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Tell us a bit about yourself I am Oliver Roeder, the FT’s US senior data journalist, based in New York. I also write for the magazine about stuff — horseracing, chess tournaments, the world’s tallest flagpole. A bit frenetic, I realise. And — miraculously — I am now Reorder, the setter (constructor, as we Americans

Rising raw sewage spills into England’s waterways flushed out a promise of increased investment from water companies this week. The number of monitored sewage discharges into rivers, lakes and the sea has risen from about 400 to 865 daily between 2018 and 2022, according to Environment Agency (EA) data. The scale of the crisis has

The author is English managing editor at OVD-Info, a group monitoring human rights in Russia More than a year into the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, my western friends often ask me: why don’t Russians protest? The answer is that some do — but protest is largely futile in the face of a decade-long Kremlin crackdown.

Some 23mn US households have acquired a new pet since 2020. Now big hotel brands are competing for the business of this new clientele: the pampered pup. According to a 2022 report by Mars Pet Nutrition, 52 per cent of Americans are planning on bringing their dogs along with them on holiday. The Hilton travel

© Ken Ishii/Reuters “The steering committee of the free world” is how Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, describes the G7. And that description underlines the importance of the G7 summit that will take place in Hiroshima. The Ukraine war is still raging and may be reaching a crucial stage. Meanwhile, tensions continue to

The most successful hedge fund of the pandemic era is the US homeowner. Interest rates plunging to near-zero and soaring house prices led Americans into a frenzy of mortgage refinancings. These deals allowed them to either slash their monthly payments or withdraw equity from their homes. New research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New

Johnny Depp’s Louis is a man of few words, mostly mumbled, in Maïwenn’s ‘Jeanne du Barry’ The Cannes Film Festival made a step forward this week only to find itself in a series of quagmires. That the opening film was directed by a woman, Maïwenn’s period drama Jeanne du Barry, might have been applauded by

Alibaba is planning to list its logistics and grocery businesses within the next 18 months and spin off its cloud division as the Chinese group commences a massive shake-up of its tech empire. In its first financial results since the tech giant announced plans to split into six businesses, Alibaba kicked off the group’s break-up

Sony said it would consider spinning off and relisting shares of its financial services arm to bolster investments in its entertainment business, delighting investors with a U-turn in strategy. Shares in the Japanese group rose 6.4 per cent on Thursday as investors welcomed the move as a way to unlock value in the Japanese conglomerate.

‘Academic rigour’: Professor Daniel Beunza, of Bayes Business School, was hired by the Financial Services Culture Board to conduct ‘ethnographic research’ © Charlie Bibby/FT Most business school professors earn their corn by delivering training programmes to students and executives on campus. But Daniel Beunza, a professor of social studies of finance at Bayes Business School

Turkey’s united opposition said it had found irregularities in thousands of ballot boxes used in Sunday’s first-round presidential election, but conceded that this was not why their candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu lost out to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Kılıçdaroğlu’s Republican People’s party (CHP) said on Wednesday that it had filed a complaint with Turkey’s election board

For one Chinese semiconductor executive, the easiest way to recruit South Korean engineers is to hang around outside factory gates. “I just go to foreign companies’ fabs and stand at the gate, asking them to come to our own production lines to do some temporary work and earn some extra money,” the executive, who did

Kick a can down a road for long enough and fatigue ends the game. On Monday, several prominent, distressed US companies finally succumbed to bankruptcy. They included Vice Media and Envision Healthcare, whose backers included some of the world’s best-known investors.  The court filings are instructive. Documents not only detailed how these companies kept running

Brazil’s powerful house Speaker has vowed to stop Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva taking any “backward steps” on economic reform, in a challenge to the president’s push to overhaul business-friendly laws. Lula, the veteran leftist leader who began his third term this year, has stirred unease among investors after seeking to roll back legislation on

EU regulators have cleared Microsoft’s $75bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard, breaking from the UK and US which are holding up the gaming industry’s biggest deal. Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief, on Monday said Microsoft had made concessions to alleviate its concerns, including allowing all European consumers who purchase an existing or future Activision game

In the quest to minimise threats and maximise rewards, risk officers have become more reliant on artificial intelligence. But, while AI is increasingly being used to spot patterns and behaviours that may indicate fraud or money laundering — and, more controversially, to recognise faces to verify customer identity — its wider use to manage risk

The G7 and EU will ban Russian gas imports on routes where Moscow has cut supplies, according to officials involved in the negotiations, the first time pipeline gas trade has been blocked by western powers since the invasion of Ukraine. The decision, which is to be finalised by G7 leaders at a summit in Hiroshima

Strikes and disruption felled another British rail franchise this week. The government seized control of TransPennine Express — best described as a non-running joke — from operator UK-listed FirstGroup. Cue lamentations about the state of Britain’s railways, coupled with rose-tinted anecdotes of rail travel elsewhere in Europe. But are Britons right to believe that trains

Rupak Ghose is an adviser to fintech companies and a former financials research analyst. When I joined Credit Suisse First Boston in the summer of 1999 I knew where the action was — equity research. Yes, really. There was legendary telecoms analyst Jack Grubman at Salomon and Internet analysts Mary Meeker at Morgan Stanley and

For a decade, Ari Aster toiled in obscurity writing a dozen feature-length screenplays that he dreamt of directing but never got the chance. One of these was the original draft for his latest film, Beau Is Afraid, the sprawling adventures of an angst-ridden mummy’s boy. “This was the one that felt the freest and most