America leads on innovation, and Europe on regulation, or so the conventional wisdom goes. But recently, the US seems to have taken the lead in the latter, particularly in politically powerful industries like technology, pharma and finance. Just last week, Eli Lilly, the producer of popular insulin medications Humalog and Humulin, pledged to reduce its
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China will target an economic expansion of “around 5 per cent” for 2023 as President Xi Jinping seeks to restore pre-pandemic levels of growth and prepares to centralise power further in his own hands. Announcing the target, which was below last year’s goal of 5.5 per cent, China’s outgoing premier Li Keqiang told its rubber-stamp
The biggest selling point for the UK stock market in recent months has been its slow, steady, boring nature. This is a quality that should not be taken for granted. The era dominated by whizz-bang, US tech-led stocks is fading. Sure, it made a good shot at reasserting itself in the final months of last
If Elon Musk is right about Twitter being crucial to the future of civilisation, then things are looking bleak for us all. Outages are on the rise, advertising revenues have plunged, and a company that had a 7,500-strong workforce just four months ago now employs just 2,000, after yet another round of job cuts. When
China’s manufacturing sector expanded at its fastest pace in more than a decade in February, in one of the clearest signs that the world’s second-largest economy is shaking off the effects of a nationwide Covid-19 outbreak and years of growth-constraining pandemic curbs. The official manufacturing sector purchasing managers’ index hit 52.6 last month, according to
The Swiss financial regulator has concluded its two-year investigation into Credit Suisse’s failings over the collapse of specialist finance firm Greensill Capital, finding there had been a “serious breach of Swiss supervisory law”. The implosion of Greensill in March 2021 caused Credit Suisse to suspend and close $10bn worth of funds that had lent money
The writer is chair of Rockefeller International The recent surge in tech stocks has true believers buzzing that the downturn of late last year is over and the boom of the past decade is back. But the opposite case is more likely. This surge had all the hallmarks of an echo bubble — a brief
Warren Buffett offered a full-throated defence of share buybacks in his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders on Saturday, saying stock purchases by Berkshire and the dozens of publicly traded companies it owns are a boon to investors. The comments from the 92-year-old investor came in the shortest annual letter he has published in decades
Joe Biden has said he did not think China would send weapons to Russia to help its military campaign in Ukraine, in comments that appeared to undercut claims from his top officials that Beijing was considering the idea. In an interview with ABC television on Friday that was aired on the evening of the anniversary
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
The EU and its allies are investigating a surge in exports to economies in Russia’s vicinity as they seek to prevent companies from evading western sanctions imposed on Moscow. David O’Sullivan, the EU’s newly appointed sanctions envoy, told the Financial Times that big increases in trade with countries in Russia’s neighbourhood raised questions as to
It was in January that the comedy routine of Mr Makati began to change. His weekly Saturday night standup at the Memento Lounge in Lagos, Nigeria’s pulsing commercial capital, switched from gags about the daily hassles of living in Africa’s most populous nation to the practicalities of voting. “He was telling jokes about how to
US President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv on Monday in a show of American commitment ahead of the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On a trip shrouded by secrecy for security reasons after months of planning, Biden announced $500mn in new military aid. “I’m here to show our unwavering support
Poland’s head of state has called on Nato powers to give postwar security guarantees to Ukraine, on the eve of a visit by the US president to Warsaw to reaffirm the west’s support for Kyiv a year into Russia’s war. Andrzej Duda told the Financial Times that promises of security guarantees “would be important” for
US President Joe Biden plans to talk to Xi Jinping, his Chinese counterpart, to “get to the bottom” of the situation involving the suspected Chinese spy balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina two weeks ago. Biden said he gave the order for a US fighter jet to shoot the balloon,
The Pentagon is reviewing its weapons stockpiles and may need to boost military spending after seeing how quickly ammunition has been used during the war in Ukraine, the most senior US military official said. General Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said the return of 20th-century ground warfare tactics in Europe was
UK inflation slowed by more than expected to a six-month low in January, adding to growing evidence that price pressures have peaked. The annual rate of consumer price inflation declined to 10.1 per cent in January, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday, down from 10.5 per cent in December. Inflation hit a high
What’s the best language through which to understand the complex events of the world today? Is it economic? Political? Cultural? I’ve begun to think it might be psychological. Psychologists (at least many of those I know) tend to divide the world up into two types of personalities: paranoids, who operate as if they are always
Gemma Hatvani has worked in the energy industry for 20 years but has not experienced anything like the past couple of months as struggling households flock to her Facebook-based service, Energy Support and Advice UK. “It’s horrendous . . . the demand from people needing food parcels, top-up vouchers . . . I know we hear this word a lot but it’s unprecedented,”
Debt market specialists have been banging the drum on this for months: bonds are back. Now it appears this message has cut through sufficiently clearly — particularly on corporate bonds — that the popularity of the bet is one of the few things they think could hold the asset class back, at least in the