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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Bill Hwang told panicked Wall Street investment banks that his family office Archegos needed up to three weeks to “make everyone whole” shortly before the fund collapsed in 2021, which ended up costing his lenders more than $10bn.

On the second day of Hwang’s trial for fraud and market manipulation, the jury in New York heard portions of a call he held three years ago with six investment banks that were on the hook for billions of dollars as the value of Archegos’s investments plummeted.

The audio recording was a rare insight into the dealings of Hwang, who kept a low profile on Wall Street and worked hard to mask his trading strategy and the positions taken by Archegos, which managed his personal fortune. 

For some on the call — which included bankers from Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Nomura, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and UBS — it was the first time they had heard from Hwang directly.

“This is Bill. Bill Hwang,” he said. “We are really confident in our ability to wind down these names given a little more time,” he told the banks during the call on March 25, 2021.

Earlier that week, the value of Archegos’s largest positions, especially media group ViacomCBS, had plummeted in value, and Hwang was being required by the banks to provide extra cash.

Prosecutors have alleged that Archegos executives misled investment banks to believe that the fund held large positions in easily tradable stocks such as Amazon and Apple at other lenders, when in reality it had similarly concentrated bets in less liquid stocks across all its lenders.

Hwang estimated on the call that it would probably take two to three weeks to sell his holdings and repay the banks what they were owed.

Bryan Fairbanks, a senior executive at UBS at the time of Archegos’s collapse who testified in the case, described some of the numbers given by Hwang during the call as “extremely alarming”.

Shortly after the call, UBS and some of the other investment banks decided to sell the positions they were holding for Hwang, resulting in a fire sale of several stocks.

Fairbanks testified that it took UBS between six and seven weeks to exit positions tied to Archegos.

UBS ended up losing about $860mn. Credit Suisse, now owned by UBS, lost more than $5bn from Archegos.

At the trial in Manhattan federal court, US prosecutors have accused Hwang of running his family office Archegos Capital as a criminal enterprise in an attempt to become a “legend on Wall Street”. Hwang and Patrick Halligan, his top deputy and Archegos’s former finance chief, who have pleaded not guilty, face decades behind bars if convicted.

Barry Berke, a lawyer for Hwang, has sought to portray his client as a high-conviction investor who took large bets in companies he believed in, such as ViacomCBS and Discovery.

Cynthia Hornor poses with Nimble, the first mixed-breed dog ever to win the Westminster Kennel Club dog show’s agility competition, in New York on Monday.

Jennifer Peltz/AP

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Jennifer Peltz/AP

Cynthia Hornor poses with Nimble, the first mixed-breed dog ever to win the Westminster Kennel Club dog show’s agility competition, in New York on Monday.

Jennifer Peltz/AP

She was nimble, she was oh-so-very quick – with the perfect moniker to match.

A 6-year-old canine from of Ellicott City, Md., named Nimble beat out 350 competitors to become the first mixed-breed dog to win the Westminster Kennel Club’s Masters Agility Championship in New York.

“I was surprised,” Nimble’s handler Cynthia Hornor told NPR. “But she proved that she’s the little engine that could.”

Nimble, who finished the race in a blistering 28.76 seconds, is a first in more ways than one: She also became the first dog from the 12-inch height division to take home the top prize since the agility competition — itself the first WKC event to allow mixed breeds to compete — was introduced in 2014.

Dogs compete in the 8-inch, 12-inch, 16-inch, and 20-inch categories. The top 10 dogs from each height category go on to compete in the championships.

While she made two firsts, Nimble also had at least two big aces in her paws.

Despite coming in an underdog — as part of the non-purebred category the WKC refers to as “All American Dogs” — Nimble is a combination of two pedigrees made up of winners: a border collie-papillon mix. Border collies have won eight of the last 11 agility titles, while the top three finishers in this year’s competition were all papillons.

Nimble’s second secret weapon: her owner and handler Hornor, who won the Masters Agility title in 2023 with her other dog Truant, a 20-inch border collie.

“This is going to be a fun run,” a Fox Sports announcer predicted on Saturday as Nimble eagerly waited for the clock to start her final run.

When it did, the pointy-eared black and white pup rocketed her way through a series of hoops, seesaws, ladders and more with hardly any cueing needed from Horner.

“I said it was going to be fun, but I didn’t know it was going to be an e-ticket!” the announcer said halfway through Nimble’s race, with eager crowds cheering in the background.

Hornor says she hopes Nimble’s big win will be enough to put to bed any false ideas that mixed breeds can’t be as fast as purebred dogs.

“Agility is the equalizer,” Hornor said. “Mixed-breed dogs can be just as fast as purebred dogs.”

Nimble’s reward for proving it?

“She got steak, and she got to play,” said Hornor. “She just really loves playing, so her reward is being able to go run and play.”

And if there’s one lesson Hornor wants other dog owners to take away from Nimble’s big win, it’s that agility is a great way for owners to bond with their dogs.

“It’s the thing I enjoy the most about this sport,” said Hornor, who has been an agility trainer for more than 20 years. “When I see my students, I love seeing their bond grow with their dogs because of agility.”

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

China poses a “genuine and increasing cyber risk to the UK”, the head of Britain’s signals intelligence agency has said.

The remarks by Anne Keast-Butler, director of GCHQ, follow a slew of alleged China-related espionage activity in the UK, including a suspected cyber attack that targeted the records of thousands of British military personnel.

Keast-Butler told a security conference in Birmingham on Tuesday that while the cyber threats from Russia and Iran were “globally pervasive” and “aggressive” respectively, China was her agency’s top priority.

“China poses a genuine and increasing cyber risk to the UK,” she said, calling the country “the epoch-defining challenge” in a direct echo of the British government last year.

“In cyber space, we believe that the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China’s] irresponsible actions weaken the security of the internet for all,” said Keast-Butler.

“China has built an advanced set of cyber capabilities and is taking advantage of a growing commercial ecosystem of hacking outfits and data brokers at its disposal,” she added.

Her warnings came a week after a reported cyber attack on private IT contractor SSCL, which has multiple government contracts, accessed the records of up to 272,000 people on the UK Ministry of Defence’s payroll.

Defence secretary Grant Shapps told parliament last week that the attack had been carried out by a “malign actor”. He did not confirm who was behind it, but a person with direct knowledge of the incident said Beijing was thought to be the culprit.

SSCL, which is owned by Paris-based Sopra Steria, a digital services company, holds the payroll details of most of the British armed forces and 550,000 public servants in total through its other state contracts, including with the Home Office, Ministry of Justice and Metropolitan Police.

The hack is one of a series of recent incidents that has sparked growing concern across Europe and in the US about Chinese cyber and espionage activity.

On Monday, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Britain faced threats from “an axis of authoritarian states like Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China” as three men appeared in a London court on charges of assisting intelligence services in Hong Kong.

On Tuesday, the UK government summoned China’s ambassador to Britain, Zheng Zeguang, over the case.

John Lee, Hong Kong’s chief executive, on Tuesday said his administration had demanded the British government provide an explanation about the prosecution of one of the three men, Bill Yuen, who was the office manager of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London.  

Beijing officials have also repeatedly denied the British accusations, calling them “groundless and slanderous” in what has become a tit-for-tat series of allegations and denials.

Meanwhile, Felicity Oswald, who heads the National Cyber Security Centre, a branch of GCHQ, warned CyberUK conference attendees about the Chinese Communist party’s cyber capability, which she described as “vast in scale and sophistication”.

She said western security agencies had repeatedly raised the alarm about Volt Typhoon, a Chinese hacking network, which FBI director Christopher Wrap said this year had targeted the US electricity grid and water supply.

Oswald added that a Chinese law, introduced in recent years, that required Chinese citizens to report any cyber security vulnerabilities they identified to the government “should worry all of us”.