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I enjoyed Simon Kuper’s piece on how to survive a conference (“How to survive a conference: don’t say things that are obviously true”, Opinion, Magazine, FT Weekend, April 30). My own pet conference peeve is when a member of the audience stands up, ostensibly to ask a question and instead makes a speech. I recall

In “The billable hour is a trap more and more of us are falling into” (Magazine, April 30) I was a little puzzled by Tim Harford’s last point that “there is a distinction between working and not working” which is worth sustaining. True enough if you need to bill a client, perhaps. But what about

Thank you Camilla Cavendish for, yet again, another common sense article, this time on the age taboo (Opinion, FT Weekend, April 23). Former Chrysler boss Lee Iacocca was certainly right, there are 40-year-olds who act like 80 and vice versa. As someone nearing the latter I am apoplectic at the lack of respect shown to

Boris Johnson will face renewed pressure on his leadership on Friday after the Conservatives suffered significant defeats in local elections across the UK, including losing the flagship London council of Wandsworth. Labour won the borough beloved of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher for its ultra-low local tax rates after 44 years in Tory hands, but

Boris Johnson’s local election results on Friday were “at the lower end of barely acceptable”, said one despondent former Conservative cabinet minister, surveying a scene of heavy Tory losses. After the events of the last few months, the prime minister will take that. On the face of it Johnson should have been sunk into gloom

Had Emma realised she was pregnant a few days earlier, things might have happened differently. She could have accessed abortion services at the Planned Parenthood clinic close to her home in Texas, which only allows abortions up to six weeks. She would have set up medical appointments rather than taking a pill to induce abortion

Cash buyers of UK homes spent one-third more on their property purchases in the year to March than in an average pre-pandemic year, analysis has found, underlining the role of mortgage-free purchasers in driving the property boom. There were 482,000 cash buyers in the year to March 2022 and they spent £178bn buying homes —

In a poor year for new US listings, Bausch + Lomb should have offered a bit of cheer. The Canadian eyecare products maker successfully raised $630mn this week. That made it the second biggest initial public offering in 2022 after private equity firm TPG’s offering in January. The listings market is having its slowest start

Since the lockdowns, gardening has not been considered eccentric. It has returned to the centre of life, not just for the over-50s. During most of the Easter break and on bank holiday, I was kneeling in flower beds without being considered odd. I was not even praying. I have been rethinking eccentricity while reading Todd

The risk of a slowdown in the UK housing market is growing as interest rate rises by the Bank of England, the threat of recession and soaring inflation put a squeeze on household finances, economists warned. The BoE increased its main interest rate on Thursday by a quarter point to 1 per cent to curb

This week, the economic mood music changed into a more anxious minor key, as recent shocks to developed world economies have echoed longer and louder than had been expected. Whatever you thought about the economy a week ago, you should be a little more worried than you were. Inflation has been grinding up for a

Petrol station operator EG Group is attempting to buy convenience store chain McColl’s business out of administration, after the crisis-hit retailer rejected a rescue bid from Wm Morrison. Blackburn-based EG, whose owners also control Asda, has been pressing for a swift deal, one person with knowledge of the matter said, as it seizes on the

“Nothing grows under big trees,” Constantin Brancusi said when he fled his job as Rodin’s assistant in 1907. Was it freedom from being French — from Rodin’s suffocating influence — that liberated eastern European artists to take the lead in Modernist sculpture? Converging on Paris in the early 20th century were Brancusi from Romania, Chaim

Yesterday, CNBC was able to roll out its “MARKETS IN TURMOIL” package, and honestly, it felt appropriate. Stocks went into a sudden and mysteriously violent tailspin on Thursday. After rising 3 per cent on Wednesday after Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell indicated that the central bank wasn’t contemplating raising rates by more than 50 basis

Messing with the nation’s Full English breakfast is tantamount to blasphemy. But that may be on the table. The pig farmers’ trade body warns that empty shelves beckon if the UK’s biggest supermarket fails to raise bacon prices. A flashpoint throughout the pandemic, pig farming ails from similar woes to makers of cars and semiconductors:

The owner of the Times Square building, where the New Year’s Eve Ball drops each December before tens of thousands of revellers, will invest $500mn in its renovation in another vote of confidence in a New York City neighbourhood trying to recover from the pandemic. Jamestown, the real estate firm that redeveloped New York’s Chelsea

Some see their seventies as a time to sail the world, write a book or simply sit back. Others will still be paying off their mortgages. UK bank NatWest last month joined the pack hoping to serve the latter camp, launching home loans that can be repaid up to age 75. Some lenders go still

The writer is professor of finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business A perfect economic storm engulfs industrial countries. Even before the pandemic, US-Chinese geopolitical rivalry impeded global trade and cross-border investment. The pandemic skewed demand towards bicycles and away from gym memberships. Then rolling lockdowns across the world disrupted production of

The US economy continued to add jobs at a rapid pace last month even as employers struggled with a shortage of workers and demands for higher wages, giving the Federal Reserve further ammunition to increase interest rates to fight soaring inflation. Non-farm payrolls grew by 428,000 in April, according to data released by the Bureau

Tesla has agreed a long-term deal to buy nickel from global miner Vale as the carmaker looks to secure the raw materials needed for its batteries. Nickel is needed for the most powerful lithium-ion cells used in electric vehicles and the supply agreement with the Brazilian group marks the latest move by Elon Musk’s group