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Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Energy sector myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. The days of handing out bribes to secure commodity contracts are over, the heads of the world’s biggest trading companies said, after a series of US bribery scandals put the sector under intense scrutiny. Speaking

Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. OpenAI and Meta are on the brink of releasing new artificial intelligence models that they say will be capable of reasoning and planning, key steps towards achieving superhuman cognition in machines. This week, executives at

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Hamas said on Tuesday that the latest Israeli proposal in hostage deal talks did not meet any of its demands, after senior Israeli officials said progress had been made in the long-running negotiations. The proposal

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Macquarie, the former owner of Thames Water criticised for loading the utility with debt, is a lender to its stricken parent company. Macquarie’s investors lent about £130mn to the utility’s holding company Kemble Water Finance

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The former head of Shell has said the oil major is “massively undervalued” in London and may benefit from switching its listing to the US, in another blow to sentiment surrounding the UK stock market.

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. AstraZeneca’s chief executive Pascal Soriot is “massively underpaid” and deserves a proposed £1.8mn pay rise, according to one of the drugmaker’s top shareholders. The British pharmaceutical company is preparing for a vote on its long-serving

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” This is known as “Stein’s law”, after the late Herbert Stein, former chair of Richard Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisers. Stein published this in June 1989,

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The evidence is strong, if not quite conclusive, that smartphones damage children and girls in particular. Governments should enact at least some of the legal curbs proposed in Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation. But take

Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the War in Ukraine myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Europe must prepare for potential war, as a full-scale conflict on the continent beyond Ukraine is “no longer a fantasy”, the EU’s chief diplomat has warned. “Russia threatens Europe,” both through its ongoing war

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. In October, Japan celebrates the 60th birthday of the shinkansen bullet train, an engineering marvel opened for the 1964 Olympics as proof of the nation’s rising industrial power. For six decades, as it has grown

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. HSBC has agreed to sell its business in Argentina to domestic lender Grupo Financiero Galicia for $550mn as it exits a market where its business has been affected by hyperinflation and a volatile currency. The

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Several large Taiwanese manufacturers are considering setting up a second headquarters overseas to ensure they can keep operating in the event of a Chinese attack on their country. The plans, which remain preliminary in most

Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Automobiles myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Imported vehicles are piling up at European ports, turning them into “car parks” as automakers and distributors struggle with a slowdown in sales and logistical bottlenecks including the lack of truck drivers. Port and car industry

Inside the museum that holds the Ara Pacis, a marble altar celebrating the peace and prosperity brought by the 40-year reign of Ancient Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, a group of prominent Italian business people were recently reflecting on the current state of the country.   The assembled entrepreneurs and executives — supporters of a fledgling civil

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Has the case for diversity been defeated in extra-time? At the start of the season, “wosoc Twitter” — the corner of social media that follows and discusses women’s football — was in uproar about the

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The writer is an FT contributing editor Passive funds are, by construction, price-insensitive bundles of financial securities, weighted to replicate the performance of market indices. But the indices themselves are not entirely passive. And decisions

Lord David Cameron is heading to Washington for a flurry of meetings with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders in an effort to try and help unblock US funding for Ukraine. The UK foreign secretary, who will also hold talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, will call on Congress to approve the extra $60bn

The US is “very focused on ensuring” Russia is not able to develop new liquefied natural gas projects, one of the country’s senior diplomats said. The remarks by Geoffrey Pyatt, the US assistant secretary of state for energy resources, to the FT’s Commodities Summit related to Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 project, which is led by

Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the US foreign policy myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. UK foreign secretary David Cameron is holding talks in Florida with Donald Trump, as London pushes to win support from the former president’s Republican allies in Congress for more Ukraine aid. Cameron’s talks with

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Labour will on Tuesday propose to toughen a planned crackdown on tax perks enjoyed by “non-doms” living in the UK, alongside a wider effort to tighten compliance, as the party seeks to plug a hole

Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. The capability of new artificial intelligence models will surpass human intelligence by the end of next year, so long as the supply of electricity and hardware can satisfy the demands of the increasingly powerful technology,