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The writer, a former senior adviser to UK chancellors Philip Hammond and Sajid Javid, is a partner at Flint Global; he writes in a personal capacity Boris Johnson’s government has been fundamentally “un-Conservative”. That has been the impression given by the Tory leadership contest so far. Inevitably, the debate has been dominated by the modern

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway dramatically slowed new investment in the second quarter after setting a blistering pace at the start of the year, as the US stock market sell-off pushed the insurance-to-railroad conglomerate to a $43.8bn loss. Berkshire said on Saturday that the drop in global financial markets had weighed heavily on its stock portfolio

Western capitals are increasingly alarmed about the deepening economic co-operation between Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Vladimir Putin, warning of the mounting risk that the Nato member state could be hit by punitive retaliation if it helps Russia avoid sanctions. Six western officials told the Financial Times that they were concerned about the pledge

America’s largest oil and gas producers are keeping a lid on supply, defying calls from the Biden administration to lift output even as soaring fuel prices driven by Russia’s war in Ukraine deliver bumper profits. Top shale oil and gas producers including ConocoPhillips, Pioneer Natural Resources and Devon Energy all unveiled a sharp increase in

The private equity businesses at some of the buyout industry’s most prominent firms are beginning to contract as a sharp slide in financial markets and a slowing of new investment from institutional investors lead to declining assets under management. Most publicly traded US buyout firms, including KKR, Carlyle Group and Apollo Global, reported declining assets

Welcome back. This weekend I’m looking at war fatigue in Europe and the US, and the impact of western sanctions on Russia. But first, thanks for voting in last week’s poll. Some 58 per cent of readers said yes, the European Central Bank would use its new bond-buying instrument to help Italy, and 22 per

Cold shower anyone? The hot water has been turned off in some German leisure centres. In Spain, energy savings measures are starting to bite. Offices, bars and shops are banned from adjusting the thermostat below 27C in summer or above 19C in winter. Temperature restrictions reflect the severity of Europe’s energy shortage. Soaring prices are

Your browser does not support playing this file but you can still download the MP3 file to play locally. The voting process in the contest for a new Tory leader and prime minister was delayed over security concerns, but the campaign continued with Liz Truss looking all but certain to win. We discuss her lines

Even in a city noted for places freighted with the darker chapters of history, Plötzensee Prison is a distinctively grim spot on the Berlin map. The red and yellow brick mid-19th century facility, tucked away in the city’s western reaches near the now abandoned Tegel airport, gained infamy under the Nazis as one of the

Here we go again. The debate about the Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum — should they, shouldn’t they be returned to Greece, where a sparkling purpose-built museum overlooking the Acropolis from which the sculptures were wrenched by Lord Elgin from 1801-05 sits waiting for them — seems to go on for ever. It was

Liz Truss, the Tory leadership frontrunner, has rejected “handouts” as the best way to help households through the worst income squeeze in 60 years, promising instead tax cuts and radical economic reform. Truss, in an interview with the Financial Times, defied the “abacus economics” of the Treasury, insisting she would press ahead with tax cuts

In days gone by, Conservatives used to be in favour of conserving things. Liz Truss, whose political identity was formed during the tumult of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, is in a hurry to challenge orthodoxies, overhaul institutions, and generally shake things up. “There are things I very much care about conserving,” the foreign secretary said, looking

Bordeaux Index, the world’s largest fine-wine trader, is toasting surging sales as investors flock to rare vintages in part as a hedge against rampant inflation. Revenues at the fine wine merchant reached £80mn in the six months to June 30, up 37 per cent on the same period last year. That puts the London-headquartered company

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Vladimir Putin have pledged to deepen economic ties between their countries as Moscow seeks to soften the blow of western sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine. After a four-hour meeting at Putin’s residence in Sochi on Friday, the Russian and Turkish presidents released a joint statement pledging to raise their

For two days straight, Chinese military officials have been delivering a message of triumph to the public. The exercises with which the People’s Liberation Army is punishing Taiwan for hosting US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi feature “multiple firsts”, they gloated on state television. “Our firepower covers all of Taiwan, and we can strike wherever we

The Bank of England has come under growing criticism from Conservative MPs who claim the central bank has been too slow in tackling surging inflation. Andrew Bailey, the bank’s governor, warned this week consumer price inflation, which already hit a 40-year high of 9.4 per cent in June, will exceed 13 per cent by the

Rishi Sunak, one of the Conservative leadership hopefuls, has sparked cross-party outrage after he was filmed telling party members in Tunbridge Wells how he had shifted money from “deprived urban areas” to fund projects in the Kent commuter belt. The former UK chancellor’s comments, made in a sun-drenched garden, appeared to cut across the government’s

Senior managers have agreed a 4 per cent pay increase with the operator of the UK’s rail infrastructure, potentially cushioning the blow from strikes later this month. The Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association on Friday said managers at Network Rail had voted in favour of the pay deal, which also includes better job security and a

The writer is author of ‘Two Hundred Years of Muddling Through: The Surprising Story of the British Economy’ The Bank of England’s new forecasts make for exceptionally grim reading. In recent months the bank’s governor Andrew Bailey has warned that the institution is walking “a narrow path” between the risks of continuing high inflation and

The Frank Gehry-designed headquarters that Facebook moved into in 2015 was a cavernous, elongated warehouse with concrete floors and a deliberately unfinished feel. At the very centre of the 500-yard, open-plan sprawl was a nest of desks where Mark Zuckerberg and his top lieutenants could congregate. The massive scale, the bustle and the sense of