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Russia has vowed to sue if sanctions force it to default on its bonds but academics and lawyers have dismissed the threat as “payment theatre” designed to project the state’s financial strength. Over the weekend, finance minister Anton Siluanov said western sanctions were an attempt to “artificially create a man-made default” — Moscow’s first since

Light crystallising against a dark sky as angelic voices rise: the opening image of Angels’ Atlas is one of transcendence, and Crystal Pite knows how to match it sweepingly in dance. While her Revisor with Jonathon Young won the Olivier Award for best new dance production over the weekend, Zurich Ballet was performing one of

Oil and gas stocks are on track for further strong gains, as a sector shunned by ethically minded investors regains favour, according to the hedge fund manager who made $700mn betting on meme stock GameStop. Richard Mashaal, co-chief investment officer at New York-based Senvest Management, whose 86 per cent gains in 2021 ranked him among

iShares has trimmed expenses on seven exchange traded funds, including its $85.5bn Core US Aggregate Bond ETF (AGG) and $73.2bn Core MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (IEMG), the manager said. AGG’s fees fell from 4 basis points to 3bp, disclosures show, while IEMG’s slid 2bp to 9bp. The cuts put AGG’s management fee below the 3.5bp

Thomas Piketty put inequality in the advanced market economies at the heart of political debate. The French economist’s 2013 bestseller Capital in the 21st Century used long runs of historical data on incomes and wealth to demonstrate how wide the gap between the rich and the rest has become. Thick with data and the famous

Tech companies that were once cautious about in-person work are calling employees back to the office. Google wants workers to come in three days a week. So does Amazon. The move poses a challenge to business software stock valuations. Take workplace chat provider Slack and its parent company Salesforce, the cloud software group. Salesforce bought

The billionaire chief executive of Fanatics plans to push on with his acquisition spree after raising another $1.5bn from investors, as the US group continues to expand from sports merchandising into digital collectibles and trading cards. “All the capital raises are always for M&A, we don’t raise capital for our operations,” Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin

Airlines and airports spent the past two years insisting that when people could finally travel again, they would. Except, it seems, they can’t — and the industry itself is to blame. The great Easter getaway has been beset by reports of chaos. Manchester airport has warned of hour-long waiting times for security for months to

Alexander Saverys, an heir to one of Belgium’s oldest shipping dynasties, has hit out at Norwegian tycoon John Fredriksen’s ambition to create the world’s largest oil tanker group and vowed to build opposition to the plan. Fredriksen last week announced a $4.2bn deal to merge his Frontline group with Belgium’s Euronav, a rival tanker group

In the spring of 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, many pharmaceutical companies faced disruptions to their supply chains. Chemicals used to produce the key ingredients in drugs were often sourced from only a few suppliers in China — sometimes from just one. The pandemic has brought to light just how much the global

The issue of prestige for frontline service workers (“Want to understand 21st-century power? Look at PizzaExpress”, Opinion, April 7) is critical for the UK’s service economy. Customer-facing staff account for 61 per cent of the nation’s workforce. They are the very bedrock of our economy, and yet, as your columnist Stephen Bush points out, very

Regarding your article “How the UK’s non-dom status works” (Report, April 9), I do not believe that the non-dom exemption “was intended to protect colonial investments and allowed UK residents to be taxed only on money brought into the country”. These people would have had a UK domicile, so the foreign exclusion would not have

Within hours of the Australian government announcing a “giveaway” budget that Scott Morrison had hoped would propel him to a second term as prime minister, his own party began tearing into him. Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, a senator from Morrison’s Liberal party, unleashed a blistering 10-minute character assassination, calling her boss an “autocrat (and) a bully who

By George Upton For traditionalists Every year, the town of Gaiole in Chianti is transformed by L’Eroica, a festival dedicated to vintage cycling (main picture, above). But whether you ride a traditional steel-framed bike or cutting-edge carbon fibre racer, this medieval hamlet, on the market for €6.6mn, is ideally located to make the most of

It has been a long time since Britain had a foreign-policy success. Boris Johnson’s trip to Kyiv at the weekend should be seen as marking one, the culmination of an arms-to-Ukraine policy which proved instrumental in driving back the initial Russian advance. The prime minister is far from the first national leader to visit Ukraine

Elon Musk will not join the board of Twitter, after all. But the world’s most recognisable entrepreneur will still exert a heavy influence on the social network. His biggest soft power asset comes in the form of 81.3mn Twitter followers, lapping up his eclectic musings and off-colour wisecracks. His more direct financial lever is the

What is going on between Elon Musk and Twitter? If you’re wishing you could be a fly on the wall in chief executive Parag Agrawal’s office right now, you’re not alone. Musk’s sudden decision to no longer join Twitter’s board marks a significant U-turn just days after he became the social media company’s biggest shareholder

Hey Fintech Fam, This week I explored how payment companies are approaching opportunities in the metaverse. I also spoke with the co-founder of one of the artificial intelligence start-ups helping to automate loan underwriting. Plus, keep reading for a recap of the horse race to become the “world’s crypto capital.” Did the new 3,000-pound crypto

The writer, former head of the IMF’s European department, is chief economic adviser at Morgan Stanley After yet another nasty inflation surprise last month, and with European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde no longer ruling out interest rate hikes in 2022, financial markets have got the message that policy tightening is afoot. Long-term rates have

Good evening, In an otherwise positive report about the airport “coming back to life after two years”, Heathrow boss John Holland-Kaye warned that resources were “stretched” and that it was “unclear whether the surge in demand is sustainable”. Labour shortages have hit the aviation industry particularly badly, limiting its ability to bounce back from the

Proxy adviser ISS is recommending that investors vote against a proposed new pay package for Axa’s chief executive Thomas Buberl, arguing the insurer has not provided a good enough rationale for an offer that would include a 14 per cent salary hike. With Buberl’s mandate as chief executive up for renewal ahead of a new