Author: Press room

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…

© Matthew BillingtonWhiskery German philosopher Nietzsche may not have been thinking of red squirrels when he wrote “What does not kill me makes me stronger”. But the quote is so apt I cannot resist overusing it one more time.Red squirrels are good at evading predatory pine martens. Grey squirrels are not. The resurgence of martens in the UK and Ireland could help tip a balance long favouring invasive greys towards native reds, scientists say. What had once seemed a lost cause is becoming a new hope.I have been pondering this lately. In spring, the grey squirrels in my London suburb…

Craig Coben is a former global head of equity capital markets at Bank of America and now a managing director at Seda Experts, an expert witness firm specialising in financial services.Spring may have arrived, but investment banking is still in the winter of its discontent. After a dismal 2022, bankers banked on a recovery in dealmaking in 2023. Although stock markets have performed well in 2023, boardroom caution, higher interest rates and recent ructions in the banking sector have dried up deal flow. Here’s Ivan Levingston at mainFT today:Global dealmaking suffered its weakest start to the year in a decade,…

© Zebedee HelmRecently, I bid a stomach-churning £4,000 for a petite two-seater sofa in need of reupholstery and lost. In fact, I lost by a mile — the sofa hammered down at £8,450 including fees.There aren’t many makers of 150cm-wide sofas that can command those kinds of sums: one is Howard and Sons. They are what Alex Hallett, head of fine interiors at Sworders, the Essex-based auction house that sold that sofa, calls “the Rolls-Royce of sofa-making”.Ask anyone who owns or has sat on a Howard what the appeal is and the first thing they’ll mention is comfort.“I don’t think…

It is 50 years since I was last driven up this long track towards the Tuscan farmhouse where artists Maro Gorky and Matthew Spender have lived and worked since 1968. Pollarded limes interspersed with the occasional sculpted figure lead the eye to the old building, ringed by cypresses, where we are met by a peacock, resplendent in his uniform of blue and green.Matthew – sculptor, painter, author – appears from the side of the house: tall, white-haired, stretching out his hand in welcome. It is Maro I have come to interview, in view of her forthcoming retrospective show at London’s Long…

This article is an on-site version of our Inside Politics newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter sent straight to your inbox every weekdayGood morning. Stephen here. One of the many reasons I was so excited to join the FT and start a newsletter was the opportunity to promote the work of our (I still get a wonderful thrill about writing the word “our”) incredibly talented reporters and columnists. One of them, Jennifer Williams, has kindly written today’s note, about devolution and scrutiny. In exciting news, Inside Politics has been shortlisted for an award. Given that so many ideas…

Rolls-Royce chief executive Tufan Erginbilgic has replaced the group’s finance director and installed new leaders at its two main businesses in the first major shake-up of his top team since joining the UK’s flagship engineering group in January. The FTSE 100 group said on Friday that Helen McCabe, currently senior vice-president of finance for the customers and products division of BP, would take over as chief financial officer. She will replace Panos Kakoullis, who will leave at the end of August after two years in the job. As part of the overhaul Rob Watson, who has been leading the company’s…

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, as Wordsworth wrote. On December 31, 1999, the FTSE 100 index, the benchmark for Britain’s largest quoted companies, closed at 6,930.2, then its highest-ever level. The index had existed only since January 1984, with an initial level of 1,000, so it had risen sevenfold in 15 years. The dotcom boom was in full swing and people had given up their jobs to day trade in equities.By contrast, the new millennium has proved a shattering disappointment. Remarkably the FTSE 100 index did not pass 7,000 until March 2015 and reached 8,000 only…