Macron looks for a new PM, again

0:02Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Tuesday, September 9th, and this is your FT News briefing. Rupert Murdoch settled a bitter succession feud, and France is on the hunt for a new prime minister again. Plus, North Cyprus is turning to gambling to boost its economy. I'm Sonia Hudson, and here's the news you need to start your day.

0:39Lachlan Murdoch, the elder son of the billionaire Rupert Murdoch, will inherit control of the family's media empire after his father dies. That includes news outlets like Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Post. The deal was announced yesterday. It concludes a years-long feud among Murdoch's children. Two more of the siblings, Grace and Chloe, will inherit Rupert's interest in News Corp and the Fox Corporation alongside Lachlan. Three other siblings will split more than$3 billion as part of a buyout from their family trust and give up ownership of all interests.

1:26French Prime Minister François Bayrou was ousted yesterday. He lost a confidence vote in Parliament over his efforts to cut the deficit. This leaves President Emmanuel Macron scrambling to find a new PM. This will be his seventh search for one since taking office. Leila Abood is the FT's Paris Bureau chief. She joins me now to talk through Macron's options given the country's hung parliament. Hi, Leila. Hello. So let's recap how strange this vote has been. I mean, how surprised are you that Beirut got a no-confidence outcome? Well, there's no surprise on the specific outcome of this vote because you could see it coming a bit like a train headed straight for you.

2:10Beirut called for this vote even though he didn't have to. He did it on August 25th, and he pitched it as basically sort of necessary to try and build consensus in the hung parliament over the need to cut the deficit. He had proposed this sort of 44 billion euro package of spending cuts and tax rises, which everybody else really hated. But you have to sort of, if you step back, you know, it's sort of amazing. This is the second prime minister to fall in a year for Macron since he called these snap elections and he lost. And if you look all the way back since 1958 when France's Fifth Republic was founded, there's only been three PMs that have fallen in a confidence vote of this kind.

2:48So we're really in sort of special territory here. Why exactly do you think it is potentially so hard for Macron to find a suitable prime minister going forward? Because he's already tried a bunch of different combinations and he has to find a third pick in 12 months. I mean, I don't know if he's always going back to the same list or how it works, but I mean, it's not a particularly easy thing to do. And especially the parliamentary maths haven't changed. I mean, the blocks of parliament are the same. The way the opposition sort of feels about this whole situation and the proposals to cut the deficit are not changed.

3:25It's sort of a very difficult political equation to try and resolve. And if it were easy, he would have already done so. Well, what are his options? Does he have any good ones? I think there are basically three paths he could go down, and then there would be names sort of linked to each one of those paths. His first one would be to continue with somebody from his centrist grouping. This would provide continuity. He would be trying to maintain his legacy. This would be sort of trying the same thing for a third time, so hoping for a different outcome, which might not actually work. The second possibility would be a big shift in moving to pick a PM from the Socialist Party, who have expressed desire to do that in recent days.

4:08The Socialists want to implement leftist policies if they go into government. So again, that's going to be hard for Macron to accept. And I'd say the third option, which actually never really has happened in France, but it would be to pick a technocratic profile of somebody who knows public finances really well, since the main job is going to be to pass a budget. somebody of that ilk would be Eric Lombard, who's now the finance minister, who has never been an elected official, but has held, you know, high ranking posts in the administration and is quite close to the socialist because he used to be a part of their party.

4:43Do you think there's a chance that Macron just gives up on finding another prime minister and calls elections again? I thought you were going to say that he just runs the country himself, doing everything under the son. I'm sure he would like that. I mean, I'm sure he would love it. Calling early elections would be incredibly risky right now. It would make more sense to try again with one more PM to try and ward that off. I mean, also, you have to step back a little. Like, shouldn't the politicians be able to compromise? Is it normal that one has to go back to voters every 12 months because the politicians can't sort it out?

5:16I mean, I just find that sort of a strange and potentially quite depressing thing about the country. Leila Abood is the FT's Paris Bureau Chief. Thanks, Leila. Lovely. Thanks, guys.

5:33The U.S. regional bank sector is continuing its consolidation. PNC announced yesterday that it's going to buy its smaller rival First Bank for about$4 billion. The deal is another example of large regional banks like PNC trying to bulk up to compete with national lenders. It'll increase the Pittsburgh Bank's presence in the western part of the country. First Bank is based in Colorado. The sale is the first of its kind since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to office in January. Lawyers and analysts have said his election sparked a major shift in regulators' attitudes towards banking consolidation.

6:16And as a result, there's growing speculation that the U.S. could see a surge in mergers like this one.

6:29North Cyprus is going all in on gambling. It has plans to double the number of casinos in the tiny region. North Cyprus is only recognized by one country, Turkey, and the region is largely cut off by trade restrictions and embargoes. The UN considers it territory that's occupied by Turkey. The North Cyprus government is betting on vice to give its isolated economy a boost. Here to tell us more is my colleague Joseph Wilkins. Hi, Joe. Hi there. So first of all, North Cyprus is a unique place. Can you tell us about it and how its economy functions? Yeah, sure. So for the last year or so, I've been living in Nicosia, which is the last divided capital in Europe.

7:19And I've been living on the Greek Cypriot side, as it is known. And not far from me is some UN border crossings, through which you can end up in the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. So yeah, when you cross over, you end up in this strange, unrecognized land that is entirely dependent on Turkey for its existence and economic support. North Cyprus faces international embargoes and trade restrictions, which, you know, bans it from exporting and things like that. And so kind of traditional, you know, revenue raises for states are just not available to this part of the island. Yeah.

8:04And now we're seeing this boom in the gambling industry. What's behind that? So if you can imagine northern Cyprus and its dependency on Turkey for imports and exports, it's going to be a very sensitive place for exchange rates and particularly the lira. And the Turkish lira has crashed massively over the last five years. And that's had pretty severe implications for northern Cyprus, which is an import driven economy. has to take, you know, all its goods from Turkey. Prior to COVID, there was some international tourism and there was a thriving higher education sector, which has since been plagued with many controversies.

8:53After COVID, we saw obviously, you know, very little tourists, probably a reduced amount of students coming to the island and it's any self-sufficiency it had collapsed. And so since then, they have resorted to these more illicit means of, you know, raising government revenues. Are there risks to this casino boom, Joe? The existence of so many casinos, according to, you know, people on the ground who we interviewed, The Economist, they see this as a facilitator for money laundering. there are, you know, various ties between casinos and crime, and they're not going to signal legitimacy on an international level for Turkish Cypriot citizens.

9:43And I think that's what they're worried about is it will also entrench further, perhaps, Turkish influence and dependency on Ankara. So Cyprus has been a divided island for decades now. There have been lots of efforts to reunify it. Do you think this casino boom could impact that process? Yeah, I think you're right. I think the conflict has proved so intractable over the last half century that the casino issue is just one more problem that the two parties will have to face. What it represents is greater economic dependency on Turkey, which is not in the interest of both Greek and Turkish Cypriots who want to see the island reunified.

10:35It's another point of contention that perhaps will keep people apart. I do think in these kinds of stories that it is the Turkish Cypriot people that suffer under these developments. Joseph Wilkins is the chief reporter at FT Advisors Asset Allocator. Thanks, Joe. Pleasure.

10:59You can read more on all these stories for free when you click the links in our show notes. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Check back tomorrow for the latest business news.

11:20Capital raising is being redefined in real time, from macro disruptions and shifting investor expectations to AI-driven demand and the rise of private credit. When headlines can tilt markets overnight, how can companies stay on course? Strategic Alternatives, the RBC Capital Markets podcast, explores how corporates and investors are navigating new pathways to raise capital, create value, and drive growth. When conditions change, alternatives matter. Listen to Strategic Alternatives, available wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to this A-Cast show ad-free on Amazon Music with your Prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.