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To succeed in business, it helps to believe in your product. Ritch Allison, until last year chief executive officer of Domino’s, indisputably believed in pizza. As proxy season approaches — when companies prostrate/parade themselves in front of shareholders over things like expenses and jet usage — FT Alphaville’s eye has been caught by an idiosyncratic

IE Business School in Spain has overtaken the UK’s Warwick Business School as the leading provider of Online MBAs, performing strongly on measures including salary increase after graduation, according to the tenth annual FT assessment of the business degree. Warwick and Imperial College maintain strong positions in the list of ten ranked institutions, ahead of

The insurance industry must resist the temptation to “give up the game” and retreat from areas blighted by extreme weather in a move that would leave governments to foot the bill for disasters, according to one of the biggest risk modelling companies. The increasing severity and frequency of storms, fires and floods in some parts

With his bushy moustache and gruff manner, Philippe Martinez certainly looks the part of the revolutionary Frenchman as he leads protests aimed at forcing President Emmanuel Macron to abandon his bid to raise the retirement age. But people who know him say the 61-year old boss of the CGT, France’s oldest and most hardline labour

Jeremy Hunt is offering extra help for companies investing in research and development in next week’s Budget to help compensate for his decision last autumn to scale back tax credits for the sector. The UK chancellor is set to restore relief to companies which can prove they are spending large amounts on research in sectors

Ukrainians were beginning to think they had won their “winter war” after riding out Russia’s repeated bombardment of their country’s power and heating system. A devastating missile strike early on Thursday — in which Moscow used several of its formidable hypersonic Kinzhal missiles — sent a brutal reminder that the threat is far from over.

The abrupt collapse of SVB Financial is unnerving. Silicon Valley Bank is the biggest bank to fail since the 2008 financial crisis. But the conditions that gave rise to the liquidity crunch at the tech-focused lender are not widely shared by most banks. The 15 per cent drop in the KBW bank index this week

BP chief executive Bernard Looney’s pay more than doubled to £10mn last year after the UK-listed energy major delivered a record $28bn in profits. The payout follows a tumultuous year in energy markets driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that led to historic earnings for the oil and gas industry as fossil fuel prices soared.

Apple and its manufacturing partner Foxconn were among the companies behind a landmark liberalisation of labour laws in the Indian state of Karnataka last month, according to three people familiar with the matter. Their successful lobbying for new legislation means two-shift production can take place in India, akin to the two companies’ practices in China,

June 1, 2012: Wandisco, “a leading provider of global collaboration software to the software development industry,” floats on London’s junior market with a market capitalisation of £37mn. Panmure Gordon is appointed Nomad, having raised £15mn gross for the company. November 19, 2012: Wandisco buys AltoStor, a California startup, for $1.5mn in cash and $3.6mn in

UK equity fund managers are calling for an overhaul of pension accounting rules to revive investor interest in London-listed shares, as a swath of companies prepares to depart or shun the City for US stock exchanges. Richard Buxton, UK equity fund manager at Jupiter, and David Cumming, head of UK equities at Newton Investment Management,

Here are some things that had happened, up until yesterday, since Swati Dhingra joined the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee: — The UK changed government, twice— The MPC was bigfooted repeatedly by the Financial Policy Committee— More than half the war in Ukraine— A plunge in energy costs Here is a thing that had

Amid higher inflation and macroeconomic uncertainty, women continue to set up and expand businesses. Yet female founders’ share of funds from backers remains stubbornly low. “There is still a big issue of unconscious bias against women founders,” says Sutin Yang, head of scale-ups at Virgin StartUp, a UK not-for-profit organisation, which has pledged to fund

Belying its temperate climate, Ireland’s economy is prone to extremes. It had a terrible financial crisis and a bad pandemic. But it recovered strongly in 2022, a trend reflected in the fortunes of its banks. Higher interest rates, diminished competition and the activities of locally-based multinationals have driven a strong run. Irish banks outperformed European

An oil industry that opposed President Joe Biden’s signature climate law is now manoeuvring to claim billions of dollars of US tax credits established by the legislation. The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022, aims to slash greenhouse gas emissions by supercharging clean energy industries. Its $369bn in climate provisions has sparked new investments in

The 2023 European individual championship, with nearly 500 entries, is currently in progress at Vrnjačka Banja, Serbia, and the fortunes of the nine English players can be followed online at chess-results.com. It is still early days in the 11 rounds, and a fine first round for England was followed by a second round slump with

Huawei is battling back in the competition to build 5G networks in south-east Asia, one of the last regions where the Chinese telecoms equipment maker still retains influence after being blacklisted by Washington. The company is among those lobbying for a role in Malaysia, according to three people briefed on the situation, after the country’s

A week ago, I’d have bet that Matt Hancock would never occupy my brain again for more than 15 seconds. But he’s back, against my will and indeed his own. More than 100,000 of Hancock’s WhatsApp messages, from his time as health secretary during the pandemic, have been shared with The Daily Telegraph. He gave

Dozens of kidnapped police officers and oil workers in Colombia have been released after they were taken hostage by protesters who raided an oilfield demanding better road infrastructure, the government has said. The announcement of the release was made by President Gustavo Petro on Friday evening. Earlier on Friday, the country’s ministers of defence, the

The writer is research director at the Social Market Foundation In gloomy times, it is natural to clutch at good news. Understandably, new research suggesting we can all have a day off work every week with no major costs got an almost breathlessly positive reception. Especially from people who already supported the move to a