FT : Criminals using AI are driving sharp rise in UK fraud cases

Criminals using AI are driving sharp rise in UK fraud cases
As part of a tech arms race, banks are also using artificial intelligence to stop scams with increasing effectiveness

Criminals are using artificial intelligence to increase their “attack rate” on UK victims, with investment fraud and romance scams hitting record levels in the first half of the year.

The number of confirmed fraud cases surpassed 2mn in the first half of this year — a 17 per cent rise on the previous year — according to statistics compiled by UK Finance, the banking trade body. The amount of money criminals stole from victims surpassed £629mn, a 3 per cent rise.

Fraudsters are using AI “to enhance tried and tested tactics more quickly, at a greater scale, in different languages and to a greater effect,” said Ben Donaldson, managing director of economic crime at UK Finance.

“It’s pretty much impossible for fraud victims to tell if AI has played a role or not, but anecdotally, it absolutely has,” he said. The cost and availability of the technology means it is fast becoming part of everyday life — even for criminals, who are using AI to scale up the distribution of scam texts, emails and direct messages on social media platforms and create ever more sophisticated content to deceive their victims.

Investment scam losses increased by 55 per cent to nearly £100mn in the period — an average loss of more than £15,000 per victim. The sophisticated tactics that criminals use are increasingly powered by AI, such as deepfake videos featuring trusted financial figures appearing to punt cryptocurrency investment opportunities or share tipping services.

Criminals often create fake websites allowing victims to log in and view a dashboard showing how well their “investment” has performed, and even withdraw some of the profits. However, this is a prelude to the scammers tempting them to invest even larger amounts.

Cases of romance fraud rose by 19 per cent, with losses increasing by 35 per cent to £20.5mn. Typically carried out over a long period as scammers gain the trust of victims, there are an average of nine scam payments per case, UK Finance said, adding that it was aware of some cases involving over 100 separate money transfers.

Banks are also using AI to prevent fraud with increasing effectiveness. In the first six months of this year, £870mn of unauthorised fraud was prevented by advanced security systems — 20 per cent more than in the first half of 2024 — and equivalent to 70p in every £1 attempted.

Ruth Ray, director of fraud policy at UK Finance, said banks were increasingly investing in AI-powered tools that worked in real time to detect anomalies that could indicate a customer was “under the spell of a fraudster”.

However, this has led to a rise in lower value fraud. Criminals will often make multiple purchases of cheaper items that can easily be sold on — such as gift cards — in an attempt to bypass banks’ anti-fraud systems.

The use of other new technologies is rising too. The Dedicated Crime and Payment Card Unit (DCPCU), a specialist police unit sponsored by the banking industry, has caught criminals in crowded areas of central London using “SMS blasters” which act as an illegitimate phone mast. These have been concealed in the boots of cars and even inside suitcases on the London Underground network, blitzing every mobile phone in the vicinity with spam texts.

Victims typically click on a link leading to a fake website — such as a government body or delivery firm — where they are duped into handing over personal details.

UK Finance stressed the shared responsibility for social media companies and the telecommunications industry to step up fraud detection and prevention.

“Rather than rely on banks to try and prevent crime at the moment it’s happening, we should be working together to prevent fraud from occurring in the first place,” said Donaldson.

FT : US health agency reapproves GSK blood cancer drug after new trial

US health agency reapproves GSK blood cancer drug after new trial
FDA gives go-ahead to UK drugmaker’s multiple myeloma treatment Blenrep

GSK’s chief executive said the company has shown its commitment to pioneering treatments after winning US approval for a blood cancer drug that had previously been withdrawn from sale.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved Blenrep despite the regulator’s own advisory committee voting in July against recommending it, finding that the risks outweighed the benefits. About a third of patients taking the drug, which is designed to tackle treatment-resistant multiple myeloma, suffer temporary blurred eye sight as a side effect. 

The advisory vote in July sent GSK’s shares down as much as 7 per cent. The FDA then extended its review period until October and GSK’s shares have sharply rebounded since and are 21 per cent higher this year.

Emma Walmsley, GSK’s chief executive who will be replaced by chief commercial officer Luke Miels at the start of next year, said Blenrep, was “one of the most important” medicines and would help the drugmaker meet its target of £40bn in annual revenue by 2031.

Walmsley took GSK back into oncology in 2018, after her predecessor Andrew Witty retreated from the specialism in 2015. The company generated £1bn in oncology sales last year. Blenrep is expected to generate at least £3bn in sales in its peak year.

But GSK’s re-entry into the lucrative market has not been smooth, with Blenrep withdrawn from sale in the US in 2022 after a trial found it was no better than other treatments. 

GSK designed another trial, where patients took Blenrep in conjunction with a drug BorDex. This new trial showed a “statistically significant and clinically meaningful” effect. 

“I think sometimes when you get knocked down, it’s about the courage to get back up again,” Walmsley told the Financial Times. 

She added that the BorDex study found the drug combination can help patients live an average of three years longer than standard treatment. “That is, by any standards, very meaningful,” she said. 

Miels said the company had hired experts, many from AstraZeneca and Roche where he has previously worked, to help design the trial.

“The emergence of a really, really deep oncology business over the next ten years can be very, very exciting,” said Miels. “We’re in very early days, step one or two of a very long staircase.” 

Now, GSK will have to convince doctors and healthcare systems to use Blenrep, which has already been approved in the UK and the EU. 

GSK is gaining a reputation for turning around overlooked treatments, having uncovered several promising therapies through acquisitions and licensing deals.

A new antibiotic for UTIs, licensed by GSK from Spero Therapeutics in 2022, was so effective that a recent trial was stopped early. It had previously been rejected by the US regulator on the basis of earlier trial results. 

Another GSK blood cancer drug, Ojjaara was approved in the US in 2023 after positive clinical trials.

The drug previously showed disappointing results in a late-stage phase 3 trial when it was owned by US biotech Gilead. Gilead subsequently sold it to Sierra Oncology for just $3mn, and GSK bought Sierra for $1.9bn in 2022.

GSK believes Ojjaara will sell more than $1bn a year at its peak. 

Walmsley said: “Anyone can spend money, the question is, can we pick assets that have a chance of winning in their field and where the returns will be truly competitive?”

WSJ : Most-Wanted Fentanyl Producer Is Extradited to the U.S. After Brazen Escap

Most-Wanted Fentanyl Producer Is Extradited to the U.S. After Brazen Escape
Zhi Dong Zhang, an accused Chinese drug boss, fled house arrest in Mexico, traveled to Cuba and was denied entry by Russia

Zhi Dong Zhang, accused of being a major link between Chinese chemical producers and Mexican cartels, is now in U.S. custody.
Zhang escaped house arrest in Mexico in July, traveling to Cuba and then being denied entry by Russia.

MEXICO CITY—The accused Chinese drug boss was this close to the perfect getaway.

In July, Zhi Dong Zhang escaped from house arrest in Mexico, where he was set to be extradited to the U.S. on drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges. The Justice Department accuses him of being the most important link between Chinese chemical producers and the Mexican cartels that make fentanyl.

He then hopped onto a private jet to Cuba and boarded a flight to Russia, beyond the reach of U.S. and Mexican prosecutors. Authorities in Russia, perhaps not knowing Zhang’s true identity, refused him entry and ordered his immediate return to Cuba, said law-enforcement officials familiar with the case.

Now, Zhang is in U.S. custody. He had been detained in Cuba, which extradited him back to Mexico on Thursday. From there he was delivered to the U.S., the Mexican government said.

Bringing Zhang to justice represents a major blow for the global underworld network that links China to Mexico’s most powerful drug-smuggling cartels and their narcotics-distribution and money-laundering networks in the U.S., officials familiar with the case said. The Justice Department considers him one of the world’s most important drug traffickers, on par with Mexico’s most-wanted cartel bosses.


Zhang is accused of smuggling tons of chemical precursors to make fentanyl for Mexico’s top two criminal organizations, the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels. U.S. and Mexican officials consider Zhang a criminal mastermind because of what they say is his logistical prowess and expertise in developing new formulas for the addictive opioid. He also allegedly brought in Chinese chemists to train the cartels’ own lab operators.

Zhang’s bold escape from house arrest in July infuriated Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. The breakout was an embarrassment for Mexican authorities who were trying to prove to the U.S. that they were tackling fentanyl trafficking and head off unilateral American military action against cartels.

The Mexican Attorney General’s Office estimates that Zhang made more than $150 million a year from his global trafficking network. U.S. prosecutors in Georgia charged him with laundering millions of dollars through U.S. banks.

Recapturing Zhang was crucial for Mexican authorities, who saw his deportation from Cuba and extradition to the U.S. as a vindication of their efforts.

Late Thursday, Mexican Security Minister Omar García Harfuch thanked Cuba’s government for its “valuable collaboration.”

The Mexican government has historically had close relations with Cuba and has often acted as a go-between for Washington and Havana.

García Harfuch wrote on X that Zhang had “alliances with criminal groups with a presence in the Americas, Europe and Asia.”

The U.S. Justice Department designated Zhang one of the world’s top drug traffickers. Like the Jalisco cartel boss Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera, Zhang is a Consolidated Priority Organization Target, a Justice Department designation that requires extensive evidence by case officers across agencies to demonstrate the regional reach of criminal activity.

A U.S. indictment in Georgia charges Zhang with trafficking large amounts of cocaine and fentanyl into the U.S. and making numerous cash deposits to U.S. banks.

Zhang’s U.S. extradition request alleges that he smuggled more than 2,000 pounds of cocaine, almost 4,000 pounds of fentanyl and over 1,300 pounds of methamphetamines to the U.S. Officials said he was a top broker of coveted Chinese chemicals needed to manufacture fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is extremely addictive. Hundreds of thousands have died in the U.S. as a result of fentanyl overdoses.

Zhang arrived in Mexico from China before the pandemic, married a Mexican woman and acquired Mexican citizenship. A fluent Spanish speaker, Zhang answers to many names. Among them: El Chino, Brother Wang, Hehe, Haha and Nelson Mandela, according to authorities.

Officials familiar with the case believed Cuban authorities took their time with the deportation as the island’s vaunted intelligence agents methodically extracted information about Zhang’s vast criminal network in China, Mexico and the U.S.

Cuba’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday that Zhang was detained July 31 because he was traveling with false identification.

The Russian Embassy in Washington didn’t respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for China’s Embassy in Washington said he isn’t familiar with Zhang’s case, but said the government has been striking hard against fentanyl-related crimes.

Mystery still shrouds Zhang’s escape in July, following a late-night court hearing in Mexico City at which a judge unexpectedly granted him house arrest. At the time, Sheinbaum said the judge should have kept him behind bars.

“He was granted house arrest with no grounds for it,” she said during a daily news conference in July. “We’ve been insisting that there is corruption in the judiciary.”

A spokeswoman for the federal body responsible for the administration of Mexico’s judiciary declined to comment.

Zhang, who had been held in a maximum-security prison, left the courtroom in Mexico City and arrived at a house protected by Mexican security officers. The house was next to a residence owned by a criminal organization, said the officials familiar with the case. Investigators later found a hole in the wall linking the two houses. Left behind was Zhang’s court-issued electronic ankle bracelet.

Mexican authorities launched a manhunt. Security officials tracked a vehicle with surveillance cameras as it left the house, believing Zhang was inside. The car headed toward Guerrero state on Mexico’s Pacific coast, people familiar with the case said.

Guerrero’s law-enforcement officials stopped the vehicle, these people said. Mexican authorities informed senior U.S. officials that Zhang had been recaptured. Then, minutes later, they said they didn’t have him.

Within hours, Zhang was on a private jet en route to Cuba.

A spokesperson for the Guerrero state police said there was no record that Zhang was detained. One person familiar with the case said that Zhang wasn’t in the vehicle.

Mexico put out a global Interpol “red alert” seeking Zhang’s capture.

From Cuba, Zhang flew to Russia. But authorities there ordered his immediate return to Cuba, the people familiar with the case said. Along with Zhang, Cuba also detained two suspects, one Chinese and one Mexican national, Mexico’s government said.

Russian officials seem to have missed the value of a top fugitive wanted by the U.S. with information about the American underworld, probably because Zhang was carrying false identification and the Interpol alert for him had been issued by Mexico, and not the U.S., these people said.

>>> Beyond Mergers: A Diversified Approach To Event-Driven Investment

Beyond Mergers: A Diversified Approach To Event-Driven Investment

Summary
  • Event-driven investing seeks to extract alpha by capitalizing on price anomalies in shares of companies that are undergoing or affected by a corporate, investor or liquidity event.
  • Over the long run, merger arbitrage has generated high-quality returns - roughly defined as returns that are consistent, understandable and uncorrelated over time to the broad equity market.
  • Many event-driven strategies tend to have a long bias, which we believe limits the opportunities to generate alpha.

For event-driven strategies, tie-ups and takeovers aren’t the only events that matter.

Event-driven investing seeks to extract alpha by capitalizing on price anomalies in shares of companies that are undergoing or affected by a corporate, investor or liquidity event. It’s one of the oldest and most well-researched hedge-fund strategies - the HFRI Event Driven Index dates to 1990. Over that period, it has delivered strong annualized risk-adjusted returns (Display) with just seven “down” years since inception.

Event-Driven: Steady Growth, Strong Risk-Adjusted Returns

Steady Growth, Strong Risk-Adjusted Returns

Past performance does not guarantee future results.The risk-free rate used in calculating the historical Sharpe ratio is the FTSE Treasury Bill 1 Mon USD Index. Performance data for the HFRI Event-Driven Index reflects the cumulative since inception performance from January 1990 through April 2025.Source: eVestment, HFR and AllianceBernstein (AB)

But some event-driven strategies have biases that may make them less effective. In many cases, we think it’s from leaning too heavily into one type of event: merger arbitrage, where managers seek to extract risk premia associated with merger transactions over a defined outcome and timeline. These biases are visible at the index level. Investors might be surprised to learn that the HFRI Event Driven Index had a high correlation of roughly 0.9 to the HFRI Merger Arbitrage index between February 2020 and August 2025.

Make no mistake: we consider the recent acceleration of corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity a welcome sign of renewed dealmaking after years of muted activity. But for strategies that seek to capitalize on event-driven price anomalies, tie-ups and takeovers aren’t the only events that matter.

Hidden Equity Correlation in Merger Arbitrage
At first glance, leaning heavily into merger arbitrage substrategies may seem prudent. Over the long run, merger arbitrage has generated high-quality returns - roughly defined as returns that are consistent, understandable and uncorrelated over time to the broad equity market. Of the 42 HFRI hedge-fund indices, merger arbitrage has the seventh-smallest maximum drawdown and has logged just two down years over the past 35 years.

But the strategy can be inherently cyclical, driven by the ups and downs of deal flow, which can create challenges. And while merger arbitrage strategies tend to have little correlation to traditional markets, they can exhibit higher sensitivity during periods of market stress.

For event-driven strategies heavily focused on merger announcements - so-called “hard” catalysts with a defined outcome and timeline - this can result in a “long” bias to equity markets. In our view, this may increase the risk of losses when the market struggles.

Embracing a More Systematic Approach
But mergers aren’t the only catalysts that managers can seek out. There are also systematic catalysts - sometimes referred to as “soft” or “diversified” catalysts. They’re often events initiated by corporations, regulatory agencies or constrained investors such as passive fund managers. Unlike mergers, these events typically have a less defined effect on security prices and timeline for monetization.

Many event-driven investors look to these types of catalysts to seek out diversified returns with little or no correlation to the broad equity market. This may also offset some of the “point-in-time” beta to equity markets that merger arbitrage can introduce into a broader event-driven strategy. The sheer diversity of event types, however, creates challenges for fundamental event-driven managers. In the corporate segment alone, there are dozens of systematic catalyst categories that can be applied globally.

A Closer Look at Systematic Catalysts
The multitude of systematic catalysts can be organized into two subcategories: those that are sentiment-driven and those that are more diversified.

Sentiment catalysts create opportunities to capitalize on directional moves caused by discrete events. For example, an investor might interpret a company’s plans to buy back shares as an expression of confidence in its forward earnings. Or the anticipated rebalancing of a widely followed equity index might provide an opportunity to capture stock price momentum, as passive investors buy or sell shares.

Diversification catalysts focus on persistent market themes. An analyst’s rating change on a particular security, which may create an opening to take a long or short position, fits into this category.

With dozens of event-driven strategies and hundreds of substrategy event categories, we believe a rules-based, systematic approach is an essential ingredient to capture the returns associated with these catalysts. It enables investors to leverage hundreds of quantitative inputs to inform investment decisions and may prevent portfolios from becoming too concentrated in a smaller number of catalysts.

The alternative - conducting fundamental research and analysis on each and every transaction - would require resources that few investors have at their fingertips today.

It’s also important, in our view, to focus on opportunities to profit from catalysts via short positions. Many event-driven strategies tend to have a long bias, which we believe limits the opportunities to generate alpha. Adding short positions in event-driven strategies may also help keep them uncorrelated to the broader market in periods of stress.

Advances in machine learning are also enhancing the appeal of systematic strategies, allowing for a quantitative and AI-driven decision-making process that can interpret vast data sets and help identify and incorporate a wider range of catalysts with the potential to affect prices.

None of this suggests M&A activity won’t continue to anchor event-driven investing. But we think a broader and more diverse event-driven approach with the ability to go long and short has the potential to reduce correlations and make portfolios more durable across market environments.

>>> US After Hours Summary: INTC +7.7% higher on earnings; MOFG +34.7% to be acq

After Hours Summary: INTC +7.7% higher on earnings; MOFG +34.7% to be acquired; DECK -12.5%, MHK -4.7% lower on earnings

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: FIX +17.4% (also increases dividend), NXT +10.6% (also to form Nextracker Arabia, a new joint venture), INTC +7.7%, SLM +6.5%, CYH +5.1%, UVE +5.1%, PECO +4.6%, WU +4.2%, SSNC +3.9%, F +3.7% (also plans to significantly increase F-150 and F-Series Super Duty truck production), CUBI +2.5%, MXL +2.2%, SAM +2.1%, DOC +1.4%, EBC +0.8% (also authorizes new 5% share repurchase program), ENVA +0.1%

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: INBX +75.9% (topline results from the registrational ChonDRAgon study), MOFG +34.7% (NIC to acquire MOFG, also reports earnings), ULH +23.2% (postpones Q3 earnings release), BBAI +4.4% (deploys veriScan at Chicago O'Hare), INV +2.3% (stock offering by selling shareholders), BBOT +2.2% (new preclinical data on BBO-11818), FHI +1.9% (to acquire a majority interest in FCP Fund Manager), TDOC +1.8% (CFO to step down, reaffirms guidance), VSTM +1.5% (preliminary data from Phase 1/2a trial of VS-7375), SAIC +0.7% (CEO steps down, reaffirms FY26 guidance), GOOG +0.7% (Anthropic announces expansion of its use of Google Cloud's TPU chips), EQT +0.7% (requests FERC authorization to construct MVP Boost), SMCI +0.6% (announces new 6U 20-Node MicroBlade), VAL +0.2% (issues fleet status report), COP +0.2% (plans November job cuts in Canada— Reuters), KO +0.1% (files mixed securities shelf offering), TGT +0.1% (announces layoffs of roughly 1,800 corporate jobs, per WSJ)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: DECK -12.5%, MHK -4.7%, FFBC -4.3%, WKC -4.2%, BYD -4%, MRTN -3.4%, MGRC -3.2%, KN -2.9%, WSFS -2.1%, HTH -2%, KNSL -1.7%, MTX -1.7%, NEM -1.6%, ELME -1.1%, BKR -0.9%, COUR -0.9%, VRSN -0.6%, ASB -0.4%, NSC -0.3%, FFIN -0.3%, DLR -0.2%, ALK -0.1%

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: COYA -12.6% (stock offering), GSK -6.5% (FDA approves Blenrep for multiple myeloma), VTOL -1.6% (files mixed securities shelf offering), STSS -1.4% (stock offering by selling shareholders), BRBR -1.4% (discloses Joint Juice litigation updates), AMAT -1.2% (4% workforce reduction), DMLP -1% (increases dividend), NIC -0.2% (NIC to acquire MOFG, also reports earnings)

WSJ : Trump Administration in Talks to Take Equity Stakes in Quantum-Computing F

Trump Administration in Talks to Take Equity Stakes in Quantum-Computing Firms
Discussions signal Washington’s wider involvement in key parts of the economy

Several quantum-computing companies are negotiating with the Commerce Department for federal funding in exchange for equity stakes.
The Trump administration is expanding its strategy of taking equity in companies receiving taxpayer funds, following a nearly 10% stake in Intel.
The funding, potentially $10 million minimum per company, would support quantum computing, a critical next-generation technology.

WASHINGTON—Several quantum-computing companies are in talks to give the Commerce Department equity stakes in exchange for federal funding, a signal that the Trump administration is expanding its interventions in what it sees as critical segments of the economy.

Companies including IonQ, Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Quantum are discussing the government becoming a shareholder as part of agreements to get funding earmarked for promising technology companies, according to people familiar with the matter. Other companies such as Quantum Computing and Atom Computing are considering similar arrangements.

The companies are discussing minimum funding awards from Washington of $10 million each, some of the people said. Other technology companies are also expected to vie for the funding.

Shares of companies in the space rose in early trading. D-Wave was up 20%, and IonQ, Rigetti and Quantum Computing were all up over 10%. The stocks have risen this year due to investor excitement about the technology.

The discussions are the latest example of administration moves to become a shareholder in some companies. President Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have said the government should share in a company’s upside since taxpayer money provides financial support and a stamp of approval.

In August, the government agreed to take a nearly 10% stake in chip company Intel in exchange for converting almost $9 billion in previously awarded grants to equity. The arrangement would make the government Intel’s largest shareholder and followed a similar deal with one of the few U.S. producers of rare-earth materials. The Energy Department received warrants giving it the right to buy shares of a lithium startup at a set price in exchange for a government loan.


The funding for quantum companies would be one of the first significant signs of support for the sector from Washington. Quantum computers are seen as a critical next-generation technology because they can quickly perform computations that would take today’s computers eons. That sort of advance could make it easier to find new drugs, materials and chemicals while making every segment of the economy more efficient, experts say.

Companies from International Business Machines to Microsoft are investing in quantum computing, as is China. Google said on Wednesday that it showed a quantum computer can run 13,000 times faster than classic supercomputers and potentially speed drug discovery and materials science.

Deputy Commerce Secretary Paul Dabbar, a former quantum-computing executive and Energy Department official, is leading the funding discussions with companies in the industry, the people said. Bohr Quantum Technology, the company Dabbar co-founded and led as chief executive for four years, isn’t a candidate to receive funding, a Commerce Department official said.

Quantum Computing Chief Executive Yuping Huang said the government’s potential equity stakes in companies in the industry are exciting. A Rigetti spokeswoman said the company is continuously engaging with the government on funding opportunities. Allison Schwartz, head of government relations for D-Wave, said the company wants to sell systems that can solve the government’s hard problems and get a return on investment. Atom Computing and IonQ declined to comment.

The funding the companies are seeking comes from the Chips Research and Development Office, which Lutnick has reorganized under his overhaul of how the agency manages 2022 Chips Act funding. He recently clawed back several billion dollars from a tech research initiative funded by the Biden administration.

The deals with the quantum companies haven’t been completed and might change. A Commerce document soliciting funding applications says the deals might include warrants, licenses to intellectual property, royalties or revenue sharing in addition to equity stakes.

WSJ : Trump Pardons Convicted Binance Founder

Trump Pardons Convicted Binance Founder
Pardon follows months of efforts by Changpeng Zhao to boost Trump crypto company

President Trump has pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the convicted founder of the crypto exchange Binance, according to people familiar with the matter, following months of efforts by Zhao to boost the Trump family’s own crypto company.

The president signed the pardon on Wednesday, the people said. Trump recently indicated to advisers that he was sympathetic to arguments of political persecution related to Zhao and others, one of the people said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump had “exercised his constitutional authority by issuing a pardon for Mr. Zhao, who was prosecuted by the Biden Administration in their war on cryptocurrency.” She added: “The Biden Administration’s war on crypto is over.”

Binance didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

A pardon will likely pave the way for Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, to return to the U.S., after the company pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating U.S. anti-money-laundering requirements and was barred from operating there.

The company has spent nearly a year pursuing a pardon for Zhao, who left prison in September 2024 after serving a four-month sentence for related charges. Earlier this year, the company hired lobbyist Ches McDowell to help pursue a pardon, the Journal previously reported.

Since Trump’s election, Binance has also been a key supporter of his family’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture, a business that has driven a huge leap in the president’s personal wealth.

FT : Novo Nordisk’s new ‘king’ tightens his grip at obesity drug giant

Novo Nordisk’s new ‘king’ tightens his grip at obesity drug giant
Boardroom shake-up at European drugmaker grants Lars Rebien Sørensen wide-ranging powers

A board shake-up at Novo Nordisk has blindsided the market and concentrated power in the hands of one man at the top of one of Europe’s biggest companies.

Lars Rebien Sørensen, a former CEO of the drugmaker, was this week announced as its chair, as the incumbent and six other directors said they were stepping down.

He is already chair of Novo’s majority owner, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, consolidating his influence over the maker of blockbuster drugs Ozempic and Wegovy. The foundation has also put forward five new candidates to join Novo’s board.

The aim is to accelerate change at a company that has fallen behind its main rival Eli Lilly in the crucial US obesity market.

But Kurt Jacobsen, a Copenhagen Business School professor who has written a history of Novo Nordisk, said the board shake-up was “unbelievable”. Sørensen is now “king of the Novo Nordisk kingdom,” he said. “This is a power concentration I have not seen in Danish business.” 

Novo Nordisk and the foundation, which owns 28.1 per cent of Novo’s share capital and 77.1 per cent of its voting rights, declined to comment.

Sørensen has said he intends to be chair of Novo for only two to three years and he is resigning his seat on another related board, Novo Holdings, which manages the foundation’s investments. Novo Holdings will take on responsibility for monitoring Novo’s performance.

Jacobsen points out that there are nonetheless major potential downsides to Sørensen’s wide-ranging role. “He is taking an enormous risk personally because if this fails, or the company doesn’t manage to improve its results and the price of the shares, it all goes back to him,” he said. 


The overhaul comes after the foundation ousted former chief executive Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen in May, blaming him for an almost 60 per cent share price fall in the past year as profit growth has slowed and investors worried about Novo’s pipeline of new obesity drugs. 


One top 10 shareholder said Sørensen, who was chief executive of Novo Nordisk before Jørgensen, had been influential in his departure. He joined the board as an observer when Jørgensen’s exit was announced. “The board probably should have resigned when they kicked the chief executive out,” the shareholder said. 

Sørensen said this week that he acted because the board was moving too slowly to update its composition with directors with more relevant experience to help it navigate the US market.

Another person close to the company said it looked like incumbent chair — energy sector veteran Helge Lund — and the six independent directors had announced their departure this week because they had found they could not work with the foundation. “This is the second time [the foundation] has done things abruptly and in conflict mode,” the person said.  

The new chief executive, Mike Doustdar, did not push for the board changes, according to two people close to the discussions.

One of these people said Sørensen was “a temperamental person who often acts before he does any planning . . . He sees himself as a saviour”.

A former executive at Novo said the changes had been “very much in character” for Sørensen who “believes he is right and likes to be seen as a firm and decisive leader”. 

But Paul Major, a healthcare-focused fund manager at Bellevue Asset Management, who has previously held Novo shares but would not buy now, said the foundation was also responsible for failing to adapt to changes in Novo’s most lucrative market.

In the US, the company has been slower to focus on the growth in direct-to-consumer sales, a crucial development as more consumers opt to pay for obesity drugs themselves. 

“I think the foundation and Sørensen have to take some of the blame for Novo’s problems,” Major said. 

He added that Sørensen was a “great man in his day” but “in my mind, he’s as guilty as he is a visionary”. 

However, some investors and analysts are pleased that the board is changing, even if they wish it had been a more orderly process.

Mikael Bak, director of the Danish Shareholder’s Association, said it had raised at the AGM in spring whether Lund had the right skills and experience to support the chief executive. 

“It is not surprising that something had to happen,” he said. “But of course this is dramatic, and we would have preferred a normal situation where changes come at an ordinary AGM . . . [and] we want a clear and normal governance model as soon as possible.” 

Novo’s board has called an extraordinary general meeting on November 14 to elect the new chair and directors. The foundation has also said it intends to appoint a further two directors next year.

Eugen Uretzki, a healthcare analyst at German asset manager Flossbach von Storch, is in favour of the board changes. “This stresses the urgency with which Novo has to transform itself,” he said.


The shake-up has also prompted questions about the roles of foundations that control companies, a Danish model also used by businesses including Lego, Carlsberg, and Maersk. 

The Novo Nordisk Foundation’s website says the companies it owns are governed by independent boards of directors “ensuring an arm’s length relationship”.

“The foundation is particularly mindful of observing and respecting the rights of other shareholders,” it says.

Kasper Meisner Nielsen, director at Copenhagen Business School’s centre for corporate governance said the changes were “drastic” and of a type that tend to happen only at companies in “deep crisis”. 

He added that the board could become less independent with the former chief executive as chair. “On the one hand we like the board to be independent of owners, but on the other side we like to have active owners,” he said, noting that if the majority shareholder is pursuing value creation, minority shareholders can benefit. 

But Niels Lunde, editor of the Danish financial newspaper Børsen, was clear about the potential pitfalls of the concentration of power.

“The most important and valuable company in Denmark is in effect controlled by one person who claims to know better than the highly respected leaders who are leaving the board,” he said.

“At the top of Danish business, everyone is shaking their heads at this tragicomic farce, but no one dares to challenge Lars Rebien Sørensen, so they remain silent.”