Author: Press room

It is faintly depressing that leadership in financial services around the shift to net zero still starts with a discussion of coal. But, close to a decade after the first divestment policies homed in on the world’s most polluting fossil fuel, it does. NatWest, which two years ago set itself a target of halving the climate impact of its financing by 2030, last week updated its commitments around stopping doing business with coal companies and with oil and gas majors lacking a “credible” transition plan.  One of the problems in this area is that it is hard to tally net…

Rivals of Elon Musk’s Starlink might be dismissed as jealous or downright anti-competitive when they object to SpaceX’s plan to launch 30,000 more satellites into orbit for its space-based broadband service.  It is not so easy to dismiss warnings from Nasa, one of SpaceX’s most loyal customers. Two weeks ago the US space agency wrote to the Federal Communications Commission outlining concerns about SpaceX’s plans for a second generation of satellites to add to the 12,000 already licensed. These range from the substantially heightened risk of collisions, adding to an already growing cloud of space debris, to the fact that…

Asking prices for UK homes jumped in February, driven by strong demand for property in London and elsewhere and a shortage of housing stock. The price of homes coming to market rose by £7,800 between January and February, climbing to £348,800, according to data from Rightmove, the UK’s largest online property portal. The 2.3 per cent rise marked the largest monthly increase since the company started tracking national prices in 2001. The data showed that the average asking price of houses had risen by nearly £40,000 in two years since the pandemic started, compared with just over £9,000 between 2018…

Look at the share-price charts for Europe’s banks and one fact is unmissable. Investors are finally feeling confident about these companies’ prospects. After a decade during which the continent’s banks have struggled with ever lower interest rates squeezing margins on the lending that is the dominant business line for most, the growing hawkishness of central banks is proving a cause for optimism. In the year to date, European bank stocks have clearly outperformed their US rivals — a rare event over any period since Wall Street’s finest began pulling away from the European competition in the aftermath of the 2008…

Good morning after another whirlwind of developments on the Russia-Ukraine front. The EU, the US and the UK have adopted a first wave of sanctions in response to Russia’s recognition of Ukraine’s eastern breakaway republics and its subsequent deployment of troops into those territories. EU ambassadors last night agreed on blacklisting 351 members of the Russian parliament, three banks (Rossiya, Promsvyazbank, VEB-bank) and trade in securities — with the legal text set to be approved later this afternoon. But given that Vladimir Putin endorsed the claims of Russian-backed separatists to the entire Donbas region, setting the stage for a full-blown…

The EU has imposed sanctions against almost two dozen Myanmar government and military officials as well as a state-backed oil and gas group, in the first measures targeting the country’s lucrative energy operator in the wake of last year’s coup. The targets, unveiled by the European Council on Monday, included 22 officials and four entities, among them a mining operator and Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, a crucial source of revenue for the junta. The latest measures marked Brussels’ fourth round of sanctions since the military overthrew the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. The US…

A fight over compensation for loss and damage suffered by countries affected by climate change is building ahead of the COP27 UN global summit in Egypt, as African climate and economic experts criticised the US climate envoy John Kerry for not taking the issue seriously. Speaking in Egypt on Monday, Kerry stressed the urgent need for national commitments to be delivered to limit global warming, but made only a passing reference to the issue of loss and damage. Kerry was also cited as saying recently that focus on a loss and damage facility “could delay our ability to do the…

The writer is a novelist based in Kyiv and author of ‘Death and the Penguin’ After Vladimir Putin recognised the separatist republics yesterday and sent in Russian troops, American diplomats who had previously moved from Kyiv to Lvіv, in western Ukraine, decided to start spending their nights in Poland. It’s 90 minutes by car from Lviv to Poland. There are long queues at the border crossings, but I am sure that US diplomats will be allowed to skip the line in both directions. They will need to get a good night’s sleep because right now they have to be super-vigorous,…

Good afternoon from London. When it comes to hybrid working, have you tried the ‘third space’: not the office, not the home but somewhere in-between? We asked alumni who responded to a survey for the FT MBA 2022 ranking to rate out of 10 the various subjects in their curriculum. Read on to find out which school came top for entrepreneurship. Also, take a look at our feature on the rise of German business schools. Thank you for reading our Business School Briefing — Wai Kwen Chan and Andrew Jack. Three days to go: Join us for a live event “Spotlight…

Jidu Automotive’s Robocar will drive itself to the main stage at the Beijing motor show in April, in a testament to the pace of innovation in the world’s biggest car market. Jidu, a joint venture between search engine Baidu and car manufacturer Geely, is showcasing Robocar after just two years in development. It joins a roster of Tesla rivals led by Nio, XPeng and Human Horizons racing to develop driverless cars. But Robocar’s brains reveal a problem threatening Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s quest for technological independence. China’s driverless car companies remain dependent on chips designed by foreign companies — mostly…