Behind the glittery facades of London’s Selfridges and New York’s Chrysler Building, Austrian property billionaire René Benko assembled a financial time bomb. Benko’s Signa Group, which bought stakes in the two trophy assets and amassed a €27bn ($29bn) property portfolio, racked up at least €13bn in debt during the years when the cost of borrowing
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EU leaders met President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday, kicking off a summit during which they plan to press China on industrial overcapacity, amid signs it is pumping hundreds of billions of dollars of new funding into the manufacturing of products targeted at European markets. The EU delegation for the annual EU-China summit —
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. In an episode of the first world war television comedy series Blackadder Goes Forth, the catastrophic absurdity of war is laid bare in parody by a court martial centred around the murder of a pigeon.
The UK government is facing more courtroom showdowns over its plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, lawyers have warned, despite new legislation designed to overcome legal blocks to the policy. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said a package of measures unveiled this week — including a bill that seeks to sidestep human rights legislation —
Shares of petcare retailer Chewy slid almost 9 per cent in extended trading on Wednesday after the company posted a wider net loss than expected and cut its full-year sales guidance. The company, which had beaten investors’ estimates for earnings for six straight quarters, missed expectations with a $35.8mn net loss. It also cut its
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. KPMG is planning to merge its UK and Swiss businesses in a tie-up that executives hope can boost growth and profits at the smallest of accounting’s Big Four. Partners in KPMG’s operations in the two
Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the US foreign policy myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Republicans in the US Senate on Wednesday blocked an effort to provide more funding for Ukraine to fight its war against Russia, delivering another blow to one of the White House’s central foreign policy
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Hedge fund Muddy Waters on Wednesday revealed a bet against a publicly listed real estate investment trust managed by private equity giant Blackstone. New York-listed Blackstone Mortgage Trust, which Blackstone began to manage in 2013
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Michael Gove’s plans to cap ground rents in England and Wales risks leaving the government open to a multibillion-pound compensation claim from institutional investors, a trade body has warned. The UK levelling up secretary has
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Rishi Sunak has unveiled a highly contentious “emergency” bill that deems Rwanda a “safe” country in law in an effort to revive his policy of sending migrants to the east African nation. The bill states
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. BlackRock plans to roll out generative artificial intelligence tools to clients in January as part of a larger drive to use the technology to boost productivity, the $9.1tn asset manager told employees on Wednesday. The
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The Conservatives are right. They had no choice. It is neither politically nor socially sustainable for the UK to continue with immigration at the levels seen in the last two years. A glance back at
Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the US foreign policy myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. You can get insurance for almost anything nowadays. It is next to impossible, however, to insure against Donald Trump’s return to the White House. The time for America’s allies to hedge against Trump 2.0
Boris Johnson has admitted the UK “vastly underestimated” the dangers posed by Covid-19 in early 2020 and did not take the scientific evidence seriously enough in testimony to the public inquiry into his government’s response to the pandemic. The former prime minister on Wednesday said his administration “may have made mistakes” but that before late
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. UK investors returned to equities for the first time in six months, as asset managers looked to reorientate their portfolios to account for brighter sentiment on inflation and interest rates. Retail investors in the UK
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. High interest rates and a slowdown in housebuilding have driven a contraction in UK construction activity for the third month in a row, according to new data released on Wednesday. The S&P Global/Cips UK construction
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Interpath Advisory, KPMG’s former UK restructuring division, has fallen to its second consecutive annual loss since breaking away from the Big Four firm, despite a rise in companies in distress. Pre-tax losses at the private
Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Chinese economy myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. You might have seen sober and accurate Financial Times reporting of the US economy’s remarkable annualised growth rate of 5.2 per cent in the third quarter of this year. Let me give you an advanced
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Private credit and leveraged lending markets remain vulnerable to “sharp revaluations”, the Bank of England warned on Wednesday, in its latest attempt to sound alarm bells about risks building up in non-bank finance. The BoE’s
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Apple wants batteries for its latest generation of iPhones to be made in India, as part of the US tech giant’s efforts to diversify its global supply chain and move manufacturing out of China. The
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. UK ministers are set to pick veteran TV executive Samir Shah as BBC chair to replace Richard Sharp, the former Goldman Sachs banker who resigned this year. Shah has had a 40-year career in TV