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Good morning from the newsroom of the Financial Times.

Today is Monday, August 26. Good morning from the newsroom of the Financial Times.

Today is Monday, August 26th.

And this is your FT news briefing.

Wall Street is putting new pressure

on America's private prison system. And the number of people living in global cities such as New York, London, and Paris is shrinking.

We'll find out why.

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

America's private prisons have come under fire for their role in the separation of families and the holding of migrants at the U.S. southern border.

The fallout from the Trump administration's immigration policies have thrust attention on the companies responsible for holding these people.

There are really two companies that are dominant in the private prison market in the US, and

they're both structured as real estate investment trusts.

So they're both REITs, and that's GEO Group and CoreCCC Group and CoreCivik. And what we've been seeing

is a lot of activist pressure against these two companies. That's FT reporter and the producer of our

moral money newsletter, Billy Naman.

He says that activism first came in the form of divestment campaigns from big institutional

investors such as the New York City Pension Fund.

And this year, the focus shifted to the banks lending to the prisons.

J.P. Morgan Chase had said we're no longer going to lend to these companies.

Wells Fargo had made a similar announcement around that time, and then the dominoes have kind of fallen.

...