News

Shell is counting the cost of its retreat from Russia. The tally could be as high as $5bn, it said on Thursday. That will not faze investors. Rival BP’s writedowns could be five times as big. But Shell’s exit could be more complicated. It may also have a bigger impact on Russia’s future ability to

The UK’s financial regulator plans to beef up enforcement operations, in a broad crackdown on what it calls “problem firms” across financial services. The Financial Conduct Authority said on Thursday it will add 80 staff to pursue businesses that do not meet basic regulatory standards in all sectors, as it laid out its strategy for

Is Future You funny and sharp? It could be. Instead of thinking up a witty retort 20 minutes after the event, Future You might now be able to insert this wisecrack into a past conversation courtesy of Twitter. This week, the social media app announced it was working on an edit function to enable users

The author is economics professor at Kozminski University in Warsaw and a former finance minister of Poland Russia’s invasion of Ukraine takes its toll. Most tragic are the terrible loss of life and human suffering, but the material destruction too is enormous. Before the war, the IMF forecast an increase this year in Ukraine’s gross

The economic crisis in Sri Lanka is deepening. The rupee has plunged to record lows against the dollar on the back of blackouts, food shortages and sky-high prices. The country may have as little as $500mn left in foreign reserves though a $1bn bond repayment is due in a few months. With the IMF ready

Right now, the dollar is the world’s most popular reserve currency by some margin. It plays a vital role in facilitating world trade and global finance, enabling the US to use it as a mightily effective weapon against those who stand against the aims of its foreign policy. Yet some think the weaponisation of the

Far-right politician Marine Le Pen has said she is open to appointing leftwingers in her government if she is elected French president later this month. Le Pen, who has already held out the prospect of a “government of national unity”, said on Thursday that while she would “probably not” work with hard-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon,

Nearly half of UK businesses expect the Russian invasion of Ukraine to result in lower sales and a growing proportion say rising energy and input prices are prompting them to curb their investment plans, according to official data published on Thursday. Of the nearly 3,000 companies interviewed for a Bank of England survey in March,

Rokos Capital Management is applying for licences to manage assets in Hong Kong and Singapore as part of an expansion into Asian equity capital markets as the UK hedge fund attempts to recover from a dire year. The fund, which is run by former Brevan Howard partner Chris Rokos and manages $13bn of assets, will

Tax experts have criticised the “disingenuous” explanation given by the wife of chancellor Rishi Sunak for claiming non-domiciled status. Akshata Murty, who married Sunak in 2009, owns a stake in Indian technology company Infosys, founded by her father, that is thought to be worth more than £500mn. Her spokesperson confirmed on Thursday that she holds

A leading infrastructure investor is eyeing the liquefied natural gas sector after raising a new $15bn fund, capitalising on Europe’s search for energy supply alternatives to Russia. I Squared Capital is among a handful of private capital firms dedicated to infrastructure investment. In the past decade the Miami-based group has grown to $34bn in assets,

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has pleaded with the international community to provide more military supplies and to impose tighter sanctions on Russia as his foreign minister said he had one demand of Nato: “Weapons, weapons and weapons.” The pleas from Kyiv come as Ukraine’s military warned that invading Russian troops were regrouping and preparing an

Richard Liu has stepped down as chief executive of JD.com, the Chinese ecommerce group he founded more than two decades ago, marking the latest exit for one of the country’s top entrepreneurs. Beijing’s months-long campaign to rein in Big Tech has spurred several Chinese entrepreneurs to flee executive roles in favour of working from behind

Shell will take a writedown of up to $5bn after its decision to quit Russia as the UK-listed energy group warned extreme price volatility in commodity markets would hit cash flow. In a trading update ahead of next month’s first-quarter results, Shell said ending its three joint ventures with Kremlin-backed gas producer Gazprom would result

Hardware rental start-up Grover has brought in former magazine executive Joanna Coles to chair its board, as it plans a rapid expansion of its consumer electronics subscription service fuelled by a new $330mn fundraising. Coles, who spent 12 years with publisher Hearst and was the former editor of women’s lifestyle magazine Cosmopolitan, has lately transitioned

We are delighted to welcome readers of Chartbook to Unhedged. This newsletter is usually available only to FT Premium subscribers. If you would like to subscribe to the FT, please click here. If you are already a Standard FT subscriber, you can get Unhedged (and the full suite of FT newsletters) by upgrading to premium,

Good morning and welcome to Europe Express. The eurozone’s own bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, will soon be looking for a new managing director to succeed Klaus Regling when his term ends this autumn. We’ll look at who might take over and why the ESM has been struggling to play a role of late.

Elsewhere on Thursday . . .  Putin’s invasion reminds us that we live in a finite world. Worldcoin promised free crypto If they canned their eyeballs with “The Orb.” Now they feel robbed. Behind Arsenal’s retro merch boom. If stocks don’t fall, the Fed needs to force them. On regulation, racing, and safety innovation. Naked mole rats have

Europe is blessed with many things but abundant and accessible mineral wealth and processing infrastructure are not among them. Industrially, Europe has positioned itself as a centre of excellence for research and development and high-end manufacturing, insulated from the challenges of extracting and processing raw commodities. Politically, Europe has driven the global agenda in environmental,

Two weeks ago the new Retroville shopping centre in north-western Kyiv was hit by Russian shelling, killing eight people. Now, a backhoe digger is clearing a mountain of debris in one section of the mall and Vladyslav Apostolov, co-founder of coffee chain Coffeelat, is trying to get back to business. “I am working on reopening

The writer is a bond portfolio manager at Barksdale Investment Management and co-author of ‘Undiversified: The Big Gender Short in Investment Management’ Not to be left out of the ESG gold rush, a growing number of bond firms now offer environmental, social and governance funds. ESG integration has become a standard box to be checked