Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Airlines myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. The runaway rise in air fares driven by the sharp rebound in post-pandemic travel demand slowed in 2023, but travellers still face prices well above 2019 levels on many of the world’s most popular routes. Average
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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The key to breaking my dependency was not detox, or fears about the impact on my brain, but making the substance a bit rubbish. So thank you, Elon Musk, for stepping in when my willpower
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Nikki Haley and groups supporting her have spent twice as much as her rivals on advertising in recent weeks, as the former South Carolina governor seeks a knockout blow in the early-voting states to become
The writer is the author of ‘Extra Time: 10 Lessons for Living Longer Better’ This year, a Christmas card arrived from an old friend telling us she’s had a bit-part on TV. Formerly a teacher, she enrolled in drama school in her fifties, which didn’t augur well. Her parents had warned her against taking such
The Financial Times’s team of crystal ball gazers had their best year for a while in 2023, with only three wrong answers — though we got these pretty wrong. The S&P 500 did not fall by more than 10 per cent, but climbed over 20 per cent (though driven mostly by just seven tech stocks).
When my father turned 90, he bought himself a manual lawnmower. He had decided that his reliable Flymo was not giving him enough of a workout, and that he needed a bit more resistance. At the time, we thought that it would be just another contraption that would soon be on its way to the
Sir Sajid Javid, the former cabinet minister whose decision to quit Boris Johnson’s government triggered a wave of resignations that ultimately led to the then prime minister stepping down, has received a knighthood in the New Year honours. The MP for Bromsgrove, who served Johnson as chancellor and later as health minister before quitting in
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Liz Truss, who was UK prime minister for just 49 days, has appointed three political allies to the House of Lords as she exercised a longstanding convention for former premiers to confer peerages and honours
Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Earlier this month, Barbara Furlow-Smiles pleaded guilty to criminal charges that she embezzled some $4mn from Facebook while serving as a top diversity executive at the tech company. That tawdry episode seemed a fitting
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Every large smartphone maker except Apple is betting that “foldable” phones will help revive a lacklustre mobile market, despite the devices still largely failing to attract mainstream consumers. Foldables, which have a screen that opens
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Emerging market stock indices have underperformed the broad equity rally this year. They’ve lagged behind not only American, Japanese and continental European equities, but even UK stocks. In sterling terms they’ve barely broken even. With
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. South Africa has accused Israel of violating international laws on genocide in its military operations in Gaza in a case it has brought to the UN’s International Court of Justice. Israel had “failed to prevent
Medford, Oregon-based hospital nonprofit Asante Health had its A-plus rating, with negative outlook, affirmed by Fitch Ratings at year-end as it works toward completion of a new building at its flagship hospital. Fitch said in a report Tuesday that it maintained the negative outlook, first assigned in January, because “Asante continues to record weakened operational
Municipals were quietly traded and little changed in the last session of 2023 while U.S. Treasuries were mixed and equities were in the red near the close. The two-year muni-to-Treasury ratio Friday was at 59%, the three-year at 59%, the five-year at 59%, the 10-year at 59% and the 30-year at 86%, according to Refinitiv
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The judgment handed down by Maine’s secretary of state on Thursday denying Donald Trump a place on the New England state’s primary ballot for the 2024 election was unsparing in its condemnation of the former
Total 2023 municipal bond volume fell slightly from 2022 as market volatility, higher interest rates, pandemic aid and slower economic growth kept issuers on the sidelines. However, a robust fourth quarter buoyed issuance for the year, so volume only ticked down 2.8%, much better than previous quarters where issuance was down double digits. The year
With 2023 municipal bond issuance of $59 billion, Texas wrested the title of top volume state from long-time debt behemoths New York and California. The debt, which was sold by Texas state agencies, cities, counties, schools, and others, and accounted for 15.5% of nationwide issuance, lifted the Lone Star State to the number one ranking
Illinois saw an uptick in its fiscal fortunes in the past fiscal year, one of the few times the state’s net position has improved since that figure swung from black to red in to red in 2002. The net position includes tax collections and government services and measures the state’s assets relative to its total
Once every decade or so the computing world finds itself on the cusp of a revolution. Whether it’s the commercialisation of the internet in the 1990s or the birth of mobile and cloud computing in the first decade of this century, a collective belief takes hold in the transformative potential of a new technological paradigm.
The muni industry is looking forward to key tax legislation moving forward while also eyeing the possible sunset of key provisions of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, though the number one priority of muni lobbyists remains the restoration of tax-exempt advance refunding. “We continue to work this issue tirelessly,” said Brett Bolton, VP, federal
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Complaints to the UK legal regulator over tactics used by media lawyers to deter reporting on wealthy individuals are on the rise, according to official data that comes as new legislation to tackle the issue