Vodafone, the UK telecoms group under pressure from an activist investor, has strengthened its board with two appointments including the former chief executive of Arm. Simon Segars, who stepped down as head of the UK-based chip business three months ago and Delphine Cunci, an industry heavyweight in France, will join Vodafone’s board as non-executives after
The writer is literary editor of The Spectator I have only one general principle in life, which is that If Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks something is a good idea — or, at least, says so publicly — then I’m against it. So it is with the return to the office. The Brexit opportunities and government efficiency
A friend sends me a photo of a packet of pak choi with a large Gucci label on it alongside a rather lovely Louis Vuitton box with some pretty cakes in it. Later she sends another of some apples and bread spilling out of a Chanel bag. The pictures have, she tells me, come from
It took a devastating combination of the pandemic, war in Ukraine and a central banking U-turn on inflation to do it. Since the turn of the year the rules of the game in markets have been dramatically upended. Gone are those notorious acronyms Fomo (fear of missing out), Tina (there is no alternative to higher
Dear reader, The tech sector mauling is not over yet. On Thursday, the tech-heavy Nasdaq index fell 5 per cent — the sharpest decline since June 2020. The S&P 500 is down 13 per cent this year. There is little the tech industry can do about decades of low interest rates coming to an end.
It must have been the nerves. When the hostess at HanGawi asked me to remove my shoes, I couldn’t. I was at the Korean restaurant to meet Ocean Vuong, author, literary darling, MacArthur genius, rare celebrity poet and, I noticed, a bit of a fashion plate. But with one frantic tug, my boot laces turned
High in a Shenzhen office tower, the new chief executive of Arm’s China unit found a six-man security team barring his entrance to the UK chip designer’s offices. But Liu Renchen, glasses pressed to his nose and khakis hiked up to his belly button, was determined to enter and resolve a two-year corporate battle. Gaining
The Penwith Moors, north of Penzance in the far west of Cornwall, form one of the richest archaeological landscapes in the country. Just search “historical landmark” on Google Maps and zoom in on the area if you want to see what I mean. The huge Lanyon Quoit; the holed stone at Mên-an-Tol; the Boskednan stone
How well did you keep up with the news this week? Take our quiz. Investors are braced for more losses on Wall Street today after a vicious sell-off wiped out the gains of a relief rally and dragged down many leading technology stocks. Shares in Asia and Europe have today followed US equities lower at
Russian forces made another attempt on Friday to snuff out Ukrainian resistance at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol to allow President Vladimir Putin to declare a battlefield success at a Moscow parade on May 9. Ukraine’s general staff said Russian troops supported by air strikes and artillery “resumed assault operations to take control of
Are bikini waxes sticky during a recession? A chain of salons based in Texas, European Wax Center, is confident they are. Chief executive David Berg told investors this week that he based this optimism on “how quickly we rebounded coming out of Covid”, when customers soon “got back into their regular beauty care regimen”. Facing
The EU is considering providing more time and money to Hungary to adapt to an embargo on Russian oil after talks on Brussels’ plans for sanctions have become “stuck”, the bloc’s foreign affairs chief said. Josep Borrell, high representative for foreign policy, told the Financial Times that he understood why Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech
What’s your view on printing services that reproduce work that is either unobtainable or prohibitively expensive? Do you have any other tips for finding affordable art for your walls? To be honest, when I look at art reproduction websites, I’m left very confused — there is so much choice, I flounder around and give up
It can look like there’s a glitch where the Manhattan skyline meets the southern edge of Central Park, as if the image of the city is breaking up with shiny bars of static appearing and shifting across the screen. That Midtown skyline, for so long anchored by the gleaming, illuminated, exuberant crowns of the Chrysler
Good morning and welcome to Europe Express. Donors are continuing to make financial pledges to help Ukraine, with $6.5bn being raised yesterday in Warsaw. But the challenges for the war-torn, cash-strapped country are by far dwarfing those numbers. We’ll bring you up to speed with what was agreed and what is still missing, apart from
“Just one launch, Boris, and England is gone,” said a broadcaster on Russian state television earlier this week, standing in front of a simulation of Britain and Ireland being wiped out by a nuclear weapon. The alarming clip, which was circulated widely on social media, was swiftly criticised in the west as hyperbolic and provocative.
Elon Musk’s $44bn Twitter takeover was never going to be conventional. First, he persuaded Wall Street to back him with enough debt to win over the company’s board. Now, he is relying on his billionaire friends to raise the cash portion of his offer and convince shareholders to make him king of the world’s “digital
The launch of the first two European-listed uranium exchange traded funds, coming hot on the heels of a $1bn US uranium ETF acquisition, are the latest indicators of what has been a flurry of fund activity in nuclear fuel investment. But despite the huge speculative interest, especially from investors in an investment trust that is
Your browser does not support playing this file but you can still download the MP3 file to play locally. Wall Street stocks suffered steep declines on Thursday with the Nasdaq’s biggest fall since 2020 and the Bank of England has warned that the UK economy will slide into recession this year. Plus, the FT’s Latin
User location information made public by leading Chinese social media companies has revealed that posts of some of the country’s most prominent hardline online nationalists come from abroad. The location data from the accounts of a handful of patriotic “influencers” have prompted anger from compatriots enduring lockdowns and other restrictions under Beijing’s tough zero-Covid policy.