This is a public service warning for Conservatives. Voters do not regard a rudimentary ability to govern as a bonus feature for those seeking to run the country. For the past three months, Tories have been allowing themselves to believe that under Rishi Sunak the mere restoration of floor-level competence and political sanity would be
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US jobs growth was stronger than expected in April, showing the resilience of the economy even as the Federal Reserve signalled it was “getting close” to pausing its cycle of interest rate rises. The US added 253,000 non-farm jobs last month, according to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, confounding expectations
On a crisp, sunny morning late last month, a lone black official Škoda draws up at a family wine farm in southern Moldova. This sliver of land was one of the great wine-producing regions of the Soviet Union and it aspires to play the same role for Europe today. It is a stunning setting of
A confrontation broke out in Los Angeles this week as 11,500 writers for film and television went on strike. Screenwriters know all about confrontations: they are the second acts of three-act dramas, when the main characters face a crisis that only gets resolved at the end. “You put them in the worst possible position they
HSBC’s shareholders voted against a proposal backed by its biggest investor Ping An to split up the sprawling global lender, in a victory for chair Mark Tucker at the bank’s annual meeting on Friday. Two special resolutions demanding that the bank regularly reviews separating and listing its Asia operations and restarts a guaranteed dividend were
And poof, it’s gone! First Republic Bank’s magical disappearing trick wowed us all on Monday. Other US regional lenders seem to be practising the same. My European bank ETF better not vanish in a puff of smoke. I won’t clap. Time to take profits, then? Answering this requires number crunching. And some thought. Which would
European stocks and Wall Street futures rose on Friday, while US regional banks clawed back some of their recent losses in pre-market trade, as investors looked ahead to the publication of US jobs data for evidence of the health of the American economy. The region-wide Stoxx Europe 600 added 0.3 per cent in morning trade
Good morning. The people have spoken, but what they’ve said isn’t yet entirely clear. Most votes in the local elections are still being counted and we still only have a partial picture. What we can say is that it has been a very bad night for the Conservative party. What’s less clear is what it
The UK’s opposition Labour and Liberal Democrat parties expressed optimism early on Friday that they were making significant gains as votes began to be counted after local elections in many parts of England. Both parties argued that their performances positioned them well for the forthcoming nationwide general election. Labour’s shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, told
One evening in late December last year, I received a cryptic phone call from a PR director at TikTok, the popular social media app. I’d written extensively about the company for the Financial Times, so we’d spoken before. But it was puzzling to hear from her just before the holidays, especially since I wasn’t working
The soaring value of family homes means that many pensioners are living inside a potential tax liability. The number of people in the UK paying inheritance tax jumped by 24 per cent in the past year, with 41,000 estates caught in the IHT net — nearly double the number three years ago. Should this trouble
Remember the rise of the right? First Brexit, then Trump, then a wave of rightwing populism broke over Europe. There were dozens of news articles on the “rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment”. Except it turns out that in the west, 2016 was a high water mark for such views. This is true of almost all
A flood of gilt sales is driving up the UK government’s borrowing costs, investors say, as markets are asked to absorb record volumes of bonds without the Bank of England stepping in to hoover up supply. Bond yields in most large economies have shot up over the past 18 months as soaring inflation drove a
Apple’s iPhone shipments bounced back from supply chain disruptions in the holiday period, though revenue still declined year-on-year for the second quarter in a row due to what it described as a “tougher” economic environment and currency headwinds. Finance chief Luca Maestri said Apple had seen “significant acceleration in iPhone revenue from December to March”.
In the US tech sell off, Apple was regarded as the safest pair of hands. It has more than 2bn active devices and nearly 1bn people paying for services. Unlike many of its peers it pays dividends as well as buying back shares. A drop in revenue and net income in the last quarter does
Travel groups Expedia and Booking Holdings said there was strong demand for accommodations in the first three months of 2023, with both companies notching record sales figures. Expedia reported $2.7bn in revenues, its highest for a first quarter and an 18 per cent improvement on the comparable period in 2022. Booking said its gross bookings
The executives leading the AI race that has transfixed the tech industry, including the CEOs of OpenAI, Google and Microsoft, met at the White House on Thursday for what a senior US official described as a “frank discussion” about their responsibilities to make sure their systems are safe. The meeting, which was attended by vice-president
UK ministers plan to widen the forms of photo identification that voters can present at polling stations in future, as concerns grow that the requirement to show an ID card may have reduced participation in Thursday’s local elections in England. Voters have for the first time been legally obliged to produce proof of identity in
The World Economic Forum’s latest Chief Economists Outlook highlighted the uncertain backdrop to the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank’s meetings this week. While 45 per cent of economists thought a global recession was likely this year, the same proportion considered it unlikely. A lack of clarity on the trajectory of the US and
This month, global investors face a peculiar paradox. A mantra of modern finance is that Treasuries are “risk-free” assets, implying that it is inconceivable that the US government might default. But in January, the Treasury breached the $31.4tn debt limit, capping bond issuance, and warned of a crisis unless Congress raises this — something Republicans
Western Alliance shares pulled back from their session lows after the Arizona-based bank denied it was exploring a potential sale. The Arizona bank described a report in the Financial Times that it was considering a potential sale of all or part of its business as “categorically false in all respects”, adding: “Western Alliance is not