Category: FT

Can a better and simpler tax help India offset hit from Trump tariffs?

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This article is an on-site version of the India Business Briefing newsletter. To receive it in your inbox regularly, sign up if you’re a premium subscriber, or upgrade your subscription here. Good morning. At last some good news. Last week, the credit rating agency S&P Global upgraded India’s long-term unsolicited sovereign credit rating to BBB, on the back of the country’s sustained fiscal consolidation and economic resilience. This is India’s first upgrade since 2007! In today’s newsletter, US President Donald Trump’s tariffs draw China and India closer to each other. But…

Israel cancels Australian visas as diplomatic rift deepens

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Israel on Monday cancelled the visas of Australian diplomats who maintain ties with the Palestinian Authority, in an escalating spat between the allies after Canberra said it would recognise a Palestinian state. The move came in response to Australia denying a visa to Simcha Rothman, a far-right ultranationalist who serves in the Israeli parliament for a coalition party propping up Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and who had planned to visit…

Hong Kong’s busy bankers give its office market a lift

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Asked about the business mood in Hong Kong, one longtime financier recently summed it up to Lex in a word: Labubu. A craze for the tiny dolls has trebled the shares of their locally listed maker and helped reignite the city’s equity market. Where equity markets lead, financial advisers typically follow, requiring swanky offices. Could this mean an end to the city’s six-year slump? Before the pandemic and Beijing’s 2020…

Qantas hit with Australia’s largest industrial relations fine over Covid job cuts

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Qantas has been ordered to pay the largest industrial relations penalty in Australian corporate history over the illegal sacking of 1,820 workers during the coronavirus pandemic, after a judge criticised the airline’s lack of genuine contrition over the affair.   The Federal Court had ruled in 2021 that a move to contract out baggage handling and cleaning a year earlier was in breach of the country’s industrial laws. A chaotic period…

What can really cure deflation in China?

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The writer is chief Asia economist at Morgan Stanley A familiarity with buzzwords is essential to keep track of what is going on in China. If you have been a China watcher over the past few years, you will be familiar with “supply-side reforms”, the “three red lines” and the mantra “housing is for living, not for speculation”. Recently, a new buzzword has emerged — “anti-involution”. In China, involution describes…

Phoenix debt deal kicks off Australian expansion drive

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Phoenix Group has begun expanding in Australia after making its first investment in the country’s booming private credit sector with a £75mn debt deal.  The UK’s largest savings and retirements business, with £290bn of assets under management, is one of a number of British pension funds looking to grow in Australia. The moves follow rising investment by Australian superannuation funds in UK, European and US assets in recent years.  The…

China’s entrepreneurial spirit is under immense strain

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The writer is a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis In recent months, a grim pattern has emerged in China’s business pages: the names of once-vibrant entrepreneurs appearing not in company profiles but in obituaries. Men in the prime of their careers have leapt from rooftops, leaving industries and communities stunned. Their deaths — four in the past three months — have been explained, accurately,…

China steps up tax crackdown on overseas investments

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Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Chinese business & finance myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Chinese authorities have stepped up calls on investors to pay taxes on their global gains, forcing wealthy individuals to rethink their trading strategy as Beijing tries to fill its coffers to counter economic pressures. Tax authorities in major economic hubs such as Shanghai, Zhejiang, and Shandong this year issued calls on their websites for investors to declare their taxes, while also calling and messaging individuals personally. Officials this…

From baseball to history, Chinese podcasts boom in censors’ shadow

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From a small 26th-floor office-turned-studio near Shanghai’s People’s Square, Cheng Yanliang leans into a microphone and records the latest episode of Left-Right, a podcast with an audience in the millions. The 34-year-old former journalist’s twice-weekly show spans topics from wartime espionage in China and the protection of endangered species to Greek historian Herodotus and He-Yin Zhen, a 20th-century Chinese feminist and anarchist. Cheng is among tens of thousands of podcasters, mostly hobbyists, broadcasting to a Chinese audience expected to total 150mn this year, according to industry forecasts. That is up…