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The BT Tower. A dank Soho alley. A pub. The highly anticipated anglicisation of the French series Call My Agent! begins with a montage reminding us that we’ve left Eiffel, Haussmann and café culture behind. The venue is now unmistakably London, but it’s a famous French idiom that comes to mind while watching the new

A year and a half before the coronavirus first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan, Devi Sridhar, a professor in global public health at the University of Edinburgh, warned with eerie prescience of the pandemic looming on the horizon. The biggest threat to the UK, Sridhar told audiences at the Hay Literary Festival in

Most of us are facing the challenge of re-entry into the “new normal”. My FT colleague Rana Foroohar perfectly captured the weirdness of this moment as “the cognitive dissonance of corporate life,” in this week’s Swamp Notes newsletter (and you can sign up here).  There is much to think about as we struggle to manage

Art began with animals – just look at Mayan jaguars, Egyptian cats and the painted bison in Lascaux. The particularly British love affair with the equestrian and canine is ingrained in its art history: see George Stubbs’ regal, romantic horses, Van Dyck’s painting of King Charles II as a child with his eponymous spaniel and

Egypt’s president has called for stakes in army-owned companies to be sold on the stock exchange before the end of the year, as part of efforts to address the economic fallout of the war between Russia and Ukraine. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi also announced plans for greater private sector participation in state-owned companies in a speech

An easing of UK immigration rules for care workers will not solve the sector’s workforce crisis unless the government funds an immediate increase in pay to well above the statutory minimum, a leading advisory group said on Wednesday. The Migration Advisory Committee, which was tasked with assessing how the end of EU free movement had

Two top-10 investors in Moderna have voted against a shareholder resolution that would push the US drugmaker towards transferring its technology to the developing world. The resolution, which will be proposed at the vaccine maker’s annual meeting on Thursday, asks its board of directors to explore the feasibility of transferring Moderna’s intellectual property and technical

India’s second-richest man Mukesh Ambani and US buyout group Apollo Global Management are planning a joint bid for UK high street pharmacy chain Boots, according to people familiar with the matter. The private equity group is working with Ambani’s Reliance Industries on a bid that if successful, would see one of Britain’s best-known retailers expand

Robinhood Markets announced it would sack 9 per cent of its full-time employees to reduce the number of “duplicate” jobs at the retail brokerage. Just two days ahead of the release of its first-quarter results, chief executive Vlad Tenev announced the lay-offs, saying the company’s “period of hyper growth” in 2020 and the first half

Arm has moved to regain control of its renegade China unit and replace its chief executive Allen Wu, as the UK chip designer seeks to clear its path to a successful public listing. The UK chip designer will put forward two individuals to act as co-chief executives of its China joint venture and has received

UK technology group Aveva has warned of slower revenue growth and margins for this financial year because of the war in Ukraine and rising costs caused by the battle for talent in the software industry. The FTSE 100 company said on Wednesday it had ceased new business in Russia, which represented 2 per cent of

UK officials are carrying out a “full inspection” of a P&O ferry on Wednesday after it lost power in the Irish Sea, as the company resumes a limited service on its most important Dover to Calais route. P&O Ferries operated its first services on the English Channel route — its busiest and most important —

Dear reader, Loaded with armfuls of flowers, joss papers, fruits and an entire roast suckling pig, my family trekked to New Jersey earlier this month to observe Ching Ming. Known in English as the Tomb Sweeping Festival, it is the day on which Chinese people honour their ancestors and clean family burial sites. For me,

Magnus Carlsen has often proved himself an innovative and inventive world champion, as he continues to stay ahead of his rivals in all forms of the game. Carlsen is the player to beat in two-hour classical play, 15-minute rapid, five-minute blitz, and one-minute bullet. The Norwegian, 31, has always varied his openings so as to

Welcome back. We have written a bit about environmental, social and governance investing losing some of its allure since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Investors are flocking towards oil-and-gas opportunities at the expense of clean energy projects. But there are signs of ESG resilience. Index provider MSCI reported earnings on Tuesday and said its ESG and

The Camden Theatre. The Camden Hippodrome Theatre. The Camden Hippodrome Picture Theatre. A BBC recording studio. The Music Machine. The Camden Palace. Koko. The changing names of this former theatre and music venue on Camden High Street in north London tell a story of shifts in entertainment culture. And now, after a £70mn restoration, a

Elon Musk can walk away from his $44bn takeover of Twitter for just $1bn — less than 1 per cent of his net worth and a fraction of the $21bn of the equity he has committed to complete the acquisition of the social media group. The “reverse termination fee”, revealed in a regulatory filing by

BASF has pledged to wind down its remaining businesses in Russia and Belarus, becoming one of the last big German groups to make such a move following the invasion of Ukraine. The world’s largest chemicals company by revenue, which last month froze all new projects in Russia, said on Wednesday it would close its existing

The first exchange traded product to combine gold and bitcoin in a single fund has launched on the SIX Swiss Exchange. The fund combines a millennia-old store of value with an upstart security that some have touted as the “new digital gold” — even if bitcoin’s slide in recent months has tarnished any reputation it

Shenzhen-based drone maker DJI has suspended its business in Russia and Ukraine, making it one of the first big Chinese companies to publicly halt Russian operations after President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. Russia’s use of DJI drones had drawn condemnation from Ukrainian officials and direct pleas to the company’s billionaire chief executive to cease its business

John Foley is retiring as chief executive of UK savings and investment group M&G, which has struggled to find its feet since its demerger from insurer Prudential in 2019. M&G said on Wednesday that Foley, who has been in the job since 2015, will continue in the position until a successor is in place. He