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It is not often that a Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist gives the keynote speech at a competition policy conference. But last week in Washington, I introduced PEN America president Ayad Akhtar before he gave the lunchtime address at a conference on monopoly policy sponsored by the Open Markets Institute. The pairing wasn’t as random as it

Would it be better to be a chief executive who is accountable to Steve Schwarzman instead of Nelson Peltz? Schwartzman is the founder of the private equity juggernaut Blackstone which has made its name taking companies private in leveraged buyouts. Peltz’s Trian Partners, on the other hand, is known for activist campaigns at public companies.

A hedge fund that was one of the highest profile victims of the FTX scandal when half its assets were trapped on the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange has decided to close and return its remaining money to investors. Galois Capital, which last year had been managing around $200mn in assets and was one of the biggest

A shortage of construction workers is putting at risk the Biden administration’s ambitious plan to fuel a historic building boom in the US, according to industry executives. The construction sector could be short of as many as half a million workers this year, according to the Associated Builders and Contractors, an industry group, increasing project

In May 2021, a group of Chinese banks agreed to lend $300mn to investment bank China Renaissance with a condition: if Bao Fan, the company’s well-known founder, ceased to be its largest shareholder or was no longer chair of the board they could demand early repayment. Nearly two years later, lawyers may soon be poring

The writer is senior economist and head of Japan FX Strategy at JPMorgan It is little wonder that markets were scouring decade-old comments by Kazuo Ueda, the newly announced Bank of Japan governor. A relatively unknown academic outside of Japan who served on the central bank’s board between 1998 and 2005, Ueda’s nomination has prompted

Friday marks the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an event that shocked the world by bringing large-scale conflict to European soil. US president Joe Biden’s visit to Poland at the start of the week will serve as a show of strength to Ukrainian and Nato allies in the face of Russia’s long-expected

Poland’s head of state has called on Nato powers to give postwar security guarantees to Ukraine, on the eve of a visit by the US president to Warsaw to reaffirm the west’s support for Kyiv a year into Russia’s war. Andrzej Duda told the Financial Times that promises of security guarantees “would be important” for

Demonstrators took to the streets of the Moldovan capital of Chișinău on Sunday, demanding the removal of pro-west president Maia Sandu after US and European officials raised concerns about an alleged Russian plot to topple her government. The protest was peaceful and smaller than previous demonstrations held last autumn. It came, however, amid heightened political

Meta will launch a paid subscription service that allows Facebook and Instagram users to verify their accounts for up to $14.99 a month, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced on Sunday. The new feature, called Meta Verified, lets users “get a blue badge, get extra impersonation protection against accounts claiming to be you, and get direct

Western leaders used a gathering of global elites in Munich to make the case that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine posed a threat not just to Europe but to the whole world. There was little evidence their message got through. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, a clutch of senior US and European officials sought to

Ireland’s central bank governor has defended the country’s world-beating economic growth against accusations that it is an artificial product of big US companies taking advantage of Dublin’s low taxes. Gabriel Makhlouf told the Financial Times that much of Ireland’s growth — forecast to be 12.2 per cent last year, more than treble growth in the

Europe’s top banking regulators have informed Deutsche Bank that they are “not satisfied” with its probe into the mis-selling of risky foreign exchange derivatives in Spain, people briefed on the matter told the Financial Times. Both the European Central Bank as well as Germany’s watchdog BaFin have expressed frustration with the probe — code-named “Project

The UK invests too little. This is now widely agreed. Naturally, this has led to a discussion of how to induce more investment. Yet how would the extra investment be funded by a country that is even more strikingly short of savings than it is of investment? According to IMF data, gross investment averaged a

Cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt has said that any deal on post-Brexit trading arrangements in Northern Ireland must be supported by the Democratic Unionist Party, as negotiations on the longstanding dispute continue. Her comments came as former prime minister Boris Johnson warned Rishi Sunak that it would be a “great mistake” to ditch the so-called Northern

Ash Regan, Scotland’s former community safety minister, and health secretary Humza Yousaf, have announced they are standing in the contest to replace Nicola Sturgeon as leader of the Scottish National Party and first minister. The two have set off the race to replace Sturgeon, who shocked her party on Wednesday by announcing that she was

The prime minister of Sweden has warned against delinking his country’s Nato membership bid from Finland’s, after the alliance acknowledged for the first time that the two might have to join separately owing to Turkey’s obstruction. Ulf Kristersson said in an interview that for strategic reasons, the two membership applications should be ratified at the

Brazil’s justice minister has vowed there will be no amnesty for radical supporters of rightwing former president Jair Bolsonaro who last month stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and presidential palace in Brasília. Pledging to crack down on far-right extremism, Flávio Dino said in an interview: “This is so serious for Brazilian democracy that the response

Last week, Sally Mapstone was exposed for breaking a big unwritten rule on how a modern boss should behave. The principal of Scotland’s University of St Andrews has made it clear her team should never write an email that starts with “I hope this finds you well”, or ends with “I hope this helps”. Nor

There is a scene in Tár, the Oscar-nominated film about a charismatic but abusive conductor of a major orchestra in Berlin, in which the character played by Cate Blanchett whispers along to an old programme. It shows Leonard Bernstein, the maestro of the New York Philharmonic, charming his audience in one of its Emmy award-winning

Investors are piling into high-quality corporate bonds this year at a record rate, reflecting their enthusiasm for an asset class that is typically seen as relatively low risk but now offers the best returns in years. A total of $19bn has poured into funds which buy investment grade corporate debt around the world since the