Author: Blake Anderson

This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to LondonWhen it opened in 1874, the Spiers & Pond hotel was, so its owners claimed, the first hotel in London to install electric lighting. Still at the cutting edge, it’s now been reinvented as the sophisticated Hyde London City, the seventh in a global Hyde collection under the Ennismore group, and this handsome Grade II-listed establishment is now injecting new life into an area steeped in the past, with City landmarks from St Paul’s Cathedral to the Old Bailey a stone’s throw away.Hyde seems like an obvious magnet for the City’s…

Women are far behind men when it comes to signing up to a workplace scheme that could potentially boost their pension pots by thousands of pounds, according to analysis by Scottish Widows.So-called salary sacrifice schemes, made available by employers, can provide access to “free money” for workers in the form of reduced national insurance contributions.The schemes work by an employee agreeing to give up a portion of their salary in exchange for a non-cash benefit, often a pension contribution or other perks.This reduces the employee’s taxable income, leading to lower national insurance contributions for both the employee and the employer,…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Rachel Reeves is examining reforms to her budget regime to avoid another unexpected springtime fiscal repair job as she comes under mounting investor pressure to curb the volatility of UK economic policymaking. The UK chancellor is considering recommendations by the IMF that it said aim to “reduce pressure for frequent fiscal policy changes” as she doubles down on her vow to hold just one fiscal event a year, according to people familiar with Treasury discussions. The Fund in May suggested changes to…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.How many love stories have started with a Spotify playlist? Surely fewer than those that began with a personalised cassette, full of painstakingly recorded songs and handwritten track listings.An exchange of such carefully curated compilations sparks a romance that endures decades and spans hemispheres in the nostalgia-tinged drama Mix Tape. Acquired by the BBC from Australian streamer Binge, the four-part series follows excitable young lovers turned wistful middle-agers across two interwoven timelines set almost three decades apart.The first plays out in late…

Britain’s energy regulator is carrying out special monitoring of the National Grid as the company faces questions over whether it is doing enough to maintain key electricity networks.The FTSE 100 company is undergoing quarterly reviews by Ofgem in relation to investment in its network of high-voltage cables, where refurbishment work has been set back by problems including supply chain delays.The reviews began last year, before the fire in March at a National Grid substation that led to the closure of Heathrow airport and thrust the company into the spotlight. The resulting power cut knocked out Europe’s busiest hub for 24…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Britain’s public spending watchdog has warned of “shortcomings” in the country’s F-35 fighter jet programme, with delays, low pilot flying hours and personnel shortages undermining the fleet’s effectiveness. The 37-strong fleet last year met only one-third of the Ministry of Defence’s target to perform all required missions, the National Audit Office said on Friday. Plans to equip the aircraft with important weapons, including UK-developed missiles, have been pushed back until the 2030s, it noted.The “combined shortcomings of the global and UK F-35 stealth…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Chancellor Rachel Reeves will next week put the brakes on plans to reform cash ISAs, the popular British tax-free savings product, after a fierce backlash from building societies and consumer champions.Reeves has not abandoned plans to reform cash ISAs, but government officials admitted there were “differing views” about how to proceed and ministers wanted more time to consult industry.She will instead use her Mansion House speech next Tuesday to promise more advice and support to encourage the public to invest in stocks…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Climate change myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Heat-related deaths in England and Wales would rise 50-fold over the next half-century if climate change is severe and adaptations are minimal, according to research that lays bare the need to prepare for higher temperatures. Fatalities would climb six-fold under even the most optimistic scenario as the planet warms and the population becomes more vulnerable due to ageing, says the study published in the journal PLoS on Thursday.  Back-to-back heatwaves this summer has underscored how initiatives from urban planning to the building and upgrading…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Climate change represents a growing threat to the UK’s economic stability, with the potential to worsen inflationary shocks and trigger the sudden repricing of assets, a top Bank of England official warned on Thursday.Sarah Breeden, the BoE’s deputy governor for financial stability, said risks that once seemed “hypothetical or far off in the distance” were now ones “that could materialise, and in some cases already are materialising” within the time horizons considered by policymakers.She pointed to a growing body of evidence that extreme…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.A lot has changed since 2022, when Britain’s then-aspiring prime minister Liz Truss, after the tensions of Brexit, said “the jury’s out” on whether Emmanuel Macron was friend or foe. A successor as prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, has this week welcomed the first state visit by a French president since 2008, and the first by a European leader since the UK’s EU exit, with a warmth and pomp that reflects a realisation that Britain needs friends — and that outside the…