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Gary Chen, co-founder of Raise Robotics, strides on stage at the University of California, Berkeley wearing a bright yellow hi-vis vest. The attention-grabbing outfit is his ploy to stand out to an audience of investors and convince them to hand over $2mn. If successful, he and his robots will continue on a journey that might

Japan’s Ministry for Economy, Trade and Industry was on a high. It was June 2018 and Meti, as it is more commonly known, had just forced through the $18bn sale of Toshiba’s prized memory chip business to a private equity consortium. The deal appeared to justify the ministry’s billing as the creator of the nation’s

One thing to start: Elon Musk’s $43bn bid to take Twitter private is struggling to draw interest from institutions with the financial firepower to pull off such a large deal including Blackstone Group, Vista Equity Partners and Brookfield Asset Management in part due to concerns over whether the social media group can become more profitable.

17Capital, a financier to buyout groups, has raised $2.9bn for its first credit fund, which will lend money to private equity funds that want to juice returns by using more leverage to strike deals. The London-based investment firm, backed by Oaktree Capital, is already a pioneer in lending money to private equity funds by allowing

In a few years, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is hoping to be able to predict outbreaks like a forecaster might do the weather, following the launch of its new pandemic forecasting unit on Tuesday. But thanks to legal setbacks for the Biden administration, including a ruling earlier this week by a

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: Who will back Elon Musk? Marc FilippinoGood morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, April 20th, and this is your FT News Briefing. [MUSIC PLAYING] Elon Musk still wants to buy Twitter, but it’s not clear who will back his $43bn bid.

A consortium led by US private equity group KKR has offered to buy Australia’s largest private hospital operator for A$20.1bn ($14.9bn), in what would be one of the biggest leverage buyouts in the country’s history. The offer for Ramsay Health Care valued the company at a 37 per cent premium on the Australian business’s closing

Opening this month, hotelier Navid Mirtorabi’s elegant property, The Twenty Two, occupies a sunny corner of Grosvenor Square. While it is very much in Mayfair, in attitude and spirit The Twenty Two is decidedly – strategically – not of Mayfair.  “It used to be that there was a very eclectic crowd there,” explains Mirtorabi, whose hotel career comprises 10 years

Janan Ganesh takes international relations theory to task (“No grand theory can explain the Ukraine crisis”, Opinion, April 13). But when debunking “realism” he makes two classic mistakes. The first one is to assume that state leaders must adhere to realism for that theory to make any sense. So Ganesh writes: “When Putin himself cites

Rana Foroohar (Opinion, April 18) echoes US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen’s call for a new Bretton Woods framework based on shared values. The call comes as the west has shown incredible unity trying to help Ukraine defend its sovereignty and, by extension, the democratic values the west holds dear. The call to base international, economic

Scientists are urging China to look for alternatives to its two homegrown Covid-19 vaccines to tackle its Omicron outbreak, amid mounting concerns about the jabs’ efficacy against the variant. The country is struggling with two problems as it faces its worst Covid-19 surge since the start of the pandemic: the sluggish take-up of booster doses

Robert Shrimsley has made a convincing case for Tory MPs to stand up for their principles or risk losing their reputation as well as their seats (“Johnson is dragging his party down”, Opinion, April 14). Unfortunately, it is symptomatic of the current illness of British politics that when the time comes to stand up and

Honda’s carefully investigative and logical approach to electric vehicle production is a model that has stood the test of time (Report, April 13). Chief executive Toshihiro Mibe says Honda needs “to take into account multiple factors, such as the living environment and the penetration rate of renewable energy, rather than simply switching to electric vehicles”.

Emmanuel Macron (Report, April 16) wants to end “abusive” executive pay through EU negotiations. There is a more effective way to end this travesty. In 1963, the top rate of income tax in the US was 91 per cent for “married filing jointly” incomes above $400,000 ($3.8mn in 2022 dollars). This effectively functioned as a

In the vast expanses of sun-drenched north-west Australia, one of the most ambitious energy ventures in history is being planned as part of a pipeline of billion-dollar hydrogen projects across the country. The Asian Renewable Energy Hub is expected to cover 6,500 square kilometres in the Pilbara mining region with solar panels and wind turbines

Ukraine plans to open a humanitarian corridor for civilians to leave Mariupol, the besieged south-eastern city where Russia this week began a bombing campaign targeting the city’s Azovstal steelworks. The government secured agreement on a corridor to bring civilians out of the city from 2pm, Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, said on Wednesday. “Given

Kirkbi of Denmark has an appropriately Nordic model. Its portfolio, anchored by a 75 per cent stake in toymaker Lego, funds philanthropic endeavours, renewable energy — and adds to the wealth of the controlling Kirk Kristiansen family. Last year profits quadrupled to DKr27bn ($3.92bn), and were 60 per cent up on pre-pandemic 2019. Fittingly, Lego

Some international airlines have dropped a requirement for passengers to wear masks on flights to and from America after a US judge threw out a Biden administration mandate. Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, a Donald Trump appointee who sits on the federal bench in Florida, deemed the public transport mask mandate unlawful on Monday, ruling that

The UK plans to strip Russia’s stock exchange of a status that allows investors to claim tax relief on trades, in a move aimed at further isolating Moscow from global financial markets. HM Revenue & Customs said on Tuesday that it intended to revoke the Moscow Exchange’s status as a recognised exchange, removing investors’ ability

Disrupter of disrupters? Or swan song of the special purpose acquisition company? European investors are making that call over a deal involving music streaming service Deezer. The French group has reached terms with cash shell I2PO to list on Euronext Paris at a pre-money value of €1bn. Bringing together billionaires François-Henri Pinault and Leonard Blavatnik,