Today In The Markets

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. US corporate bond markets are “on fire” as companies have sold a record $150bn of debt since the start of this month, the busiest opening to the year for more than three decades. Investment-grade groups

Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the War in Ukraine myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Operations have been suspended at a major gas terminal outside St Petersburg after a large fire broke out, which the Russian operator said had been caused by “external action”. Novatek, Russia’s second-largest natural gas

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Donald Trump has unleashed a volley of smears at Nikki Haley as he tries to quash any lingering Republican opposition to his White House run and score a decisive victory in the New Hampshire primary

No light enters the office of Ukraine’s military spymaster, Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov. The walls are fortified, the windows reinforced with sandbags, and the curtains drawn. When Budanov, 38, arrived for a Financial Times interview, walking in through a doorway adorned with a religious icon, he immediately ordered an aide to turn off the lights.

A third of UK universities saw a decline in overseas non-EU applicants in 2023, almost twice as many as the previous year, according to a Financial Times analysis of data from the university admissions service. The cooling of international demand for a swath of British higher education institutions came as overall non-EU applications grew 3.6

Attacks on shipping in the Red Sea threaten to create a ‘‘chaotic” period for Europe’s manufacturers and retailers as supply chains are disrupted, logistics experts have warned. Nearly all container ships have been rerouted away from the Suez Canal towards the longer route around the Cape of Good Hope since Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi militants last

Just five years ago, Andreas Wolf was struggling to convince investors of his plans to turn the Bavarian automotive supplier Vitesco Technologies into a specialist in parts and systems for electric vehicles. “Nobody believed in it,” the Vitesco CEO said, underscoring just how late the incumbent automotive industry was to realise that combustion engine cars

Across the dozens of economic indicators released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics this week, few demonstrated the difficulty of pinning down the state of the world’s second-biggest economy better than the steel data. Just months ago, steel output — previously subject to an informal cap as Beijing sought to curb emissions and production —

Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the War in Ukraine myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. The writer is a former president of the World Bank As Ukraine struggles to survive Russia’s relentless onslaught, the G7 countries are still debating the transfer of frozen Russian reserves to Ukraine. Some hesitate

The market town of Bawku, crammed into a nook of Ghana’s most north-eastern region, is about a day’s drive from the country’s coastal capital, Accra. But the distance between the two places is not merely geographical. While Accra boasts rich culture, nightlife and a steady stream of tourists, rural Bawku has become a tinderbox of

Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Hedge funds myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Assets managed by the Chinese operations of Bridgewater and Two Sigma surged as the US hedge funds outperformed their local peers during the market turbulence of last year. Bridgewater China Investment Management, the local arm

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Iran accused Israel of killing four members of its elite Revolutionary Guards and a number of Syrians forces in an air strike that targeted a building in Damascus. Tasnim, an Iranian news agency affiliated to

US public pension plans that manage hundreds of billions of dollars of assets are increasingly turning to risky leverage strategies as burgeoning private market holdings create cash flow strains. At least eight very large US public pension funds are using borrowed cash or other leverage strategies, now that the board of Calstrs, one of the

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Gilts have endured a bruising new year as investors have a big rethink about the timing of Bank of England interest rate cuts this year. An Ice Bank of America index of UK government debt

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Labour will not try to delay endlessly Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda bill in the House of Lords, partly because of fears its peers are too few and too old to withstand a Tory revenge

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Sam Altman is in discussions with Middle Eastern investors and chip fabricators including TSMC about launching a new chip venture, as the OpenAI chief executive seeks to satisfy his company’s growing need for semiconductors while

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. There is always a point in working out a whodunnit where a half-forgotten fact resurfaces to complicate the evolving theory. There is a similar pattern developing in the current investor narrative of the US economy

China’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua stood beaming beside his US counterpart John Kerry as the UN COP28 summit closed. He had brought his eight-year-old grandson from Beijing to Dubai to wish his friend a happy 80th birthday, he said, as the two men marked the end of an unusual chapter in diplomacy. Xie, 74, retired

Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Social affairs myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Melania Trump appears to be sitting out Donald Trump’s bid for presidential re-election this year. In fact, since leaving the White House the former first lady has largely retreated from public view. It feels, writes

This time last year Murray Auchincloss appeared to have little ambition to ever be chief executive of Britain’s most storied oil company. The Canadian former tax analyst had carved out a highly successful, quiet career inside BP, but as finance chief he was destined to be the numbers guy keeping his more flamboyant boss in