TheChek News Flow

The deal would mark one of the pharmaceutical company’s biggest takeovers in years

Pfizer is closing in on a potential $7.3bn takeover of anti-obesity drug developer Metsera, which would mark the US pharmaceutical company’s first big deal in two years, in a push to give the drugmaker a foothold in the lucrative weight-loss drug market.

As part of the purchase, Pfizer will pay Metsera $47.50 in cash a share and a further $22.50 if certain performance milestones are met, valuing the company at up to $7.3bn, according to two people familiar with the matter. The deal represents a sizeable premium to Metsera’s Friday share price close of $33.32 in New York.

The acquisition could be announced as early as Monday, provided it does not hit any last-minute snags, the people added. The deal represents a bold attempt by the New York-based drugmaker to buy its way into the lucrative anti-obesity drug market after its own experimental weight-loss drug, known as danuglipron, flopped in clinical trials this year.

Pfizer and Metsera did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Metsera, which went public this year in one of the biggest biotech listings of 2025, is one of a host of companies researching next-generation weight-loss treatments. Several large pharmaceutical groups showed interest for the biotech, two people familiar with the situation said.

The treatments could be an improvement on existing weekly anti-obesity injections, known as GLP-1s — Eli Lilly’s Zepbound and Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy — which have side effects including muscle loss.

Under the leadership of its longtime chief executive Albert Bourla, Pfizer is seeking to boost the company’s share price.

Its shares are down more than half from their 2021 peak during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the company produced a blockbuster vaccine. The price closed at $24 on Friday, giving the drugmaker a market value of $136bn. In 2023, Pfizer paid $43bn for cancer-focused biotech Seagen, its most recent major deal.

Metsera’s lead drug MET-097i, which activates the GLP-1 receptor instead of blocking it like the current treatments, resulted in 11.3 per cent body mass reduction after 12 weeks in a phase-two trial with limited side effects. The company is also testing the drug as a long-acting, monthly injection, which could make it more convenient to use for patients. 

The New York-based biotech is also researching medicine that harnesses amylin, another hormone, in early-stage trials, with further clinical data expected by the end of this year. Scientists believe amylin could be an effective appetite suppressant without causing the muscle loss associated with the current GLP-1 treatments. Metsera also has a weight loss pill in its pipeline. 

In recent weeks, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk have released clinical data for next-generation pill versions of their obesity drugs.

The gulf between political ambitions and new reactors on the ground shows little sign of narrowing

Uranium investors and scientists should have a lot in common: both are focused on generating powerful benefits from a small starting point. Prices of the fuel have soared over the past three years as yet more countries show fresh interest in nuclear power. The gulf between political ambitions and new reactors on the ground, though, shows little sign of narrowing.

It isn’t hard to see why investors are optimistic about long-term demand. Governments have to square surging power needs with plans to slash carbon emissions. By the end of this decade, global electricity consumption may have risen as much as 30 per cent, say Bank of America analysts, as transport goes electric and artificial intelligence data centres come online. Hence the resurgence of interest in reliable carbon-free power.

Governments that have this year gone nuclear in their planning include coal-rich Indonesia, which has added the energy source to a $235bn project to expand its power generation over the next decade. Both Belgium and Germany have dropped long-held goals of phasing out nuclear. And the US, already the world leader by number of reactors, went really big, President Donald Trump in May calling for a quadrupling of its capacity by 2050. US energy secretary Chris Wright hinted this week at plans to increase stockpiles, boosting shares in Canadian uranium mining company Cameco.

While the political will is there, bottlenecks are likely to skew the most careful supply and demand calculations. In the US, just three reactors have been constructed in the past quarter-century — two of which ran well over budget and behind schedule. No plants are currently under construction, yet meeting Washington’s goals will involve starting work on 20 average-sized reactors each year, Morgan Stanley analysts estimate. Even China, known for streamlining bureaucracy when it wants to, usually takes between five and 10 years to design, approve and build a new plant.

Prices aren’t necessarily a straightforward guide to future direction. At about $76 per pound now, they peaked last year at more than $100 on worries that supply would be dramatically tightened by Ukraine-related restrictions imposed by the US on Russia and the potential for retaliatory actions, though the curbs ended up being less severe than feared. The spot market for uranium is pretty thin, since most mined output is sold through long-term contracts.

The potential of nuclear remains, especially if the world is to embrace electrification and move away from its dependence on oil. It’s no surprise that investors are getting interested. But those betting on its primary fuel are expecting too much too soon.

How top hedge funds can pay traders $100mn

The era of giant multi-managers has changed how rewards are calculated — and ushered in bumper deals

Even for the hedge fund industry, $100mn is a lot of money.

That was how much Izzy Englander’s Millennium Management had to offer to convince Steve Schurr — a senior portfolio manager (PM) at New York-based Balyasny, and the Financial Times’ former hedge fund correspondent — to defect earlier this year.

“It’s a great trade for Schurr Capital,” said an executive at one of the largest global hedge funds.

This is how a select group of hedge funds known as the multi-managers — chief among them Balyasny, Citadel, Millennium and Point72 — created new cost and incentive structures, and rocketed trader pay into the nine figures.

These illustrations are simplified examples based on conversations with more than a dozen multi-manager executives, portfolio managers and recruiters in the industry.

In the past decade, the multi-managers have scooped up the world’s top portfolio managers across every type of trading strategy. The biggest now have hundreds of portfolio managers, each entrusted to run their team — or “pod” — like their own small business with their own income statement.

Key to their success is a new fee model. The traditional set up was “2 and 20”: a management fee equal to 2 per cent of assets a year covers costs, and a performance fee worth 20 per cent trading gains. Portfolio managers got a cut of the profits they make, but usually less than the 20 per cent performance fee.

The problem is that a single year of mediocre performance could prove an existential crisis for the fund. Poor performance from some portfolio managers limits the firm’s ability to pay its best people, a problem known as netting risk. Competitors then pick off disgruntled stars, leading to a downward spiral that can sink the fund.

“If they have bad performance then the good people leave and it gets worse and worse,” said one hedge fund recruiter. “You hear about people getting shafted when they are paid a fraction of what they are supposed to get.”

In the multi-managers’ “pass-through” fee model, investors instead cough up almost all the hedge fund’s expenses, including bonuses for portfolio managers, client entertainment and technology. This structure in turn allows the portfolio managers to keep a far higher proportion of what they make. Profit shares can go as high as 40 per cent, though 15-20 per cent might be more typical.

In this example, we take a portfolio manager (PM) who has been allocated $5bn and has negotiated a deal where they get a 20 per cent profit share.

This model addresses both big talent retention problems faced by traditional hedge funds. If a hedge fund has a poor year it can charge the winnings owed to the few top performing portfolio managers directly to investors, preventing them from leaving. This may anger investors in the short run, but key talent can be retained to fight another year.

And if the opportunity to hire a top performer comes along, the firm can snap them up without worrying about short-term profitability. The netting risk has been pushed from the management of the hedge fund on to investors.

To persuade top portfolio managers to switch firms, however, the multi-managers have to dangle additional incentives. These will be negotiated heavily, and are highly customisable. Some elements are one-off payments, others can help turbo-charge a portfolio manager’s earnings for years after they make a move.

This is how a portfolio manager secures an offer that gets them to $100mn — and beyond.

Different portfolio managers have different preferences for how their packages are structured. Depending on performance, the accelerator can easily be the most lucrative component of the package: but it is not guaranteed.

Hedge funds will often try to tilt the balance towards the accelerator to offset the danger that a new hire secures a huge cash guarantee and then underperforms or coasts.

“Someone can just come along and suck [at trading] and walk away with investors’ money,” said an executive at a top family office. “It’s a philosophical misalignment.”

The most talented people can command cash advances in the tens of millions of dollars, payable either up front or in the case of the largest payments, spread over a few years. These cover everything from deferred pay and earnings foregone at their old employer, to compensation for the time it takes to hit full earnings potential at their new fund — and for the career risk of moving at all.

Accelerators instead offer portfolio managers a greater than usual cut of the profits — 30 or 40 per cent, for example, rather than 20 per cent — on an agreed amount of gains for the fund. So a portfolio manager might be able to negotiate themselves an extra 7.5 per cent share of the trading profits on the first $1bn as in our example, or even more.

Some sceptics think the talent war will inevitably cool and pay will fall, as hedge funds increasingly struggle to pump out returns high enough to justify the payments.

But even if the multi-manager boom fades, there may still be others willing to pay. Trading firms such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities or family offices such as Michael Platt’s BlueCrest may simply step in to snap up the best talent.

“Do you think [Real Madrid striker Kylian] Mbappé will be paid less next year? It’s not happening,” one industry executive said. “[Pay] will keep increasing every year; it’s just the market.”

Higher production, lower consumption and plunging profits threaten factory closures

A bitter downturn is sweeping Europe’s sugar industry as tumbling prices, soaring costs and regulatory pressures force factories to close and profits to melt away.

European sugar prices have slumped to their lowest level in three years because of surplus stock from increased Ukrainian exports, higher sugar beet production and lower sugar consumption.

“At current price levels, the market is simply not sustainable,” said Pierre-Henri Dietz, general manager of Cristalco, the commercial arm of major producer Cristal Union. “If prices don’t correct, we’ll see even more sugar factories closing across Europe.”

David Souriau, commercial director at France’s largest sugar group Tereos, said lower prices and rising costs related to climate, disease and regulation were “endangering the long-term viability of European sugar production”. 

Sugar prices in Europe have dropped more than a third since last summer to €536 a tonne in June, according to the latest data from the European Commission.

Speculative traders have amassed their largest net short position in New York sugar futures since 2019 — the biggest collective bet in years that prices will fall, according to Commodity Futures Trading Commission data.

Tereos reported in August that revenues in the three months to the end of June were down 25 per cent year-on-year earlier to €1.2bn, while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation dropped 79 per cent to €56mn.

It reported a recurring operating loss of €22mn and net debt rose to €2.265bn but the group maintained its full-year guidance.

Germany’s Südzucker, Europe’s largest sugar producer, reported in July an 85 per cent fall in operating profit to €22mn for its first quarter to the end of May, with its sugar division swinging to a €56mn operating loss.

The group expects a full-year loss of up to €200mn in its sugar division, although it is forecasting a price rebound in the second half of the year.

Cristal Union, France’s second-largest producer this summer reported a 62 per cent drop in net profit to €117mn for the 2024-25 financial year and warned of “much more unfavourable market conditions” ahead.

The downturn has already forced the closure of five sugar factories in Europe this year, adding to the 14 closures in the UK between 2010 and 2025 and cutting the number of operating plants to 83. 

As farmers facing lower prices weigh the risk of selling at a loss, the number of acres planted with beet is expected to decrease by nearly 10 per cent this season.

“We’re already seeing beet areas shrink sharply,” said Stanislas Bouchard, deputy general manager of Cristal Union. “That’s going to have consequences for production.”

While Tereos has kept its planting stable, the group said production costs had surged. The average cost of making sugar in Europe has increased by €200 per tonne since 2017, according to the company, driven by rising farm inputs, energy prices and climate-related risks.

Souriau also blamed some of the sector’s struggles on European policies that “hold the bloc’s producers to tougher environmental standards than foreign competitors” who benefit from tariff-free access. This has “severely undermined European competitiveness”, he said. 

“Today there is a very strong misalignment between the EU’s environmental policies and its trade policy, which continuously increases imports of sugar, alcohol, and ethanol without tariffs from countries that do not apply the same environmental regulations.”  

Ukrainian imports have been particularly damaging, according to Dietz.

More than 1mn tonnes of sugar from the war-torn country entered the EU in 2023 and 2024, pushing up stock levels and dragging down prices. Brussels agreed to slash Ukrainian import quotas by 80 per cent from July. 

Despite a recent slump in sugar demand, Dietz played down concerns about long-term risks linked to changing consumption patterns as a result of the new wave of weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro. “Ten years ago, the big worry was glucose substitutes — and that hasn’t come to fruition,” he said. 

“The bigger factor for us is cocoa. About 30 per cent of our sales are tied to the cocoa market, so a downturn in chocolate demand can hit sugar sales.”

Switzerland in fresh push to woo Donald Trump on tariffs

Bern offers to buy more American weapons and energy in attempt to persuade Washington to lower its import levies

Switzerland is offering to buy more American weapons and energy products and make more investments in the US, in a fresh push to persuade the Trump administration to lower its tariffs on Swiss imports.

The Swiss government has engaged in negotiations after President Donald Trump went ahead with his threat to impose an unexpected 39 per cent rate on the Alpine country — one of the highest levels applied to a western ally — because of the trade imbalance between the two countries.

“We have had some good progress lately. Negotiations are still ongoing, but I would not be hopeful for an imminent deal,” said Rahul Sahgal, chief executive of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce.

Bern has offered to buy more US weapons and energy — including enriched uranium and liquefied natural gas — and made fresh investment pledges, according to two people close to the negotiations.

One US official confirmed that Washington and Bern were still discussing a potential trade deal.

The delicate talks have been handed to economy minister Guy Parmelin, who is set to become federal president next year in the country’s rotational system. Parmelin was in Washington earlier this month, holding lengthy sessions with Trump trade officials Howard Lutnick, Scott Greer and James Bessent.

US commerce secretary Lutnick said after his talks with Parmelin that “Switzerland will sort its way out over time”.

Swiss officials now describe a “whole-of-government” approach after President Karin Keller-Sutter’s disastrous call with Trump last month, when he rejected her plea for a lower rate. The US president later described her as a “nice lady” who “didn’t listen” to his complaints about America’s multibillion-dollar trade deficit with Switzerland.

After the call, Keller-Sutter rushed to Washington to try and get Trump to reverse course, but she returned to Bern empty-handed. She will take part in the UN General Assembly in New York this week, where Trump will also be present. But a bilateral meeting has yet to be confirmed and another White House visit is not on the schedule, according to people familiar with the planning.

A spokesperson for Keller-Sutter, who is also finance minister, confirmed the president would represent Switzerland alongside Ignazio Cassis, a former president, for the UN meeting. “We don‘t comment on planned meetings during the high-level week,” they said. 

In 2024, Washington recorded a goods trade deficit of about $38.3bn with Bern. But the balance has shifted sharply this year: by May, Switzerland was running a goods trade surplus of about $4.2bn with the US. 

The figures have been criticised as misleading as they include gold exports, which are exempt from tariffs. The Alpine country was further rattled when US customs officials started applying import taxes on gold bars. That policy has since been rescinded, but only after it upended the gold bullion markets. 

At home, the Swiss state secretariat for economic affairs (Seco) has enlisted top executives to lend weight to the push: Rolex chief executive Jean-Frédéric Dufour hosted Trump at the men’s tennis final of the US Open earlier this month — a high-visibility gesture. “The Rolex move wasn’t planned by Seco, but it wasn’t discouraged,” said one person.

The US government has appointed a new ambassador to Switzerland, Callista Gingrich — the wife of Republican congressman Newt Gingrich — who had already served as Trump’s ambassador to the Vatican in his first term. She is expected to take office next month, with trade featuring prominently on her agenda.

Trump’s tariffs are already having an impact: Swiss exports to the US collapsed in August, plunging 22.1 per cent to SFr3.1bn ($3.9bn) — their weakest showing since late 2020. Watch shipments alone sank 16.5 per cent, with declines across every major market and price range.

Exporters of everything from cheese to chocolate and luxury watches are braced for a long grind under Trump’s tariffs.

“Swiss watch-export data for August delivered an abrupt reality check,” said Jean-Philippe Bertschy, a managing director at Swiss investment group Vontobel, in a note to clients. “Total exports fell 16.5 per cent, with declines across every major region, material and price point.”

Industrialist’s latest pivot comes as he merges OCI Global into Abu Dhabi-listed Orascom in major business overhaul

Egypt’s richest man Nassef Sawiris is seeking to invest up to $50bn in US infrastructure projects and is consolidating his publicly traded holding companies in Abu Dhabi in a big pivot of his business interests.

Sawiris, who also owns the English football club Aston Villa, is close to concluding a break-up of his Dutch-listed chemicals and fertiliser group OCI Global, which has sold off more than $11.6bn worth of assets in the past two years.

After winding down the asset sales, Sawiris is now merging OCI into his family’s legacy business Orascom Construction in a deal that will be announced on Monday.

The newly merged company will be listed in Abu Dhabi. Sawiris has recently redomiciled to the emirate and Italy after a high-profile exit from the UK, where tax changes have prompted the departures of several billionaires.

The business will focus on infrastructure investment in the US, where it is seeking to capitalise on a surge of spending in areas such as data centres while leveraging Orascom’s expertise in construction and the more than $1bn in cash and other proceeds on OCI’s balance sheet.

The company plans to invest its own capital and partners’ funds in US infrastructure via equity and credit investments in the coming decade.

“We want to focus the next stage of our business on the area we see the biggest opportunity, which is infrastructure,” Sawiris told the Financial Times.

He said Orascom, like some of the most successful companies in the sector such as France’s Vinci and Spain’s Ferrovial, had an advantage from its deep experience in construction and project management.

“Any day, these companies will be more successful than a bunch of bankers who do desktop analysis of an asset and then struggle to create the most value,” Sawiris said.

Private capital firms have flooded the infrastructure space in recent years, with funds led by BlackRock’s GIP and Brookfield Asset Management among the biggest players.

The industrialist has been critical of the private equity sector, telling the FT this year that the industry’s best days had passed.

Orascom already operates in US infrastructure via its subsidiary Weitz, which it acquired in 2012. Weitz has built projects such as data centres, airport terminals and university housing.

Sawiris, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes at almost $9bn, is the youngest son of the late Onsi Sawiris, who founded a construction company in the 1950s and built it into the large multinational corporation now called Orascom.

The latest move marks the latest big pivot of Sawiris’ career, coming after his focus on chemicals and his initial presence in cement. Sawiris sold Orascom’s cement business to the French group Lafarge in 2007 for more than €10bn.

OCI and Orascom generated a combined internal rate of return of more than 39 per cent between Orascom’s listing in 1999 and the end of 2024 and returned more than $22bn in dividends to shareholders, according to an audit performed by KPMG.

Last year OCI sold its global methanol business to US specialist Methanex for about $2bn, marking the Amsterdam-listed group’s fourth transaction since undertaking a strategic review in 2023.

The company has been exploring options including a sale of its final European assets.

French entrepreneurs decry ‘communist’ wealth tax proposal

Tech start-ups and business leaders outraged by Socialist demands to impose levy on super-rich

French business leaders have billed the left’s proposal for a new tax on the very wealthy as “insane” and “communist”, as the Socialist party pressures Emmanuel Macron’s new prime minister to ensure the rich pay their fair share in efforts to narrow the public deficit.

The Socialists’ votes are essential for the survival of premier Sébastien Lecornu, after the hung parliament toppled two prime ministers in less than a year over their attempts to limit public spending. The leftwing lawmakers are pressing for people with fortunes of more than €100mn to pay a minimum of 2 per cent tax annually on all their assets, including their companies, shares of companies, and unrealised gains. 

Bernard Arnault, chief executive of luxury conglomerate LVMH, said the push amounted to a “clearly stated desire to destroy the French economy”.

“I cannot believe that the French political forces that govern or have governed the country could lend any credibility to this offensive, which is deadly for our economy,” the billionaire said in a statement.

Arnault is not alone in opposing this idea. Éric Larchevêque, a co-founder of crypto wallet company Ledger, told the Financial Times: “It’s collectivism, it’s communism . . . it’s a fundamental attack on my freedom and right to property.” 

With Ledger last valued at €1.3bn by venture capital investors, Larchevêque’s stake puts his fortune high enough that he would have to pay the new wealth tax even though the unlisted start-up does not make a profit, nor pay dividends. 

If enacted, the so-called Zucman tax — named after Gabriel Zucman, the economist who floated the idea — would be a blow to Macron’s business-friendly agenda since he was first elected in 2017, pledging to turn France into “a start-up nation”.

One of the president’s first moves was to water down a net wealth tax on people’s personal assets above a certain threshold by replacing it with a narrower tax on real estate assets. He also gradually cut corporate taxes from 33 per cent to 25 per cent, and applied a flat tax of 30 per cent on capital gains. 

But Macron went on to pay a high political price for those tax cuts, with opponents quickly tagging him as the “president of the rich”.

Macron remains strongly opposed to wealth taxes and sees Zucman’s proposal as an aberration, said a person familiar with his thinking. Lecornu told French regional newspapers that he was open to discussing “tax fairness and sharing the burden”, but warned that “professional assets” needed to be handled with “care”.

Advocates of the Zucman tax claim it would raise €15bn a year, reducing the need for spending cuts when tackling the public deficit, which is expected to reach 5.4 per cent of GDP by the end of the year — one of the highest in the Eurozone.

But other economists say it could raise just €5bn. Lecornu’s predecessor François Bayrou was toppled over his proposed 2026 budget, which included €44bn worth of spending cuts and tax rises. 

Arnault billed Zucman a “far-left activist” whose “ideology aims to destroy the liberal economy”. Arnault is one of the wealthiest people in the world, largely due to his controlling shareholding in the €256bn Paris-listed luxury group he built.

Zucman’s “pseudo-academic competence is widely debated”, Arnault said, adding it was aimed at him personally, given he was “certainly the largest individual taxpayer and one of the largest corporate taxpayers through the companies I run”.

Zucman described Arnault’s criticism as “baseless”.

“Coming from one of the richest men in the world and in a context where academic freedom is being called into question in a growing number of countries, this rhetoric . . . should worry us all,” Zucman wrote on X, adding: “It’s time to tax billionaires at a minimum rate.”

The Zucman tax would be particularly problematic for the owners of promising tech start-ups that, despite their high valuations on paper, often do not generate a profit or dividends. These individuals could face tax bills that exceed any liquid assets they have. 

The pro-Zucman camp argues that start-up founders could just pay their tax bills by handing over shares of their companies to a French sovereign wealth fund or by borrowing — both heavily contested ideas.

Critics, however, argue the tax may be unconstitutional given how it would affect a small group of about 1,800 people. 

Philippe Corrot, co-founder of tech start-up Mirakl, which is valued at $3.5bn, told the FT it was “absurd” and “dangerous” to “put people in a situation of having to sell” parts of their companies to pay taxes.

But the argument that more should be done to tax the super-rich is a popular one in a country that is home to some of the world’s wealthiest people, such as Arnault or the billionaire families behind Hermès and L’Oréal. 

More than half a million people marched through the streets of Paris and other French cities last week to protest against looming spending cuts, and many carried signs that called for taxing the rich. 

An Ifop study commissioned by the Socialists recently found that 86 per cent of those polled supported the Zucman tax.

“Who is going to say no if you say ‘let’s tax the rich at 2 per cent?’” said Fabrice Le Saché, vice-chair of the business lobby Medef and founder of a carbon credit trading company. “It’s hard for people to understand that the value of a company is not cash in your pocket.”

Many business leaders now believe some form of wealth tax has become inevitable, but hoped for a toned-down version. One option would be to extend supposedly temporary measures that were included in this year’s budget, such as a tax top-off on people earning more than €250,000 a year, as well as a rise in taxes on big companies.

“Everyone must make an effort, and no one has said that we don’t want to pay taxes . . . But it mustn’t discourage people from taking risks, it mustn’t be confiscatory,” said Mirakl’s Corrot.

“Would I have created Mirakl in France 15 years ago if these taxes existed?”

UK explores plan to drop visa fees for top global talent

PM’s team wants to make it easier to attract people who have attended top universities as US moves in opposite direction

Sir Keir Starmer is exploring proposals to abolish some visa fees for top global talent at a time when the US has moved sharply in the other direction.

The British prime minister’s “global talent task force” is working on ideas to lure to the UK the world’s best scientists, academics and digital experts, as it seeks to stimulate economic growth.

One option being considered is abolishing visa charges for top-level professionals, according to people briefed on the discussions inside Number 10 and the Treasury.

“We’re talking about the sort of people who have attended the world’s top five universities or have won prestigious prizes,” said one official. “We’re kicking around the idea of cutting costs to zero.”

The reforms were being discussed in Number 10 and the Treasury before the Trump administration announced last week it would increase to $100,000 the application fee for an H-1B visa, which is relied on by US tech groups.

But one person involved in the UK discussions said that Trump’s decision had put “wind in the sails” of those wanting to reform Britain’s high-end visa system to boost growth ahead of the November 26 Budget.

The discussions are being driven by the global talent task force, chaired by Varun Chandra, Starmer’s business adviser, and Lord Patrick Vallance, science minister. 

Government officials said the idea of cutting visa costs was not yet being actively discussed in the Home Office, which has a remit to cut net migration, but that immigration visa routes were kept under review.

Another British official said the current global talent visa system was a “bureaucratic nightmare”, adding: “We are also looking at how we can help people navigate the visa process.” 

The official added: “This isn’t about diluting our determination to bring down net migration but it’s about getting the brightest and best into Britain. There is unity across government on this.”

Meanwhile, government officials said that chancellor Rachel Reeves was looking at the tax system ahead of her autumn Budget to identify disincentives to attracting global talent.

The chancellor’s recent reforms to the non-dom tax system have been blamed for some wealthy individuals leaving Britain, although provisional tax data suggests the exodus was not as great as some had feared.

Britain’s global talent visa, introduced in 2020, costs £766 to apply for, with partners and children paying the same fee. An annual health surcharge fee of £1,035 is usually applied to each person applying.

The route has no ties to an employer, and offers a fast-track route to settlement in the UK.

The visa is aimed at eminent people in science, engineering, humanities, medicine, digital technology or arts and culture. The Home Office said successful applicants are “leaders, or have the potential to be leaders, in their field, as determined by an endorsing body”.

In the year ending June 2023, there was a 76 per cent rise in the number of global talent visas granted, taking the total to 3,901.

Reeves has tasked officials with coming up with pro-growth reforms aimed at easing regulatory barriers and bolstering inward investment, as she confronts the possibility of a sharp downgrade to the outlook by the Office for Budget Responsibility. 

The chancellor is also reviewing inheritance tax changes affecting non-doms ahead of her Budget, according to government officials.

In its immigration white paper earlier this year, Labour committed to “increasing the number of people arriving on our very high-talent routes”, with faster routes for people who could “supercharge” growth in strategic industries. 

Applications for skilled worker visas have already fallen sharply as a result of changes raising the skills and salary requirements, as well as sharp increases in fees. 

Jamie Arrowsmith, director of Universities UK International, said the main initiative the government has taken so far to lure US scientists — establishing a £50mn Global Talent Fund available to 12 UK institutions — was “relatively modest” in scale. 

The government also needed to look at the costs of immigration for researchers and ensure they were globally competitive, he said, adding: “Ultimately to attract global talent we need to be able to offer funding and autonomy and make the transition as smooth as possible.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Our global talent routes attract and retain high-skilled talent, particularly in science, research and technology, to maintain the UK’s status as a leading international hub for emerging talent and innovation.”

Briton and Singaporean faked documents to suggest German payments company was in better financial health

Two businessmen were found guilty on Monday of falsifying documents for senior executives at Wirecard as part of one of Europe’s biggest accounting frauds.

James Henry O’Sullivan, a 50-year-old British national, and Shan Rajaratnam, a 61-year-old Singaporean, used the documents to hoodwink auditor EY into thinking the German fintech start-up had more money stored away than actually existed.

In June 2020, Wirecard disclosed that €1.9bn said to be in the accounts did not exist. The business subsequently collapsed in one of Europe’s largest accounting scandals.

The verdict by a Singaporean judge on Monday follows a trial that has lasted for two years and has had the highest profile of several cases brought in the city-state in connection with Wirecard. Both men will be sentenced on November 20. 

Markus Braun, Wirecard’s former chief executive, and two other senior managers are currently on trial in Germany, while Jan Marsalek, the company’s former chief operating officer, fled to Russia to avoid prosecution.

O’Sullivan was a close confidant of Marsalek and ran a series of businesses in Asia with close ties to Wirecard. He was accused of instructing Rajaratnam, a director of secretarial firm Citadelle Corporate Services, to falsify documents.

O’Sullivan was found guilty of five charges and Rajaratnam 13, each relating to specific fraudulent transactions and carrying possible sentences of up to 10 years in prison as well as fines. Both had their bail doubled to S$300,000 (US$233,000) by the judge.

The charges related to paperwork sent by Rajaratnam between March 2016 and March 2018 that purported to show €150mn in cash overseen by Citadelle on behalf of Wirecard in Singaporean bank accounts.

Several mid-level Wirecard executives have been imprisoned in Singapore over the past two years, in cases that included the first criminal convictions linked to the scandal. 

The Monetary Authority of Singapore, the country’s financial regulator, has also fined several banks and an insurer for anti-money laundering breaches connected to Wirecard.