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Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Monday, August 7th.

And this is your FT News Briefing.

Private equity firms are handing out perks to get investors on board

and US regional banks are still on government life support.

Plus Latin American central banks are cutting interest rates.

We'll take a look at why they're ahead of the game.

I'm Mark Filipino and here's the news you need to start your day.

It is a pretty good time to be a private equity backer.

PE firms are increasingly offering sweeteners to depocketed investors.

We're talking about blue chip firms like CVC Capital Partners,

TPG, and SinVen. They've all recently started offering investors some

kind of incentive like discounts on management fees.

Some firms are even offering big backers like pension plans and sovereign wealth funds,

a slice of the management fee that usually goes to the fund manager.

The fact that these firms are even offering these perks

shows that there's an increasingly competitive fundraising market.

And many big investors have been unwilling or unable to allocate fresh funds.

To put this into context, so far this year firms around the globe raised $517 billion,

which sounds impressive, but it's a 35% drop from the same period last year.

It's been nearly five months since the collapse of Silicon Valley bank triggered a crisis

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