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Michael Pettis is a finance professor at Peking University and a senior associate at the Carnegie China Center. China’s recently released economic data illustrate just how difficult it has been for the authorities in China to implement economic policies to expand sustainable domestic demand. While first-quarter GDP grew nominally by 8.4 per cent year on

Multinational companies continue to pay almost 200,000 employees based in Russia despite pledges to suspend or end activities in the country, raising fears of mass sackings or nationalisations as hopes fade for a swift end to war in Ukraine. A string of western companies from McDonald’s to Renault committed to paying thousands of employees’ wages

A few moments ago, money markets began pricing in, with 100 per cent certainty, a half percentage point interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve next month. It seems certain that we’re in for the most aggressive global central bank tightening cycle in decades. Data snaphot from Bloomberg: And a prescient chartbook just dropped through

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, bars and retailers have been delisting Russian brands in protest and, in some cases, theatrically pouring the liquor down the drain.  At the last count, UK sales of Russian vodka were down seven per cent according to NielsenIQ. Bestseller Russian Standard, which is distilled in St Petersburg, leaves a gap in the

When Jack Calland, a South African masters student at the London School of Economics, was told one-fifth of his classes would be cancelled last term he took matters into his own hands. Having been charged more than £23,000 for his international development degree, he decided to withhold his tuition payments in protest over “extortionate” rates

The secret to successful food delivery is to manage a speedy pick up and drop off without letting the grub go cold or misplacing half the order on the way. The mouthful that is Just Eat Takeaway.com may do all right handling dinner from the local pizza place or kebab shop. But in its corporate

Several hundred GlaxoSmithKline workers have voted to go on strike after rejecting a below inflation pay rise, setting the stage for an industrial battle unusual in the pharmaceutical industry. Unite, the union representing the workers at manufacturing sites across the UK, said the strike would be the first in the drugmaker’s history. Unite members voted

Dear reader, British householders basked in Easter holiday warmth at the weekend. A few have even returned to work sporting tans gained in their back gardens. The political climate is chillier. Autumn will bring colder weather, big price rises for domestic heating and voter discontent. In October, the UK’s latest rolling energy price cap, which

Oxford BioMedica warned that uncertainty over the future of its contract to manufacture AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine would cause revenue to decline this year, sending its share price down 6 per cent. The London-listed company said there was a “pause” in vaccine manufacturing while it was in talks with AstraZeneca about whether to extend the supply

ESG “is the Devil Incarnate”, Elon Musk wrote on Twitter this month. The Tesla and SpaceX chief executive has obvious reasons for discomfort with the ESG agenda. While Tesla can boast uniquely impressive environmental credentials, having kick-started the global electric car industry, its social and governance record is more problematic. There have been serious allegations

The best thing about Frieze Art Fair, or any international art show for that matter, is the potential for superlative people-watching. Forget the crazy installation pieces by artists with single syllable names and Old Masters selling for the annual GDP of a small nation; when it comes to stealth-wealth dressing, no environment is better for

To get trapped in a temporal glitch once is unfortunate. To get trapped in a temporal glitch twice is surely a sign that the cosmos knows exactly what it’s doing. It’s also a sign that Netflix knows how to get more out of a cult hit. A second series of the trippy psychological comedy Russian

The IMF has warned governments against relying on short-term improvements to their public finances stemming from higher inflation, saying these rarely provide lasting relief from fiscal pressures. The fund’s Fiscal Monitor, published on Wednesday, showed the surge in inflation over the past year had lowered both borrowing and debt burdens in advanced and emerging economies.

Six months ago opposition leaders were so worried that Rishi Sunak would be their rival at the next election they began working to dent his reputation. The young chancellor’s star quality and popularity ratings reassured Conservatives that they had a powerful plan B in place should Boris Johnson’s premiership blow up. Since then Sunak has

Momentum is building in Sweden for the country to apply for Nato membership after its biggest selling newspaper endorsed the move and an opinion poll showed a record number of Swedes supported the idea. The debate over membership of the western military alliance in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been slower to

Japan’s Ministry for Economy, Trade and Industry was on a high. It was June 2018 and Meti, as it is more commonly known, had just forced through the $18bn sale of Toshiba’s prized memory chip business to a private equity consortium. The deal appeared to justify the ministry’s billing as the creator of the nation’s

Gary Chen, co-founder of Raise Robotics, strides on stage at the University of California, Berkeley wearing a bright yellow hi-vis vest. The attention-grabbing outfit is his ploy to stand out to an audience of investors and convince them to hand over $2mn. If successful, he and his robots will continue on a journey that might

It sounded like a fair question. With sanctions against Russia likely to disrupt Germany’s energy supply, why, asked MP Marc Bernhard, couldn’t Berlin just restart its mothballed nuclear power stations? “If we reactivate the three plants that were switched off last December they could, together with the three that are still operating, replace all the

A consortium led by US private equity group KKR has offered to buy Australia’s largest private hospital operator for A$20.1bn ($14.9bn), in what would be one of the biggest leverage buyouts in the country’s history. The offer for Ramsay Health Care valued the company at a 37 per cent premium on the Australian business’s closing

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: Who will back Elon Musk? Marc FilippinoGood morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, April 20th, and this is your FT News Briefing. [MUSIC PLAYING] Elon Musk still wants to buy Twitter, but it’s not clear who will back his $43bn bid.