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Economists’ definitions of so-called safe assets — those that serve as a bolt hole for nervous money in crises — are often devoid of political content. This omission is historically under-informed. Safe assets, like reserve currencies and financial centres, have largely lost their pre-eminent status thanks to war. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine serves as a

“I’m trying to be nice but sometimes it comes out horrible,” says movie producer Cameron O’Neill at one point in Chivalry, offering a crisp encapsulation of this lively comedy about Hollywood’s hopelessly maladroit efforts to adjust to a post-#MeToo world. The new Channel 4 series is something of a high-wire act. A comedy set against

Pay for FTSE 100 chief executives bounced back to pre-pandemic levels after increasing by a third in 2021, as some sectors experienced a post-Covid boom and companies measured performance against conservative targets. An analysis by PwC of the first 50 FTSE 100 companies to publish their 2021 remuneration reports — based on financial years ending

Susie Boyt was spot on in her excellent piece “A love letter to The Wolseley” (Life & Arts, April 9). John Betjeman, poet Laureate and saviour of Holy Trinity Sloane Square, famously noted that when the end of the world came he wanted to be in the haberdashery department of a certain iconic department store

To step inside Carmen Haid’s Marrakech home is to be immersed in a sunset palette of Sahara brown, ochre and burnt red – the same tones that define so much of the ancient city’s architecture. Haid, who embarked on a career in fashion and worked alongside Yves Saint Laurent in the 1990s handling his PR,

This week’s problem I have a manager who does not support my professional development. I asked other senior managers for feedback and based on what they told me, I have spent my own time and money on professional training and activities to improve my soft skills. When my manager heard about this, she started giving

A vessel docked at a jetty on Louisiana’s coast is claiming its cargo of liquefied natural gas. Ice forms on a pipe as chilled fuel extracted from fields as far away as Texas or Pennsylvania is sent into the tanker’s insulated hold for shipment overseas. Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass export terminal is one of seven

The author’s latest book is ‘Lift As You Climb: Women and the Art of Ambition’ At a conference in central London recently, I finished giving a talk and watched the audience stream out of the room, faster, it seemed to me, than in pre-pandemic times. Couldn’t wait to get away from me? Probably. Or just

The proposed $40bn merger between India’s biggest private sector bank and mortgage provider has been driven by tighter regulation of the country’s shadow banking sector, according to the executive spearheading the deal. The merger of HDFC Bank and Housing Development Financing Corporation (HDFC) would be the largest in the country’s history and create a financial

In February, Xiaomi founder and chief executive Lei Jun threw down the gauntlet to Apple and Samsung, vowing to make his company China’s top-selling premium brand in three years. “[It’s] a war of life and death,” Lei said in a post on Chinese social media site Weibo. Xiaomi, the world’s second-largest smartphone vendor, is a

By Tom Bartlett Often, colour is seen as being only decorative, but at Waldo Works, the agency I co-founded, it’s one of the first things we think about on a new project. Our approach has always been to use colour to enhance the architecture of a space: to provide emotional cues, reinforce design agendas and

Claer Barrett is right to say that higher national insurance, rising inflation and stratospheric energy bills will be financially catastrophic for millions of people on low incomes (FT Money, March 19). I’d go further — the cost of living crisis is a health crisis too. Health issues and problems with money exacerbate each other. Financial

There appears to be a prevailing belief that during lockdown Boris Johnson morphed into a 21st century Marie Antoinette, scoffing cake and guzzling wine, while saying, “Let them go to parties” — only to be reminded that his own rules prohibited them from doing so (FT View, April 13). Many commentators have written that he

The number of vacant NHS hospital beds in England is lower than at any time since the start of the Covid-19 crisis, as the health service contends with a wave of infections unleashed by the Omicron variant while attempting to clear a massive backlog of outstanding treatment. In the week ending April 12, an average

Deloitte has sharply scaled back its London office space in one of the most significant reductions of real estate by a UK professional services firm since the pandemic triggered a shift to hybrid working. The Big Four accounting and consulting firm will leave a building at its New Street Square campus next month, taking to

At the outset of the pandemic, James Daunt instructed managers at US chain Barnes & Noble to take every book off their shelves, “weed out the rubbish”, make each section flow and put their stores back together again. The overhaul is a strategy that the managing director of Waterstones, the chain’s owner, has deployed many

Will China’s zero-Covid policy slow its economic growth? Shanghai’s Covid-19 lockdown has cast a shadow over China’s economic outlook for the remainder of 2022. Investors will pay special attention to this week’s reading on first-quarter gross domestic product, which will set the tone for how aggressively policymakers in Beijing will need to act to prop

The writer is a science commentator The first approval of an Alzheimer’s drug for 18 years should have been cause for celebration. But aducanumab seems to have broken new ground in all the wrong ways. This month, it became the first US-approved drug that will not be routinely covered by government healthcare schemes. It may

Isaiah switches effortlessly between Greek and Russian as he welcomes visitors to his church in Tamassos, deep among orange groves in the Cyprus countryside. With its five shiny gold domes — brought from St Petersburg — it is the first Russian Orthodox church in Cyprus, funded by the owner of a Russian construction company and

Daimler Trucks, eBay and a US energy company were among the recent buyers of carbon offsets created by projects that involved injecting carbon dioxide underground in order to extract more oil. Three US-based extraction projects were eligible to generate credits because their processes involved the capture of CO2. But this was used as a way