South Korean diving instructor Park Soo-hong has been a customer of AliExpress, Chinese tech giant Alibaba’s online shopping service, ever since he went bargain-hunting for car parts five years ago. The 54-year-old regularly compares the platform’s prices with South Korea’s dominant portal Naver and US rival Amazon. An oil level gauge he recently bought for
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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. China’s economy is at a “fork in the road” between choosing between past policies or “pro-market reforms” to unlock growth, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva said on Sunday, as calls grow for Beijing to do
Friday’s bloody attack on a Moscow concert hall has been claimed by the terror group Isis, but Russian propagandists have sought to blame Ukraine. Responsibility for the assault, in which four gunmen killed at least 133 people and incinerated the building, was attributed by the US and other western countries specifically to an Afghan-based affiliate
Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Property sector myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminster’s property company, is launching a £900mn lending business focused on residential development, as real estate investors opt for debt investments over the risk of buying assets with shaky valuations. The
A string of companies could follow Reddit into the US stock market in the coming months, bankers believe, after shares of the social media group leapt 48 per cent on their debut. A steady, sustained rise in activity would breathe life into the market for initial public offerings, which has been largely shut down since
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. UK stocks are trading close to a record discount relative to their Wall Street counterparts, luring some bargain-hunting investors back to the country’s battered stock market. London-listed equities have lagged behind peers in recent years
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Russian security services have detained 11 people in connection with an attack on a Moscow theatre that killed 93 people. The FSB security service said on Saturday it was holding 11 people, including four men
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. US senators from both main political parties reached a late agreement to avert a partial government shutdown over a $1.2trn spending bill, capping a brief budgetary stand-off that threatened to close non-essential operations of some
A storm rolled over Milan as Sabato de Sarno’s big debut for Gucci took place, thwarting plans to use the city’s streets to present his new vision to the world. Last September’s event was the most hotly anticipated of the year after the designer was plucked from near obscurity by French luxury group Kering to
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Iceland plans to prioritise food security over financial gain, planting corn and curbing bitcoin miners as the island state strives for more self-sufficiency in a hostile world. Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir told the Financial Times
Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Four years ago this month, I boarded an eerie, near-deserted flight from Los Angeles to Washington. (A week earlier, it would have been full.) The Uber driver who picked me up from a ghost
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. This weekend marks the first anniversary of the scariest moment in European banking of the past decade. It was a testing time. US regional banks that frankly most Europeans had never heard of but were
Call it the Nadella variation. It might sound like a diabolical move in a chess match, but it is in fact a useful term to describe the latest calculated corporate gambit by Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive. Tech companies often try to poach teams of smart employees through so-called acquihires: acquiring a start-up to hire
At least 40 people died and more than 100 were injured after attackers opened fire at a large concert venue in Moscow late on Friday and a blaze took hold of the building. At least four men dressed in camouflage burst into the Crocus City Hall concert venue on the outskirts of Moscow, where a
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Catherine, Princess of Wales, has said she is receiving treatment for cancer that was discovered after she underwent major abdominal surgery in January. In a video clip recorded in Windsor on Wednesday, and released on
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Magnum has been running television ads in the UK in which a woman finds to her dismay that her partner has brought home a private-label version of the chocolate-covered ice cream on a stick. “He
Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the US politics & policy myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the hardline Republican congresswoman and close ally of Donald Trump, has launched a bid to oust Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House of Representatives, as chaos gripped the party’s
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. A US resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war in Gaza was vetoed by Russia and China in the UN Security Council on Friday. The US proposal was the clearest signal to date
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. If economic growth could be conjured by words, Britain would be as rich as Norway by now. Although inflation is falling and real wages are on the up, there is a sense that the country
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Donald Trump’s social media business will become publicly listed after shareholders of a blank-cheque company approved the deal, unlocking a potential $3bn-plus windfall for the former US president as he seeks cash to cover massive
Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the War in Ukraine myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. The Kremlin has admitted that Russia is in a “state of war” amid a push to increase domestic support for President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine after previously calling it a “special military operation”.