Author: Press room

The United Arab Emirates has cancelled the licence of Russia’s MTS Bank and ordered it to wind down its operations in the Gulf state, citing the “sanctions risks” associated with the lender.The decision comes as the region’s dominant trade and financial hub has been facing US pressure over western concerns that it is becoming a haven for Russian sanction busting. The UAE’s central bank said in a statement on Friday that it “has been decided to cancel MTS Bank’s Abu Dhabi licence, wind down its operations within six months from the date of the decision . . . and close the branch”.“This decision comes…

Serhiy Prytula asks to meet me at St Andrew’s church, an 18th-century landmark with green and gold onion domes at the top of Kyiv’s most picturesque street. I am puzzled as to why. It is only a short walk to his preferred restaurant in the Ukrainian capital. But the answer soon becomes clear. Prytula is a showman who adores the spotlight. As we stroll to our destination, he turns the head of every person we pass. For Ukrainians, the 41-year-old was already a television star, comedy actor and host for the national stage of the Eurovision Song Contest. Now he…

A top UK fund manager has defended domestic pension funds for cutting their exposure to London-listed stocks, warning that the City has fallen into the “backwater” of global equity markets.Nick Train, who co-founded investment firm Lindsell Train, which manages over £18bn, said that “the sad fact is you can understand pension fund asset allocators’ disenchantment with and disinvestment from UK equities”.He pointed to the UK’s “dismal capital performance” over the past 20 years and the “absence [of] globally significant technology champions” as reasons for London’s “unwelcome reputation as a backwater in 21st century equity markets”.Train’s comments come as British pension…

It’s taken four months, but my two employee pensions are now toast and the money has been transferred into a self-managed portfolio. Sipp, Sipp hooray! Then again, no more blaming others for bum returns. We’re on our own from here, readers.About time too. Stuck in bureaucratic limbo, my portfolio wasn’t changing much month to month. You were losing patience? It’s a frustrated man who has to write 950 words on index-linked bonds. Thank goodness for the distraction of a mini banking crisis.And sitting on so much cash — while inflation sneered — was excruciating. No more. As you can see…

The UK economy was more resilient than previously estimated in the final three months of 2022, according to revised data, with the government easing the impact of higher energy costs on households even as business investment fell. The Office for National Statistics said on Friday that gross domestic product rose by 0.1 per cent between the third and fourth quarters of last year, rather than remaining unchanged, as indicated in its preliminary estimates. The uptick followed a 0.1 per cent contraction in the three months to September 2022, which the ONS first estimated as a 0.2 per cent drop. Nevertheless,…

Floppy disks and fax machines are still very much in use in Japan. Old-fashioned business habits have damped demand for enterprise software and cloud computing. Private equity interest in the sector is a sign that the pace of digital transformation could be set to pick up.Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC has invested in Works Human Intelligence. It will jointly own the Japanese human resources software provider with private equity firm Bain Capital. The deal values Works Human at Y350bn ($2.6bn). That is more than triple the Y100bn paid by Bain for the business in 2019. GIC takes over about half…

You know the feeling. You are ­sitting listlessly in front of the TV, flicking through the channels, when you come across some backwater station, maybe it is ITV3 or Dave, and there is an old drama show you remember from years ago. Nor, lest you pigeonhole me as the middle-aged git that I indeed am, is this a uniquely Freeview experience. Log into Netflix and it will not be long before you are offered some prehistoric film or series that mysteriously is “trending now”.Perhaps it was a series you used to like, or maybe you were never a fan but…

French sports retailer Decathlon is doubling down on India, investing in manufacturing in the south Asian country as it looks to tap the fast growing market and diversify its global production bases.The group, which is the third largest athletic retailer in the world after Adidas and Nike by sales, said that it would invest €100mn over the next five years into its retail, logistics and manufacturing operations in the country.“As India is producing more and more for India, it can also produce more and more for the world”, said Barbara Martin Coppola, the chief executive of the sporting goods giant,…

A campaign group has taken the first step towards legal action against the UK government over its free trade deal with Australia, arguing that it flouts Britain’s international climate obligations. Global Feedback, a UK and Netherlands-based group, said it would seek a judicial review, claiming ministers failed to carry out proper due diligence on the environmental impact of importing Australian agricultural products, such as beef and dairy.The move is the latest in a series of legal actions taken by campaigners against the government on environmental grounds. One recent successful case in the High Court forced the Department for Business, Energy…

This article is an on-site version of our Moral Money newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter sent straight to your inbox.Visit our Moral Money hub for all the latest ESG news, opinion and analysis from around the FT So much for Green Day. The UK government’s flurry of announcements on energy policy yesterday contained no big bazooka of green subsidy pledges to counter the huge incentive packages wheeled out by Washington and then Brussels. That will add to concerns about green investment drifting abroad, despite chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s promise that the government will “mitigate against those risks” in…