Chanel has ruled out an initial public offering, insisting that it can hold on to its privately owned status and remain the world’s second-biggest luxury brand. “We’re going to stay a private, independent company,” Leena Nair, the French company’s global chief executive, said. “Rumours always float around, but you can put those to rest.” Wearing
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One thing to start: BBC directors have raised concerns that chair Richard Sharp’s position is becoming untenable after they were briefed on the investigation into his appointment, adding to pressure for his resignation as early as Friday. In today’s newsletter First Republic on the rocks Creditors square off over Serta Wall Street risks losing its
The head of the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund has called on governments to speed up the regulation of artificial intelligence as it revealed it would set guidelines for how the 9,000 companies it invests in should use AI “ethically”. Nicolai Tangen, chief executive of Norway’s $1.4tn oil fund — which owns on average 1.5
Amazon reported better than expected sales and profits in the March quarter despite persistent inflation and a weakening economic environment that analysts had feared would result in softer spending among consumers and enterprise cloud customers. Revenues grew 9 per cent to $127.4bn, ahead of forecasts of $124.6bn, according to S&P Capital IQ. Sales at Amazon’s
BBC directors have raised concerns that chair Richard Sharp’s position is becoming untenable after they were briefed on the investigation into his appointment, adding to pressure for his resignation as early as Friday. The BBC board met this week to discuss the independent inquiry by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments into Sharp’s
The BBC is stuck in a “yesteryear” TV and radio era and needs more resources and regulatory certainty in order to compete in the global digital media market, MPs have warned. The broadcaster was contending with international rivals that have no public-service remit in a race to engage new audiences, according to a report by
Amazon reported better than expected sales and profits in the March quarter, despite persistent inflation and a weakening economic environment that analysts had feared would result in softer spending among consumers and enterprise cloud customers. Overall revenues grew 9 per cent to $127.4bn, ahead of forecasts of $124.6bn, according to S&P Capital IQ. Sales at
The UK government is set to abandon its controversial plan to review or scrap all EU-era law by the end of 2023, in a move which has sparked fury among Tory Eurosceptics. Kemi Badenoch, business secretary, told Tory Brexiters this week that the majority of almost 4,000 pieces of retained EU law would remain on
Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s hard-right prime minister, has endorsed Rishi Sunak’s tough stance on immigration, in spite of misgivings among her officials about backing the UK policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda. Sunak and Meloni, who held talks in Downing Street on Thursday, hailed “very strong” relations between the two countries on a range of
The High Court in London ruled on Thursday that a 48-hour stoppage by the UK’s largest nursing union was unlawful, cutting short the most extensive walkout yet over pay. The decision will roughly halve the length of next week’s proposed two-day walkout, the first to affect NHS emergency and critical care, and came as four
In recent decades, a set of distinctive rituals has emerged in finance around the phenomenon known as “Fedspeak”. Whenever a central banker makes a comment, economists (and journalists) rush to parse it while traders place investment bets. But if economists at the Richmond Fed are correct, this ritual could soon change. They recently asked the
Good afternoon. This was the week when Rishi Sunak sought to reboot the Conservative party’s relationship with business with a summit for FTSE 100 chief executives, spurred on by fears that Labour is now stealing a march with the boss class. The obvious difficulty for Sunak is that a bit of Davos-man veneer cannot cover
Wall Street futures gained ground on Thursday as several more strong results from the US technology sector boosted sentiment ahead of the latest set of US gross domestic product figures. Contracts tracking Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 rose 0.6 per cent, while those tracking the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 were up 0.9 per cent ahead of
“This town ain’t big enough for the both of us” is the classic language of two cowboys psyching themselves up for a gunfight at the OK Corral. It is a phrase ready-made for the grotesque spectacle of two generals blasting each other for control of what is left of Sudan. Two gunslingers at war is
The writer is founder of Sifted, an FT-backed site about European start-ups British politicians seemingly love nothing more than to swap confidential information, gossip, lobby and conspire on WhatsApp, unless, of course, their messages leak. Then, those selfsame politicians, such as Matt Hancock — the former health secretary who inadvisedly shared thousands of WhatsApp messages
US economic growth slowed sharply in the first quarter of 2023 despite strong consumer spending, as the Federal Reserve ploughed ahead with its historic monetary tightening campaign. The world’s largest economy grew by 1.1 per cent on an annualised basis between January and March, according to preliminary data released by the Commerce department on Thursday.
Back in 2019, three of the largest US regional banks successfully lobbied regulators to ease their capital requirements by excluding paper losses on their investment portfolios. Doing so, they claimed, would allow them to increase lending — thus supporting the American economy — and better manage interest rate risk. As regulators consider rolling back those
The crisis-stricken CBI will be renamed as part of efforts to demonstrate that it has reformed its toxic workplace culture after weeks of allegations of rape, sexual harassment and bullying, the new boss of the business lobby group has said. Rain Newton-Smith said the rebranding would be necessary as part of a promised “root and
Sharon Wong had decided she had earned a little indulgence as she browsed at Louis Vuitton in La Samaritaine department store, one of Paris’s marquee luxury shopping destinations. “It’s expensive, but I’ve been thinking about it for a few months,” the thirtysomething marketing manager from London said as she examined models of the Petit Sac
One of the (many) times I have been heckled during a panel on crypto was when I argued that it shouldn’t be thought of as money. The only reason to use it other than for speculation, I said, was to buy drugs on the internet. This was a preposterous idea, the heckler retorted; crypto is
Microsoft’s blockbuster $75bn acquisition of Activision may have been teetering on the edge of failure on Wednesday, but its shareholders had other things on their minds. The software company’s shares jumped more than 7 per cent the day after it reported a resurgence in its cloud computing business and reiterated a determination to capitalise on