TalkTalk has asked investment bank Lazard to review its options after several groups, including Vodafone, approached the UK broadband company about potential deals, according to people briefed on the matter. British telecoms executives have long called for greater consolidation in the domestic broadband market, claiming that the array of companies supplying mobile and internet contracts

Maison François, London Until 17 April, fans of François O’Neill’s French-style St James’s brasserie can celebrate spring with a playful “Cochon de Pâques” – a limited-edition Easter egg in the shape of a pig (£30). Head pastry chef Jérémy Prakhin has hand-crafted the creature – which is filled with hazelnut gianduja – from chocolate supplied

Ukrainian miner Ferrexpo managed to find buyers for the majority of its iron ore during the first quarter of the year, using rail and barges to transport material to the country’s western border. The London-listed company said it had sold 2.6mn tonnes of pellets, small balls of the steelmaking ingredient, in the three months to

Investors withdrew close to €14bn from European corporate debt funds in the first three months of the year, the worst quarter since the start of the pandemic, as the war in Ukraine fired up already rapid inflation and stirred market volatility.  So-called investment grade debt — at the safer end of the spectrum — lost

Goldman Sachs is offering its network of former partners, who range from tech executives to prime ministers, exclusive access to a new investment vehicle that will put money into the Wall Street firm’s private market funds. The so-called 1869 fund, which takes its name from the year Goldman was founded, invests across multiple private funds

If the tech movement known as Web3 represents the internet’s next big gold mine, then why aren’t we hearing more about the truly useful applications that will be built on this new platform? And why aren’t more developers flocking to it to make their fortune? Those questions hang uncomfortably over Web3 as the boom in

Most coffee shops have customers who drop in occasionally and Starbucks has a boss who does the same. Howard Schultz started his third stint in 35 years as chief executive this week with a pledge to restore the heart of a global chain that grew from one café in Seattle. “We are longing for love,

The largest living organism on our planet is neither animal nor plant. It lives in or, more accurately, under a forest in Oregon, spread over nine square kilometres. It glows eerily in the dark, and scientists reckon it’s about 2,500 years old. This is not the elevator pitch for a Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster, though I

On the surface, April 2020 was apocalyptic. You could walk the sunny streets of Oxford and barely see a soul: shops closed, roads empty, just the occasional pedestrian nervously crossing to the other side of the street. Of course, it wasn’t just Oxford. The International Labour Organization estimated that, globally, more than 80 per cent

UK investors poured more than £1bn into venture capital trusts in the tax year just ended, in a record fundraising season for the early-stage businesses investment vehicles. Figures published by the Association of Investment Companies (AIC) show that a record £1.13bn was invested in venture capital trusts in 2021-22, a 65 per cent increase compared

It’s always intriguing when you get to view an organisation’s internal emails, particularly when they’re about you. A recent Freedom of Information request made to the Scottish Government has yielded more than 100 pages of internal communications, revealing its discussions between staff about how it should deal with the final stages of a separate and

BlackRock will not go ahead with plans to switch a €1.4bn iShares corporate bond exchange traded fund to an environmental, social and governance index, after a shareholder meeting to approve the change failed to reach quorum. Last month the world’s largest asset manager proposed changing the index for its €1.4bn iShares € Corp Bond ex-Financials

The Thai hotel group that won full control of London’s Wolseley and Delaunay restaurants last week has accused their original co-founder Jeremy King of refusing its offer to recapitalise the business, leaving it with no option but to launch a “last resort” sale. Minor Hotel Group became outright owners of Corbin & King, which owns

Just Eat Takeaway: taking the piste Unperturbed by a recent share price that resembles a ski slope, Just Eat Takeaway staff decamped this week to Arosa in Switzerland. Hundreds of employees from the food delivery group’s two-dozen international markets were delivered to the Alpine resort for Snow Fest, an all-expenses-paid skiing and team-building junket. Snow

Of the 1.5mn people living with a learning disability in the UK, just six per cent are in paid work. Despite the promises of the 2010 Equality Act, employment rates have shown little progress, with numerous reports of unfair hiring practices. But in a refurbished car park in Peckham, south London, an unusual design studio

Imran Khan faces the greatest challenge of his political career after Pakistan’s supreme court ruled that the prime minister’s attempt to avoid a no-confidence vote by dissolving parliament was unconstitutional. The ruling, announced late on Thursday evening, set the stage for a weekend showdown in the national assembly that is widely expected to end the

The delay in legislation to create a right to flexible working is to be welcomed (“Tories shelve flexible working plans”, Report, April 2). This will give more time for this movement to be exposed for what it is, an opportunistic attempt to secure four (or even three) day working by stealth. This movement is being

John Thornhill’s recent article looking at a potential artificial intelligence power imbalance between the public and private sectors (Opinion, April 1) certainly doesn’t understate the risks of a brain drain from AI research into industry. Translation of deep tech research into successful industrial applications has always been a challenge in the UK — and having

Janan Ganesh follows a torturous line of logic by contrasting the real world approach of President Joe Biden in Ukraine, with some imagining of what Biden’s predecessor would be doing (“The war in Ukraine is not the end of Trump”, Opinion, March 30). Yet it strains credibility to assume tough talk or strategic ambiguity from

I was surprised to read Jonathan Guthrie’s statement that “good governance . . . prescribes box ticking over the independence of non-executive directors and similar matters of little significance” (“ESG category errors need unbundling for ethical investors”, Opinion, April 5). Especially when the FT’s own non-executive director (NED) diploma — quoting from Sir David Walker’s “Review of Corporate Governance