News

Two of the biggest landlords in the West End are in talks over a £3.5bn merger that would bring together some of central London’s best known tourist destinations under the ownership of a single company. Capital & Counties, which owns Covent Garden and the surrounding area, and Shaftesbury, which has a portfolio spanning parts of

In 2005, Fiona Rogers joined Magnum, the prestigious photography co-operative, as an unpaid intern. She spent 16 years there, working her way up to chief operating officer. Founded in 1947, Magnum has long been dominated by its white, male membership, although that is beginning to change. During Rogers’ time there, she became familiar with debates

US accounting regulators are discussing a potential deal with their counterparts in Beijing that could pave the way for American officials to inspect audits of Chinese companies, according to people briefed on the matter. A deal that would allow officials from the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board access to the audits could help resolve

At the start of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Hugh Grant’s character can’t remember at which of his friends’ weddings he has just turned up late. “Who is it today?” he asks caddishly, as he rushes into his pew. Personally, I’m not sure I ever went to so many weddings that I lost track of

As supermarkets grapple with fraught supply chains and the highest food price inflation in decades, they are also facing another pressing challenge: predicting which of the many pandemic induced trends will endure. From panic buying and a surge in home deliveries, to a collapse in sales at city centre convenience stores, consumers have upended the

The surging dollar has prompted some analysts and investors to forecast a new period of “reverse currency wars” as many central banks abandon a longstanding preference for weaker exchange rates. The new dynamic marks a departure from the period of low inflation that followed the 2007-09 global financial crisis, when historically low interest rates and

1 Torque wrench Snap-On adjustable torque wrench, £455 2 Tonearm Linn titanium Ekos SE tonearm, $5,645, basilaudio.com 3 Hex keysWiha colour-coded hex L-Key set, from $3.69 4 Paper folderPaper folder, hwebber.co.uk 5 Measuring TapeHermès leather In The Pocket measuring tape, $530 6 LoupeVintage brass folding magnifier by Leitz Wetzlar, from Jony Ive’s personal collection 7

Pilita Clark writes with her customary verve and clarity on the dangers ahead from climate inaction and special pleading by the corporate sector (“Magical thinking on fossil fuels endangers safety”, Opinion, FT Weekend, April 30). Separately, you report that resolutions demanding stricter fossil fuel financing policies at three big American banks were backed by only

The repercussions of Elon Musk’s brand of “free speech absolutism” for Twitter have of late received much comment (“Musk, Twitter and the need to vet new media owners”, FT View, April 29). The EU’s internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, went so far as to remind Musk of his need to comply with EU rules, a

Anyone reading your review of the book by Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel, Dead in the Water (“Fire, fraud and murder”, Life & Arts, April 30), would suppose that the spectacular attempted fraud by the Greek shipowner who faked a Somali pirate attack on his own vessel was only exposed in London legal proceedings by

Just six years ago, Boris Johnson departed London’s City Hall as a popular mayor who had softened the party’s once toxic brand in the capital. But on Friday, Conservatives were left clinging on to only a few remnants of electoral power within the city as voters in key boroughs, concerned with the cost of living

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

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

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

The review of Adrian Duncan’s The Geometer Lobachevsky (Life & Arts, April 30) had me humming the classic 1953 song “Lobachevsky” by satirist Tom Lehrer: “Who made me the genius I am today/The mathematician that others all quote?/Who’s the professor that made me that way/The greatest that ever got chalk on his coat?/One man deserves

While how art works indeed remains an enigma (Opinion, FT Weekend, April 23), neuroscience and Marcel Proust come to the rescue. Our brains (Jeff Hawkins: On Intelligence) use memory-based models to make predictions of future events, and the best art breaks some expected patterns while teaching us new ones. The artist (as Proust wrote of

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

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

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

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 —