The world’s biggest alternative asset manager Blackstone Group expects less dealmaking this year because of high inflation, rising interest rates and geopolitical uncertainty. “It’s hard to predict deal activity, although I would expect it to be lower than last year,” Blackstone’s president Jonathan Gray told the Financial Times. A record $5.8tn in mergers were agreed

When Donald Trump became US president, his critics pronounced the death of the liberal international order. The shorthand “LIO” spread like a rash across think-tanks and op-ed pages. Its funeral was both premature and parochial. Like the Holy Roman Empire, which was not holy or Roman, nor an empire, the liberal international order was always

China has said it will launch an official private pension scheme that aims to push more of the country’s vast household savings into the financial market, as the government grapples with an ageing population. Employees in China will be able to contribute up to Rmb12,000 a year ($1,860) to private schemes, which the government said

Choppy waters distance Chinese business from western capital. Cnooc, a driller in the contested South China Sea, embodies that gulf. The US expelled China’s biggest offshore oil and gas producer from the New York stock market in 2021, deeming it a security threat. Cnooc’s politicised status invites scepticism from international investors, despite a triumphant homecoming

Bill Ackman may have hung up his activist breeches this year, but there seems to be a new generation of young guns emerging that is just as willing to take on companies. The investment bank Lazard recorded 73 new activist campaigns globally in the first three months of 2022, the most since it started systematically

Nestlé pushed up prices for its products by more than 5 per cent in the first three months of the year, in the latest sign of steep commodity inflation feeding through to consumer prices for branded goods. The world’s largest food company said on Thursday it had increased pricing by 5.2 per cent in the

Deloitte has been ordered to pay a fine and costs of more than £2mn by the UK accounting regulator after admitting rule breaches during its audit of outsourcing group Mitie. The Financial Reporting Council found that the Big Four firm failed in its audit of the FTSE 250 company’s impairment testing of goodwill, which was

This is Lauly Li in Taipei, covering the tech industry’s hardware supply chain, from semiconductors to smartphones to EVs. My fellow tech correspondent Cheng Ting-Fang and I have seen some incredible changes over the past four years. I remember back in March 2018, the chairman of a key Apple supplier told me it would be

Pandemic-related absenteeism and social unrest in Chile have hit BHP’s copper and nickel output, which fell 10 per cent and 13 per cent, respectively, as the company warned labour constraints would persist for the rest of 2022. Declines in copper production in the nine months to March 31 were driven by large Covid-19 outbreaks at

This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: Le Pen, patriots and the anti-globalist movement [MUSIC PLAYING] Gideon RachmanHello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. This week’s edition comes from France, where I’ve been following the presidential election. It’s now a

Good morning and welcome to Europe Express. European leaders — the UK’s Boris Johnson today, the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday — are visiting India at a time of simmering anxiety over its relations with Russia. We’ll explore the stakes and what goodies are on offer in terms of free trade deals. In

The carbon emissions of JBS, the world’s largest meatpacking company, soared more than 50 per cent in the past five years, according to new research that lays bare the challenge of reducing greenhouse gases in the global food industry. The study by several environmental groups suggested that the São Paulo-headquartered company released 421.6mn metric tonnes

In September 2020, a Hong Kong-registered company transferred ownership of a ship, which had disappeared from maritime tracking data bases the previous month, to the Pyongyang-based Su Ryong San Shipping Co Ltd. According to UN monitors, the Chinese-owned company imported up to 200,000 tonnes of sanctioned North Korean coal, which it bartered with a Chinese

It’s well known that office temperatures are mostly set at levels that suit men better than women — temperatures are often based on a historic formula that used men’s metabolism as a guide. You can witness the consequence in offices anywhere: women shivering while men stretch out in T-shirts and shirtsleeves. It sounds trivial. Yet,

Individual shareholders might feel that they cannot truly influence what happens in companies in which they own shares. But they can at least hope that if the performance of the company is sufficiently bad, large shareholders may eventually step in. Over the past year several of Europe’s largest companies have faced such interventions as so-called

Scandaltown Lyric Hammersmith, London “This part of our literature is a disgrace to our language and our national character,” thundered Victorian politician, historian and writer Thomas Macaulay in a diatribe against Restoration comedy. It was, he continued, thoroughly indecent: “earthy”, “sensual” and “devilish”. That’s precisely what attracted playwright Mike Bartlett to the genre. In his

Hedge funds and finance industry groups are laying the groundwork for litigation that threatens to jeopardise some of the top priorities for reforming markets following the collapse of Archegos, which are being pushed by Gary Gensler, the top US securities regulator. Gensler, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has pointed to the collapse of

The new political drama Gaslit pulls off a coup: not only does it find a different angle for a story that has been endlessly retold since 1973, it also gives Julia Roberts her most substantial role in two decades. This is the highest profile original offering to appear on the Starzplay streaming platform to date.

My husband and I decided to divorce nearly 12 months ago but we held off launching proceedings until no-fault divorce was introduced. This way we don’t need to cite blame, which is important to us. Now this law has come in, we feel we can go ahead. Will this affect the financial outcome in any

Rosenthal, one of Germany’s oldest porcelain manufacturers, has seen plenty of disruption in its 140-year history. But nothing has prepared it for this: the threat of a cut-off of natural gas that would bring production of its bone china plates, bowls and vases to an abrupt halt. “We can’t live without gas,” says Mads Ryder,