Behind the glittery facades of London’s Selfridges and New York’s Chrysler Building, Austrian property billionaire René Benko assembled a financial time bomb. Benko’s Signa Group, which bought stakes in the two trophy assets and amassed a €27bn ($29bn) property portfolio, racked up at least €13bn in debt during the years when the cost of borrowing
In the 2,500 years since Herodotus delivered the first known written military history, a page-turner on the Persian wars, strategists have been busily studying conflict — not least to help their own states avoid “fighting the last war”. Just as the Napoleonic wars influenced tactics in the American civil war, so Europeans observed its killing
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro has dramatically raised the stakes in his country’s border dispute with Guyana, ordering state companies to exploit contested oil and mineral deposits and redrawing official maps after claiming an “overwhelming” mandate
Early each summer, the bus began to fill with teenagers. Tang Mingfang, a 40-year-old office manager, watched as his shuttle from the workers’ dormitories to Foxconn Hengyang, an Amazon supplier factory in southern China, grew more crowded with kids brought in to assemble Kindle ebooks and Echo speakers for Christmas. By the peak of the
EU leaders met President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday, kicking off a summit during which they plan to press China on industrial overcapacity, amid signs it is pumping hundreds of billions of dollars of new funding into the manufacturing of products targeted at European markets. The EU delegation for the annual EU-China summit —
Crypto industry short sellers have lost at least $6 billion trying to bet against publicly-traded crypto firms this year, due largely to Bitcoin’s (BTC) outsized rally since Jan. 1. According to a Dec. 5 report from research firm S3 partners, traders who bet against publicly traded crypto firms such as Coinbase, MicroStrategy, and Marathon Digital
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is being hauled over the hot coals on crypto X (Twitter) after claiming Bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrency’s “only true use case” is to facilitate crime. “The only true use case for it is criminals, drug traffickers, money laundering, tax avoidance,” Dimon said in a hearing before the United States Banking Committee
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. In an episode of the first world war television comedy series Blackadder Goes Forth, the catastrophic absurdity of war is laid bare in parody by a court martial centred around the murder of a pigeon.
Residential buildings under construction at China Vanke Co.’s Isle Maison development in Hefei, China, on Monday, Nov. 27, 2023. China is ramping up pressure on banks to support struggling real estate developers, signaling President Xi Jinping’s tolerance for property sector pain is nearing its limit. Source: Bloomberg Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images BEIJING — China
Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the US foreign policy myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Republicans in the US Senate on Wednesday blocked an effort to provide more funding for Ukraine to fight its war against Russia, delivering another blow to one of the White House’s central foreign policy
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. KPMG is planning to merge its UK and Swiss businesses in a tie-up that executives hope can boost growth and profits at the smallest of accounting’s Big Four. Partners in KPMG’s operations in the two
Shares of petcare retailer Chewy slid almost 9 per cent in extended trading on Wednesday after the company posted a wider net loss than expected and cut its full-year sales guidance. The company, which had beaten investors’ estimates for earnings for six straight quarters, missed expectations with a $35.8mn net loss. It also cut its
The UK government is facing more courtroom showdowns over its plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, lawyers have warned, despite new legislation designed to overcome legal blocks to the policy. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said a package of measures unveiled this week — including a bill that seeks to sidestep human rights legislation —
Municipals were firmer Wednesday while a busy primary market saw Pennsylvania sell $2.1 billion of general obligation bonds competitively and the New York City Transitional Finance Authority repriced its $1.3 billion of revenue bonds in the negotiated market with yields lowered by up to 12 basis points from Tuesday’s retail offering. Treasuries were firmer five
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Hedge fund Muddy Waters on Wednesday revealed a bet against a publicly listed real estate investment trust managed by private equity giant Blackstone. New York-listed Blackstone Mortgage Trust, which Blackstone began to manage in 2013
A plan to modify outstanding Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company debt with an upfront cash payment and a new series of longer-dated taxable bonds, which had overwhelming support of bondholders, was approved by U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain Wednesday. The PRIDCO bonds, federally taxable, have $150 million in principal outstanding ($189.6 million when
Bitcoin (BTC) has been on a tear, rising more than 10% this week. This shows that traders are urgently scrambling to buy Bitcoin as they anticipate the price to rally further. CoinShares data shows that investors have pumped in more than $1.44 billion into Bitcoin investment products in the past ten weeks. The expectation is
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Michael Gove’s plans to cap ground rents in England and Wales risks leaving the government open to a multibillion-pound compensation claim from institutional investors, a trade body has warned. The UK levelling up secretary has
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Rishi Sunak has unveiled a highly contentious “emergency” bill that deems Rwanda a “safe” country in law in an effort to revive his policy of sending migrants to the east African nation. The bill states
The Biden administration will award $6 billion to a pair of high-speed train projects in the west, marking the strongest federal support to date for a technology that has struggled to get off the ground in the U.S. “The dream of American high-speed rail is about to become reality,” Ray LaHood, former U.S. Secretary of
Municipal experts say buying attractively priced tax-exempt securities in the final weeks of 2023 could benefit portfolios well into 2024. With only a few short weeks left until year end, investors still have time to lock in value and historically attractive yields in the municipal bond market, according to analysts. Even with the latest rally,