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Good morning from the financials. Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, July 10th, and this is your

FTE's briefing. Investment banking in the U.S. is finally picking back up and a deadly attack in Ukraine is another example of the limits of Western sanctions.

Plus there's a pro-reform president in Iran for the first time in 20 years, but how much change can he really make?

I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day. A Russian missile destroyed a children's hospital in Kiev on Monday and it turns out that Western components were used to build this kind of weapon.

That's what experts and Ukrainian officials told the FT

Russia denies that it was behind the attack.

Now Western tech making its way into Russian missiles is yet another way that the

Kremlin has been able to dodge sanctions and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zolinsky

will raise the issue during the NATO summit going on in Washington DC this week.

U.S. banks start reporting second quarter earnings this week.

J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup kicked things off on Friday.

But it could be a mixed bag for American banks, in part thanks to high interest rates that just won't quit.

I'm joined now by the FT's US banking editor Joshua Franklin. Hi Josh

Josh. Hi Josh. Hi Josh. Hi Josh so let's just start with the good news.

What are we expecting to go right for American banks this earning season?

So Wall Street executives have been crossing their fingers for the last 24 months, really hoping that there was going to be a recovery in investment banking activity.

It's been very, very sluggish since kind of early 2022 when the Federal Reserve started lifting interest rates pretty rapidly.

Now it's starting to look like this activity is bouncing back.

You've seen an uptick in debt deals, you've seen an uptick in mergers, a little bit of an

uptake in equity capital markets activity.

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