Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic One thing to start: Team DD is on the ground in Davos this week. If you’re in town and have tips, gossip or fondue recommendations, reach out to Arash Massoudi (arash.massoudi@ft.com) and Ortenca Aliaj (ortenca.aliaj@ft.com).And a scoop: London-based fintech Monzo is at odds over where to pursue a long-awaited market listing, with the digital bank’s chief executive pushing consideration of a US initial public offering while the board favours the UK market.In today’s newsletter:Corporate America salutes TrumpSantander considers selling its UK retail bankShareholders kick out Telefónica chairBillionaires welcome Trump presidencyThe FT mused just a week ago whether corporate America was going Maga. Now we have a definitive answer: Yes, big time.While most corporate executives and Wall Street dealmakers descend on the glitzy gathering at Davos this time of year, Donald Trump’s inauguration day has given the annual get-together for billionaires some serious competition.If you’re an executive interested in currying favour with the new president, you better have secured yourself a seat at the inauguration. Or at least a ticket to one of Monday night’s three inauguration balls.Here were some of the most notable executives in the crowd gathered at the Capitol’s rotunda: Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Tesla’s Elon Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew and Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi.There were also powerful foreign captains of industry, including France’s Bernard Arnault of LVMH and India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Group.Woke and DEI are out. Zuckerberg’s desire for “masculine energy” is in. And from what we hear, there has been no shortage of celebration, even if some of the executives are grimacing between sips of their dirty martinis.The party started on Sunday night with an event hosted at the opulent Café Riggs, which was co-sponsored by Uber and X.To be sure, the moneymaking has begun. While the stock market was closed on Monday for a separate federal holiday, the crypto market traded on, and bitcoin reached a new high.Trump and his wife Melania wasted no time in launching their own crypto coins in recent days, called $TRUMP and $MELANIA. At its peak, Trump’s coin reached a $14bn value.Attendees at Davos were fixated on the new coins, reports DD’s Arash Massoudi, as the World Economic Forum’s own week-long event commenced and executives kept one eye trained back across the Atlantic.The vibe in Washington? “Prosperous,” James Fishback, who attended the inauguration activities on Monday and is co-founder of financial firm Azoria Partners, told DD.The way corporate America will try to ingratiate itself with Trump by supporting his enterprises and the companies backed by his family — particularly those of his kids Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr as well as his son-in-law Jared Kushner — will come under scrutiny.DD’s already reached out to ethics lawyers, and we’ll soon report back.Exactly a century ago, then Republican president Calvin Coolidge uttered the famous adage, later often boiled down to: “The business of America is business.”Today, the business of America appears to be showing up, with a big smile, to support Trump.The great European bank shake-up continuesAfter Santander agreed to buy former building society Abbey National in 2004 for £9bn, the group’s then chair Emilio Botín said the tie-up would “‘reinforce our pan-European franchise”.At the time, it was the largest cross-border banking deal ever attempted in Europe. It gave the Spanish lender a sizeable footprint on Britain’s high street, helping to transform the group into a serious multinational player.However, two decades later, Santander is considering exiting the UK’s retail banking market amid frustrations with the unit’s low returns relative to other markets and its high cost base, DD’s Ortenca Aliaj and the FT’s Simon Foy report.One former executive told the FT that the wider group had also grown frustrated with the UK’s ringfencing regime, which requires lenders with more than £25bn in deposits to formally separate consumer operations from their investment banking arms.The UK government is in the process of raising the ringfencing threshold to £35bn.The former executive said it had “always been a possibility” that Ana Botín, Emilio’s daughter and executive chair of Santander, would decide to sell the ringfenced bank as a result of these frustrations.It wasn’t immediately clear who might be interested in buying the unit, which employs 21,000 staff in the UK and has 14mn customers.Analysts at Citigroup said Santander could get €10.7bn for the UK business if it was sold at 0.7 times book value, which was the multiple Nationwide paid for Virgin Money last year. If it was sold at 1 times book value, it would be worth as much as €15.3bn, Citi said.Santander said: “The UK is a core market for Santander and this has not changed.”Separately, the saga between Andrea Orcel’s UniCredit and Germany’s Commerzbank continues, with the latter exploring plans to axe thousands of jobs as it seeks to fend off the Italian lender’s unwanted advances.The cuts are expected to be unveiled to the workers’ council in the coming weeks. One person familiar with the matter told the FT the figure was likely to be “in the low thousands”.Executive drama at Spain’s TelefónicaWhen Saudi Arabian telecoms group STC took a surprise stake in Telefónica, the big question was whether a clash was looming between the Spanish government and the kingdom.Nobody expected what happened at the weekend: they joined forces to oust Telefónica’s chair.The drama is a salutary lesson for others watching Gulf groups acquire big stakes in European companies.José María Álvarez-Pallete, Telefónica’s now-departed executive chair, discovered he was a goner after being called to a meeting on Friday afternoon at the office of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, reports the FT’s Barney Jopson.Sánchez himself wasn’t there, but his officials were involved because STC’s 2023 purchase of a 4.9 per cent stake in Telefónica — and its ongoing plan to raise it to 9.9 per cent — prompted Spain to buy 10 per cent via a state holding company as a counterweight.In a similar vein, the investment arm of the Caixa Foundation, which is close to the government and tied to the lender CaixaBank, raised its stake to 10 per cent. Its chief was at the Friday meeting, but didn’t instigate the firing of Álvarez-Pallete.Instead, when Telefónica announced on Saturday that “some shareholders have expressed the desire to embark on a new stage in the executive chairmanship” it was referring to the Spanish government and STC, which is majority-owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.Their chosen replacement is Marc Murtra from defence group Indra.An STC representative was at the fateful Friday meeting, according to Spanish media. STC declined to comment.Spain’s conservative opposition leader attacked Sánchez, saying: “not content with colonising public institutions, he is now colonising private companies”.With Telefónica’s shares languishing on Friday nearly 50 per cent below their level when Álvarez-Pallete started in 2016, it wasn’t hard to find a reason for change.But with the shares falling nearly 3 per cent on Monday, is replacing the chair enough?Job movesGoldman Sachs has named Dirk Lievens co-chair of the bank’s global financial institutions group (FIG), alongside John Mahoney, according to a memo seen by DD. The bank also named Stephen Considine and Mathieu Munuera as co-heads of FIG in Emea.White & Case has hired Dan Reavill as a partner for the firm’s technology group in London. He joins from Travers Smith, where he led the technology and commercial transactions department.M&G has named Marcello Arona as the chief financial officer of its asset management business. He previously worked for Axa Investment Managers UK as chief executive.Bain Capital has promoted Ivano Sessa to co-head of European private equity, a source tells DD. He will lead the group alongside Stuart Gent.Smart reads$2 for $1 MicroStrategy is in the business of buying bitcoin, the Wall Street Journal writes. Its popularity has led to a bizarre reality: its shares are worth more than twice all of the bitcoin it owns.Avoided apps Half a million Americans joined Chinese social media app RedNote last week as the US government ban of TikTok loomed, the New York Times reports. Why aren’t more people using China’s social media sites?The great flip-flop A cohort of corporate executives are bending their long-held values and political beliefs to fall in line behind Trump’s agenda, Bloomberg reports. It begs the question: “Which time were you lying?”News round-upHedge fund managers pocket almost half of investment gains as fees (FT)What next for Glencore after failed Rio Tinto merger talks? (FT)Apple hit by Belgian probe over ‘blood minerals’ from Congo (FT)Trump-backed crypto venture to extend token sales after raising $1bn (FT)Investors in clean energy funds backtrack as rates and Donald Trump cloud outlook (FT)International hedge funds and private equity pump more money into Lloyd’s vehicle (FT)Broadcom chief eyes AI opportunity after confronting VMware backlash (FT)KPMG probed by UK accounting watchdog over Entain audit (FT)
