Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has committed more than $2bn to new long-term football sponsorship deals this year in a sign of the kingdom’s growing ambitions in the world’s most popular sport. The Public Investment Fund said in its most recent financial statement that it had entered into sponsorship agreements “with multiple football clubs amounting
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Calpers, the biggest public pension plan in the US, admitted a decision to put its private equity programme on hold for 10 years had cost it up to $18bn of returns as it announced an overhaul of its governance. In a frank assessment of past failings at the $440bn retirement system, chief investment officer Nicole
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Too many things get called Orwellian these days. Poor George Orwell — a man who advised writers to “never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in
Wang Chuanfu is not afraid of throwing investors curveballs. In fact, the Chinese billionaire appears to relish it. Twenty years ago, Wang unveiled plans for his BYD group to buy a failing state car manufacturer that had attempted to develop a sideline in making missiles. His logic: rip out the petrol-guzzling internal combustion engines from
After a decade of scandal shaped by billions of euros in losses, a flurry of misconduct and compliance cases and boardroom battles it looked — just for a few hours at the end of April — as if the outgoing Deutsche Bank chair Paul Achleitner was going to leave on a high. Germany’s largest lender
You can enable subtitles (captions) in the video player I’m here at the Kennedy Centre, where I’ve just spoken to Dr Henry Kissinger about the war in Ukraine, the prospects of it going nuclear, how that compares with the Cold War, which, of course, is his era. How China is viewing the situation between Nato
Two decades ago, HSBC made a bold gamble to recapitalise an ailing Chinese insurance firm, paying $600mn for 10 per cent of Ping An. The risk paid off handsomely netting the bank $2.6bn in profit when the stake was sold in 2012. But a decade on, Ping An has become HSBC’s largest shareholder and is
5 Belgrave Square, a stucco-fronted mansion complete with pillared portico, is one of London’s most exclusive addresses, overlooking leafy gardens and nestled between grand embassies and other private residences. Once home to Sir Henry “Chips” Channon, a US-born Conservative MP whose diaries published during the 1960s were a source of scandal about British high society,
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. On a bus for a “pilgrimage” to the grave of renowned Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, Hoda overheard others discussing what they would pray for when they reached “the holy site”. Their words made clear to
The era of unlimited central bank largesse is drawing to a close, injecting intense volatility in to government bonds and inflicting heavy damage on a clutch of high-profile hedge funds. Superstars of the industry have been left nursing billions of dollars in losses after an abrupt rethink on how and when central banks will reverse
Telegram has raised more than $1bn through bond sales to investors including Abu Dhabi state funds, as the encrypted messaging app tries to capitalise on a surge in users. In his Telegram channel, chief executive Pavel Durov said the company had raised the funds from “some of the largest and most knowledgeable investors from all
January 30 2019: it was mid-afternoon on a grey Wednesday in London when a dozen or so anonymous Twitter bots burst into life. “McCrums a criminal . . . Dannyboy McCRIM is GOING TO JAIL!!” they sang. As this stream of online abuse gathered pace, another more formal voice joined the chorus, that of Heike Pauls, a respected and
This story is outside the FT’s paywall (you do not need a subscription to access it) so it can be shared freely. Deborah Fuller had just heard the sentences that were the closest she would get to justice. In March 2016, her daughter Sarah died from an overdose of drugs that included Subsys: a tiny
© James Ferguson As we leave Alexei Navalny’s office for our lunch, I realise we are to be joined by an uninvited guest. A young man in a baggy white T-shirt yells “Alexei, where do you buy cocaine?”, follows us across the street and begins filming us on his phone. For Vladimir Putin’s biggest opponent,
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Ten years ago this summer, I was on a family holiday in Mallorca. Four weeks after I became chancellor of the exchequer, the economic waters seemed as calm as the Mediterranean. Dispatched to buy the
In Richard Desmond’s hands, simple objects become terrifying. There’s the receptionist’s bell that he uses to interrupt executives in board meetings, or the cups of tea that occasionally fly over underlings. For me, the terror begins when he picks up the wine list. This is Coq d’Argent, a rooftop restaurant overlooking the Bank of England.
James Gorman arrives promptly at noon at a sparsely populated Greek restaurant in midtown Manhattan. We are a couple of blocks from Morgan Stanley’s headquarters, which are incongruously located near Times Square. While Gorman and his colleagues fought to save the investment bank from collapsing in recent years, tourists would throng obliviously outside, having pictures