Had a lot of déjà vu while writing this story on the small accountancy firms that audited Market Financial Solutions' books (particularly to our coverage of Sanjeev Gupta and his Stakhanovite auditors King & King). Full story below www.ft.com/content/0d53...

"A panicked salesman is a dead salesman." Tom Wolfe, Bonfire of the Vanaties. Feeling like CoreWeave CEO sounds like Sherman McCoy trying to sell his dying Giscards.

Investing in tax and financial crime enforcement is one of the highest ROI uses of public money. Who knew?!? www.ft.com/content/c96d...

Deutsche Bank arithmetic Q: If "Epstein brought in more than $1mn in annual revenues" how much does Deutsche pay out in Epstein-related fines and settlements plus compliance failings linked to a Russian money-laundering scheme? A: $225m

Fantastic deep dive into Deutsche Bank’s impressive fidelity to Jeffrey Epstein as.ft.com/r/b8e5215d-c...

Must-read piece on how Deutsche Bank turned a blind eye to Epstein for years, during a relationship that began half-a-decade after his conviction for soliciting a minor:

Deutsche Bank: bringing new meaning to the term “bad bank” Our story of how Germany’s largest lender rolled out the red carpet for Jeffrey Epstein Lots of grim detail. Eg the name of the supposed language school he sent money to a Russian model thru: Comfort Corporation www.ft.com/content/b1d9...

Terrific reporting by colleagues: a bank gone horribly wrong as.ft.com/r/b32d4c15-1... @bondhack.ft.com @ortenca.bsky.social @costasmourselas.bsky.social

Quite the Eye Told You So in Private Eye, flagging its reporting of Mandelson’s dealings with Epstein from 2009 (!)

Committed to making Jeffrey Epstein’s Wikipedia page more accurate, one Alphaville post at a time

‘“I would rather have an interesting life than a couple hundred million dollars in my bank account. Racing cum is definitely interesting.” I found Eric very hard not to like.’ Delicious writing from Sam Kriss harpers.org/archive/2026...

This is a sublime weekend read from the great @cynthiao.bsky.social, telling the story of a B-movie producer who claims to have stumbled upon a sprawling corruption scandal. Full of twists and turns and geopolitical intrigue. Lovely stuff. www.ft.com/content/7767...

Internal bank documents show the scale of secret shareholdings in India’s Adani, at the very moment Hindenburg accused it of “brazen market manipulation” An FT and OCCRP collab. as.ft.com/r/eb906e00-d...

i often think about this review

!! … ah

Puck: “Why Goldman is Sticking With Kathy” *several hours pass* Ruemmler tells the FT she is resigning from Goldman because the media attention on her ties to Epstein has become as “distraction”: as.ft.com/r/f9dbadbd-4...

Over at Puck, Bill Cohan writes that the "truth" about Kathy Ruemmler and Jeffrey Epstein "is often more complex than the blinkered narrative gleaned from large email dumps". It's a take, I guess! puck.news/why-goldman-...

Absolute banger of a long read from @bondhack.ft.com, ostensibly about Epstein, but ends up solving the qn on who triggered the GFC. (No spoilers, but you have heard of the actual person.) Where else but @alphaville.ft.com. www.ft.com/content/6901...

A must-read, despite the mention of a certain "Swedish" journalist.

One of the enduring legends surrounding Jeffrey Epstein is that he inadvertently knocked over the first domino in the subprime meltdown. But the Epstein files show the accepted history around his Bear Stearns fund stakes isn't true. The real story is nearly as wild, tho: www.ft.com/content/6901...

"Jeffrey Epstein was secretly pulling the strings at a key Rothschild bank" is a statement that would have had you branded a conspiracy theorist until recently. It is a fairly accurate summary of our weekend FT story on the bombshell revelations in the Epstein files, however.

One person close to the Will Lewis exit from the Washington Post told the FT: “Bezos lost patience after the Super Bowl thing". Lewis was spotted at a Super Bowl party on the same day as his newspaper was firing 300 staff.

The FT’s evisceration of Mandelson is an entirely reasonable and proportionate response to someone raising their voice in the quiet carriage.

Ariane de Rothschild ousted her husband as CEO of his family’s storied bank, negotiated a big DOJ settlement and examined several mergers Behind every move was none other than Jeffrey Epstein, who had found his backdoor into one of Europe’s most powerful banking dynasties www.ft.com/content/0d70...

Fixed the Times magazine cover

here’s our 2,000 word report from June 2023: www.ft.com/content/0723...

According to Goldman's top lawyer Kathy Ruemmler, when it comes to Epstein the journalists doing public interest reporting are the "despicable" ones www.ft.com/content/a07b...

Among some of the most unremittingly bleak material imaginable, the Epstein files contain amazing windows into how the 0.01% financialise anything they can. This is a wonderfully detailed examination of Leon Black's art lending from the FT's wealth editor 👇🏻

“Now Mandelson’s pantomime act has crashed into reality. At the same time as he was sharing an ice cream with me and fellow hacks, he was allegedly passing along sensitive market information to his pal, the pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.” www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Private bankers are often bad investors, Jeffrey Epstein edition "Barrett traded everything from currency options to shares ... (but) appears to have generated little in the way of trading profits, however, seemingly falling out with the financier due to his underwhelming performance"

🚨EPSTEIN'S SECRET FAMILY OFFICE REVEALED 🚨 Paul Barrett was Jeffrey Epstein's longtime private banker at JPMorgan What has never been reported until now: he set up a family office to trade on Epstein's behalf in the last years of the sex offender's life as.ft.com/r/8101f34a-f...

“I would love to take photos of you in a Snow White costume. You can get it from the costume store,” Jeffrey Epstein wrote to a woman three weeks before Jes Staley's now infamous email: “that was fun. Say hi to Snow White” Our scoop below 👇

Jeffrey Epstein asked an unidentified woman to buy a Snow White costume just weeks before former Barclays chief executive Jes Staley’s infamous exchange with the convicted sex offender about the Disney character. 🤯 story from @kadhim.bsky.social, @ortenca.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/6a76...

Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp told Jeffrey Epstein: ‘You’re amazing’ Some 👀 exchanges between the head of the elite law firm and the deceased sex offender in this just published FT story as.ft.com/r/a8a809eb-9...

NEW: Top Apollo Global Management executives including chief Marc Rowan held wide-ranging discussions over the firm’s tax arrangements with Jeffrey Epstein throughout the 2010s, despite the firm having previously said it “never did any business” with the child sex offender. as.ft.com/r/eeb49ab9-9...

Lord Peter Mandelson was sent money directly from disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein as early as 2003, according to new files released by US government The files record three payments in 2003/4 from Epstein’s JPMorgan accounts of $25,000 each, all mentioning Mandelson www.ft.com/content/1728...

This mf was trading JPYKRW forwards from his Gmail account? I’m absolutely losing it.

So disappointing to see JPYKRW in the Epstein files

I hate to say this, but he also seems to have traded it well. On Jan 20 in 2016, BCB held rates, to which markets (amazingly enough) reacted rationally, treating it not as politically inspired but as an end to a contested dominance pissing match where high real rates were blowing up debt dynamics.

Konstantin Kisin straight up lying on #bbcqt Douglas Alexander: “When Fraser Nelson put it to you that Rishi Sunak is absolutely english… you said “he’s a brown Hindu, how is he english?” Kisin: “No, that’s not what I said...”

Like a lot of people, I’ve spent much of my weekend so far perusing the Epstein files. A little taken aback to see that someone once sent him a long article that @miles-johnson.bsky.social and I wrote on CDS shenanigans back in 2018!

I’ve written this lengthy FT analysis overnight about the multiple multi-thousand pound Epstein payments to Mandelson’s husband these particular paragraphs are worth reading slowly www.ft.com/content/608a...

I'm not prone to exaggeration but this is probably the biggest scoop I've ever been involved in Mandelson's partner took £10,000 from Epstein to pay for his osteopath course while Mandelson was de facto UK deputy prime minister, according to new files more to follow www.ft.com/content/c950...

Big day for subjects of my financial shenanigans stories running into trouble with the law

Big day for subjects of my financial shenanigans stories running into trouble with the law

US prosecutors charged First Brands Group founder Patrick James and his brother Edward with fraud, accusing them of “fraudulently obtaining billions of dollars from lenders and enriching themselves”. James denies the charges. Full story here: as.ft.com/r/8bebc828-8...

Worth reading Gotham City Research’s short report on stock market darling Carvana here: www.gothamcityresearch.com/post/carvana... And @mccrum.bsky.social’s write up here: as.ft.com/r/75d5c341-c...

Thinking of the hundreds of London lobbyists, architects, PR advisers, engineers, etc who managed to buy a house in Clapham after a few years work on whatever this was.

Average Sunday show interview: OFFICIAL: we are going to dip enemies of the state into acid vats HOST: how will you pay for it? OFFICIAL: tariffs HOST: critics say tariffs don't generate acid vat money OFFICIAL: tariffs have generated more money than has ever existed HOST: thank u for ur time