InMarketing Today

The London Stock Exchange struck a partnership with Payward, owner of crypto exchange Kraken, to launch tokenised trading of the UK's 100 biggest stocks from next year on its planned night-time venue, deepening its push into digital markets. Hours later, three FTSE 250 constituents, Bodycote, Gamma Communications and Capricorn Energy, unveiled takeover deals worth a combined £3bn-plus to leave the exchange entirely, part of an exodus that has already claimed more than 50 companies this year, including Schroders, Beazley and Intertek.

Two announcements, one morning, and one uncomfortable optics problem: an exchange pitching itself as the future of trading while three more household names walk out the front door. Any institution running a growth narrative alongside a visible attrition problem is inviting the audience to do the comparison themselves, and they'll draw the less flattering conclusion. IG's Chris Beauchamp put it plainly: any hope the FTSE leak had stopped is dashed.

Don't let outsiders write the contrast for you. When your headline story and your harder numbers point different ways, address both in the same breath, own the attrition candidly, then make the case for why the strategy still holds. Silence on the uncomfortable half only makes the polished half look like spin.

Citi, Lloyds Banking Group and MUFG are among nineteen banks committed to launching a jointly owned stablecoin venture before the end of the year, Finextra reported today. The as-yet-unnamed venture, which also counts Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo and Standard Bank among its members, plans a USD-denominated stablecoin to market in the first half of 2027, with a euro-denominated version to follow. Barclays and BNP Paribas, both part of the original October 2025 consortium, are no longer listed among the members, and nothing in the announcement explains why.

A venture with nineteen shareholder banks and no name yet has an unusual branding problem: whose trust does the product actually borrow? Clients don't bank with a consortium, they bank with Citi or Lloyds or MUFG, and a jointly owned stablecoin will need a single, coherent identity strong enough to stand apart from all nineteen without appearing to belong to none of them. Two founding members quietly leaving the group is its own signal, and one the venture hasn't addressed.

If your institution sits inside a shared-infrastructure venture like this one, settle the branding question before the product does: who is the public face when it goes right, and who explains it when it doesn't. Get ahead of membership changes with a plain explanation rather than letting departures go unremarked and inviting speculation.

John Ternus posted his first message on X within hours of becoming Apple's chief executive today, taking the handle @johnternus with a bio that reads simply 'CEO' and an opening post that reads simply 'hello', 9to5Mac reported. Ternus succeeds Tim Cook, who moves to an Executive Chair role after a decade in the top job. Apple's own corporate account posts only sponsored ads on X, while past and present executives, including Cook and marketing chief Greg Joswiak, have kept public-facing profiles there.

The choice of platform is the story here, not the account. X is the one social network most brand-safety teams would flag as a reputational risk, and Apple's new chief executive has opened his tenure there rather than on a platform its own corporate account treats as an ad channel and nothing more. Whatever content follows, the decision itself already says something about how Ternus intends to be seen: accessible, direct, and unafraid of a platform many of his peers avoid.

Watch what Ternus actually posts once the fall product event lands next week, that's where the real signal will be. In the meantime, any executive weighing a personal account on a platform their own brand won't touch should have an answer ready for why, because the choice itself will be read as a statement whether or not one was intended.