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NatWest has ended UK high street banks’ quarterly reporting season on a note of cheer. The former Royal Bank of Scotland posted a year-on-year 40 per cent increase in pre-tax profits to £1.2bn, easily trumping analysts’ forecasts. That is good news for investors — including the government, which holds just under half the bank’s shares

The writer is editor-in-chief of MoneyWeek Edinburgh has a new Library of Mistakes — a financial library devoted to helping us all learn from the disasters of the past. Over the past week it has been running a series of events designed to discuss those disasters. Wednesday was devoted to the mistakes of fund managers.

The writer is vice-chairman of S&P Global and the author of ‘The Prize’ and ‘The New Map: Energy, Climate and the Clash of Nations’ Among Vladimir Putin’s many miscalculations was his expectation, before the invasion of Ukraine, that Europe’s dependence on Russian energy was so great that its response would be muted, limited to little

All the answers here are linked in some way. Once you’ve spotted the link, any you didn’t know the first time around should become easier. Who was the last female prime minister of New Zealand before Jacinda Ardern? Which president’s tomb is the largest mausoleum in America? Which British film won the Oscar for Best

“Greed is good,” said Gordon Gekko, the unforgettable villain of Oliver Stone’s classic 1987 film Wall Street. The character, Stone later said, was inspired in large part by one of that decade’s most controversial financial figures: Carl Icahn, once described as “the ultimate corporate predator”. But if Icahn’s explosive Trans World Airlines takeover in the

Vase by Van Briggle, £220 A 1920s ceramic piece with a satin matte glazed finish. vinterior.co Pietra dura tabletop, £4,000 This 20th-century tabletop is inlaid with precious stones in a floral pattern. lassco.co.uk 18th-century Delftware dish, £249 This plate can be used as a serving platter or as a piece of wall art. selency.co.uk Pair

ExxonMobil said it would triple its share buyback programme to $30bn and Chevron reported its most profitable quarter since 2012 as surging crude and natural gas prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine delivered a windfall for American Big Oil. Texas-based Exxon’s stepped-up share repurchase programme came as it posted first-quarter profits of $5.5bn on Friday,

About four in 10 British households are finding it difficult to pay for gas and electricity and a similar proportion are buying less food, according to the first official statistics covering the period after the 54 per cent increase in the cap on most consumers’ energy bills. The results of a survey run by the

The aftermath of Emmanuel Macron’s re-election has turned into a fight for survival for the once-powerful political movements that gave France most of its postwar presidents. The centre-left Socialist party and the conservative Les Républicains (LR) were crushed in this month’s presidential vote. Now they risk being torn apart as politicians scrabble for alliances to

I’m hugely excited by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s efforts to shame his homeworking civil servants back to the office. Many have been critical of the passive-aggressive and rather Dickensian notes left by Rees-Mogg and his aides on officials’ desks, but I’m looking forward to testing out the theory in my own domestic setting. For those who missed

Engineering has not been one of literature’s great muses, but for Adrian Duncan — a Berlin-based Irish writer, visual artist and former structural engineer — it is central to his spare, affecting novels. Duncan’s 2019 debut, Love Notes from a German Building Site, revolves around Paul, a thirty-something-year-old engineer on an Alexanderplatz construction site, while

Sissinghurst called and Troy Scott Smith has returned. Back for a second stint as head gardener at the world-famous garden where he started his career 30 years earlier. “Sissinghurst is a part of me,” he says of the garden created by Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson after they purchased Sissinghurst Castle in Kent in 1930.

How well did you keep up with the news this week? Take our quiz. Apple and Amazon caused a sharp intake of breath on Wall Street last night as they warned that supply chain challenges and rising costs were having an impact on their businesses. Executives at the iPhone maker said the company could sustain

I have started to grow flowers in my garden this year. I am picking my first tulips and I’m wondering how best to show them off in my house. Any ideas? What can compare to the joy of growing one’s own flowers? I’m thrilled for you: once you’ve had a go, you’ll never not bother

The sequencing of an album opening is a delicate art. The first song can’t be the best one, otherwise what follows will be a long anticlimax. But nor can it be the kind of straightforward track that most albums require at some point. The ideal curtainraiser should be neither filler nor killer. It should leave

It’s Jamie Powell’s last day on FT Alphaville. From writing in 2018 about how Tesla was overvalued at $340 to writing in 2022 about how Tesla was overvalued at $920 post a five-for-one stock split, Jamie has been a constant source of insight and/or entertainment. To mark his departure, here’s a selection of hits from

When Emma Hardy collapsed and died on a November morning in 1912, a few days after she turned 72, no one could have predicted that her death would inspire some of the greatest love poetry in the English language. Her marriage to the novelist Thomas Hardy, author of The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) and Tess of the

Arm is on the cusp of regaining control of its renegade China joint venture, in a move that would remove a significant obstacle to SoftBank’s plan to take the UK chip designer public. Government business records on Thursday night in Beijing showed that Allen Wu, the head of Arm China, had been removed from all

Hopes and Homes for Children Salisbury-based charity Hopes and Homes for Children has staff working across Lviv, Kyiv and Dnipro, and efforts are currently focused on providing essentials, medicine and supporting child protection services. In the UK, journalist Annabel Davidson has organised Jewels for Ukraine, a series of charity prize draws where a £10 donation

New satellite images of a North Korean nuclear facility suggest that Pyongyang is inching towards its first nuclear test since 2017, experts have warned, as Kim Jong Un ratchets up tensions on the Korean peninsula. The commercial satellite images were collected this week and analysed by experts from the Center for Strategic and International Studies

Sales at AstraZeneca soared 60 per cent in the first quarter, boosted by demand for its Covid-19 vaccine and the rare diseases medicines it acquired as part of its acquisition of Alexion. The UK drugmaker announced sales of $11.4bn, above the analyst consensus of $10.9bn, bolstered by $1.1bn coming from its Covid vaccine and $1.7bn