When the US drugs company Abbott Laboratories acquired a small division of the German chemicals group BASF for $6.9bn 23 years ago, its shares fell on fears that it had overpaid. But the deal was an amazing bargain. Humira, the promising medicine that came with it, is now the industry’s biggest blockbuster, with cumulative revenues
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Rishi Sunak is preparing to face down his Conservative critics and push ahead with reforms to post-Brexit trading rules in Northern Ireland, with allies saying the vast majority of Tory MPs just want to settle the issue. The UK prime minister spoke to Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president, on Friday, in a new
Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani was just 28 when he joined the board of Credit Suisse in 2010, tasked with representing Qatari interests after investors from the Gulf emirate poured billions into the Swiss bank. He arrived at the Zurich-based lender with a low profile, and after seven years with a seat at the top
Shell, ExxonMobil and the Dutch government earned €429bn from exploiting the Groningen gasfield, but left thousands of residents with cracked homes and health issues, a parliamentary investigation has found. The geological destabilisation caused by drilling at Groningen, Europe’s largest natural gas reserve, resulted in 1,594 earthquakes and damaged more than 85,000 buildings, a Dutch parliamentary
Ten years have passed since a fresh-faced British prime minister David Cameron promised a referendum on Brexit, a gamble that sowed the seeds of his political destruction. Now, four prime ministers later, Rishi Sunak is taking the biggest wager of his political career: trying to clear up the mess. Sunak is already in a precarious
Ukraine’s western allies have unveiled a swath of new sanctions targeting Russia’s military, industrial capacity and financial sector as they vow to increase pressure on Vladimir Putin. As Ukraine marked the first anniversary of the invasion on Friday, the UK and US announced new measures against hundreds of groups and individuals including Russian banks and
The writer is an FT contributing editor and writes the Chartbook newsletter In the first 12 months of the war in Ukraine, the condemnation of Russia and rhetorical backing of Kyiv by the governments of Europe and the US has been intense and largely unanimous. But the economic numbers tell a different story. Judged against
Students and academics at Oxford university have called for a sweeping review of policies around its relationship with donors, following revelations that the elite institution courted the Sackler family even after others cut ties. A Financial Times investigation on Monday showed that over the past two years Oxford extended exclusive invitations to a Sackler family
US stock futures dropped on Friday after the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation came in higher than expected, the latest in a run of hotter-than-expected economic data that has fuelled expectations of further interest rate rises from the central bank. S&P 500 futures fell 1.4 per cent while Nasdaq 100 futures were 1.7 per
The Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin often brags about his supposedly fearless exploits on Ukraine’s battlefields, but his most reckless manoeuvre may have been at home: flying too high in the Kremlin. For months, the founder of the Wagner group has been sparring with Russia’s military over a series of calamitous defeats in Ukraine, in
“The glory and freedom of Ukraine have not yet died.” Scarcely has the first line of a national anthem proved so apt. Russia’s assault on its neighbour on February 24 2022 brought large-scale war, with all its bloodshed, misery and mass dislocations, back to Europe. A year later there are grounds for solace. Ukraine has
Germany’s economy shrank more than expected in the fourth quarter according to revised figures, raising doubts over the ability of Europe’s biggest economy to escape recession and recover swiftly from its energy crisis. High inflation drove sharp falls in German consumer spending and investment in buildings and machinery in the final quarter of 2022, the
On February 24 last year, the world awoke to news that Russian tanks had rolled into Ukraine from the east and north. Troops had been massing on Ukraine’s borders for months and Russian leader Vladimir Putin had made a series of fiery speeches on the long-running conflict in the Donbas region. There were fears that
China has called for a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine and a return to negotiations as Beijing attempts to position itself as a peacemaker in the conflict on the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The Chinese foreign ministry on Friday released a 12-point paper on its position on a “political settlement” to the war
Europe needs to do more to boost supply chain self-sufficiency in renewable energy, the head of French utility Engie has warned, as huge US subsidies help it steal a march in creating an independent green tech industry. Catherine MacGregor, the gas distributor’s chief executive, said it was branching heavily into renewables in Europe as well
On February 22 1946, 77 years ago this week, George Kennan sent a 5,000-word telegram to James Byrnes, then US secretary of state. It was to become known as the “long telegram” and would form the basis of America’s policy towards the Soviet Union for nearly half a century. A shy and introverted Midwesterner, Kennan
Each February, the team at NPR’s fabulous Planet Money podcast announce their Valentines, nerdy love letters to under-appreciated data releases or obscure supply-chain trackers. This year, co-host Amanda Aronczyk revealed that her Valentine would be for . . . the office. She loved the camaraderie of office life. As love letters go, it was bittersweet. At the beginning of
31.1.23 The train taking me from Poland to Ukraine is full. The passengers are almost all women, and I share a compartment with one who’s mostly silent. In the long hours when the train is at a standstill, passport control and customs come around. Then we trade a few sentences. She’s expecting a child and
The US will make “no apologies” for prioritising American jobs in its bid to lead the global clean energy contest, the White House official responsible for the $369bn green funding drive has said. In an interview with the Financial Times, John Podesta, Joe Biden’s senior clean energy adviser, pushed back at criticism that the US
Job cuts at McKinsey and KPMG this month are the first concrete sign that a boom in spending on consultants that started during the pandemic might be over, as clients move to reduce costs and battle inflation. Companies short on staff and desperate to make their operations digital after the pandemic paid record amounts to
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed to defeat Russia in 2023, as Ukraine marked the solemn anniversary of the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion and a year that forever altered the country and upturned the global order. “A year ago on this day, from this same place around seven in the morning, I addressed you with a brief