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UK.

Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Monday, June 30th, and this is your FT News briefing.

U.S. banks can't wait to start doing deals again, and China's online stores might be going

out of style in America.

Plus, the White House is starting its search for the next central bank chair early.

It's just going to sow confusion at a time when markets are already having to face a lot of uncertainties about economic policy.

I'm Kasha Brousalian, and their next meal might just be right around the corner.

Executives are anticipating a surge in deals

in the next year, even as the last few months have been hit by a bit of a food desert. Now here to

hopefully explain my tortured metaphors is the FTs Martin Arnold. He writes about financial

regulation. Hey, Martin. Hello. All right, so tell me what's driving the positive

outlook for U.S. Bank consolidation. Why are we expecting a turnaround? Yeah, so it's very much

an expected turnaround, and the reasons people are anticipating that this is going to happen

are mainly twofold, I would say. The first is a big shift in the regulatory climate.

So the main watchdog and supervisors of the banks in Washington are proactively saying that they

want to change the rules and regulations to encourage more bank mergers.

And secondly, people are looking ahead to what they hope will be a reduction in the volatility and uncertainty that has been thrown up by the trade tensions and also many of the geopolitical tensions created under the Trump administration.

...