Silicon Valley investors are touring the Middle East, seeking to build long-term ties with sovereign wealth funds during the worst funding crunch for venture capital firms in almost a decade. Top technology VCs such as Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global and IVP have jetted teams of executives to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar
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If there is one ally the US can be excused for spying on, it is the Republic of Korea. This is not because the two countries do not have a close relationship. Nor is it because South Korea is any more or less reliable a partner than anybody else. It is because the stakes are
Tens of thousands of Hongkongers who moved to the UK are being blocked from accessing as much as £2.2bn of pension assets, as activists accuse the city’s government of retaliating against those deemed “unpatriotic” following a political crackdown. The figures, released by UK advocacy group Hong Kong Watch on the eve of the first visit
HSBC has hired more than 40 investment bankers who used to work at Silicon Valley Bank, the latest move by the British lender to scoop up parts of the failed tech-focused bank. A month after HSBC acquired SVB’s UK subsidiary for £1, the bank is now hiring several dozen of its US bankers from First
HSBC has hired more than 40 investment bankers who used to work at Silicon Valley Bank, the latest move by the British lender to scoop up parts of the failed tech-focused bank. A month after HSBC acquired SVB’s UK subsidiary for £1, the bank is now hiring several dozen of its US bankers from First
The sacking of CBI director-general Tony Danker on Tuesday was intended to draw a line under weeks of bruising allegations of sexual misconduct, but within hours Britain’s leading business lobby group was facing questions over the decision to appoint an insider to restore its reputation. Rain Newton-Smith, who served as the CBI’s chief economist until
EY has called off the plan to break up its audit and consulting businesses after months of internal disagreement and opposition from executives in the US. The Big Four firm communicated the decision on Tuesday in a note to partners, which was seen by the Financial Times. The plan, code named “Project Everest”, was approved
The CBI’s website is groaning with “thought leadership” articles about corporate culture, inclusion and transparency. Would you like to create a “culture of belonging” at your business, perhaps? Or “improve workforce wellbeing”? Maybe go “further, faster” on the “moral question” of diversity and inclusion? Well, the CBI has your back. Which is more than its
Will Japan abandon its ultra-loose monetary policies now that Kazuo Ueda has replaced Haruhiko Kuroda as governor of the Bank of Japan? The answer, it seems, is “no”. The new governor, a well-known and respected academic economist, stressed that the two pillars of Japan’s current monetary policy — negative interest rates and yield curve control
Over the past three years the global economy has been subjected to an unprecedented series of shocks. After the pandemic struck, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought added disruption. Both contributed to a cost of living crisis, with central banks raising interest rates rapidly to contain runaway inflation. Arguably, the international economic system has displayed remarkable
At least 100 apparently classified documents have been leaked online in the most significant unauthorised release of US intelligence material since the large-scale disclosures by former contractor Edward Snowden in 2013. The documents largely relate to the war in Ukraine, including recent battlefield information, but also include details intercepted by the US from allies including
A top official at the IMF has warned of “acute” risks to the global financial system and said weaker banks face further pressure if central banks continue ratcheting up rates to squash inflation. In an interview with the Financial Times, Tobias Adrian, director of the fund’s monetary and capital markets department, struck a downbeat tone
SoftBank chief Masayoshi Son will this week sign off on an agreement with Nasdaq to list chip designer Arm, setting in motion a blockbuster initial public offering as early as this autumn. According to two people familiar with the situation, the Japanese investment group and New York exchange reached a tentative agreement over Arm’s proposed
Who better to walk you through the banking sector’s March madness and offer their thoughts on systemic financial stress than… Credit Suisse? Notes from the bank analysis team at CS have come admirably thick and fast, even after their employer collapsed and was subsequently folded into rival UBS last month. But there’s a rather large Swiss
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s efforts to revitalise the UK economy have not been sufficient to raise it from the foot of the global league table this year, according to forecasts published by the IMF on Tuesday. In its twice-yearly World Economic Outlook, the fund predicted that the UK economy would shrink by 0.3 per cent in
The IMF has warned of a “hard landing” for the global economy if persistently troublesome inflation keeps interest rates higher for longer and amplifies financial risks. Although the fund left its overall economic forecasts largely unchanged from January in its latest World Economic Outlook, published on Tuesday, it stressed that signs of resilience alongside lower
Three Aprils ago, Sir Keir Starmer took over a UK Labour party in the electoral and moral pits. He lost his first 18 months to a pandemic that made the role of opposing the Conservative government seem almost unpatriotic. He has the “help” of a shadow cabinet that, as a gathering of talent in one
CBI director-general Tony Danker has been sacked with immediate effect following an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment at the employers’ organisation. He will be replaced by Rain Newton-Smith, the UK lobby group’s former chief economist, who will return as director-general after a brief spell as a managing director for policy at Barclays. The dismissal
European stocks advanced at the opening on Tuesday, as investors took heart from a late rally on Wall Street and looked towards the possibility of more interest rate increases from the European Central Bank and US Federal Reserve. The region-wide Stoxx 600 rose 0.5 per cent, while Germany’s Dax and France’s Cac 40 were up
The writer is a financial journalist and author of ‘More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy’ The recent turmoil in financial markets is a sign of a longer term problem. More than a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, inflation has proved to be far from transitory. That has meant government bond yields, while
Low-income countries will face their biggest bills for servicing foreign debts in a quarter of a century this year, putting spending on health and education at risk. Repayments on public debt owed to non-residents for a group of 91 of the world’s poorest countries will take up an average of more than 16 per cent