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Brussels has proposed using the EU budget to indirectly support weapons production, an unprecedented move provoked by Russia’s war against Ukraine to provide cash to an industry it has previously been barred from funding. Providing weapons to help Ukraine’s defence since February 2022 has emptied Europe’s armouries and defence stocks and strained the continent’s limited

In Huawei’s head office last month, staff gathered to celebrate the in-house development of software to replace a US system that, thanks to Washington’s export controls, the Chinese technology company was no longer able to purchase. “Three years ago, we were cut off from the old ERP [enterprise resource planning] system,” said Tao Jingwen, a

Top investors have warned against complacency following the second-biggest bank failure in US history. Gathering for the opening day of the annual Milken Institute conference in Beverly Hills following the sale of First Republic to JPMorgan hours earlier, David Hunt, chief executive of $1.2tn asset manager PGIM, told delegates: “There is a little bit of

US financial regulators have recommended partly revamping American deposit insurance to increase coverage for day-to-day business accounts as a way to reduce the risk of bank runs, such as the ones that brought down Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said such a targeted increase would be more cost effective

UK employers are pressing to suspend scheduled pension contributions amounting to tens of millions of pounds after many retirement schemes hit an unexpected surplus. Investment advisers to FTSE-listed companies with “defined benefit” pensions that pay a guaranteed income based on an employee’s salary and length of service, said employers are increasingly looking to reach agreements

China’s manufacturing activity contracted in April, official figures showed, as global demand for goods slowed and Communist party leaders warned that a post-Covid recovery in the world’s second-largest economy had yet to gain solid footing. The National Bureau of Statistics’ purchasing managers’ index fell to 49.2 points compared with 51.9 in March, falling below analyst

As a town planner specialising in gaining consents to alter listed buildings, I agreed with just about everything in Hugo Cox’s article about the struggle to make England’s older homes energy efficient (“Retrofit roadblocks”, House & Home, April 22). Delays have never been worse, inconsistency never greater. A main reason for this is the under-funding

US authorities ordered a tanker of Iranian crude oil to redirect towards the US in recent days, in a move officials believe was the trigger for Iran’s decision to capture a US-bound tanker on Thursday. Three people briefed on the situation said the US had intervened to summon a ship loaded with Iranian crude, originally

Milton Friedman famously declared that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. While this is undeniably true, no policymaker can afford to overlook the behavioural dynamics that are part and parcel of the inflationary process. In confronting an energy price shock it would be helpful, as Huw Pill, chief economist of the Bank of

Since Silicon Valley Bank failed in March, regulators have been studying why, exactly, they didn’t better identify the risks of having the country’s 16th-largest bank keep more than 90 per cent of its deposits uninsured. Now the Fed is out with an initial report on what went wrong: The four key takeaways of the report

The banking equivalent of defenestration that befell Credit Suisse might have been sudden, but, the like the run-up, the aftermath is likely to be long, messy and litigious. A press release from legal gunslingers Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan just landed in Alphaville’s inbox. It says the litigation firm is joining forces with a handful

Sometimes only violence will do: a high kick straight to the pretensions. Such is the lesson of Polite Society, the fizzy new comedy from first-time feature director Nida Manzoor. A madcap genre jumble of martial arts and Bollywood-style slapstick, the aggro is largely carried out by 16-year-old Londoner Ria Khan (Priya Kansara), an aspirant stuntwoman.

A woman wraps white chocolate in Virunga Chocolate’s Mutwanga factory. Profits are reinvested in local communities © Moses Sawasawa/FT At the agribusiness facility in Mutwanga, a Congolese village in the foothills of the Rwenzori mountains, bordering Uganda, chocolate is a deadly serious business. Heavily armed park rangers from the adjacent Virunga National Park guard fermenting

The former chief executive of South Africa’s broken Eskom electricity monopoly refused to name politicians alleged to be involved in looting of the blackout-plagued utility, in his first appearance before South African lawmakers since he was removed from his role. André de Ruyter told a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday that he stood by an explosive

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Sudanese refugees pour into Chad’ Marc Filippino Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, April 26th, and this is your FT News Briefing. [MUSIC PLAYING] Alphabet just reported a bounce-back quarter. The violence in Sudan is putting pressure on its neighbour

Europe’s financial authorities are quizzing lenders about their exposure to rapidly rising interest rates, as they investigate how much this risk may spread beyond the banking sector. Andrea Enria, chair of the European Central Bank’s supervisory board, said the bank was looking at whether unrealised losses on lenders’ bond portfolios, the value of which have

Your browser does not support playing this file but you can still download the MP3 file to play locally. How do you know if you need a financial adviser, how do you go about finding one and how do you know you’re getting value for money? Presenter Claer Barrett guides 22-year-old Laureen, who works for

French luxury group LVMH on Monday became the first European company to hit a $500bn market capitalisation, boosted by Chinese consumers’ appetite for luxury goods following Beijing’s decision to lift all coronavirus-related restrictions. Shares in the Paris-listed company, whose brands include Louis Vuitton and Dior, edged up 0.3 per cent to €903.7 to achieve a

CME Group, the world’s largest derivatives exchange, said it is not planning to launch a nickel contract to rival the London Metal Exchange, despite its chief describing the LME as having “a lot of issues”. “I’m not working on listing a nickel contract,” Terry Duffy, chair and chief executive of the Chicago-based group, told the

Dialogue has all but broken down between the US and China, but a speech by the US Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has offered a way out of the impasse. Though Yellen last week reiterated the Biden administration’s position that national security will always trump economics, in both content and tone her speech marked a break