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Volkswagen’s anchor shareholder, the state of Lower Saxony, has joined Germany’s most powerful union boss in calling on the company to address allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, the Chinese province where the manufacturer has had a car plant since 2013. The unusual interventions by IG Metall’s Jörg Hofmann and Lower Saxony’s minister president

How many times can the same chief executive make a “gaffe” before investors should start taking him at his word? Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess infuriated Ukrainian officials this week by suggesting the EU should prioritise a rapid settlement with the country’s Russian invaders for the sake of economic growth. “I think we should do the

A fresh assault on the Russian banking system on Wednesday was poorly timed for Raiffeisen Bank, which boasts European lenders’ biggest exposure to the country. Any cheer from a positive first-quarter earnings update was soon wiped out by EU proposals to remove Russia’s Sberbank, among others, from the Swift system. Shares ended the day down

“Friendly reminder: This is a community. We build each other up, not tear each other down,” reads a recent post on the Instagram account of American casualwear brand Abercrombie & Fitch. “Today — and every day — we’re leading with purpose, championing inclusivity and creating a sense of belonging,” reads another message on the brand’s

Growing up in the 1990s, Alexis Ohanian was more into fantasy battles than fantasy sports, playing the trading card game Magic: The Gathering, casting spells to summon creatures and defeat opponents. Back then there wasn’t a lot of overlap between geeks and jocks. Remembering my own school days, the cool kids were all swapping football

The owner of Britain’s largest electricity distribution network Western Power Distribution has agreed to pay £14.9mn after it was found to have let down vulnerable customers on a number of “totally unacceptable” fronts. Energy regulator Ofgem announced the settlement on Wednesday after a probe launched in 2020 into whether the company had been meeting its

The US is moving towards imposing hard-hitting sanctions on Hikvision, the Chinese surveillance camera company accused of enabling human rights abuses, in a decision that would affect cities from New York and London to Singapore. The Biden administration is laying the groundwork to place human rights-related sanctions on Hikvision, according to four people familiar with

Good morning. We’ve written before that if inflation is going to subside peacefully, workers have to enter the workforce. We got bad news on that front yesterday: quits and job openings rose in March. If the Fed still needed a reason for a 50 basis point increase and a swift reduction in the balance sheet,

Good morning and welcome to Europe Express. French president Emmanuel Macron is expected to hold a big, Sorbonne-style speech on the future of the EU next week — but that didn’t stop other European politicians from putting their ideas forward. We’ll bring you up to speed with what Italy’s Mario Draghi and Austria’s foreign minister

Yikes. Tiger Global got smoked again last month. Kudos to Bloomberg for getting the scoop, but here is the FT’s story: Tiger Global’s flagship hedge fund was dealt a fresh blow in April and is now down more than 40 per cent this year, in the latest sign of how star investors who rode the

In the northern industrial town of Baoding, toilet paper rolls off Jinye’s industrial machinery, ready to be sent direct from the factory floor to bathrooms across China. Sales of Jinye’s absorbent tissues have exploded since it became one of the first companies to open a store on Alibaba’s Taobao Deals, a platform launched by the

Two of Roman Abramovich’s longstanding associates are set to keep their jobs running Chelsea Football Club if the leading bidder, a consortium led by US financier Todd Boehly, prevails. Chelsea’s chair Bruce Buck, 76, and director Marina Granovskaia, 47, have been offered the option to stay in place under Boehly’s ownership, three people with knowledge

When Zambia’s opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema secured a landslide victory over incumbent Edgar Lungu in the country’s presidential elections nearly eight months ago, he pledged economic growth of 10 per cent a year. If this ambitious promise is to be achieved, the key lies in reinvigorating Zambia’s mining industry. The last time the country saw

BlackRock has launched two exchange traded funds that invest in areas that the firm thinks will accelerate the economy. The iShares Blockchain and Tech ETF (IBLC), seeks to track the NYSE FactSet Global Blockchain Technologies index and is composed of companies that are involved in the “development, innovation and utilisation of blockchain and crypto technologies”,

For thousands of years, the region around Antakya, in Turkey’s southern Hatay province, has been a breadbasket of great civilisations. The Roman mosaics in the city’s museums depict olives and grapes grown in the rich red soil and verdant hills around Antioch, as it was known in biblical times. But those who work the land

JD Vance, the author and venture capitalist, has won the primary election to be the Republican candidate for the US Senate from Ohio, in a victory that underlined the continuing influence of the former president Donald Trump in the party. With more than 95 per cent of the vote counted after polls closed on Tuesday,

Shahid Astori, a 27-year-old electrical engineer, voted against Imran Khan when he was first elected as prime minister in 2018. His dislike of Khan only intensified during the former celebrity cricketer’s term, with Astori blaming Khan for painful inflation and an economic crisis. Yet all that was forgiven as Astori joined thousands of demonstrators at

When answering a survey about the FT I was asked if there was enough content written by women and whether I was more or less likely to comment on articles if I could do so anonymously. This reminded me that, while many FT articles are written by female journalists, the letters page seems to be

The article “Growth stock stars of the pandemic take a tumble” (Report, April 30) gives an interesting perspective on the volatility underpinning growth stocks. It’s true that the S&P 500 growth index is down 20 per cent or more on a year-to-date basis. This also accompanies falling gains for speculative stocks with little earnings records

It was an event that signalled a striking shift in South Korea’s corporate scene: a millennial fund manager taking on senior executives of one of the country’s leading entertainment companies in a YouTube debate put on for the nation’s growing army of retail investors. Thirty-five-year-old Changhwan Lee, who left private equity group KKR last year