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BT held “war games” to prepare for the disruption from a potential conflict between China and Taiwan, in a sign of companies’ growing unease over escalating tensions in the region. Staff at the telecoms group’s Dublin-based procurement business took part in the two-day exercise last year, during which they modelled how they would secure BT’s

Countries must exert greater control over gold imports and companies dealing in contraband supplies of the precious metal from the Amazon region should be punished, Brazil’s government has said. Sonia Guajajara, the country’s first indigenous affairs minister, called for more support from foreign governments and industry in tackling illegal gold mining, a priority for the

NHS data specialists have warned against the rollout of Palantir’s software across the organisation, as the US tech company vies for a £480mn contract to build the UK health service’s operating system. Palantir, led by chief executive Alex Karp and co-founded by Peter Thiel, the tech investor and prominent backer of Donald Trump, became the

Jamie Dimon and Larry Fink have warned investors to brace for the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates higher for a longer period of time, bucking the view that the central bank will cut rates later in 2023. The comments from two of Wall Street’s most prominent executives made the case that the collapse of Silicon

Finance ministers from some of the world’s largest economies refused to have their optimism dented by the gloomy message delivered by top IMF officials at the fund’s spring meetings in Washington this week. Despite IMF forecasts highlighting the potential for a hard landing for the global economy, Bruno Le Maire, France’s finance minister, said the

Hedge funds and other parts of the shadow banking system should face greater scrutiny after last month’s upheaval in US government bonds, the country’s top markets regulator has said, reflecting concerns that speculative investors pose a risk to financial stability. Gary Gensler, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, told the Financial Times that taming

Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has said he wants to work with Beijing to “balance world geopolitics” as he wrapped up a three-day visit to China aimed at deepening relations between the two nations. “We want to raise the level of the strategic partnership between our countries, expand trade flows and, together with

Had it ever left the ground, the self-piloting camera drone that Antoine Balaresque dreamt of building when he was an undergraduate at Berkeley would have been a marvel of the modern world. The loan from Silicon Valley Bank that sustained his doomed venture arouses a different kind of wonder. It is unlikely that many banks

China is refusing to let US secretary of state Antony Blinken visit Beijing over concerns that the FBI will release the results of an investigation into the downed suspected Chinese spy balloon. Four people familiar with the negotiations said China had told the US it was not prepared to reschedule a trip that Blinken cancelled

The writer is executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies Asia, and author of ‘The Billionaire Raj’ Two recent Beijing trips by global leaders have shed light on the many paradoxes of a future age of economic decoupling. A visit by Emmanuel Macron, president of France, and Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission

The CBI needs to become “sharper and more focused” to reclaim the confidence of its members and the government after “devastating” allegations of rape, sexual harassment and bullying, the organisation’s president said on Friday. Speaking publicly for the first time after a week of bruising headlines questioning the future of the UK’s premier business lobby

For the victims of the rape, sexual harassment and bullying allegations that have rocked the UK’s biggest business lobby group, it has been a frustrating four days of silence. But, on Friday, the CBI’s president Brian McBride finally offered them a personal apology. “The first message is that Brian McBride, personally, and this organisation are

Do you want the good news or the bad news? Luckily, it is the same either way: one month on, it seems the short, sharp banking crises on both sides of the Atlantic have fizzled out without causing an outright disaster. (Yet). No sensible investor wants to see a repeat of the 2008 crisis, and

Jack Teixeira was reading a book on the deck of his home in a wooded section of North Dighton, Massachusetts, on Thursday, when federal agents swarmed in for what turned out to be an easy arrest. The 21-year-old airman, who was wearing red shorts and an olive T-shirt, has suddenly emerged as the latest outlaw

The writer is a former editor of the FT and a former director-general of the CBI Two questions are posed by the sacking this week of the CBI’s director-general and the allegations of shocking behaviour by a number of unnamed senior managers. The first is whether the organisation still serves a useful purpose, and would

The low point in a dire week for President Emmanuel Macron came during a press conference on Wednesday when a reporter confronted him with a jibe from an old adversary: Donald Trump. The former US president, who alternately embraced and clashed with his French counterpart, had taken issue with Macron’s state visit to Beijing earlier

Elon Musk is developing plans to launch a new artificial intelligence start-up to compete with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, as the billionaire seeks to join Silicon Valley’s race to build generative AI systems. The Tesla and Twitter chief is assembling a team of artificial intelligence researchers and engineers, according to people familiar with the tech entrepreneur’s plans.

Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is severely ill and his condition is worsening rapidly, according to a key member of his team who raised the possibility that the politician may be being poisoned. Navalny was suffering from stomach pains and had lost more than 8kg in body weight in just over two weeks, Ruslan

A 21-year-old Air Guardsman suspected of leaking highly classified US intelligence documents made his first appearance in court on Friday, where he was charged with illegally sharing top-secret national defence information. Jack Teixeira entered the courtroom in handcuffs wearing a tan prison uniform, according to local media. A hearing on his detention will take place

The G7 has privately rebuked Switzerland for not doing enough to combat Russian oligarchs evading sanctions. A letter sent to the Swiss government, signed by G7 ambassadors in Bern on behalf of the group, as well as the EU’s ambassador, said Swiss privacy laws and other “loopholes” were being exploited by Russians to hide billions

The writer is head of the foreign and defence policy team at the American Enterprise Institute It’s really bad. So bad the Pentagon is not only conducting its own investigation, it also immediately called in the Justice Department to investigate. Over 100 pages of highly classified CIA Operations Center and Joint Chiefs of Staff assessments — some