Good morning and welcome to Europe Express. French president Emmanuel Macron is expected to hold a big, Sorbonne-style speech on the future of the EU next week — but that didn’t stop other European politicians from putting their ideas forward. We’ll bring you up to speed with what Italy’s Mario Draghi and Austria’s foreign minister
Good morning. We’ve written before that if inflation is going to subside peacefully, workers have to enter the workforce. We got bad news on that front yesterday: quits and job openings rose in March. If the Fed still needed a reason for a 50 basis point increase and a swift reduction in the balance sheet,
For thousands of years, the region around Antakya, in Turkey’s southern Hatay province, has been a breadbasket of great civilisations. The Roman mosaics in the city’s museums depict olives and grapes grown in the rich red soil and verdant hills around Antioch, as it was known in biblical times. But those who work the land
BlackRock has launched two exchange traded funds that invest in areas that the firm thinks will accelerate the economy. The iShares Blockchain and Tech ETF (IBLC), seeks to track the NYSE FactSet Global Blockchain Technologies index and is composed of companies that are involved in the “development, innovation and utilisation of blockchain and crypto technologies”,
When Zambia’s opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema secured a landslide victory over incumbent Edgar Lungu in the country’s presidential elections nearly eight months ago, he pledged economic growth of 10 per cent a year. If this ambitious promise is to be achieved, the key lies in reinvigorating Zambia’s mining industry. The last time the country saw
Two of Roman Abramovich’s longstanding associates are set to keep their jobs running Chelsea Football Club if the leading bidder, a consortium led by US financier Todd Boehly, prevails. Chelsea’s chair Bruce Buck, 76, and director Marina Granovskaia, 47, have been offered the option to stay in place under Boehly’s ownership, three people with knowledge
In the northern industrial town of Baoding, toilet paper rolls off Jinye’s industrial machinery, ready to be sent direct from the factory floor to bathrooms across China. Sales of Jinye’s absorbent tissues have exploded since it became one of the first companies to open a store on Alibaba’s Taobao Deals, a platform launched by the
JD Vance, the author and venture capitalist, has won the primary election to be the Republican candidate for the US Senate from Ohio, in a victory that underlined the continuing influence of the former president Donald Trump in the party. With more than 95 per cent of the vote counted after polls closed on Tuesday,
Shahid Astori, a 27-year-old electrical engineer, voted against Imran Khan when he was first elected as prime minister in 2018. His dislike of Khan only intensified during the former celebrity cricketer’s term, with Astori blaming Khan for painful inflation and an economic crisis. Yet all that was forgiven as Astori joined thousands of demonstrators at
When answering a survey about the FT I was asked if there was enough content written by women and whether I was more or less likely to comment on articles if I could do so anonymously. This reminded me that, while many FT articles are written by female journalists, the letters page seems to be
It was an event that signalled a striking shift in South Korea’s corporate scene: a millennial fund manager taking on senior executives of one of the country’s leading entertainment companies in a YouTube debate put on for the nation’s growing army of retail investors. Thirty-five-year-old Changhwan Lee, who left private equity group KKR last year
The article “Growth stock stars of the pandemic take a tumble” (Report, April 30) gives an interesting perspective on the volatility underpinning growth stocks. It’s true that the S&P 500 growth index is down 20 per cent or more on a year-to-date basis. This also accompanies falling gains for speculative stocks with little earnings records
China’s independent refiners have been discreetly buying Russian oil at steep discounts as western countries suspend their own purchases and explore potential embargoes because of the war in Ukraine. An official at a Shandong-based independent refinery said it had not publicly reported deals with Russian oil suppliers since the Ukraine war started in order to
In a battered market for technology stocks there may be hope: call it the “private equity put”. On Tuesday, Elliott Management disclosed a $1bn — or roughly six per cent — stake in Western Digital, the maker of hard drives and flash memory devices. Elliott urged Western to break up those two halves of its
On Monday morning, with volumes thinned by the UK’s bank holiday, Citigroup briefly crashed the European market. Nearly two trading days later, we’re still struggling to figure out how. Citi has placed the blame on one unfortunate in its London office, saying a unidentified trader “made an error when inputting a transaction”. As excuses go,
US president Joe Biden called on the Supreme Court to uphold the landmark Roe vs Wade abortion rights ruling following the leak of a draft opinion that would overturn it, which the court’s chief justice condemned as a “betrayal” and insisted was not indicative of its final decision. “I believe that a woman’s right to
BrewDog staff are in line for potential payouts of up to £120,000 after its chief executive pledged to share with them £100mn of his personal stake in the UK’s largest craft brewer. James Watt said on Tuesday that he would donate a fifth of his 24 per cent stake in the company to an employee
The writer is a science commentator It seems like a ingenious solution to an intractable problem. The world may be bungling its promise to limit global temperature rise to less than 2C above pre-industrial levels, but could solar geoengineering ride to the rescue? Methods vary but the basic idea is the same: to reflect sunlight
This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: Federal Reserve poised to raise rates a half-per cent Jess SmithGood morning from the Financial Times. Today is Tuesday, May 3rd. And this is your FT News Briefing. [MUSIC PLAYING] US central bankers are meeting today amid expectations for a half point interest
When the UK’s furlough scheme was announced near the start of the pandemic, Paul Stephenson thought he would be eligible. He was working via a temp agency in a small manufacturing company where other staff were being furloughed. But he wasn’t employed by either the manufacturer or the agency. Instead, his employer was an “umbrella