Author: Blake Anderson

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Jeremy Hunt, the former Conservative chancellor, has accused the Office for Budget Responsibility of breaching political impartiality over its handling of a review into whether it was given adequate information before the last Budget. The UK’s independent fiscal watchdog plans to publish the findings of a review into the “adequacy of the information and assurances” on departmental spending the Treasury provided to the OBR on Wednesday, when chancellor Rachel Reeves will deliver her first Budget. Reeves has accused Hunt of hiding spending…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Northern Ireland’s executive faces an overspend of £769mn this year as it battles to improve the region’s struggling public services but expects little cheer from Rachel Reeves’ Budget on Wednesday.The Stormont executive, which relies almost entirely on UK funding that it argues is significantly less than it needs, is under pressure to balance its books in order to avoid having to repay £559mn it borrowed from the UK Treasury after overspending last year. Repayment if the books are not balanced is a…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Argentina’s foreign minister has said the “conditions are in place” to restart flights to the Falkland Islands from her country’s second city, as libertarian president Javier Milei adopts a more conciliatory approach with the UK over the territory.Diana Mondino told the Financial Times that, after four years without a route between Argentina’s highly populated north and the remote British Overseas Territory, the “frequency” of flights would “have to be determined by an airline that deems it convenient”.“What we have done as a…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.UK lawyers representing wealthy clients are reporting the busiest run-up to a Budget in decades as they manage a rush of activity ahead of some potentially significant tax changes next week.Lawyers acting for high-net-worth individuals have reported a huge influx of enquiries in recent weeks, leading to working practices more akin to corporate lawyers, as they field out-of-hours calls, work weekends and have a series of late nights to manage the deluge.Such dynamics are more commonly seen in the M&A space, where…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Sir Keir Starmer will on Monday vow that this week’s Budget will “embrace the harsh light of fiscal reality” to move Britain off a path of decline, but he is facing growing criticism that planned tax rises will hit the “working people” he has pledged to protect.In a speech before the fiscal event on Wednesday — the most important moment of his premiership so far — Starmer will promise long-term reforms and investment alongside tax rises and spending cuts to stabilise the…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.France and Germany have hit out at Sir Keir Starmer’s plan to levy value added tax on private school fees, saying the policy risks forcing hundreds of children out of international schools and damaging diplomatic relations with the UK.Hélène Duchêne and Miguel Berger, French and German ambassadors to London, told the Financial Times that fee-paying international schools in the UK, which are part-funded by overseas governments, were not “conventional” independent schools and should not be subject to the levy.The prime minister plans…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Labour MP Mike Amesbury has been suspended by his party after a late-night altercation in which CCTV footage appeared to show him punching a man to the ground.Sir Keir Starmer, prime minister, approved the suspension of the party whip from Amesbury on Sunday evening, after new video footage emerged of the incident on Friday.In the video, obtained by the Daily Mail, the MP for Runcorn and Helsby appears to continue to hit the man as he is lying in the street. It…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Rachel Reeves will not unveil any new freeports in the Budget on Wednesday despite Downing Street saying last Friday that the UK planned to build five more of the tax-free sites, government officials have admitted. The chancellor will instead announce only “next steps” on five existing freeports, which will receive official clearance to have custom sites within their boundaries, the officials said. Reeves will also approve plans for a separate “investment zone” in the East Midlands that were put forward by the previous Conservative…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Foreign Exchange News, the coffee shop, bureau de change and newsagents located on a quiet road near Paddington station, is a celebration of the surreal. At the front you can buy coffee (£3.60 for a flat white), a slice of Reemies banana cake (£4.50), a pain au chocolat from Kuro Bakery (£3.60) or a vitamin shot (£2.99): at the back you can trade US dollars ($100 for £71), Japanese yen (¥10,000 for £49) or Saudi Arabian riyals (SR100 for £18) (rates likely to fluctuate). And while…

For the developers of the UK’s first lithium hydroxide demonstration plant, its opening this month marked a bet on future demand for a metal that is key to the energy transition but which has slumped in price. Cornish Lithium’s plant in a rural corner of Cornwall in southern England was unveiled a week after mining company Rio Tinto announced plans to acquire Arcadium Lithium, in a deal that will make it the third-largest producer of a material that is used in the batteries that power electric vehicles.General Motors is also pumping almost $1bn into a US lithium mine, in the…