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Every novelist is in the business of managing cliché and the unreal. The first is necessary for a work to have some degree of universal appeal, the second because fiction is never a strictly documentary art. Realism itself is a way of managing invention, of deviating from and shaping real materials in the service of

At first, I assumed that the senior investment banker I was meeting for lunch at his posh private members’ club in Mayfair was joking. “There are no chief executives in Germany,” quipped the specialist in merger and acquisitions advisory. I wondered if he was referring to the fact that the current crop of German chief

Sometimes you come across a recipe or the story of a dish that strikes a chord. It could be something you tear out of a magazine or a screengrab on your phone that sets off a journey which concludes only when that dish is on your table. For us, Rosie Sykes’ The Sunday Night Book

Tesco lifted profits last year but the UK’s biggest supermarket group has warned earnings will suffer this year as it prioritises price competitiveness in the face of soaring costs and a vicious squeeze on household incomes. Chief executive Ken Murphy said on Wednesday that while the full impact of rising inflation was yet to be

James Bullard, president of the St Louis branch of the Federal Reserve, has warned it is a “fantasy” to think the US central bank can bring down inflation sufficiently without raising interest rates to a level where they constrain the economy. Bullard, a voting member of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee and one of

P&O Ferries has suffered a setback in its efforts to return to full operations after maritime inspectors detained the Spirit of Britain, the second of two ferries on its Dover-Calais route to be barred from sailing. The UK’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency said the vessel was held because surveyors identified “a number of deficiencies” that

The activist shareholder which called in January for Peloton to fire co-founder John Foley has taken aim at its new chief executive, arguing that Barry McCarthyhas failed to reform the connected-fitness company’s governance or justify its continued independence. Blackwells Capital, which has a stake of almost 5 per cent, plans to set out its argument

Please don’t tell anyone what happened today lads x. That’s among the standout lines in chat logs released on Tuesday as part of litigation against UK traders accused of engineering an oil futures crash. A class-action lawsuit filed by rare coin shop Mish International Monetary alleges that traders associated with Vega Capital London made out

A full EU embargo on Russian energy would trigger a major recession in Germany, sending output down 2.2 per cent next year and wiping out more than 400,000 jobs, according to the country’s top economic institutes. The new forecast released on Wednesday was more pessimistic than most earlier economic studies and could give cover for

Delta Air Lines’ chief executive said the carrier has sold a record number of tickets in the past five weeks as customers set aside their concerns about inflation to splurge on air travel. “We’ve . . . sold more tickets, in that time, than any period in public history,” Ed Bastian told the Financial Times in an interview. “We’re

I am sitting in a homely pizzeria in Jokkmokk, a Swedish town tucked just north of the Arctic Circle, talking to Anders Sunna, a Sámi artist whose small studio is a couple of blocks away. The Sámis are the indigenous people of the far north of the Scandinavian peninsula, whose presence also stretches into north-western

Microsoft has escaped the recent backlash against the power and wealth of the biggest US tech companies. Despite a stock market value that has soared to more than $2tn on its dominance of various parts of the business software market, it has avoided a repeat of the complaints that made it the most prominent target

Oleg Bril’s high-rise apartment block in Chernihiv was ripped apart by a rocket fired by Russian troops last month. Looking up at its remains, Bril still wonders why they did it. “I have no explanation. There are no military units here,” he said. “There are only civilians, and across the street a cardiology hospital and

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: Volkswagen’s U-turn Marc Filippino Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, April 13th, and this is your FT News Briefing. [MUSIC PLAYING] US banks are out with quarterly earnings this week. We’ll get a preview from FT US banking editor Josh

One thing to start: Two of the most influential proxy advisers have counselled Credit Suisse shareholders to vote against a motion to absolve executives and board members from blame for the multiple scandals afflicting the Swiss lender. Saying auf Wiedersehen to German banks In February 2020, as disappointing revenue growth, negative interest rates and the

Are you a woman who is spacey? Forgetful? Or chatty? asks one advert on TikTok, portraying a teenage girl acting out these characteristics for the camera. The text across the top of the screen explains that if so, you may have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. And that now is the time for you to “take

Stockpiles of some of the world’s most important industrial metals have dropped to critically low levels as record power prices in Europe hit production and the war in Ukraine threatens output from Russia. Inventories of aluminium, copper, nickel and zinc — four of the main contracts traded on the London Metal Exchange — have plunged

The 47th Old Vic, London What wouldn’t we give to have Shakespeare’s voice on the seismic power struggles currently playing out on the national and international stage? His absence is key to Mike Bartlett’s bold, witty new drama, The 47th, which playfully echoes many of the playwright’s great works as it measures up to this

Wealthier UK investors have suffered greater losses than smaller traders since the beginning of the year, as market turbulence struck down the riskier portfolios typically favoured by those with higher levels of investment. Interactive Investor, which has roughly a one-fifth share of the UK’s self-directed investment market, said on Monday that customers with more than

More than two decades ago — before fund companies began converting mutual funds into ETFs and US regulators streamlined the ETF approval process — Vanguard executives had an idea. Rather than launch ETFs as a standalone vehicle, they decided to work on packaging them within a mutual fund. The idea led the firm in 2001