Financial Services

NEW YORK – – September 16, 2026 -- Wealth Management crowned the winners of its 2026 Industry Awards before more than 600 executives at Cipriani 42nd Street, capping a program that drew a record 1,392 nominations from 508 unique companies.

Nominations climb nearly four-fold since program launch

The 2026 field represented a 15% jump from 1,210 nominations in 2025 and nearly four times the 350 submissions logged in the inaugural 2015 edition. Finalists numbered 315 unique companies competing across 107 categories, with almost 40% of entries recognizing entirely new initiatives.

Amsterdam – September 16, 2026 -- Atradius Surety has launched operations in Canada, marking its first branch outside Europe as it targets rising demand for surety guarantees in construction, real estate and commercial sectors.

Atradius appoints Sam Halilovic to build Canadian surety business

On August 31, 2026, Sam Halilovic was appointed Senior Manager, Surety Canada. He will oversee the development of the company's Canadian operations, including broker and customer relationships, and drive Atradius Surety's long-term growth ambitions in the market.

London – September 16, 2026 -- Mayer Brown has recruited Scott Ashton as partner and Brian Bates as senior counsel into its Capital Markets practice, adding two attorneys who have represented issuers on roughly 30 percent of total cross-border U.S. private placement debt issuance in recent years. Both will be based in the firm's London office.

New hires specialize in cross-border private placements for infrastructure and energy funding

Ashton and Bates focus on cross-border securities offerings, representing issuers and placement agents on debt and equity transactions. Their practice centers on advising non-U.S. entities placing private debt with U.S. and other large institutional investors and pension funds, a funding channel that continues to expand for infrastructure and energy projects.

San Ramon, Calif. – September 16, 2026 -- California's surplus lines sector now writes roughly $24 billion in annual premium, with Lloyd's holding an 18% share of the state's excess & surplus (E&S) market in 2025, according to a new on-the-record discussion released by the Surplus Line Association of California (SLACAL).

The conversation, the inaugural episode of SLACAL's Executive Forum video series, features SLACAL CEO & Executive Director Benjamin J. McKay and Lloyd's Americas President Marc Lipman, moderated by SLACAL Chief Industry & Regulatory Officer David Kodama Jr.

Shenzhen – September 16, 2026 -- Tencent Music Entertainment Group has closed a US$1,000 million senior unsecured notes offering, netting approximately US$991.9 million after underwriting discounts and expenses.

TME splits offering into two tranches maturing 2031 and 2036

The offering consists of US$500 million in 5.050% notes due 2031 and US$500 million in 5.650% notes due 2036. The notes are registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933 and are set to list on The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited on September 11, 2026.

Proceeds earmarked for offshore debt refinancing and share repurchases

TME plans to direct the net proceeds toward general corporate purposes, including refinancing existing offshore indebtedness and funding share buybacks. The company, dual-listed as NYSE: TME and HKEX: 1698, operates China's QQ Music, Kugou Music, Kuwo Music, WeSing and Ximalaya platforms.

Chicago – September 16, 2026 -- Cboe Global Markets, Inc. (CBOE) will send four top executives to present at the Barclays Global Financial Services Conference in New York City on September 16 at 12:00 p.m. ET.

Cboe's CEO and three senior leaders will address investors at the New York conference

Chief Executive Officer Craig Donohue will be joined by Prashant Bhatia, Executive Vice President and Head of Enterprise Strategy & Corporate Development; Jill Griebenow, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Rob Hocking, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Derivatives.

Cboe will stream the session live and archive it within an hour

The presentation will be webcast live and later archived on ir.cboe.com under the Events and Presentations section, with the recording expected to be available within an hour of the live event.

Toronto – September 15, 2026 -- Manulife has appointed Sarah Chapman as Global Chief Marketing & Customer Experience Officer, effective January 1, 2027, giving her oversight of brand, marketing and customer experience strategy for a company serving more than 37 million customers worldwide.

Chapman joins Manulife's Executive Leadership Team, reporting directly to CEO Phil Witherington

Chapman will lead Manulife's Global Marketing organization and report to President and Chief Executive Officer Phil Witherington. Witherington said the appointment reflects internal succession planning and cited Chapman's track record leading transformation as key to advancing Manulife's goal of becoming the top choice for customers.

Cambridge, England – September 15, 2026 -- Risilience has been rated "market-leading" by independent analyst firm Verdantix in both asset-level risk analysis and integrated climate/non-climate risk analysis, the highest tier awarded in the newly published Verdantix Smart Innovators: Physical Climate Risk Solutions (2026) report.

The benchmark evaluated eleven physical climate risk solution providers as financial losses from natural hazards escalate globally. The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) put the 2025 global damage cost from natural hazards at $224 billion, intensifying pressure on real asset owners, investors and financial institutions to forecast and price physical climate exposure.

San Francisco – September 15, 2026 -- cfo.ai, formerly known as Runway, has launched Ari, an AI CFO designed to give founders a continuous finance partner that builds and maintains a live financial model of their business.

Ari connects directly to core financial systems to build live models

Ari integrates with NetSuite, QuickBooks, Rippling, ADP, Mercury, Brex, Stripe, Salesforce, Snowflake, Google Sheets and Excel to construct a financial model that updates automatically as underlying data changes. Founders can use it to forecast cash, analyze hiring plans, explain variances, prepare board updates or model the financial impact of a decision before it is made.

Boston – September 15, 2026 -- FINTRX, a provider of private wealth intelligence, has launched an AI agent called Fin that pushes data and alerts directly into email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Outlook and Google Calendar, extending its existing platform AI into the tools investment professionals already use daily.

Fin Monitors 850,000 Financial Firms and Contacts Without Being Asked

Unlike conversational AI tools that require a prompt, Fin continuously scans the private wealth industry and proactively delivers alerts, prospect lists and meeting-prep briefs. The rollout covers intelligence on more than 850,000 financial firms and contacts, including 45,000 registered investment advisor (RIA) and broker-dealer firms, 790,000 registered reps, over 4,600 family offices, and 1,900 banks and trust institutions.