Simon Foy

Simon Foy reports on how Europe’s biggest banks are reshaping their business models, workforces and relationships with governments, with a focus on strategic inflection points rather than routine earnings news. He is the European banking correspondent at the Financial Times, covering lenders across the continent and the policies that govern them. His recent work ranges from inside accounts of boardroom decisions to data-led analysis of how technology and regulation are remaking European finance. Before moving onto the banking beat he covered accounting and professional services, bringing a detailed understanding of auditors, corporate reporting and the advisory firms that sit around big financial institutions.

European banking deals and strategy

Foy’s core coverage follows the strategic choices of major European lenders, especially when those choices test political limits or challenge legacy business models. He has written on how UniCredit sought backing for a lowball bid for Commerzbank, unpacking how management built support for a cross-border deal that was always going to be politically sensitive and closely watched by regulators and investors. In his analysis of Deutsche Bank’s turnaround, he explains how the group pared back its outsized investment bank and returned to its roots in European corporate banking, setting out the trade-offs behind chief executive Christian Sewing’s strategy and what it means for profitability and reputation. On the FT’s news briefing, he has talked through quarterly results at large European banks, linking swings in trading revenue to global market volatility and shifts in dealmaking, and using earnings to illuminate broader questions about the health of the sector.

Across these pieces he treats banks as political and social institutions as much as commercial ones, looking at how executive decisions on capital, headcount and business mix intersect with national priorities and regulatory pressure. His stories typically move beyond headline numbers to examine why boards back particular mergers or restructurings, which parts of a bank are being shrunk or expanded, and how those choices ripple out to staff, clients and policymakers.

UBS, Credit Suisse and Swiss financial policy

A distinctive strand of Foy’s beat is his sustained attention to UBS, Credit Suisse and the post-crisis architecture of Swiss and European banking. He co-writes coverage that uses UBS’s rescue of Credit Suisse as a lens on the risks and rewards of creating a national champion, including whether the much-heralded “deal of the century” is beginning to sour as integration proceeds. His reporting on UBS’s decision to gate a €400mn European property fund for up to three years sets out how liquidity management, real-estate exposure and investor protections collide when markets turn, giving readers a close look at one of the region’s flagship wealth managers under stress.

Foy also follows the tense relationship between UBS’s leadership and the Swiss authorities that engineered the Credit Suisse takeover, including detailed accounts of how senior figures at the bank and the Swiss finance minister have at times been barely on speaking terms. In a front-page piece co-bylined with the Financial Times’s editor, he relays the UBS chief executive’s warning that “over-regulation across the board” risks driving European capital and talent elsewhere, framing the comment in the context of long-running debates over competitiveness and financial stability. These stories show him combining boardroom access with a close read of supervisory politics, using UBS as a case study in how European regulators and banks are renegotiating power after a crisis.

Technology, jobs and the future of bank work

Foy regularly explores how technology is changing the structure of European banking, particularly for staff. In a recent piece forecasting that artificial intelligence could put 200,000 European banking jobs at risk by 2030, he quantifies the potential impact of automation on roles from branch staff to back-office processing, drawing on industry research and bank disclosures. The article looks at how lenders plan to redeploy or reduce workers, which functions are most exposed, and how unions and policymakers are responding, turning a broad trend into specific questions about workforce planning and social impact.

This focus on AI and job losses sits alongside his reporting on cost-cutting at banks and related firms, giving him a consistent angle on how balance-sheet strategies translate into changes in everyday work. He tends to connect technology and efficiency drives to regulation, labour markets and political expectations, showing that digital transformation is as much about governance and culture as it is about software.

Accountancy and professional services

Before taking on European banking, Foy was hired as an accountancy correspondent at the Financial Times, covering auditors, corporate reporting and the wider professional services industry. His early archive at the paper includes stories on Grant Thornton and Endeavour Mining as well as a series of pieces under the Accountancy banner, reflecting a brief that straddled audit firms and their listed clients. A notable example is his report on PwC’s plan to cut up to 600 UK jobs as the firm’s attrition rate plunged, where he links workforce reductions to a cooling recruitment market and changing demand for advisory services.

In prior roles he covered accountants, insurers, law firms, stock exchanges, workplace conduct, regulation, green finance, lending and asset management, building a wide view of how different parts of the financial and professional-services ecosystem fit together. That background shows in his current work: stories about banks are often attentive to how auditors, lawyers, regulators and investors constrain or enable strategic change, and how governance failures or culture issues can spill across sectors. Across both beats he favours clear, sourced reporting that ties firm-level developments to bigger structural trends in European finance.