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Barclays is exploring a plan to drop thousands of clients at its investment bank as part of a strategic overhaul that is meant to boost profits and cut £1bn of costs. Barclays executives have met several times this year to thrash out the restructuring, codenamed Minerva after the Roman goddess of wisdom, according to people

Efforts to extend a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas depend on the militant group locating dozens of women and children held hostage in Gaza by civilians and gangs, Qatar’s prime minister has said. A four-day pause in the war brokered by the Gulf state which began on Friday is due to end after Monday.

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Hamas is expected to release at least a dozen more hostages who are being held in the Gaza Strip on Saturday as a four-day truce stretches into its second day. Israel and Hamas conducted the

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Hamas has released 24 hostages who had been held in the Gaza Strip, according to Qatar, as the Palestinian militant group’s truce with Israel took hold. The group were transferred to the International Committee of

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. A senior intelligence officer in the Israeli military dismissed as an “imaginary scenario” the contents of a detailed warning predicting Hamas’s raid of October 7, two people familiar with the discussions said. Sentries on Israel’s

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt has cut national insurance by 2 percentage points and made business investment tax relief permanent, as he put a £20bn tax giveaway at the heart of his Autumn Statement. Hunt claimed

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Jeremy Hunt will on Wednesday put a £9bn permanent tax break for business at the heart of his Autumn Statement, as the UK chancellor attempts to jolt Britain’s sluggish economy back to life. Facing forecasts

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Microsoft has hired Sam Altman and Greg Brockman to lead a team conducting artificial intelligence research, days after the pair were pushed out of OpenAI, the company they co-founded. Writing on X on Monday, Microsoft

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. OpenAI investors are working to get rid of the company’s board and reinstate Sam Altman as chief executive of the generative AI start-up, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation, in what would

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The upheaval that hit the top ranks of pioneering AI company OpenAI on Friday has brought something that, only a day before, would have been hard to imagine. Leadership in generative artificial intelligence, the tech

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman has left the company abruptly after losing the confidence of the board, according to a statement on Friday from the Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence pioneer. “Mr Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Jeremy Hunt is looking at cutting inheritance tax and business taxes in next week’s Autumn Statement, as ministers confirmed he would have more fiscal “headroom” than expected for giveaways. Hunt is under significant pressure from

Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the US-China relations myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping have reached an agreement to resume communications between their countries’ militaries at a summit in San Francisco designed to stabilise relations after several years of

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Israeli forces entered al-Shifa hospital in Gaza on Wednesday to conduct what the military described as a “precise and targeted operation” against Hamas. The move by Israeli troops comes days after they surrounded the besieged

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Rishi Sunak has sacked Suella Braverman, the controversial home secretary, after she defied the prime minister’s authority last week, as the he launched a major reshuffle of his top team. In further developments on Monday

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The UK’s investment screening powers are to be pared back to make them “more business friendly”, the deputy prime minister has said, less than two years after they were introduced. Oliver Dowden will launch a

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that he opposed the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, underscoring the growing divergence between his government and the US over what the enclave’s postwar governance should be. US

Business taxes are set to fall in this month’s Autumn Statement as UK ministers signalled that they want to incentivise companies to pull Britain out of its growth stupor. As new data showed the economy flatlining, chancellor Jeremy Hunt and his deputy John Glen made clear their desire to cut business taxes, including by extending

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. A ransomware attack on the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has disrupted the US Treasury market, according to market participants. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association told members on Thursday that ICBC, China’s

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The US’s top diplomat has provided Washington’s most detailed plan for the postwar future of Gaza, saying the enclave should be politically unified with the West Bank under the administration of the Palestinian Authority. Antony

Two of the world’s biggest private equity firms have reported starkly diverging fortunes as KKR boosted its fundraising expectations while Carlyle axed jobs as part of a cost-cutting drive. The results on Tuesday underscored how the two investment groups, which were roughly the same size a decade ago, have since moved apart, with KKR boasting