Day: October 21, 2025

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Indonesia’s economic slowdown is hitting a consumer activity often described as the country’s national pastime — smoking.  Smokers in Indonesia, the world’s third-largest tobacco consumer after China and India, are switching in large numbers to cheaper illicit cigarettes amid weaker purchasing power and a sluggish job market, analysts and industry figures say. Illegally produced cigarettes can be more than 60 per cent cheaper than the legal variety as they are…

As a state guest house, the Akasaka Palace in central Tokyo is used to playing host to visiting dignitaries. Last month, however, former prime minister Fumio Kishida wooed a different kind of crowd: the guests of US private equity group KKR. Over dinner for almost a hundred of Japan’s corporate executives and their bankers, Kishida extolled the virtues of private equity and why the country needed the financiers in the room. It was a far cry from when private equity first entered Japan a quarter of a century ago, when…

As a state guest house, the Akasaka Palace in central Tokyo is used to playing host to visiting dignitaries. Last month, however, former prime minister Fumio Kishida wooed a different kind of crowd: the guests of US private equity group KKR. Over dinner for almost a hundred of Japan’s corporate executives and their bankers, Kishida extolled the virtues of private equity and why the country needed the financiers in the room. It was a far cry from when private equity first entered Japan a quarter of a century ago, when…

As a state guest house, the Akasaka Palace in central Tokyo is used to playing host to visiting dignitaries. Last month, however, former prime minister Fumio Kishida wooed a different kind of crowd: the guests of US private equity group KKR. Over dinner for almost a hundred of Japan’s corporate executives and their bankers, Kishida extolled the virtues of private equity and why the country needed the financiers in the room. It was a far cry from when private equity first entered Japan a quarter of a century ago, when…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Superlatives are not prerequisites for a thriving equity market, but they do tend to help. New York’s two giant exchanges and Hong Kong, this year’s leading venues for initial public offerings, respectively boast record index values and big gains. India, right behind them in capital raising, has a very different mood: not too hot, not too cold. Certainly, when markets are abuzz, companies thinking of issuing stock are more likely…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The EU has warned China that there must be a “prompt resolution” to restrictions on essential exports of critical materials that have hobbled some of the bloc’s manufacturing industries. “We have no interest in escalation. However this situation has cast a shadow over our relationship, therefore a prompt resolution is essential,” European trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič told a press conference in Strasbourg after talks with Chinese officials. China, in response…