Good morning. We’ve a number of banking tales to begin the week, together with extra updates on UniCredit’s controversial transfer on Commerzbank, Russia’s state lenders increasing into occupied components of Ukraine and European governments promoting billions of euros of shares in bailed-out banks.

However first, we flip to Florida, the place Donald Trump was the goal of a suspected try on his life, simply two months after a gunman tried to kill him at a Pennsylvania rally.

Trump is protected after what the FBI is investigating as a possible assassination try on the previous US president, who was on the golf membership close to his Mar-a-Lago resort yesterday.

Legislation enforcement officers have detained a person who they stated had been hiding in bushes bordering the Trump Worldwide Golf Membership. They discovered an AK-47 type rifle with a scope, two backpacks and a GoPro digital camera within the bushes.

The potential assassination comes little greater than seven weeks earlier than he faces vice-president Kamala Harris in a tense and intently fought presidential election. Right here’s what we all know to this point.

• Harris leads on economic system: The Democratic nominee has consolidated her polling lead over Trump on financial points, in response to the most recent FT-Michigan Ross ballot.

The White Home race is within the dwelling straight. Join for our US Election Countdown e-newsletter so that you don’t miss any updates. And right here’s what else I’m preserving tabs on immediately:

• Starmer in Rome: The UK prime minister will meet his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni for recommendation on tackling small-boat migration.

• Murdoch succession: Court docket hearings over the tycoon’s try to wrest management of his empire away from three of his youngsters are set to start immediately.

• UN Safety Council: The physique meets for a briefing on the Center East, together with the humanitarian scenario in Gaza. Israeli air strikes killed six UN employees at a college within the territory on Wednesday.

5 extra prime tales

1. Prime German officers weren’t briefed upfront about an invite for UniCredit to bid for a authorities stake in Commerzbank, in response to folks acquainted with the occasions, regardless of the transfer opening the door to a full takeover. JPMorgan Chase bankers who suggested Berlin invited UniCredit, creating an impression that the Italian financial institution’s curiosity was welcome.

2. Russia is consolidating its maintain on newly occupied areas of Ukraine by opening branches of its largest state banks in cities corresponding to Mariupol. Defying western sanctions, Vladimir Putin instructed state corporations this 12 months there was “nothing to concern” by organising store in occupied areas, and Sberbank and VTB have begun to heed the decision.

• Army briefing: Kyiv’s gamble in Kursk is in query as Russia begins its counteroffensive, with the strategic rewards of the incursion nonetheless elusive.

3. Economists anticipate the US economic system to achieve a smooth touchdown, in response to the newest Monetary Occasions-Chicago Sales space survey. The findings come simply days earlier than the Federal Reserve is anticipated to begin slicing rates of interest, and counsel the nation’s economic system is headed for stable development, low inflation and wholesome employment.

• Fed milestone: After greater than a 12 months of preserving borrowing prices excessive, the financial institution is about to begin a cycle of easing in its momentous assembly this week.

• Gen Z spending: Regardless of weaknesses, how is the US economic system nonetheless so robust? A uniquely subsidised generation could also be a essential driver of consumption, writes analyst Meredith Whitney.

4. The top of the World Commerce Group has confused the necessity for international carbon pricing to forestall “troublesome and problematic” commerce disputes from environmental measures. The WTO is taking the lead in working for a world carbon pricing system with the IMF, OECD and UN, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala instructed the FT.

5. Asking costs for UK properties rose at twice their long-term common tempo this month, as post-election stability and declining mortgage charges helped to gas a rebound in purchaser demand and draw extra sellers to the market. Learn the total story.

The Massive Learn

Since returning to workplace final 12 months, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has already achieved a big drop in Amazon deforestation and outlined wide-ranging inexperienced economic system plans for Brazil. However his authorities’s plan to spice up financial development has created an uneasy rigidity with the president’s aspirations for international local weather management, summed up in a single phrase: oil.

We’re additionally studying . . . 

• Copper crunch: BHP, the world’s largest miner, has warned that the bogus intelligence increase will exacerbate a looming international scarcity of the crimson steel.

• Apollo vs banks: Led by a onetime seller in loss of life profit settlements, the asset supervisor is taking up the largest conventional lenders in funding extremely rated multinationals.

• US chips: Business is finest positioned to tell American semiconductor technique and “outcompete” China, writes former Nationwide Safety Council official Meghan Harris.

• Rachel Reeves: Crucial factor the UK chancellor has to do is clarify how her plan for sooner development goes to work, writes Martin Wolf.

Chart of the day

European governments have offloaded greater than €16bn of bailed-out financial institution shares over the previous 12 months, in response to an FT evaluation, as they search to attract a line underneath the long-running results of the worldwide monetary disaster.

Take a break from the information

For 30 years, Lunch with the FT has featured a who’s who of our occasions: dictators and dissidents, CEOs and communists, philosophers and fraudsters. Henry Mance, the FT’s chief options author, explains its magic.

Extra contributions from Benjamin Wilhelm