm up for the future,” said one. 

But ultimately, returns are everything in hedge fund land, and the investor added that those figures would soon matter. 

“The real race is starting for them now.”

VDL’s ‘voodoo maths’

European Commission president von der Leyen yesterday made a pitch for a €2tn budget — a 64 per cent increase compared with the current purse. She swears EU countries won’t have to pay more for it, writes Paola Tamma.

Context: The EU budget is mostly financed by national contributions, with richer countries paying more into it, and other revenue streams such as taxes directly raised by Brussels.

The commission proposal includes a raft of new levies or “own resources” that would collectively raise around €58bn per year, or just over €400bn for the whole 2028-2034 period.

These include a tax on companies with €100mn in annual turnover, another on e-waste, a fee on flown-in packages, and hikes in tobacco tax.

But that leaves a roughly €400bn hole compared with the current budget appropriations of €1.2tn.

“It’s an interesting way to think about it and it doesn’t add up,” said one official in a European finance ministry.

That’s easily explained, commission officials say: countries will be asked to contribute what they will pay at the end of the current budget cycle, which is higher than what they agreed at the start, partly in thanks to carry-overs from previous years. 

EU countries in 2027 will collectively pay in €186.2bn to the budget, according to the commission’s latest forecast. Seven times that — roughly €1.3tn — is the amount of money the commission expects them to cough up for the next budget, enabling von der Leyen to claim that “member states contributions will remain constant as we propose a step change in the new own resources”.

But still, it doesn’t quite add up.

“It will make sense if you believe that money will fall from the sky. But these new own resources will never happen,” the finance ministry official added.

As the commission shared its budget plans with EU countries yesterday evening, one EU ambassador told the commission the near-doubling of the budget was “highly problematic and unjustified,” according to people briefed on the discussions.

A second EU ambassador added: “We have a competitiveness problem in Europe and a debt problem, and this proposal is making both worse,” adding it’s “voodoo maths”.

Bottom line: the proposal is likely to be ripped to pieces as net EU contributors — the likes of Germany, Austria, Sweden, the Netherlands and Finland — refuse to pay the commission’s bill.