International News: Ukraine, Fed, and Global Markets

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LIFE & ARTS
Biden fears Ukraine attack is close
Siberia’s crypto craze
The DIY bitcoin miners
LIFE & ARTS
3 Russia ramps up military threat 3 US calls allies to crisis talks 3 Kyiv bolsters defences
JAMES POLITI — WASHINGTON
ROMAN OLEARCHYK — KYIV
MAX SEDDON — MOSCOW
The US has warned thatt a Russian invasion of Ukraine could be launched
within days as Presidentt Joe Biden summoned transatlantic leaders to a meeting to discuss the crisis and embassies
stepped up warnings to their citizens to
leave
a tthe country.
Russia is ramping up its military capability along Ukraine’s border, sending
additional troops and equipment to the
region, and has also started a large military exercise in areas in Belarus.
“We continue to see very troubling
signs off Russian escalation, including
new forces arriving at the Ukrainian
border,”
r said Antony Blinken, the US
secretary of state.
“We’
W re in a window when an invasion
could begin aat any time and, to be clear,
that includes during the Olympics,” he
added, referring to the winter games in
Beijing that conclude on February 20.
In a short statement the White House
said Biden and counterparts, including
the leaders of Germany, France and the
UK, would be discussing “our shared
concerns about Russia’s continued
build-up of military forces around
Ukraine and continued co-ordination
on both diplomacy and deterrence”.
The new US warning ffollows a flurry
of high-level diplomatic activity in an
effort to defuse the crisis, led this week
by French president Emmanuel
Macron, who met Vladimir Putin, his
Russian counterpart, in Moscow.
The UK said it would withdraw some
embassy staff from Kyiv while Japan,
the Netherlands and Latvia advised
nationals to leave
a Ukraine as soon as
possible. “American
“
citizens should
leave
a , should leave
a now,”
w Biden told
NBC. “We’
W re dealing with one of the
largest armies in the world. Things
could go crazy, quickly.”
.
In Ukraine, the governmentt stepped
up defence preparations. President
Volodymyrr Zelensky urged officials to
Antony Blinken:
‘We’
W re in a
window when an
invasion could
begin at any
time and that
includes during
the Olympics’
support efforts to bring 1.5mn to 2mn
civilians into a newly formed territorial
defence force under military command.
“This is a reliable rear for a professional and well-equipped army, which
together form the basis of our state, a
strong state,” Zelensky said.
Valeriy Zaluzhny, commander-inchief of the armed forces, said: “This is a
force thatt can restrain the enemy and
prevent them from thinking about setting foot on our land . . . The purpose of
all this is to resist in every city, everyy village, on every street and in every house.”
Trading place
The tale of One Wall Street
HOUSE & HOME
News & analysis page 4
Edward Luce page 9
John Dizard page 14
Back
a k to reality
Preparing for
life after Covid
In search of the Hum
The noise that only few can hear
A message from the US that it is exiting
“the full-blown pandemic phase”;
moves by England and Denmark to
remove all Covid-19 restrictions; and
holidayy bookings abroad soaring to pre2020 levels have spurred hopes that a
return to normal life is on the horizon.
Some governments are shiftingg strategies by relyingg on high levels of immunity and broad vaccine coverage to limit
pressure on hospitals and reopen economies fully. As the world heads for its second anniversary since being forced to
live with coronavirus, are lockdowns,
social distancing, self-isolation, maskwearing and tests relegated to the past?
LIFE & ARTS
Hopes stirred page 3
A crowded platform at Waterloo station in London on Thursday as final Covid-19 restrictions are lifted
Andy Rain/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Inve
n stors
t crank up bets on aggressive
i
Fed action to combat soaring inflation
TOMMY STUBBINGTON — LONDON
KATE DUGUID — NEW YORK
Plan for NY listing of Arm
deals painful blow to UK
After the collapse this week of Nvidia’s
$66bn deal to acquire UK tech group
Arm amid antitrust concerns, owner
SoftBank’s plans to list Arm in New
York was tantamount to a vote of no
confidence in London. It comes as
Britain is facing deep concerns
about its ability to create and retain
homegrown tech champions and piles
pressure on the government to reverse
a long-term decline in listings.
‘Keep Arm in London’ i PAGE 10
Huge blow for UK i PAGE 13
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© THE FINANCIAL TIMES LTD 2022
No: 40,937 ★
Printed in London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin,
Frankfurt, Milan, Madrid, New York, Chicago, San
Francisco, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul,
Dubai
Investors are betting that the US Federal Reserve might deliver an extralarge rate rise in March, or even lift borrowing costs between scheduled meetings for the first
f time since 1994, as policymakers battle blistering inflation.
Expectations mounted of a more
aggressive tightening in monetary policy after Thursday’s US inflation data,
which showed consumer prices rising at
the fastest annual pace in 40 years and
once again confounded forecasts that
price pressures would begin to level off.
Investors had in recent weeks coalesced around the view that the Fed
would increase interest rates by 0.25
percentage points at its March meeting.
However, traders in money markets are
now pricing in a more than 50 per cent
chance the central bank will boostt rates
byy half a percentage point next month.
Futures contracts linked to the federal funds rate, which stands at a historic low off 0-0.25 per cent, also show
the possibilityy of a move before the Fed
meeting that starts on March 15.
“The Fed knows itt has to hike rates,”
said GennadiyG
y oldberg at TD Securities.
“It’s very likely that they will hike
faster and probably will hike at consecutive meetings. There are a multitude of
arguments for going more quickly and I
think the market is realising it.”
Two-yearr US governmentt debt, which
is highly sensitive to moves in shortterm interest rates, suffered its biggest
one-dayy sell-off since 2009 on Thursday
after the data showed inflation hit 7.5 per
cent in January. The two-year yield
traded at 1.63 per cent yesterday,
a leaving
itt on track
k for the highest close since late
2019, from 0.4 per cent in November.
James Bullard, one of the Fed’s more
hawkish policymakers, fuelled the selling byy saying he backed a half-point rate
rise in March and that
t t the Fed should be
open to the idea of responding sooner.
A shift in Fed policy between meetings is rare. The central bank delivered
emergency unscheduled rate cuts during the financial crisis in 2008 and the
early stages of the pandemic in March
2020 but has not increased borrowing
costs in this way since April 1994.
A move prior to the March Fed meeting would be “out of character” for policymakers who typically try to prime
markets for policyy changes, according
to analysts at JPMorgan. It would also
entail ending the Fed’s bond-buying
programme early, tthe analysts added.
Day in the markets page 14
The Long View page 18
World Markets
STOCK MARKETS
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FTWeekend
12 february/13 february 2022
INTERNATIONAL
Financial regulation
Alarm raised on Europe property boom
WORLD|
WEEK IN REVIEW|
Regulators warn banks at
risk from loose lending
and rising household debt
Russia interest rate hits five-year
high with scope for more increases
martin arnold — frankfurt
Europe’s financial regulators are warning the region’s housing market has
“decoupled” from the rest of the economy since the pandemic hit, increasing
risks for banks due to soaring property
prices, loosening lending standards and
rising household debt levels.
The European Systemic Risk Board,
the authority responsible for monitoring and preventing dangers to the European financial system, signalled its concern yesterday by calling on seven of the
30 countries it oversees to take action to
curb the risks created by surging house
prices.
Russia’s central bank raised its key interest rate by
100 basis points to a five-year high of 9.5 per cent and
is leaving scope for more increases in the short term.
“Inflation is far above the Bank of Russia October
forecast,” the bank said. Elvira Nabiullina, the bank’s
governor, also noted “increased geopolitical risks”
and other external factors including a rise in prices of
energy and other commodities such as food.
Russia’s gross domestic product is expected to
grow between 2 per cent and 3 per cent this year, and
a further 1.5 per cent to 2.5 per cent next year.
The nation’s central bank has been one of the
world’s most aggressive in raising rates to try to curb
inflation.
US to relax Trump-era tariffs on
Japanese steel to ease ally tensions
James Politi — Washington
At a community college in central Virginia this week, Joe Biden put his finger
on the biggest domestic problem of his
presidency. “Inflation is up. It’s up,” the
US president said. “And coming from a
family when if the price of gas went up,
you felt it . . . it matters.”
Biden was speaking a few hours after
data showed the US consumer price
index rose 7.5 per cent last month compared with January 2021, exceeding
economists’ expectations and marking
the largest annual jump since 1982.
High inflation has blemished what
would otherwise be a strong economic
record for Biden, with elevated job and
wage growth. It has depressed his
approval ratings and contributed to the
demise of a $1.75tn flagship spending
bill that some lawmakers feared would
exacerbate higher prices.
Like many forecasters, the Biden
administration’s economic team had
been expecting inflation to gradually
subside after its initial surge in the
spring of 2021, but that view has been
debunked by persistently high readings.
The White House has since sought to
tame inflation: Biden dispatched top
officials to ease bottlenecks at US ports,
pushed Saudi Arabia and other Opec
members to increase oil production and
told regulators to crack down on price
gouging.
But those efforts have done little to
change the dynamic, leaving the administration relying on the Federal Reserve
to stamp out inflation with a string of
interest rate rises ahead of this year’s
midterm elections, when many pundits
expect Biden’s Democratic party to take
a big hit.
“Inflation is not intractable, the Federal Reserve can always do something
about it,” said Donald Kohn, a former
senior Fed official now at the Brookings
Institution. “I guess the harder question
is: what does the Fed need to do, and can
it engineer a soft landing?”
White House officials say there is still
a strong case for inflationary pressures
Ramaphosa extends cash grants for
South African jobless by a year
South Africa will extend for another year a landmark
cash grant for the jobless it introduced during the
pandemic. The monthly R350 ($23) is the possible
nucleus of a permanent basic income grant in a country with an unemployment rate of about 34 per cent.
But it has strained government finances.
South Africa needs “trade-offs” to deal with its
economy, President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a state
of the nation speech. Civil society groups want Ramaphosa to boost cash payments for the poorest.
“We will continue conversations” with groups who
want a permanent or a larger grant, but this “must
not come at the expense of basic services or at the
risk of unsustainable spending”, Ramaphosa said.
WORLD BUSINESS NEWSPAPER
UK £3.80; Channel Islands £3.80; Republic of Ireland €3.80
JAMES BLITZ — WHITEHALL EDITOR
A computer system acquired to collect
duties and clear imports into the UK
may not be able to handle the huge
surge in workload expected once Britain
leaves the EU, customs authorities have
admitted to MPs.
HM Revenue & Customs told a parliamentary inquiry that the new system
needed urgent action to be ready by
March 2019, when Brexit is due to be
completed, and the chair of the probe
said confidence it would be operational
in time “has collapsed”.
Setting up a digital customs system
has been at the heart of Whitehall’s
Brexit planning because of the fivefold
increase in declarations expected at
British ports when the UK leaves the EU.
About 53 per cent of British imports
come from the EU, and do not require
checks because they arrive through the
single market and customs union. But
Theresa May announced in January that
Brexit would include departure from
both trading blocs. HMRC handles 60m
declarations a year but, once outside the
customs union, the number is expected
to hit 300m.
The revelations about the system,
called Customs Declaration Service, are
likely to throw a sharper spotlight on
whether Whitehall can implement a
host of regulatory regimes — in areas
ranging from customs and immigration
to agriculture and fisheries — by the
time Britain leaves the EU.
Problems with CDS and other projects
essential to Brexit could force London to
adjust its negotiation position with the
EU, a Whitehall official said. “If running
our own customs system is proving
much harder than we anticipated, that
ought to have an impact on how we
press for certain options in Brussels.”
In a letter to Andrew Tyrie, chairman
of the Commons treasury select committee, HMRC said the timetable for
delivering CDS was “challenging but
achievable”. But, it added, CDS was “a
complex programme” that needed to be
linked to dozens of other computer systems to work properly. In November,
HMRC assigned a “green traffic light” to
CDS, indicating it would be delivered on
time. But last month, it wrote to the
committee saying the programme had
been relegated to “amber/red,” which
means there are “major risks or issues
apparent in a number ofkey areas”.
HMRC said last night: “[CDS] is on
track to be delivered by January 2019,
and it will be able to support frictionless
international trade once the UK leaves
the EU . . . Internal ratings are designed
to make sure that each project gets the
focus and resource it requires for successful delivery.”
HMRC’s letters to the select committee, which will be published today, provide no explanation for the rating
change, but some MPs believe it was
caused by Mrs May’s unexpected decision to leave the EU customs union.
FINANCIAL TIMES
330 hudson street,
new York, nY 10013
Timetable & Great Repeal Bill page 2
Scheme to import EU laws page 3
Editorial Comment & Notebook page 12
Philip Stephens & Chris Giles page 13
JPMorgan eye options page 18
THE END
OF THE
ROAD
i Emerging nations in record debt sales
Credit Suisse
engulfed in
fresh tax probe
i London tower plans break records
A survey has revealed that a
record 455 tall buildings are
planned or under construction
in London. Work began on
almost one tower a week
during 2016.— PAGE 4
Shutdown risk as border
wall bid goes over the top
Congressional Republicans seeking to
avert a US government shutdown after
April 28 have resisted Donald Trump’s
attempt to tack funds to pay for a wall
on the US-Mexico border on to
stopgap spending plans. They fear
that his planned $33bn increase in
defence and border spending could
force a federal shutdown for the first
time since 2013, as Democrats refuse
to accept the proposals.
US budget Q&A and
Trump attack over health bill i PAGE 8
The fine by the Financial Conduct
Authority highlights the increasing
problem new media pose for companies
that need to monitor and archive their
staff’s communication.
Several large investment banks have
banned employees from sending client
information over messaging services
including WhatsApp, which uses an
encryption system that cannot be
accessed without permission from the
user. Deutsche Bank last year banned
WhatsApp from work-issued Black-
For the latest news go to
www.ft.com
© THE FINANCIAL TIMES LTD 2017
No: 39,435 ★
Printed in London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin,
Frankfurt, Brussels, Milan, Madrid, New York,
Chicago, San Francisco, Washington DC, Orlando,
Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, Dubai
Dow Jones Ind
FTSEurofirst 300
Euro Stoxx 50
FTSE 100
FTSE All-Share
CAC 40
3 UK, France and Netherlands swoop
3 Blow for bid to clean up Swiss image
i HSBC woos transgender customers
AFP
Lloyd’s of London chose Brussels over “five or six” other
cities in its decision to set up an
EU base to help deal with the
expected loss of passporting
rights after Brexit.
John Nelson, chairman of the
centuries-old insurance market, said he expected other
insurers to follow. Most of the
business written in Brussels
will be reinsured back to the
syndicates at its City of London
headquarters, pictured above.
The Belgian capital had not
been seen as the first choice for
London’s specialist insurance
groups after the UK leaves the
Berrys after discussions with regulators.
Christopher Niehaus, a former Jefferies banker, passed confidential client
information to a “personal acquaintance and a friend” using WhatsApp,
according to the FCA. The regulator said
Mr Niehaus had turned over his device
to his employer voluntarily.
The FCA said Mr Niehaus had shared
confidential information on the messaging system “on a number of occasions”
last year to “impress” people.
Several banks have banned the use of
new media from work-issued devices,
but the situation has become trickier as
banks move towards a “bring your own
device” policy. Goldman Sachs has
clamped down on its staff’s phone bills
as iPhone-loving staff spurn their workissued BlackBerrys.
Bankers at two institutions said staff
are typically trained in how to use new
prev %chg
Mar 30
2361.13 0.20 $ per €
5897.55 0.09 $ per £
20703.38 20659.32 0.21 £ per €
1500.72 1493.75 0.47 ¥ per $
EU, with Dublin and Luxembourg thought to be more likely
homes for the industry. But
Mr Nelson said the city won on
its transport links, talent pool
and “extremely good regulatory reputation”.
Lex page 14
Insurers set to follow page 18
media at work, but banks are unable to
ban people from installing apps on their
private phones.
Andrew Bodnar, a barrister at Matrix
Chambers, said the case set “a precedent
in that it shows the FCA sees these messaging apps as the same as everything
else”.
Information shared by Mr Niehaus
included the identity and details of a
client and information about a rival of
Jefferies. In one instance the banker
boasted how he might be able to pay off
his mortgage if a deal was successful.
Mr Niehaus was suspended from Jefferies and resigned before the completion of a disciplinary process.
Jefferies declined to comment while
Facebook did not respond to a request
for comment.
Additional reporting by Chloe Cornish
Lombard page 20
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7369.52
4011.01
5089.64
it followed “a strategy offull client tax
The bank has unveiled a range of gender-neutral
DUNCAN
— BRUSSELS
but was still trying to
titles
such asROBINSON
“Mx”, in addition
to Mr, Mrs, Misscompliance”
or
Ms, in a move to embrace diversity and cater togather
the information about the probes.
Credit
Suisse hascustomers.
been targeted
by
HM Revenue & Customs said it had
needs
of transgender
— PAGE 20
sweeping tax investigations in the UK, launched a criminal investigation into
France and the Netherlands, setting suspected tax evasion and money launback Switzerland’s attempts to clean up dering by “a global financial institution
Datawatch
and certain ofits employees”. The UK
its image as a tax haven.
The Swiss bank said yesterday it was tax authority added: “The international
Terror
attacks inwith
western
Europe after
reach
co-operating
authorities
itsattacks
Recent
— of this investigation sends a clear
that there is no hiding place for
offices in London, Paris and Amsterdam
notably the message
2011
were contacted
local officials
massacre bythose seeking to evade tax.”
Highlighted
attack byOthers
in
prosecutors, who initiated the
“concerning client tax matters”. Anders BreivikDutch
Norway,
the
Dutch authorities said their counter- action, said they seized jewellery, paintattacks in Paris
ings and gold ingots as part of their
parts in Germany wereBrussels
also involved,
and Nice, and
the while French officials said their
probe;
while Australia’s revenue department
Norway
Brussels suicide
investigation had revealed “several
said it was investigating
a Swiss
Paris
Nice bank.
bombings — have
thousand” bank accounts opened in
The inquiries threaten to undermine
bucked the trend
efforts by the country’s banking sector
Switzerland and not declared to French
of generally low
to overhaul business models and ensure
tax authorities.
fatalities from
The Swiss attorney-general’s office
customers meet international tax
Sources: Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre terror incidents in
said it was “astonished at the way this
requirements following a US-led clampwestern Europe
down on evaders, which resulted in operation has been organised with the
deliberate exclusion of Switzerland”. It
billions of dollars in fines.
The probes risk sparking an interna- demanded a written explanation from
tional dispute after the Swiss attorney- Dutch authorities.
In 2014, Credit Suisse pleaded guilty
general’s office expressed “astonishment” that it had been left out of the in the US to an “extensive and wideactions co-ordinated by Eurojust, the ranging conspiracy” to help clients
evade tax. It agreed to fines of $2.6bn.
EU’s judicial liaison body.
Additional reporting by Laura Noonan in
Credit Suisse, whose shares fell 1.2 per
cent yesterday, identified itself as the Dublin, Caroline Binham and Vanessa
Houlder in London, and Michael Stothard
subject ofinvestigations in the Netherlands, France and the UK. The bank said in Paris
RALPH ATKINS — ZURICH
5902.74
3481.67
MAGAZINE
In a stormy three-hour meeting, investors accused
managers ofhaving an entrenched secrecy culture
and cast doubt on a revival plan after Westinghouse
filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.— PAGE 16
1.164
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Chic new lodgings
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i Toshiba investors doubt revival plan
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How To Spend It
i Tillerson fails to ease Turkey tensions
World Markets
STOCK MARKETS
Art of persuasion Mystery deepens
over disputed painting of Jane Austen
The US secretary of state has failed to reconcile
tensions after talks in Ankara with President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan on issues including Syria and the
extradition of cleric Fethullah Gulen.— PAGE 9
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Censors and sensitivity
Warning: this article may be
upsetting — LIFE & ARTS
FT WEEKEND MAGAZINE
Developing countries have sold record levels of
government debt in the first quarter of this year,
taking advantage of a surge in optimism toward
emerging markets as trade booms.— PAGE 15
City watchdog sends a clear message as
banker loses job over WhatsApp boast
A boastful WhatsApp message has cost
a London investment banker his job
and a £37,000 fine in the first case of
regulators cracking down on communications over Facebook’s popular
chat app.
HOW DRIVERLESS
TECHNOLOGY IS
CHANGING AN
AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE
A report on how the health service can survive
more austerity has said patients will wait longer for
non-urgent operations and for A&E treatment while
some surgical procedures will be scrapped.— PAGE 4
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LAURA NOONAN — DUBLIN
JENNIFER THOMPSON — LONDON
SATURDAY 1 APRIL / SUNDAY 2 APRIL 2017
Briefing
i US bargain-hunters fuel Europe M&A
Europe has become the big target for cross-border
dealmaking, as US companies ride a Trump-fuelled
equity market rally to hunt for bargains across the
Atlantic.— PAGE 15; CHINA CURBS HIT DEALS, PAGE 17
i Report outlines longer NHS waiting times
3 Confidence in IT plans ‘has collapsed’
3 Fivefold rise in declarations expected
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ALEX BARKER — BRUSSELS
GEORGE PARKER — LONDON
STEFAN WAGSTYL — BERLIN
Living wage rise to pile
pressure on care services
About 2.3m people will benefit from
today’s increase in the national living
wage to £7.50 per hour. But the rise
will pile pressure on English councils,
which will have to pay care workers a
lot more. Some 43 per cent of care
staff — amounting to 341,000 people
aged 25 and over — earn less than the
new living wage and the increase is
expected to cost councils’ care services
£360m in the coming financial year.
Analysis i PAGE 4
The EU yesterday took a tough opening
stance in Brexit negotiations, rejecting
Britain’s plea for early trade talks and
explicitly giving Spain a veto over any
arrangements that apply to Gibraltar.
European Council president Donald
Tusk’s first draft of the guidelines,
which are an important milestone on
the road to Brexit, sought to damp Britain’s expectations by setting out a
“phased approach” to the divorce process that prioritises progress on withdrawal terms.
The decision to add the clause giving
Spain the right to veto any EU-UK trade
deals covering Gibraltar could make the
300-year territorial dispute between
Madrid and London an obstacle to
ambitious trade and airline access deals.
Gibraltar yesterday hit back at the
clause, saying the territory had “shamefully been singled out for unfavourable
treatment by the council at the behest of
Spain”. Madrid defended the draft
clause, pointing out that it only reflected
“the traditional Spanish position”.
Senior EU diplomats noted that
Mr Tusk’s text left room for negotiators
to work with in coming months. Prime
minister Theresa May’s allies insisted
that the EU negotiating stance was
largely “constructive”, with one saying it
was “within the parameters of what we
were expecting, perhaps more on the
upside”.
British officials admitted that the EU’s
insistence on a continuing role for the
European Court of Justice in any transition deal could be problematic.
Brussels sees little room for compro-
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© THE FINANCIAL TIMES LTD 2017
No: 39,436 ★
Printed in London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin,
Frankfurt, Brussels, Milan, Madrid, New York,
Chicago, San Francisco, Washington DC, Orlando,
Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, Dubai
19/01/2017 13:57
mise. If Britain wants to prolong its
status within the single market after
Brexit, the guidelines state it would
require “existing regulatory, budgetary,
supervisory and enforcement instruments and structures to apply”.
Mr Tusk wants talks on future trade
to begin only once “sufficient progress”
has been made on Britain’s exit bill and
citizen rights, which Whitehall officials
believe means simultaneous talks are
possible if certain conditions are met.
Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary,
reassured European colleagues at a
Nato summit in Brussels that Mrs May
had not intended to “threaten” the EU
when she linked security co-operation
after Brexit with a trade deal.
Reports & analysis page 3
Jonathan Powell, Tim Harford &
Man in the News: David Davis page 11
Henry Mance page 12
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In a letter to the Israeli government,
three top civil servants have spoken of
the anguish of having their “personal
and professional worlds” exposed by
one of the country’s most powerful
cyberweapons, Pegasus.
May’s first stab at the break-up
letter — ROBERT SHRIMSLEY, PAGE 12
Lloyd’s of Brussels Insurance market
to tap new talent pool with EU base
US inflation hits a 40-year high
mehul srivastava — Eilat
UK £2.70 Channel Islands £3.00; Republic of Ireland €3.00
Dear Don...
FEBRUARY 4 2017
HMRC warns
customs risks
being swamped
by Brexit surge
Stefani Reynolds/AFP/Getty
subsiding over the year as the pandemic
recedes and the economy returns to a
more normal footing.
Although price increases have broadened in recent months, in some areas,
such as new and used cars, they have
shown signs of moderation, suggesting a
peak could be on the horizon.
But plenty of damage has been done
to Biden’s political standing. As recently
as August, 51 per cent of Americans
approved of his handling of the economy, but that fell to 37 per cent, according to a CNN poll released this week.
10
22
-5
The persistence of inflation has
obscured the benefits of a roaring job
market, which performed much better
than expected even in recent months as
the Omicron variant of the coronavirus
surged across the country. Higher prices
have also undercut wage gains.
Perhaps most dispiritingly for the
White House, it was soaring inflation
that emboldened Joe Manchin and
Kyrsten Sinema, Democratic senators
from West Virginia and Arizona respectively, to scupper Biden’s hopes of
spending $1.75tn on the social safety
net. The Build Back Better package,
which included climate measures and
was funded by higher taxes on the
wealthy and corporations, was the centrepiece of Biden’s economic vision.
“Inflation [is] causing real and severe
economic pain that can no longer be
ignored,” Manchin said on Thursday.
“It’s beyond time for the Federal
Reserve to tackle this issue head on, and
Congress and the administration must
proceed with caution before adding
more fuel to an economy already on
fire.”
Michael Strain, director of economic
policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said the Biden adminis-
tration shoulders much of the blame for
surging prices, saying the $1.9tn stimulus in March last year was excessive.
“It contributed to both a big boom on
the demand side of the economy and
also supply side restrictions. And so I
think that set the stage for the US to
have a worse inflationary problem than
Europe and also a worse inflationary
problem than we would have had if the
[stimulus] were, say, $500bn.”
Some economists, including Strain,
have also pointed out that Biden could
have done more to ease inflation by cancelling tariffs on Chinese goods introduced by Donald Trump, a move the
Biden administration has resisted.
But White House officials and many
Democrats fiercely defend their economic approach and the stimulus measures. They argued it achieved their primary goal of fostering a much stronger
rebound compared with the recovery
from the 2008 financial crisis, while
sharply reducing poverty and handing a
financial lifeline to struggling families.
Indeed, left-leaning economists now
worry that lawmakers and central
bankers may become too hawkish on
inflation, jeopardising the administration’s accomplishments.
Pegasus hacking affair stokes doubts in Israel on use of spyware
Subscribe to the FT today at FT.com/subscription
A Five Star plan?
Cost of living:
a meat shop in
Washington.
Inflation has hit
Joe Biden’s
approval ratings
Cyber surveillance
MAKE A SMART INVESTMENT
Italy’s populists are trying to woo
the poor — BIG READ, PAGE 11
since 2016. EU households increased
their debt as a proportion of incomes to
107.2 per cent in the first quarter of
2021, up from 101.9 per cent in the
fourth quarter of 2019.
The ESRB said housing market risks
were also elevated in Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Luxembourg — exceeding 180 per cent of
income in all five countries. But it issued
recommendations to four of those countries in 2019 and thinks Norway has
taken sufficient measures already.
Claudia Buch, vice-president of Germany’s central bank, told the Financial
Times last month that if the country’s
banks did not “think twice” about the
recent trend for some to provide mortgages for the entire value of a property
with little or no deposit, they could face
legally binding limits on how much they
can lend against a property.
A strong record on jobs and
wage growth is in danger of
being ruined by soaring prices
hundreds of millions of indians began voting in state
elections, seen as a test of the economic stewardship
of narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party.
although the economy has rebounded since a 7.3 per
cent economic contraction in the first year of the
pandemic, unemployment is at about 7 per cent and
has risen to more than 25 per cent among the young.
FRIDAY 31 MARCH 2017
Residential
property
prices in the
EU saw
the fastest
growth since
just before
the 2008
financial
crisis
Inflation hobbles Biden’s policy agenda
Modi’s economic record put to
the test in Indian state elections
Trump vs the Valley
Yesterday, the ESRB called on Germany and Austria to introduce more
safeguards — such as capping borrowers’ debt at a set multiple of their
income and forcing lenders to have
more capital. It also warned Bulgaria,
Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia and Liechtenstein about increasing housing market risks.
The “key vulnerabilities” it identified
included “rapid house price growth and
possible overvaluation of residential
real estate, the level and dynamics of
household indebtedness, the growth of
housing credit and signs of a loosening
of lending standards”.
Decisions by the ESRB, chaired by
European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde, are not binding. It can only
issue warnings and recommendations
to countries about the need to act over
housing market risks, as it has done
us politics. Economy
The US agreed to ease Trump-era tariffs on Japanese
steel as President Joe Biden presses to relax trade
tensions with American allies.
The US will suspend its 25 per cent levy on steel
imports of up to 1.25mn tonnes a year. A 10 per cent
tariff on aluminium will remain in place.
Donald Trump imposed tariffs on a range of countries in 2018, claiming cheap foreign metal imports
posed a threat to national security. The US and Japan
agreed to co-operate on tackling overcapacity in the
global steel market as a result of subsidies in nonmarket economies. Biden administration officials
have accused China of dumping steel produced by its
state-subsidised industry into global markets.
Tech titans need to minimise
political risk — GILLIAN TETT, PAGE 13
Fuelled by low interest rates, residential property prices in the EU rose 9.2
per cent in the year to September 2021
— the fastest growth since just before the
2008 financial crisis and well ahead of
growth in both European wages and
gross domestic product.
Yet when the pandemic began in
2020, most European financial regulators removed measures designed to
increase banks’ resilience to a potential
correction in housing markets by building up extra capital in good times so they
could absorb losses in a crisis.
As the European Central Bank prepares to tighten monetary policy in
response to multi-decade high levels of
inflation, borrowing costs are set to rise
for housebuyers, which could depress
prices and make it harder for some
households to keep up with payments
on variable-rate mortgages.
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(minimum order 100 copies). one-off copyright
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“We are in an emotional tempest and
our sense is very grim,” they wrote. “Our
sense of insult, humiliation and powerlessness in light of the trampling of our
basic rights is unbearably severe.”
Their words echo those of many others whose governments have bought the
smartphone hacking software. These
include a jailed dissident in the United
Arab Emirates, government critics in
Mexico and the former wife of murdered Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi.
But this week’s allegations mark the
first time the flagship product of Israel’s
NSO Group has become embroiled in a
domestic scandal, and the first time the
weapon’s use, and abuse, is being
debated by Israeli society.
So far, the three civil servants and 23
other Israelis — mayors, senior political
aides, even a son of former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu — are reported
to have been targeted by the police with
the spyware, all purportedly without
court warrants.
The Financial Times and other media
have not been able to verify the claims.
The police have prevaricated between
accepting that some abuse had been
uncovered and denying that these people had been targeted. Former police
chief Roni Alsheich said the reporting
“was disconnected from reality”.
The government has ordered a commission of inquiry. Judges in former
prime minister Netanyahu’s trial for
corruption have delayed proceedings,
since any unlawful targeting of potential
witnesses in his trial without a police
warrant would scupper parts of the case
against him. Politicians have decried the
alleged assault on Israeli democracy.
Netanyahu, who for more than a decade used the software as a diplomatic
calling card as he wooed recalcitrant
Arab allies, captured the shock of
Israel’s elite as he told parliament: “[It’s
like] using planes meant to be used
against Iran, Hizbollah and Hamas to
blow up Israeli civilians. They exposed
citizens . . . listened in on them and got
into their most buried secrets.”
The outcry was in sharp contrast to
years of official indifference towards the
non-Israeli victims of abuse of the country’s most notorious export, software
that defeats smartphone encryption by
mirroring its contents remotely.
Even as evidence mounted that hundreds in civil society worldwide have
had secrets stripped from phones by
those who bought Pegasus software,
Israel has backed the NSO Group, which
makes Pegasus. When foreign victims
sought justice in Israeli courts, judges
agreed to NSO’s requests that the hearings happen in secret.
Under fire: NSO Group is for the first
time involved in a domestic scandal
“When we filed the lawsuits in
2018 . . . neither the courts nor society
appreciated the seriousness and risks of
such technology; they were seen as
exotic stories of things that happen in
faraway places but never at home,” said
Alaa Mahajna, lawyer for a friend of
Khashoggi’s and Mexican activists who
allege that NSO shares responsibility for
the harm its weapon causes. Now, “this
is the only thing on the media cycle”.
For privacy advocates such as Tehilla
Shwartz Altshuler, a fellow at the Israel
Democracy Institute, Israel’s response
should be a chance to reform surveillance and policing in a country where
citizens have been convinced that any
intrusions are necessary for security.
Most worrying, she said, is the alleged
intrusion of intelligence gathering by
the police, who ought to have a more
restricted right to violate privacy.
“What methods of investigation
should the Israeli police use? Only when
we have the answer can we decide what
technology should be used.”
So far, the focus in Israel has not been
on Pegasus per se, but on whether it had
been used without warrants. The NSO
group has declined to comment.
★
12 February/13 February 2022
FTWeekend
3
INTERNATIONAL
Easing of Covid
curbs stirs hopes
Omicron has
passed its peak
‘People are
moving on
with their
lives. The
question is
not will
countries
lift all
restrictions,
but when’
Return to normality on horizon after case
numbers fall in many western countries
OliveR BaRneS, JOHn BuRn-MuRdOcH
and HannaH KucHleR — London
England joined Denmark with plans to
lift its remaining coronavirus restrictions, Joe Biden’s top medical adviser
said the “full-blown” phase of the crisis
was nearly over and Europe’s biggest
holiday group revealed bookings were
returning to levels last seen before the
pandemic.
The flurry of announcements from
Europe and North America this week
crystallised hopes that the worst of the
Omicron variant wave had passed,
allowing health experts to speculate
whether normal life was within sight.
“There are no real criteria for the end
of a pandemic, but it probably feels
something like this,” said David Heymann, professor of infectious disease
epidemiology at the London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
“People are moving on with their
lives,” agreed Ali Mokdad, a University
of Washington global health professor.
“The question is not will countries lift all
restrictions, but when.”
‘There are no real criteria
for the end of a pandemic,
but it probably feels
something like this’
Social distancing, self-isolation,
mask-wearing, testing and contact tracing have been the backbone of measures
recommended by the World Health
Organization throughout the pandemic.
But two years on, with Omicron receding, moves are afoot to scrap even
basic measures, as a range of governments bank on high levels of population
immunity and broad vaccine coverage
to limit the pressure on hospitals.
Under UK government plans for England, all virus legislation will end by late
this month, removing a legal requirement to self-isolate after a positive test.
Sweden and Norway have scrapped
most restrictions while Italy and Spain
have moved to ditch outdoor mask
mandates. Switzerland said it could stop
using vaccine passports as early as next
week, having dropped contact tracing
and homeworking rules.
In the US, Anthony Fauci, the White
House’s Covid-19 expert, this week said
the country was exiting “the full-blown
pandemic phase” as states, including
New York and California, rolled back
laws requiring indoor mask-wearing.
In another sign of returning confidence, Europe travel operator Tui said
loosening travel testing requirements
had pushed summer bookings back
towards pre-pandemic levels. By January 30, 3.5mn customers had booked
flights for summer, about three-quarters of 2019 levels. For Heymann, the
rule changes provide further evidence
that countries are shifting from a “topdown, legislative approach” to an
“endemic control programme” similar
to that used to combat seasonal flu.
Mokdad said: “We’re at the stage of
the pandemic where people are increasingly weighing their own personal risk,
rather than being told what to do.”
Case numbers are falling across western Europe and North America, down
73 per cent from the Omicron peak in
the US, and down 60 per cent in England, Spain and Belgium. Even where
the surge was strong, the tide has turned, with rates dropping in Denmark,
Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands.
Although cases climbed above previous records this winter, markers of
severe disease did not follow suit. In
Denmark and Norway, where case rates
soared to 12 and 20 times their respective pre-Omicron peaks, the number of
Covid patients in intensive care units is
23 per cent of last winter’s peak.
Denmark made the early move towards lifting all restrictions when early
this month it said it would stop treating
Covid-19 as a “societally critical” disease, revoking emergency public health
legislation and removing all restrictions
apart from a testing requirement for foreign visitors. This was despite record
infection rates, driven by the more
infectious strain of Omicron, BA.2.
Denmark’s relaxation comes against a
backdrop of low levels of public anxiety
about Covid, according to YouGov data.
Danes have consistently been the least
likely in Europe to say they always wear
a mask in public spaces and among the
least likely to say they are avoiding large
or crowded indoor gatherings.
The data also show that English rates
of mask-wearing have dropped in recent
weeks to tie with the Danes as equal lowest, and the English are now more comfortable than any other nationality to
socialise in large groups.
Not everyone is convinced that an end
to curbs is the answer, with countries
such as China continuing to pursue a
zero-Covid policy. As Kevin Schulman,
professor of medicine at Stanford University, pointed out, the “world is not
out of the woods yet”.
“The question of whether we have to
reimpose restrictions will be asked,”
said Mark Woolhouse, professor of
infectious disease epidemiology at Edinburgh university, “because I’m as certain as I can be that there will be other
variants.” Tim Spector, professor of
genetic epidemiology at King’s College
London, added: “It could be the last
time we have legal limits in place but it
doesn’t mean the end of the pandemic.
The virus has been one step ahead of us
every time . . . we can’t just ignore it.
That would be folly.”
See Ft Big Read
Beijing warning
Hong Kong faces prospect of
stricter lockdown measures
PRiMROSe RiORdan and cHan HO-HiM
Hong Kong
tOM MitcHell — Singapore
Beijing will help “formulate and implement” epidemic-control policies to
contain Hong Kong’s largest coronavirus outbreak yet, increasing the
chances that harsh lockdown measures
routinely enforced on the mainland
could soon be extended to the increasingly isolated financial centre.
China’s State Council office responsible
for Hong Kong affairs said officials from
the territory would travel “in coming
days” to southern Guangdong province
for meetings with central and regional
health officials. The office added that it
was “highly concerned” about the Hong
Kong outbreak, which has been stoked
by the fast-spreading Omicron variant.
Chinese policy advisers and state
media have publicly criticised the Hong
Kong government, led by chief executive Carrie Lam, for failing to hold the
line on Beijing’s “zero Covid” policy.
Similar outbreaks in mainland cities
with much larger populations than
Hong Kong’s have been successfully
contained by harsh lockdowns.
“The Hong Kong government has
made mistakes in its decision-making,”
Tian Feilong, a policy adviser to the Chinese government on Hong Kong, told
the Financial Times. Tian, a director at
the Beijing-based Chinese Association
of Hong Kong and Macau Studies thinktank, said civil servants had been too
influenced by “western” approaches
that emphasised “living with Covid”.
Regina Ip, a member of the territory’s
legislature and Lam’s de facto cabinet,
said: “The government is torn between
adhering to western norms of respecting individual liberties and adopting the
more aggressive mainland model.”
Hong Kong has rolled out increasingly
stringent measures to combat the outbreak, including forbidding people from
gathering publicly in groups larger than
two. It logged more than 1,325 new
infections yesterday.
“If the new social distancing measures
do not work within two weeks . . . a
period of lockdown should be considered,” said David Hui, infectious disease
professor at the University of Hong
Kong who also heads one of the government’s Covid advisory committees.
This week, Fitch Ratings slashed its
2022 gross domestic product growth
forecast for the territory to 1.5 per cent
from 3 per cent, citing the social distancing measures.
Unmasked:
visitors without
face coverings
at a museum in
Copenhagen,
after Denmark
lifted Covid
restrictions
Carsten Snejbjerg/Bloomberg
4
★
FTWeekend
12 february/13 february 2022
INTERNATIONAL
sanctions talks
Western allies close to agreeing Moscow curbs
Putin would suffer ‘major
strategic’ blow if Ukraine
invaded, says US diplomat
sAM FleMiNg ANd MeHreeN KHAN
Brussels
The US and its European allies are getting “pretty close” to agreeing a farreaching package of potential sanctions
aimed at deterring Russia from attacking Ukraine, a senior US state department official has said, as he warned that
Vladimir Putin could act any time.
Derek Chollet, counsellor at the state
department, said the Russian president
would suffer a “major strategic setback”
if he invaded Ukraine given the scale of
the penalties being lined up by the west.
Any sanctions agreed would be “dynamic”, meaning the allies could “evolve
and innovate” afterwards as they seek
to maintain pressure on Moscow.
“We are progressing apace, and if the
contingency arises where Russia moves
we are going to be ready,” Chollet said
after talks with EU counterparts in
Brussels on Thursday.
Some EU members have in recent
days expressed private concerns about
the impact further Russian sanctions
will have on their domestic economies,
while broadly standing by the west’s
pledge for swift and severe penalties in
response to any invasion of Ukraine.
Officials insist they remain confident
that the EU will respond quickly with
the US and other allies if Putin moves
soon. The EU’s goal has been to tee up a
package of sanctions in tandem with the
US, UK and others to be ready ahead of
any action by Russia, in contrast to 2014
when the west was wrongfooted by
Putin’s move on Crimea.
Chollet said the advanced state of
sanctions planning meant the situation
was “night and day” compared with
2014, when it took months for the west
to settle on sectoral sanctions. “Putin
should not question in any way the credibility of what the US and the Europeans
have said about this,” he added.
The European Commission has been
consulting with EU capitals to gauge
their views over differing sanctions
options, while keeping details of plans
private, in contrast to the US, which has
been more public about its intentions.
Any package would need to be agreed
in detail and unanimously signed off by
all 27 EU members, most likely after an
emergency summit of leaders.
Italy’s envoy to the EU warned of the
economic impact of sanctions on Italian
businesses during a private meeting of
diplomats last week, according to people familiar with the talks. The ambassador supported the EU-US work on the
package, stressing the costs must be
evenly shared between member states.
Brussels is determined to minimise
the extent to which members negotiate
carve-outs from the package in order to
dull the impact on industries with big
exposure to Russia. Even so, diplomats
expect unity to hold.
“The response would be a quick and
good one; we have never seen this kind
of unity and appetite to act,” said one.
Chollet said the “door to diplomacy is
open” but warned the deployment of
Russian troops in Belarus was worrying
as it “suggests optionality in what they
may be thinking of doing in Ukraine”.
The Russian naval presence in the Black
Sea was also “very concerning”.
He then pointed out that the “perverse reality” was that Putin’s moves
had only strengthened Nato.
ukraine. russia threat
Divided port city fears eruption of violence
Odesa’s large pro-Moscow
population makes it a likely
key target if war breaks out
guy CHAzAN — odesA
Outside Odesa’s trade union house,
scene of a fire in 2014 that left 42 proRussian protesters dead, a makeshift
shrine of crosses, candles and flowers
commemorates the victims, along with
a stark message fixed to a fence: “We’ll
never forget, and never forgive.”
Graffiti etched on a nearby flagpole is
more ominous: “Ukraine — you’re
gonna get so fucked up soon” and “your
days are numbered”.
That year was the last time communal
tensions erupted into violence in Odesa,
a port city on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast
with a large ethnic Russian population.
But with a Russian attack on Ukraine
feared to be imminent, that might soon
change. “Odesa is cloven in two,” said
Boris Khersonsky, a well-known local
psychiatrist and intellectual.
Its divisions make it uniquely exposed
in the current crisis. Many residents
worry that Odesa could be a key target
for Vladimir Putin’s forces if war breaks
out — and that parts of the population
might even welcome a Russian invasion.
“Odesa is crucial to anyone who
dreams of rebuilding the Russian
empire,” said Oleksiy Goncharenko, a
local MP. It has, he said, the same hold
on the Russian imagination as Sevastopol, the Crimean naval redoubt that
Moscow annexed in 2014. “That’s why
the danger we face here is so great.”
Frenzied diplomatic efforts have been
made this week to end the stand-off
over Ukraine, one of the worst east-west
showdowns since the cold war ended.
After talks between Putin and French
president Emmanuel Macron in the
Kremlin, there was even tentative talk
of de-escalation. But in Odesa, tensions
have, if anything, increased.
Many people in the city feel encircled.
To the north-west, Russian peacekeepers are hunkered down in the separatist
Moldovan enclave of Transnistria. To
the south-east is Crimea, bristling with
Russian arms. And to the south is the
Russian Black Sea fleet, recently reinforced by six landing ships that have just
passed through the Bosphorus Strait,
ostensibly to take part in naval drills.
“Odesa is highly vulnerable,” said
Volodymyr Dubovyk, director of the
centre for international studies at the
Never forgotten:
a memorial is
held for 42
pro-Russian
protesters killed
in a 2014 fire at
Odesa’s trade
union house
Konstantin Sazonchik/Tass
city’s main university. “The fear is that it
could be targeted in an amphibious
assault, possibly combined with paratrooper landings. It’s geographically
very easy to invade.”
Even if there is no invasion, locals fear
Russia could be planning something less
spectacular but similarly damaging — a
naval blockade that would throttle maritime trade and cut off one of Ukraine’s
key export routes.
Either way, the big unknown is how
Odesans would react if Russia attacked.
Kyiv
UKRAINE
Transnistria
region
MOLDOVA
Territory held by
Russia-backed
separatists
Odesa
Sea of Azov
ROMANIA
CRIMEA*
Sevastopol
RUSSIA
Black Sea
*Crimea is annexed by Russia but
this is not recognised by the international community
200 km
“There are definitely a lot of people here
who would welcome them,” said Khersonsky. The city contains many more
ethnic Russians than most other
Ukrainian towns. “They look more to
Moscow than to Kyiv,” he said. “If Odesa
is a country, its capital is Moscow.”
Moscow, too, looks to Odesa. Long
revered as the birthplace of some of
Russia’s greatest comedians, actors and
writers, its peculiar brand of folklore
and special humour enjoyed cult status
in the Soviet Union. With its mix of
roguish charm and faded glamour, and
its whiff of criminality — think a Black
Sea Brighton Rock — it was always a
world of its own.
But in 2014, the city’s easy-going,
peaceful reputation was shattered. That
was the year Moscow annexed Crimea
and a separatist revolt broke out in
Donetsk and Luhansk, in eastern
Ukraine’s Donbas region. The violence
then spread to Odesa where, on May 2,
pro-Kyiv and pro-Moscow mobs fought
vicious street battles.
Then, later that day, the trade union
house in its city centre was set on fire
and dozens of pro-Russian protesters
who had retreated there died, some
from smoke inhalation, some after leaping from windows.
‘Odesa is
crucial to
anyone who
dreams of
rebuilding
the Russian
empire’
Oleksiy
Goncharenko,
Ukrainian MP
Winter Olympics
To some Odesans, it was the moment
they stopped their city becoming
another Donetsk. But to others it was a
massacre. “It became a rallying cry for
Russians fighting against what they
called ‘Ukrainian Nazis’,” Dubovyk said.
Alexander Prigarin, an ethnologist
at Odesa National University, said
that as Russian forces took control of
Crimea, many Odesans had wished
their city would be next. “A lot of small
businessmen hoped Putin would come
here and impose order . . . People
envied Crimea,” he said.
Since 2014, he claimed, things had
become worse. He cited recent laws that
aimed to promote the primacy of the
Ukrainian language and restrict the use
of Russian in public settings. One, which
came into force last month, compels all
national print media to publish in
Ukrainian. “You can’t impose a language on people,” Prigarin said.
Odesa itself offers little evidence that
Russians and their language are persecuted, but the media law has allowed
Kremlin propagandists to portray
Ukraine’s government as “ethnofascists” who victimise Russian speakers, said Khersonsky.
Additional reporting by Roman Olearchyk
in Kyiv
Taliban restrictions
Biden orders
freezing of
Afghan assets
worth $7bn
held in US
JAMes POliTi — wAshington
President Joe Biden has moved to
freeze about $7bn in assets held in US
financial institutions by the Afghan
central bank in the wake of the Taliban
takeover, as he vowed to direct $3.5bn
to humanitarian aid and preserve the
rest for families of victims of the September 11 terror attacks.
In an executive order signed yesterday,
Biden directed “all property and interests in property” of the Afghan central
bank in the US to be blocked and transferred to an account at the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York.
The order in effect cut off the Taliban’s access to the US financial system.
The move caps months of uncertainty
over the Afghan central bank’s funds
in the US. The Biden administration
has faced competing pressures to keep
humanitarian assistance flowing to
the Afghan people while ensuring
court-ordered payouts to families of
the victims of the 2001 attacks are
honoured.
“This executive order is designed to
provide a path for the funds to reach the
people of Afghanistan while keeping
them out of the hands of the Taliban and
malicious actors,” the White House said.
“The United States has sanctions
in place against the Taliban and the
Haqqani network, including for
activities that threaten the safety of
Americans such as holding our citizens
hostage.”
Since the US military withdrawal
from Afghanistan last August, Washington has been under pressure to find a
way to punish the Taliban government
economically without closing the door
to humanitarian aid.
US officials said their plan was to set
up a trust fund to manage the distribution of the $3.5bn in funds, which would
be separate from the bilateral aid that
was already being sent to Afghanistan.
They noted the US had already contributed more than $516mn in humanitarian funds to Afghanistan since Kabul
fell to the Taliban and last month
announced a further contribution
worth $308mn.
The US already has a network of independent aid organisations it uses to distribute its humanitarian contributions,
from water and food to healthcare and
sanitation services.
“We are going to be ensuring that we
have very robust controls in place. This
is not going to the Taliban,” a senior
Biden administration official said.
Washington said it could still take
some time to direct the funds, both for
humanitarian aid and for distributions
to relatives of 9/11 victims, which would
have to be approved by the federal court
overseeing the litigation.
“We have to go through a judicial
process here, it is going to be at least a
number of months before we can move
any of these funds,” a senior administration official said.
The announcement of Biden’s decision to freeze the assets was accompanied by a grim assessment of Afghanistan’s finances.
The White House said the economy
was “on the brink” even before the US
pullout, including high poverty rates,
widespread damage to crop yields from
a two-year drought and a poorly developed financial system.
North Africa
Russia at centre of cheating scandal after skater fails drug test Libya appoints premier and
prompts concerns over unity
sArA gerMANO — Beijing
MAx seddON — Moscow
The star of Russia’s women’s figure
skating team has tested positive for a
performance-enhancing drug, Beijing
Winter Olympics officials disclosed
yesterday, throwing into disarray one
of the top competitions at the Games
and implicating Moscow in another
high-profile sports cheating scandal.
Kamila Valieva, 15, who this week became the first woman to land a quadruple
jump in Olympic competition, tested
positive for banned heart medicine trimetazidine in a sample collected in
December, said anti-doping watchdog
the International Testing Agency.
Trimetazidine improves blood flow
and is used for heart conditions, but can
also be used by athletes to train harder,
enabling their bodies to recover quickly
by sending more oxygen to muscles.
The positive test and Valieva’s deferred suspension from competition constituted the most significant sporting
scandal at the Beijing Games, which
began last Friday. It drew a sharp
defence from Moscow and requests by
the US for “accountability”, highlighting
the charged political nature of the
Olympics.
The positive test came from a sample
taken in St Petersburg on December 25
under the eye of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada), processed by a
World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) laboratory. The appeals process has pitted
Rusada against the International Olympic Committee on whether Valieva will
be allowed to compete in the individual
event on Tuesday. Her quadruple
jump helped the Russians win
the team figure skating event,
but the medal ceremony has
been delayed indefinitely.
According to the Russian
Olympic Committee, Valieva,
pictured, appealed and was
granted a reprieve from a provisional suspension. The
ITA, on behalf of the IOC,
said it would appeal against
the Russian decision to the
Court of Arbitration for
Sport, which handles international legal matters for
athletic events.
Stanislav Pozdnyakov, ROC head, said
Moscow suspected Wada had deliberately delayed processing Valieva’s test
until after the team event at Beijing. Her
other tests before and after the December competition were negative, the ROC
said, adding it was “taking comprehensive measures to protect the rights and
interests of the ROC Team members and
to keep the Olympic gold medal won in
fair competition”.
The row widens the rift between the
Russians and IOC, which since 2017 has
banned them from competing at the
Olympics due to Russia’s
state-run doping programme at the 2014
Sochi Winter Games.
But athletes declared to be
“clean” have been allowed to
compete under the ROC name,
swapping symbols such as the Russian flag and anthem for Olympic
insignia and a Tchaikovsky concerto excerpt.
The case renewed questions
about the efficacy of the sanctions
programme. Mark Adams, for the
IOC, said it took “tough but appro-
priate action” against Russia when
asked if the measures were sufficient,
while stressing that the Olympics movement had a mandate to remain “politically neutral”.
The Games have been a focal point of
wider geopolitical tensions. Western
countries have staged a diplomatic boycott over Beijing’s human rights abuses
in Xinjiang, where it has interned more
than 1mn Muslim Uyghurs.
China president Xi Jinping has used
the event to signal firmer ties with
Vladimir Putin, his Russian peer, as
Moscow is engaged in a diplomatic
stand-off with the west over Ukraine.
Valieva is the brightest star in a deep
field of Russian teenage figure skating
talent. They are coached by Eteri Tutberidze, who has trained many champions over the past decade and ushered in
the era of quadruple jumps in women’s
skating. Two teenage Tutberidze protégés won gold and silver for ROC in the
women’s individual figure skating event
at the 2018 Olympics.
Additional reporting by Thomas Hale in
Beijing, Nastassia Astrasheuskaya in Moscow and William Langley in Hong Kong
HebA sAleH
north AfricA correspondent
Libya’s parliament has appointed a
new prime minister in a deal that could
produce two rival administrations and
deliver a setback to UN plans to unite
the North African country.
Fathi Bashagha was appointed prime
minister on Thursday by the House of
Representatives, which is based in
Tobruk in the east, amid frustration
stemming from the UN-recognised government in Tripoli failing to hold
December elections.
Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, the interim
prime minister of the Government of
National Unity in Tripoli, has rejected
Bashagha’s appointment and refuses to
step down until elections have taken
place. This raises the possibility of two
rival leaders vying to rule the country.
Dbeibeh’s government replaced two
opposing administrations in the east
and west of the country that has been
divided since 2014.
The UN and western governments
had hoped the December elections
would help the country where militias
have held sway for most of the past decade and foreign governments have
engaged in proxy wars by sending arms
and mercenaries. But the December poll
was delayed because of disputes about
eligibility after the emergence of divisive candidates such as Saif al-Islam
Gaddafi, the son of the former dictator.
Bashagha, an influential politician
from western Libya, has the backing of
Khalifa Haftar, who controls the east
and who launched a failed military
offensive in 2019 to seize control of the
entire country. Bashagha still has to
form a government that will be submitted to a vote of confidence in the parliament within two weeks.
“One question now is whether Bashagha can actually take over because if
not, then we are in a situation of a parallel government,” said Wolfram Lacher,
Libya analyst at the German Institute
for International and Security Affairs.
12 February/13 February 2022
★
FTWeekend
5
6
★
FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
FT BIG READ. PANDEMIC POLITICS
About 500 vehicles have blocked the centre of Ottawa for the past two weeks. What started as a protest
over mandatory inoculations for some jobs has morphed into a broader anti-government movement.
By Charlie Mitchell and Kiran Stacey
T
he occupation of Canada’s
capital is approaching the
two-week mark, with about
two dozen streets blocked
and some residents afraid
to leave their homes for fear of harassment. But Nolan, a trucker from British
Columbia, is as determined as ever.
Having driven 2,800 miles to Ottawa
and slept for 11 nights in an articulated
lorry, the 25-year-old, who did not want
to give his last name, vows to stay “as
long as it takes”. “This is the moment,”
he says, to fight against “oppression”.
The apocalyptic rhetoric is a common
feature of the self-styled “Freedom Convoy” — a group of truckers and antilockdown demonstrators who have
managed to shut down the centre of
Ottawa and a section of the country’s
border with the US.
Fired with indignation at what they
see as a crushing of individual liberty
during the pandemic, the protest began
last month in opposition to a requirement that cross-border truckers get vaccinated against Covid-19. Since then it
has morphed into a broader anti-government movement that mixes antivaccine rhetoric, far-right politics and
conspiracy theories, from 5G-enabled
microchips to QAnon.
Some 500 vehicles, including lorries,
cars and pick-ups, are blocking the
streets in front of Canada’s parliament.
A stench of diesel lingers in the air, as
protesters carry jerrycans of fuel to keep
the trucks warm, despite threats they
would be arrested for doing so. On the
long boulevard outside the parliament
building, there are kitchen tents, trestle
tables loaded with hot dog buns, and a
stage. Earlier in the week, there were
portable saunas and a bouncy castle.
Justin Trudeau, the centre-left prime
minister who is the main target of the
protesters’ ire, left his official residence
in Ottawa because of the protest. “Individuals are trying to blockade our economy, our democracy, and our fellow citizens’ daily lives,” Trudeau said this
week. “It has to stop.”
It is possible that the protest is merely
a shortlived spasm orchestrated by an
angry yet relatively limited group of discontents. The trade union that represents Canada’s truckers has denounced
the participants.
But there are some tentative signs
that Canada’s protest could spark copycat events in other parts of the world,
from France to the US. Politicians on the
American right are watching events
closely to see if there are the stirrings of
an anti-lockdown version of the gilets
jaunes, the 2018 anti-establishment protests that swept across France.
At the very least, the events in Ottawa
hint at the deep wells of resentment
about two years of heavy-handed pandemic health restrictions that have the
capacity to spill over — from the violent
protests that erupted in Amsterdam
and Brussels in recent months to the
Canadian truckers.
According to Cathryn Carruthers, cofounder of Families for Choice, a group
based in Alberta which wants parents to
be able to choose whether to vaccinate
their children: “Seeing truckers take
direct action gave Canadians who were
feeling fed up and powerless a
sense of hope that something might actually
change, and permission to
stand together and say
enough is enough.”
After two weeks of
protests, the costs are
starting to mount. On
Monday truckers
organised a blockade
at the Ambassador
Obituary
The voice
that united
generations
of Indians
Lata Mangeshkar
Bollywood playback singer
1929-2022
Canada’s vaccine backlash
Protest
organisers
have ‘latched
on to a
feeling that
is very real,
of anger and
resentment
and
exasperation
from a part
of the
Canadian
electorate’
Bridge linking Windsor and Detroit, the
busiest US-Canada land crossing,
accounting for more than a quarter of
cross-border trade. By yesterday, they
were still blocking traffic.
The blockades at the border are
delaying an estimated C$300mn in
daily trade. The carmakers Toyota and
Ford say production is being disrupted.
Protesters blocked streets at Ottawa’s
international airport and attempted to
flood emergency lines with nuisance
calls, Ottawa police said on Thursday.
Fearing harassment
In the early days of the protests, police
opted to stand aside, fearing a violent
escalation. Many residents felt abandoned in the face of what they considered harassment. Some say they were
forced to scrape excrement off their
doorsteps and suffered abuse for wearing masks. Dozens of businesses have
closed, including the city’s main mall,
which was briefly occupied by flagwaving maskless protesters.
However, this week police
started making arrests, detaining
25 people, mostly on mischief
charges. Yesterday, Doug Ford, premier of Ontario, declared a state of
emergency, threatening those who
block roads and bridges with C$100,000
fines and a year in jail.
It is not clear how much support the protesters have across
society. Among Canadians aged
over five, 82 per cent are fully vaccinated — one of the highest rates
in the world. A recent poll by
Abacus Data found that 87 per
cent of Ottawa residents want
the protesters gone.
Teamsters Canada, which
The soaring, silvery voice of a Bollywood playback singer was the soundtrack to millions of lives, a thread that
bound generations across the 75 years
following India’s independence in 1947.
Lata Mangeshkar, who has died aged
92, was bigger than The Beatles and
Beyoncé in her home country. Often
referred to by the respectful term
“Lata-ji”, her fame eclipsed that of
Michael Jackson or Madonna. She wore
her trademark white saris at most of her
performances, holding audiences in
thrall everywhere from Las Vegas to the
Sydney Opera House. Crowds of homesick Indians flocked to pay tribute as she
walked barefoot on to the stage of London’s Royal Albert Hall in 1974.
By the time of her death, she had
recorded a legendary number of songs
— somewhere between 25,000 and
30,000 — in at least 14, or some said 20,
of India’s 22 official languages and in
several others from English and Dutch
to Swahili. The numbers are debated.
But they matter less than the place she
occupied in the hearts of Indians. For
decades they listened to her on shellac
gramophone records, then vinyl, cassette tapes, Walkmans, CDs, until a new
generation summoned her on Alexa.
represents 15,000 lorry drivers, has
denounced the protests. “The so-called
‘freedom convoy’ and the despicable
display of hate led by the political right
and shamefully encouraged by elected
Conservative politicians does not reflect
the values of Teamsters Canada, nor the
vast majority of our members,” said the
organisation’s president, François
Laporte, in a statement.
The protesters insist their beef is with
Trudeau, who clashed with unvaccinated protesters during last year’s tense
general election. At one event, he was
hit by gravel thrown by protesters.
In some parts of Canada, mandatory
vaccines for certain professions have led
to police, firefighters and truckers losing their jobs — including some involved
in the protests. Most Covid-19 restrictions are controlled by provincial governments, many of which, including
Ontario and Quebec, have required people to show proof of vaccination to enter
restaurants, cinemas and bars. The
western provinces of Saskatchewan and
Alberta have started easing restrictions.
Stéphanie Chouinard, a politics professor at the Royal Military College in
Kingston, Ontario, says organisers
“latched on to a feeling that is very real,
of anger and resentment and exasperation from a part of the Canadian electorate who has perhaps had a higher price
to pay” — such as frontline workers who
could not pivot to working from home.
She adds: “The far right has used this
resentment and this anger as a pretence
for organising and disturbing.”
The protests have revealed some fissures within the political establishment.
On Tuesday, Joël Lightbound, a member
of Trudeau’s Liberal party, accused the
prime minister of trying “to divide and
Lata was born Hema Mangeshkar in
1929 in the city of Indore. Music was in
the air she breathed. She was the oldest
daughter of Pandit Deenanath Mangeshkar, a Marathi and Konkani theatre
actor and classical musician, and his
wife, Shevanti. At nine, she asked her
father if she could sing Raga Khambavati during one of his concerts. She
wore a white frock, she recalled later,
opened the performance, then fell
asleep on her father’s lap as he sang late
into the night. He died when she was
just 13, and she took small roles in theatre and films to support her family. She
recorded her first film song in Marathi
for the movie Kiti Hasaal in 1942. Her
voice was both girlish and assured — as
it would remain thereafter.
The family moved to Mumbai in 1945,
when the partition of the country into
India and Pakistan also split the world of
Hindi film singers. Noorjehan, one of
the greatest singing stars of the time,
moved back to Lahore and, in 1948 and
1949, Lata had her first big hits in the
movies Majboor and Mahal. A torch had
been passed on. Years later, when Lata
was travelling in Punjab, she and Noorjehan met — poetically, in the unclaimed
territory between the borders.
to stigmatise” the unvaccinated and
lockdown-sceptics.
The opposition Conservatives, who
recently ousted their leader for pulling
the party too far to the centre, initially
praised the truckers. However, as the
protests have dragged on, some have
changed tack in the face of the perceived
radicalism, with Candice Bergen, the
interim leader, called on Thursday for
an end to the blockade.
Copycat protests
Across the border in the US, the protests
have put further pressure on supply
chains already stretched by the pandemic. But the Biden administration
also has an eye on a potentially far bigger problem: what if American truckers
decide to carry out a copycat protest?
Could they bring similar chaos to New
York, or Washington, DC?
This week, officials at the US Department of Homeland Security issued a
warning to law enforcement agencies
across the country that a group of truckers was planning a convoy which would
begin in California and end in Washington, DC. The widely-circulated memo
said the protest could affect the Super
Bowl in Los Angeles this weekend and
the State of the Union speech to be given
by Joe Biden on March 1.
Analysts and officials who monitor
rightwing online groups say those
involved with the QAnon conspiracy
theory movement and supporters of
former president Donald Trump have
been mulling the possibility of holding a
similar protest in the US.
But the plans are disparate, analysts
say, and the numbers involved are
small. “It is definitely true that US and
Canadian conspiracy theorist groups
Her four siblings, Meena Khadikar,
Asha Bhosle, Usha Mangeshkar and
Hridaynath Mangeshkar, are all musicians. Lata and Asha, also a cherished
playback singer, often denied Bollywood gossip about their relationship:
“How can we be rivals? I can never sing
what she can,” Lata said.
The sisters dominated the songs of
Hindi cinema. As another singer, Alka
Yagnik, recalled in 1990: “In the beginning, music directors would say ‘give us
the same magic as Lata-ji, give us the
same magic as Asha-ji’. I tried, but that
magic is only in them.”
Lata brought the rigour of riyaz, the
steady practice of classical musicians,
and a strict professionalism to her
recording sessions. “I always find faults
with my singing,” she said once. “If I
don’t like what I’ve sung, I put my fingers in my ears and run away.” Bade
Ghulam Ali Khan, another great classical musician, proclaimed: “Kambakht,
kabhi besura gaati hi nahi!” — loosely,
“that woman never sings out of tune!”
As her biographer Harish Bhimani
noted, she was “all steel beneath her
lovely, rustling silks and half-smile”,
negotiating the often ruthless world of
Bollywood with iron professionalism.
The ‘Freedom
Convoy’
protesters have
shut down parts
of Canada’s
capital and
forced Prime
Minister Justin
Trudeau, below
left, to vacate
his official
residence
Spencer Platt/Getty
‘Many US
conspiracy
theorists and
rightwing
grifters are
talking
about the
possibility of
a convoy, but
they are
waiting for
someone
else to
start it’
Lata is said to have recorded
between 25,000 and 30,000 songs
She was ‘all steel beneath
her lovely, rustling silks
and half-smile’, negotiating
ruthless Bollywood with
iron professionalism
have been sharing information back
and forth for the last few weeks,” says
Brian Murphy, vice-president of strategic operations at Logically, a group
formed to fight online disinformation.
“But a US movement would also need
a set of leaders to organise and galvanise
it, which it lacks right now.”
Mike Rains, host of Adventures in
HellwQrld, a podcast tracking the
QAnon conspiracy, says: “Many of the
US conspiracy theorists and rightwing
grifters are talking vaguely about the
possibility of a US convoy, but everyone
is waiting for someone else to start it.
In France yesterday, convoys of cars
and trucks were making their way from
various regions to the capital ahead of
protests planned for today. Organised
via Facebook groups and the chat app
Telegram, the heterogenous movement
appears to be made up of people who
oppose France’s Covid-19 vaccine
requirements, as well as some who identify with the gilets jaunes movement. The
Paris prefecture said the protesters
would be prohibited from entering the
capital from yesterday to Monday, citing
the risk of public disorder.
Among the “Fuck Trudeau” banners
and Canadian flags that some of the
Ottawa protesters use, there are also
plenty of far-right tropes — including
the odd swastika and Confederate flag.
Anti-media sentiment is rampant.
Even with the prospect of the protest
entering a third week and the state of
emergency, there are few signs that the
truckers are backing out. “I want to go
home,” Tom Marazzo, one of the organisers, said this week. “But I am not going
until I am no longer needed here . . .
until the job is done.”
Additional reporting by Leila Abboud
She remained both deeply religious and
independent throughout her life, never
marrying. When a journalist had the
temerity to castigate her for playing the
slot machines in Las Vegas, she retorted
that she was gambling with her own
money, not his father’s cash. She wore
gold anklets, thought to be the prerogative of royal families, enjoyed collecting
cars and state of the art cameras.
Her most loyal listeners were at
home. Delhi and Mumbai were much
smaller cities in the 1970s and 1980s. On
summer evenings, people would sit outside their homes listening on tinny transistor radios as her perfectly pitched
voice floated above the open windows of
Mumbai’s chawls, or rose from a score of
Delhi’s bungalow rooftops.
India changed. Those cities became
giant metropolises and democracy
would veer away from the post-partition dream of pragmatic pluralism. But
throughout, you could travel anywhere
and hear Lata’s latest Hindi film hit, or
one of her devotional bhajans, or a lilting
romantic duet in the toddy shops of Kerala or the bus stands in Bihar. Her songs
belonged to every Indian, wherever
they were.
Nilanjana Roy
12 February/13 February 2022
★
FTWeekend
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12 February/13 February 2022
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SATURDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2022
Economics should never
waste a good crisis
The dismal science learns the most when things go very wrong
Max Planck, the Nobel Prize-winning
theoretical physicist, had it that “science advances one funeral at a time”.
By that he meant that rather than anyone changing their mind — in response
to reasonable argument or the presentation of novel data — younger generations with new ideas gradually replaced
the older ones with fixed ideas.
With a little modification the same
principle can be applied to economic
theory: it advances one crisis at a time.
The failure of policymakers to bring
the Great Depression to an end in the
1930s spurred the adoption of Keynesian demand management. Then the
Great Inflation of the 1970s led to the
adoption of monetarism and its focus
on controlling the quantity of money.
The 2008 crisis led to a re-evaluation of
theories of financial instability and a
renewed focus on banking. As recently
as this week, America’s bout of inflation has sparked discussion about
competing theories of its origin.
Crises offer opportunities partly
because they show how economies
react to a source of stress. Social scientists struggle compared with the physical sciences because there is no way of
running an experiment on a whole
society — you cannot get a research
grant to shut down face-to-face economic activity for months at a time and
then compare it to another economy
that did not receive such a shock. While
it has been by no means a controlled
experiment, the experience of the
pandemic can provide some evidence.
There is much to learn, too, from
pathology: early neurologists examined people with brain injuries to learn
what function was carried out by the
damaged part. Similarly seeing what
causes recessions shows how economies behave when healthy.
The pandemic, of course, was originally a public health crisis rather than
an economic one: it was not generated,
internally, by the actions of businesses,
consumers and policymakers but
externally, by a virus. Still there is
much to learn, not least from the inflation that has followed the reopening
and the policy response to it. One
avenue is the possibility of “multiple
equilibria”, an agenda that was being
pursued before the shutdowns but
looks at how there are different possible steady states for an economy and
how it transitions between them — for
instance, a low growth, low inflation
one and a higher growth, higher inflation one.
Perhaps, instead of generating purely
new ideas, each crisis leads to a re-evaluation of old ones. Keynesianism had
something in common with earlier,
previously rejected, mercantilist ideas.
The 2008 financial crisis led to a
re-evaluation of the work of Hyman
Minsky, an oft-ignored American economist who was writing from a Keynesian perspective when the monetarism
of the Chicago School held sway. The
quantity theory of money, revived by
Milton Friedman to become the bedrock of monetarism, was first articulated by the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. Some argue the first
version was in the Guanzi, a fourth century BCE Chinese text.
Crises not only lead to intellectual
shifts but also political ones. The failure of a group of scholars helps promote the ideas of a new set while the
poor response of one political party can
lead to a different group taking over.
The progressive supply-side policies
advocated by US Treasury secretary
Janet Yellen — arguing that economic
capacity as well as demand can be
reshaped by an activist state — would
not have got much of a hearing in Donald Trump’s administration. Perhaps
economists should reflect that they,
like their subject of study, are prone to
cycles, shocks and even scarring.
The Met police chief
finally falls on her sword
Cressida Dick proved herself incapable of tackling a toxic culture
Cressida Dick’s position as head of the
Metropolitan Police — a role often
described as Britain’s top cop — had
become untenable. She was not personally responsible for many of the
scandals on her watch, but she has
proved herself unable to stamp out the
Met’s toxic and back-covering culture.
Finally this week, she was essentially
told that she had lost the confidence of
the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, who is
also the police and crime commissioner for the capital, and tendered her
resignation. The mayor was right.
Across a series of incidents, the Met lost
public confidence. Britain’s ethos of
policing by consent means public
approval is vital to the police’s ability to
both serve and protect.
The killing of Sarah Everard by a
serving officer, the heavy-handed
policing of a vigil in her honour and the
force’s tin-eared advice to women worried about being approached by a lone
officer to “flag down a bus” will have
convinced many Londoners that Dick
was failing in both the organisational
and operational functions her role
demanded. A steady stream of shortcomings proved her undoing, including
the Met’s mishandling of the murder of
two black sisters, and a laggardly
response to investigating lockdown
gatherings at Downing Street.
A clever, able and dedicated police
chief, Dick ran out of excuses. The
Met’s cultural failings were not changing at a speed demanded by citizens.
Dick seemed too keen to cling to a “rotten apple” defence rather than attack
the force’s racism and misogyny with
vigour. Even last year the Met was
accused of a form of “institutional corruption” for its efforts to obstruct an
inquiry into a historic murder probe.
For many, Dick should not have been
appointed after her oversight role in
the killing of the innocent Jean Charles
de Menezes following the 2005 London
bombings. Her appointment as the
Met’s first female — and openly gay —
commissioner might have been used to
greater symbolic effect but her failure
to address the force’s toxic culture is all
the more pointed because of it.
The timing of her exit is unfortunate,
given the Met’s investigation into
Downing Street gatherings. Since the
inquiry’s outcome could bring down
the prime minister, this is hardly the
ideal moment for his government to be
choosing her successor, selected by the
home secretary, Priti Patel, with input
from Khan. Already Boris Johnson’s
allies are applying rhetorical pressure
on the Met. It is essential that its investigation is seen to be uncontaminated.
It is worth asking why Khan agreed
to Dick’s reappointment only three
months ago. While the immediate
cause of his angry ousting of her was a
watchdog report into appalling social
media messages by officers at Charing
Cross police station, most of the criticisms of Dick were well known to him.
Nor was Patel an enthusiastic supporter. It was the absence of a suitable
successor that swayed them.
This is perhaps a key point. There are
many who feel the job is too big and
that this may be the moment to split
the 43,600-strong force, hiving off the
Met’s national role in areas such as
counter-terrorism and diplomatic protection, leaving it to focus entirely on
the capital (already a big enough challenge). This would also end the confusion of reporting lines to both the home
secretary and the mayor.
Many talk of this being an impossible
job. Three of the past four commissioners have left before they intended.
Patel is known to want Dick’s successor
to come from outside the Met. Wherever the new appointee is found, he or
she must have the determination to fix
a police culture that has become a
national embarrassment.
Lessons can be learnt from US president Jimmy Carter’s handling of the build-up of Soviet forces on Poland’s border in 1980, writes Edward Luce — Ewan White
US venture capital is late to the party of Europe’s tech revival
Reading Sebastian Mallaby’s US-centric
account of European venture capital
(The Weekend Essay, Life & Arts,
February 5), I am reminded that many
in Silicon Valley still see Europe as a
collection of museums and a place to
go on vacation. And that’s OK with us.
Far from being a contrarian bet in
2019, Europe already had 93 unicorns
(private tech companies worth at least
$1bn), with enterprise value of
$200bn, including exits achieved by
Adyen, Farfetch, Elasticsearch and
Spotify. Venture capital investment in
Europe, worth $42bn in 2019, had
grown to $113bn by 2021, despite the
economic hit of the global pandemic.
Europe’s venture capital sector has
not suddenly ignited because of the
arrival of a group of US investors with
deep pockets, and Europe’s business
history is far from “lacklustre”, as
Mallaby asserts. In fact returns from
European VC-backed tech start-ups
over the past two decades have been
higher than those in the US. Far from
resenting Valley-style venture capital,
European VCs have learnt from the
best practice of the West Coast.
We welcome the influx of US capital,
which accounted for 38 per cent of all
money invested in UK venture capital
last year. But we also note that recent
arrivals are still overwhelmingly
investing at growth stage, with more
than 85 per cent of their capital
invested after their European
counterparts have made the much
harder, riskier decisions at seed and
series A stages, the name given to the
first significant round of VC financing.
With more than 300 unicorns and
almost 30 “decacorns” (a company
valued over $10bn), the risks European
VCs took, and continue to take, have
generated significant returns and those
will assure the success of the next
generation of European tech, which
our US counterparts are so keen to
participate in.
Ophelia Brown
Founder, Blossom Capital, London N1, UK
How Orwell’s dystopia
includes a love of gardens
Wordle is like the golden
egg of the Aesop’s fable
programming blogs and newsletters
and once upon a time I set up and ran a
perfectly functional website by writing
its underlying code.
I am not quite in the aforementioned
age group, but we’re talking months
not years, and I doubt that my faculties
will suddenly desert me when I cross
that particular Rubicon.
Stephen Bamber
Warwick, Warwickshire, UK
There’s a reason pedestrian
deaths are lower in Oslo
Reading Robin Lane Fox’s review of
Orwell’s Roses (House & Home,
February 5) I was surprised by his
misunderstanding of Rebecca Solnit’s
purpose. He objects that Solnit doesn’t
include certain details, and that a
metaphor about rose hips isn’t central
to the plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
But there are more ways for
something to be important to a book
than to its plot. And likewise Solnit
never suggests that Orwell plotted his
whole life around vegetables.
Solnit is better than anyone at
reminding her fellow activists that
victorious movements for social
change are powered as much by joy
and love as by anger and dread. The
common myth around Orwell is
powered by his dystopias (neatly
demonstrated by Gaurav Narayan
Varma’s letter in the same FT), and
Solnit wants to reclaim him for hope
and possibility.
So her goal isn’t to show that flowers
and gardens were important to Orwell’s
novels, but that they were important to
Orwell. He thought about springtime as
much as winter, and so should we.
David Singerman
Charlottesville, VA, US
It’s time for us
all to speak
more like
the Dutch
Notebook
by Gillian Tett
John Gapper’s thoughtful article about
Wordle is especially relevant in a week
when the share price of Facebook/Meta
has plunged (“Wordle and recipes are
the secret sauce of news”, Opinion,
February 5).
He writes that the editors on the FT
news desk play. It’s a game that appeals
to an intelligent audience, unlike
Sudoko and infantile internet games.
Moreover it can only be played once a
day, and in less time than it takes to
boil an egg. Mine are not always runny.
The New York Times has a precious
asset but, like the golden egg of the
Aesop’s fable, it must reflect on how to
exploit it without killing the goose.
Christopher Bellew
London W6, UK
I object to being called
‘technologically backward’
I take exception to the implication in
Will Page’s piece about Spotify’s spat
with Neil Young (“Everyone’s a winner
in Spotify’s face-off with Neil Young”,
Opinion, FT Weekend, February 5)
that the over-65s are technologically
backward.
I subscribe to various tech and
A decade ago, a Dutch friend
recommended that I read an online
“Anglo-Dutch translation guide”.
Written by Nannette Ripmeester, an
expert in labour mobility, this list
illuminates the pitfalls that emerge
when the British and Dutch talk in
what is supposed to be the same
tongue, namely English.
British people, Ripmeester explains,
often use words in a manner so riddled
with ambiguity that the sense can only
be understood if both the speaker and
listener share an implicit cultural
frame. The Dutch, however, tend to
speak in a far more direct and logical
way, with fewer hidden meanings.
For example, when the British begin
a sentence saying, “With all due
respect,” they actually mean “I think
you are wrong”. But a Dutch person
would hear this phrase and think, “She
respects my view”. Similarly, if a British
person says, “That is an original point
of view”, a Dutch person might
assume they were being praised, when
in British parlance the phrase tends to
imply, “That’s a stupid idea!”
But aside from embarrassing
misunderstandings, these linguistic
twists have an important implication
for public life. English is the lingua
franca for large parts of the business
world, with the English Proficiency
Index estimating that 2.5bn people
use the language, of whom only
400mn are native speakers. So if we
want to build a more effective,
democratic and trusting world, we
would do better by using language
more logically. It is time for us to all
Equivocating over Marx is
a dispiriting academic trait
Most philosophers have little impact on
the real world. Not so for Karl Marx
whose followers killed about 100mn
people in the last century.
In the west we have become used to
Marxist academics but it is most
dispiriting to discover the author Lea
Ypi, whose family suffered under the
Albanian communists, in that camp or
at least equivocal on Marxism (“For
me, Marx is neither a saint nor an
enemy”, Lunch with the FT, Life &
Arts, February 5).
What next for UK academia? Perhaps
a descendent of Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn taking up a Chair of
Marxist studies?
Peter Daly
Dublin, Ireland
speak more like the Dutch; even (or
especially) when using English.
To understand why, it is worth
pondering a new book by the business
writer Kevin Duncan. Five years ago,
Duncan started a crusade against what
he describes as “bullshit” in corporate
life. His The Business Bullshit Book: A
Dictionary for Navigating the Jungle of
Corporate Speak lists phrases he wants
excised from the office, such as
“incentivising”, “get your ducks in a
row”, “thought leadership” and so on.
Now he has released The BullshitFree Book, which tries to replace those
hated phrases with better words. In
many ways, his recommendations
amount to turning British English into
the Dutch version. Consider the
phrase “reach out”. Duncan says this
first cropped up in 1966 in a Four Tops
song (“Reach Out I’ll be There”), and
was then used in an ad from AT&T,
the telecoms group. Now it is
ubiquitous in corporate life since the
idea of “reaching out” to colleagues
creates “an element of vulnerability
and softness” or “an emotional, or
even spiritual, component to
proceedings”, Duncan says.
But if you stop to think about the
meaning of those words, they are
ridiculous. Nobody in corporate life is
actually extending their hand. Duncan
suggests we should replace the words
with a simpler one: “talk”. He also
hates the phrase “singing from the
same hymn sheet”, arguing it is better
to just say “agree and portray a united
front”. He wants “push the needle”
(which comes from car speedometers)
David Coombs says the UK government
risks accidents if it doesn’t reconsider
the change in the Highway Code
(Letters, FT Weekend, February 5).
He has obviously never had the
pleasure of living in Scandinavia. Here,
it is a legal requirement for cars to give
way to pedestrians when turning from,
or into, a road. Having lived in
Denmark, I had several close shaves on
returning to the UK when I expected
the turning cars to stop to let me cross
the junction.
On the other hand I implement this
excellent rule when driving, to the
wary surprise of waiting pedestrians.
Why would this be a “dangerous new
rule” in the UK when its practice in
Scandinavia contributed to both
Helsinki and Oslo having zero
pedestrian deaths in 2019?
David W Marshall
Banchory, Aberdeenshire, UK
Correction
c An article in last weekend’s newspaper
mistakenly referred to the idea of
‘noble force corruption’ rather than
‘noble cause corruption’.
expressed as “work as hard as we can”.
“Gut feel” and “de-staffing” would be
more honestly translated as “instinct”
and “redundancies”.
To take Duncan’s advice, I will be
honest and say these recommendations
are not particularly original. Former
FT columnist Lucy Kellaway wrote a
piece as early as 1994 mocking
business jargon. Yet it is worth
revisiting the subject of corporate
“guff” and asking why it hasn’t gone
away. The answer is partly that
ambiguity and double talk do not
emerge by accident. Their function is
often to mask some of the ugly realities
of business life or office hierarchies.
Familiar idioms, like nicknames, can
create a shared cultural base and
reinforce our sense of belonging.
But when you need to be an insider
to understand what is going on, you
have a problem. And that is why it
pays to reduce the bullshit. A world of
clubby speech creates barriers to
entry. It is also tends to breed
cynicism and distrust — precisely
what the business world does not need.
So the next time you read a
corporate leader’s memo or listen to a
politician’s speech, think of that
Anglo-Dutch guide. Then try to
imagine what might happen if you
were to replace the “bullshit” with
straightforward speech. Call it, if you
like, a dose of double Dutch — albeit
not in the usual English sense of the
word (since the 17th century, the
phrase has been slang for “gibberish”),
but in the “logical” sense, ie, twice as
direct. Most of us would cheer.
★
12 February/13 February 2022
9
FTWeekend
Opinion
Biden should use the cold war handbook to stop Putin
politics
Edward
Luce
H
istory repeats itself, first as
tragedy, then as farce, said
Karl Marx. But sometimes,
as Mark Twain rejoined, it
simply rhymes. The 1980
amassing of Soviet divisions on Poland’s
border threatened to become a lethal
escalation of the cold war. America
warned Moscow that an invasion of
Poland would kill US-Soviet detente —
and probably much worse. Today’s Russian build-up on Ukraine’s border,
which Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s national
security adviser, says could produce an
invasion “any day”, is arguably as ominous. But Washington has a useful
handbook available.
Almost everyone thought the Soviets
would invade Poland. In August 1980,
Lech Walesa led a workers’ occupation
of the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk that
expanded into strikes across Poland. A
weak government caved in to pressure
to permit an independent trade union,
Solidarity — an alarming precedent for
Moscow and its other satellite regimes.
As in Hungary in 1956, and Czechoslovakia in 1968, Moscow gave the wobbly
Polish communists a window in which
to crack down or risk an invasion. Warsaw continued to prevaricate.
Much like Russian forces in Belarus
today, Moscow reinforced its point by
conducting military exercises on
Poland’s borders. By December 1980, as
many as 45 Soviet divisions, or more
than 400,000 troops, were on Poland’s
eastern flank. A handful of East German
and Czechoslovak divisions were
primed on Poland’s western borders.
The spectre of a third invasion of an east
European satellite in 25 years sowed
division in western Europe. In this case,
history offers useful lessons.
In May 1980, Valéry Giscard d’Esta-
ing, France’s president, went to Warsaw
for talks with Leonid Brezhnev, the ailing Soviet leader. Giscard did not warn
his allies of his plans. The parallels to
Emmanuel Macron’s freelancing are
hard to miss. More troubling to Washington was the response of Helmut
Schmidt, West Germany’s chancellor,
who argued that a Soviet invasion would
not endanger detente. Nor would it
derail German plans to provide the
USSR with loans to build a gas pipeline
from Siberia to West Germany. Some
things stay the same. Today’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has still not committed
to halting the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if
Russia invades Ukraine.
But perhaps the closest parallel is
between the Biden and Jimmy Carter
administrations. At 37 per cent in the
polls, and facing a tough election battle
with Ronald Reagan, Carter was seen as
indecisive and wobbly. Much of this was
unfair. But America’s nightly broadcasts
were dominated by images of the US
hostages in revolutionary Iran, about
which Carter could do little. Biden is
more than two years from the next election. But his ratings are little better than
Carter’s — and his political obituary has
become a media staple.
Carter’s trump card was Zbigniew
Brzezinski, his hawkish national security adviser, who was a native-born fluent Polish speaker and naturalised
American, and who drew on a secret
One reason Russia sees the
US as weak is because of
the hasty exit from
Afghanistan after 20 years
weapon — Ryszard Kuklinski, a senior
Polish military official and spy for the
CIA. Kuklinski was also a Polish liaison
to the Soviet military. His reports were
so tightly held that only Carter, Brzezinski and Walter Mondale, the vice-president, were permitted to read them.
Assets this valuable are extremely
rare. It would be remarkable were the
CIA to have an equivalent mole on
Putin’s staff. Biden’s White House has
nevertheless leaked apparently strong
intelligence about Putin’s plans for a
Ukrainian puppet government.
Whether Biden is hyping these findings
to whip allies into line remains to be
seen. With the benefit of hindsight —
and the minutes of Soviet politburo
meetings — we know plans were drawn
up for an invasion of Poland in December 1980. How did Carter stave it off?
This is where history sounds more
cacophonous. Unlike Putin, Brezhnev
was in a weak position. In December
1979 the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.
They were suffering losses at the hands
of the US-backed mujahideen. Now the
Afghanistan shoe is on the other foot.
One reason Putin sees Biden as weak is
because of the hasty US exit from
Afghanistan after 20 fruitless years.
Moreover, China is in a radically different place than in 1980. A year earlier,
Carter had normalised US-China relations, which cemented Beijing’s move
into the anti-Soviet camp. This was a
strategic coup. Brzezinski and Deng
Xiaoping, China’s leader, even toasted
“death to the Soviet Union!” (with Russian vodka, to rub salt into the wound).
Today China and Russia are aligned.
Last week Xi Jinping and Putin issued a
statement opposing Nato’s expansion.
But the similarities are compelling.
The USSR stood down from invading
Poland in 1980 because it judged the
costs could be prohibitive. The US
warned of arms sales to China, a total
Soviet trade boycott and a grain
embargo. The Poles, like Ukrainians
today, were bitterly hostile to Moscow.
The more Biden can convince Putin he
would risk another “bleeding wound” —
as Mikhail Gorbachev later described
the Soviet war in Afghanistan — the less
attractive invading Ukraine will seem.
George Santayana said: “Those who
cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” For Biden that
could read: “Those who study history
may be fortunate to repeat it.”
[email protected]
A superyacht is a luxury
toy that keeps on giving
In stepping down from
Meta, the entrepreneur
shifts from Silicon Valley
to Washington. By Richard
Waters and Lauren Fedor
John
Gapper
All Consuming
I
I
s Washington ready for Peter Thiel’s
radical brand of anti-establishment
thinking?
One of the most successful Silicon
Valley investors and entrepreneurs
of the last two decades, Thiel this week
disclosed that he was stepping down
after 17 years on the board of Facebook
(or Meta, as it is now known). The
departure, according to one person who
knows him, was designed to give the
social network’s first outside investor
more freedom to expand his political
influence, while protecting Meta from
any backlash.
Thiel’s personal backing for Donald
Trump in 2016 left many in liberal-leaning Silicon Valley aghast and — along
with a personal fortune that Forbes puts
at $2.6bn — has fuelled expectation that
he is about to emerge as a powerful new
force in rightwing politics.
“It’s a false narrative,” complains one
ally — from an establishment which has
long found it convenient to cast Thiel as
a political manipulator. “They need
some kind of bogeyman on the right.”
Yet the Meta split appears to signal a
watershed. Thiel moved his base to Los
Angeles in 2018 after tiring of what he
claimed was Silicon Valley’s waning
ambition and spends more time in New
York, Washington and Miami.
Thiel has always relished the part of
contrarian outsider. Born in Germany
and brought up in California, he did not
follow the usual path to the tech industry’s top. A philosophy degree was followed by an early legal career, while his
entrepreneurial endeavours were interspersed with a period at a hedge fund.
His business ventures included
founding PayPal (where he was also
CEO) and Palantir, a data analytics company whose work for the national security establishment has long antagonised
civil liberties activists. Along the way,
Thiel became a voluble exponent of a
strand of libertarianism that pervades
Silicon Valley. Zero to One, his handbook
for budding founders, depicts such
entrepreneurs as Randian heroes.
Blake Masters, his co-author and head
of Thiel’s private foundation, is contesting the Arizona Republican Senate primary, backed by $10mn of Thiel’s cash.
Thiel has thrown the same amount
behind JD Vance, author of Hillbilly
Elegy and formerly at the Thiel-founded
Mithril Capital, in a Senate seat race in
Ohio. These splashy contributions,
among others, have made him the thirdbiggest backer of federal candidates in
this year’s elections.
Thiel has a deep interest in challenging conventional thinking, according to
people who have worked with him. At
dinners at the home he shares with his
husband Matt Danzeisen and their
daughter, “you’d spend three and a half
hours debating the strangest things”,
one says. A typical subject: if there was
an alien invasion, how would you reach
diplomatic common ground?
Behind all this lie deep personal
beliefs. Thiel is a committed Christian,
and his worldview was shaped by
French philosopher René Girard, who
he studied under at Stanford University.
According to Girard’s mimetic theory,
Person in the News | Peter Thiel
The contrarian tech
investor turns to politics
most people’s desires are copied from
others, a habit that ultimately leads to
conflict. Only true originality — in
Thiel’s view, fuelled by technology innovation — can carry humanity beyond
these destructive limits.
“It’s a Plato/Socrates thing,” says one
ally. “Everyone who is close to [Thiel]
knows Girard inside and out.” Ironically,
that hints at an intellectual conformity
that Thiel detests. Taking a cue from
Girard, he has long argued that tech
start-ups have given up on innovation
and prefer to copy each other. And in
Washington, says an acquaintance, “He
looks at the Republican party and says,
‘This institution is frozen in time’.”
Whether his ample cash can change
anything is an open question. “Thiel is
picking up where the Tea Party left off,
placing bets on outsider candidates to
shake up the party,” says Republican
donor Dan Eberhart, chief executive of
Canary, a drilling company.
Ultimately, his influence will depend
on his “ability to evaluate, identify and
recruit talent that can win races”, says
David Tamasi, a veteran Republican
fundraiser and lobbyist.
The record so far is mixed. Thiel
backed Kris Kobach, a controversial
anti-immigration Senate candidate who
lost a Republican primary contest in
2020. He was also a big funder of Josh
Allies and foes alike say
his interest in ideas sets
him apart from the normal
run of big donors
Hawley, the polarising Missouri senator
and Trump supporter who ousted Democrat Claire McCaskill in 2018.
Thiel’s influence on rightwing thinking may end up being as important as
his money. Allies and foes alike say his
interest in ideas sets him apart from the
normal run of super-donors. His attacks
on Google, which he accuses of anti-
competitive behaviour and cosying up
to China, have earned him unlikely support from some on the left. Matt Stoller,
an antitrust expert, credits Thiel with
helping to seed an unusual distrust of
corporate power in Republican circles.
Stoller detects inconsistencies in
Thiel’s thinking. These include support
for an expanded government role in
areas such as antitrust and standing up
to China — ideas which sit uncomfortably alongside his desire to curtail the
Federal Reserve’s power.
An ally retorts, however, that to look
for a consistent ideology is to completely misunderstand the man: “He
just wants people with ideas who are
willing to challenge things.”
Thiel’s favoured candidates may
break through in this political cycle. But
aged 54 and freed of many of his Silicon
Valley responsibilities, there could be
many more elections to come.
[email protected]
[email protected]
once boarded a superyacht, the
personal cruise ship favoured by
billionaires. The yacht, later
extended to include a glass-bottomed pool and 15 cabins, was
owned by Ron Perelman, the cosmetics
tycoon, although he had not invited me
to join him — it was the venue for a trade
show party in Cannes.
Perelman placed the yacht on which
we sipped our drinks up for sale at
€90mn two years ago, along with various of his properties and works of art.
“For far too long, I have been holding on
to too many things that I don’t use, or
even want . . . It’s time for me to clean
house, simplify, and give others the
chance,” he reflected.
He is sailing against the tide. The FT
reported this week that Credit Suisse
has lent more than $1bn to ultra-rich
clients to buy their own yachts (what it
called “luxury toys”, in an investor
pitch). A private boat builder in the
Netherlands is making a 127m sailing
yacht with three masts for Jeff Bezos, the
billionaire founder of Amazon, which is
so tall it may require part of a bridge in
Rotterdam to be dismantled on its route
to the open sea.
The pandemic briefly dented the
superyacht business but it has bounced
back rapidly — about 1,000 yachts are
on order or being built this year, according to the trade publication Boat International. “The last two years have been
crazy. It has been harder to find boats
than clients,” says Sybil Napolitano,
owner of Peritas International, a London-based yacht charter agency.
I wonder why, sometimes. Eight or
nine figures is a lot to pay for a luxurious, but often blandly furnished, floating hotel that will require expensive
upkeep. Gazing out in summer from a
Mediterranean beach at all the superyachts anchored offshore, it looks like a
complicated way to relax.
But consider the angry local reaction
to the news that Rotterdam might agree
to the request to take down temporarily
part of the Koningshaven Bridge, at
Bezos’s expense. One Facebook group
has formed to organise a protest at the
bridge and throw eggs at his $500mn
boat as it goes by.
When David Geffen, the entertainment billionaire, blithely posted on
Instagram in March 2020 that he was
“isolating in the Grenadines avoiding
the virus” on his superyacht Rising Sun,
he provoked outrage and had to go
silent. It sounded too much like boasting that he had sailed far away from
other people’s troubles.
That is the superyacht’s paradoxical
appeal: the less popular the display of
wealth, the more desirable the boat. If
you want to travel beyond the reach of
egg-throwers, paparazzi or even onlook-
ers, it offers an ocean domain. A Russian
oligarch can place his security guards
and helicopter on a support vessel
moored nearby.
“Elites reshape their environment
through the physical and symbolic
power they exert over space,” one
research study of rich holidaymakers in
St Tropez concluded. Expensive beach
clubs offer one way to take part in the
“aristocratic parade” without becoming
over exposed to gawkers, but a superyacht is the ultimate means of controlling
your visibility.
Most superyachts now provide “toys
and tenders”. The former are jet skis and
seabob water scooters on which guests
can speed around noisily, having ostentatious fun. The latter are dinghies and
water taxis for them to take trips to
flashy waterfront restaurants and clubs
before escaping to sea again.
Napolitano says only a minority of her
charter clients, typically paying
€250,000 a week rent, are “party people” who drop anchor at St Tropez,
Mykonos or Ibiza. The rest are families
who want to be as invisible and inviolate
as possible, often taking a helicopter out
to a yacht and then nosing around coves
in the Aeolian or Balearic Islands.
But even a billionaire likes to be seen
sometimes and Geffen’s Instagram
account still shows his past superyacht
holidays. Here he is off Mallorca with
Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom; “having
a great time in the Balearics” with Bezos
and Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs’
former chair; and eating an “incredible
The paradoxical appeal:
the less popular the
display of wealth, the
more desirable the boat
lunch” at a restaurant on the Amalfi
coast with Paul McCartney.
Look carefully and you see not just a
rich man displaying his possessions but
one who is patently enjoying himself. It
is not only the scenery and sea, but the
joy of hosting others, albeit from an elite
circle. Geffen fought a long legal battle to
limit access to the public beach in front
of his Malibu home before settling, but
has no problem controlling who boards
his superyacht.
A “Giffen good” is what Victorian
economists called a staple that the poor
spent more on as its price rose in order
to live, and perhaps a superyacht is a
Geffen good. I define the latter as a super
luxury on which the wealthy splash out
as they become richer so they can share
it with celebrities.
Even that has limits. The bigger the
superyacht, the more of the ocean or
Mediterranean marina it occupies:
every neighbourhood eventually gets
overcrowded. Perelman put his own
boat up for sale during a personal liquidity crunch, but he was right to celebrate
his release. Superyacht owners have a
lot to take on board.
[email protected]
Top reads at FT.com/opinion
3 In unequal Britain, why aren’t there more
Dick Whittingtons?
Government’s aim to spread highly-skilled
jobs is a good one, writes Sarah O’Connor
3 Putin, Ukraine and the madman theory
of diplomacy
West clings to the hope that the Russian
leader is bluffing, writes Gideon Rachman
10
★
FTWeekend
Biotech blight Cash crunch as ‘tourist’
investors abandon the sector — PAGe 12
12 february/13 february 2022
Fertiliser power Dependency on Russia
keeps eurocrats awake at night — JOHN DIZARD, PAGe 14
Former spy chief urges big UK
effort to keep Arm in London
Black’s lawyers asked
Manhattan DA to probe
alleged extortion scheme
3 SoftBank plans NY listing 3 Security issues cited 3 Government stake mooted
MArK vAndevelde And SujeeT IndAp
New YORk
Sir Alex Younger, ex-head of MI6, said it was a ‘market failure’ that so many UK tech groups had skipped London’s bourse in favour of the US — FT montage/Bloomberg
joHn pAul rATHBone, AnnA groSS
And jIM pICKArd —LONDON
Sir Alex Younger, former head of the
British secret service MI6, has weighed
in over the future home of Arm Holdings, saying the British government
must “strain every sinew” to ensure the
chip designer stayed in the UK.
Japan’s SoftBank said this week it
planned to list the British tech company
in New York after its planned $66bn sale
to Nvidia of the US collapsed.
The announcement by SoftBank chief
Masayoshi Son has sparked a furore in
the UK about the inability to retain
homegrown industry leaders and a concentration of power in the semiconductor industry, which is central to the tech
arms race between the US, China and
Europe.
Younger said Britain’s “future security depends on our ability to sustain
and grow a strong science and technology base”. It was a “market failure” that
so many UK tech groups had skipped
London’s bourse in favour of New York.
“Failure to strain every sinew to bring
about at least a dual listing would send a
depressing message to those of us who
believe the existence of a few truly
global-scale tech companies in the UK
would radically alter our prospects and
those of our children.
“There is a direct security and military aspect to this. But more important
is the economic strength it generates.”
Rene Haas, Arm chief executive, said
the group had not “made any decisions
at all” about which country it would list
in. “We are looking at all the options.”
Son has argued that listing Arm on the
Nasdaq would achieve a higher valuation as New York is more friendly to tech
IPOs and has deeper liquidity with more
knowledgeable investors.
Arm was sold to SoftBank for $32bn
shortly after the Brexit referendum,
when the deal was hailed by the government as a sign of Britain’s attractiveness.
The company was founded in Cambridge in 1990 and its specialised
designs are found in about 99 per cent of
smartphones.
Its biggest customers are in the US.
Most of the group’s executive team and
staff are based in the US, leading many
to question whether it could still be
called a UK company.
“At a suggested valuation of over
$60bn, Arm would be in the top 10 companies listed on the LSE, so it shouldn’t
be surprising that it would look to the
deeper pools of capital in the US,” said
‘Failure to strain every
sinew to bring about at
least a dual listing would
send a depressing message’
Stuart Andrews, managing director and
head of capital markets at finnCap.
The UK Treasury had so far asked
ministers not to voice public opinions
about the collapse of the Nvidia-Arm
deal, according to people close to the
discussions. Instead senior figures plan
to make private overtures to SoftBank
on the benefits of a London listing.
A sole US listing would set back British plans to create a flourishing tech
scene and counter security concerns
real estate
that have led many countries to become
preoccupied with tech sovereignty.
The UK has banned the use of chips
made by China’s Huawei in British 5G
mobile infrastructure, and last year
placed tech at the heart of its revamped
defence strategy, earmarking £6.6bn to
create an “enduring military edge” in
areas such as space, lasers and advanced
high-speed missiles.
Some have argued for drastic intervention. Hermann Hauser, Arm’s cofounder, suggested the government take
a strategic stake as a “golden share” in
the company as part of its national security strategy.
Younger said: “We cannot rely on the
market alone to generate the capability
we need. Government policy should
reflect this fact.” He cited the sale of artificial intelligence pioneer DeepMind to
Google in 2014 for $500mn, a price now
seen as a bargain.
“Arm [and] DeepMind are great companies,” said Younger. “We must find a
way for their successors to regard a decision to stay at home as a no brainer.”
Markets page 13
A prominent Wall Street lawyer telephoned the Manhattan district attorney on behalf of his billionaire client,
Leon Black, prompting New York’s top
prosecutor to open an investigation
into whether the former Apollo chief
executive was being extorted by a Russian fashion model who has accused
him of rape.
Brad Karp, who chairs the Paul, Weiss,
Rifkind & Garrison law firm, phoned
then Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance in
April, according to several people with
knowledge of the call.
Black was seeking an investigation
into what he has characterised as an
extortion scheme perpetrated by the 38year-old model, Guzel Ganieva.
Vance instructed his prosecutors to
look into the matter, one of the people
said. In a meeting soon after, Paul, Weiss
lawyers told prosecutors they were in
possession of evidence that would show
Ganieva demanding millions of dollars
in exchange for keeping silent about her
affair with Black. The evidence was said
to include text messages, signed contracts and secret tape recordings.
Black had stepped down as chief executive of Apollo a month earlier after disclosing that he had paid $158mn in professional advisory fees to the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Karp’s previously unreported communication with Vance sheds further
light on a scandal that broke into the
open in June, when Ganieva filed a civil
lawsuit in New York claiming Black had
sexually abused her during their
relationship and later tarnished her reputation by publicly accusing her of
extortion.
Black has denied the allegations and
said his relationship with Ganieva was
consensual. In a statement to the Financial Times, a spokesperson for the private equity billionaire said: “Last April,
Mr Black asked counsel to refer the matter to the Manhattan DA’s office for
criminal investigation. Since then, Mr
Black has co-operated fully with the
DA’s investigation of [Ganieva].”
Leon Black stepped down as
Apollo chief executive last year
Prosecutors in Vance’s office listened
to Black’s lawyers and asked to see the
documents but did not hear back for
several months, the people said.
Black’s team eventually provided
some documents in October. It is
unclear how far Vance’s office pursued
the matter, and no criminal charges
have been filed. Vance said that “the
matters you refer to are, I understand,
open investigations”, but declined to
comment further.
Vance was succeeded as Manhattan
DA by Alvin Bragg last month. His office
declined to comment. Karp also
declined to comment.
While the DA’s office sometimes
receives approaches from white-collar
lawyers, the effort to trigger an investigation by New York’s top prosecutor
Lawyers told prosecutors
that evidence would show
Ganieva demanding
millions of dollars
represented an unusual assignment for
Paul, Weiss — a “white shoe” firm that
handles acquisitions and litigation for
some of the biggest US corporations,
including Apollo.
The firm has mostly operated behind
the scenes on behalf of Black. For example, it has not signed any court documents related to the case.
Karp, who became chair of Paul,
Weiss in 2008, is active in Democratic
politics and a prominent representative
of the New York business community.
He played a role in recruiting Susan
Estrich, a feminist legal scholar, to
Black’s legal team in October, according
to a person with knowledge of the
arrangement.
Since then, Black has adopted a hardnosed legal strategy, suing Ganieva in
federal court, claiming she is trying to
destroy his reputation by filing sham
lawsuits with funding and assistance
from prominent New York business
figures.
Black’s former top lieutenant at
Apollo, Josh Harris, who remains on the
company’s board, is allegedly among
those figures. Black filed a lawsuit
against Harris in January, painting his
one-time partner as a bitter rival who
had plotted with Ganieva to “destroy”
him after losing the race to succeed him
as Apollo chief executive.
Harris denies the claim, and says he
has never had any contact with Ganieva
or any of her representatives.
Ganieva’s lawyers have also forcefully
rejected Black’s theory. “Knowing that
he could no longer control her into
silence, Black resorted to the age-old
playbook used by wealthy and powerful
men,” they wrote in a complaint filed
several weeks after Karp’s phone call to
Vance. “[Black] made a pre-emptive
claim of extortion.”
Automobiles
Chinese developers shed UK property Mercedes buoyed by higher-end sales
george HAMMond, TABBy KInder
And THoMAS HAle
One of China’s biggest developers has
sold a flagship London project, in the
latest sign that Beijing’s squeeze on the
real estate sector is triggering a sell-off
of assets beyond the country’s borders.
Shanghai-based Greenland Holdings
touted a £600mn development opportunity when it bought the Ram Brewery
site in south-west London in 2014 for
about £140mn, its first investment in
the UK. The deal was agreed during a
push by David Cameron, then UK prime
minister, and Boris Johnson, then London’s mayor, to encourage Chinese
investment.
Greenland is now backing away from
completing the scheme, having sold
more than 300 homes. It has sold the
remainder of the project to British
housebuilder Berkeley Group for about
£40mn, according to two people close to
the deal.
Taotao Song, chief executive of
Greenland UK, said the company would
retain control of the completed portion
of the site, adding: “We look forward to
working alongside [Berkeley brand] St
George as neighbours.”
Greenland is the latest Chinese developer to abandon its UK ambitions in
order to raise capital to repay debts. The
sector has been hit by a liquidity crisis
and the collapse of Evergrande.
Almost half of China’s 30 biggest
developers including Greenland were in
breach of at least one of Beijing’s
recently introduced rules on property
sector leverage, according to a Financial
Times analysis.
Other Chinese developers have
defaulted on loans and stopped paying
bills on London projects as Beijing
cracked down on the highly levered sector. One of the largest projects, the Royal
Albert Dock development owned by
Beijing-based Advanced Business Park,
is on the brink of collapse after creditors
appointed administrators to recover
unpaid debts last week.
Greenland’s other London project, an
undeveloped site in Canary Wharf in
east London originally intended to be
western Europe’s tallest residential
tower, has been stalled for years.
Last week, Shanghai-based Shimao
sold a £370mn office complex, close to
St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London, to Goldman Sachs, which had previously leased the building, according to
React News. Shimao bought the complex in 2015, its first purchase in the UK,
for about £270mn. Shimao said in January it had defaulted on a domestic loan
and would consider selling more assets
“in order to reduce the indebtedness of
the group”.
The retrenchment is a big shift for
Chinese developers, which ploughed
£3.5bn into UK commercial and residential property between 2013 and
2018, according to Real Capital Analytics. “Chinese and Hong Kong investors
were about 25 per cent of the commercial market five years ago; that’s just
stopped,” said Andrew Hawkins, international partner at Cushman & Wakefield, a property services company.
Meanwhile, Guangzhou R&F, a Chinese developer that was placed in
restrictive default last month, has failed
for months to pay workers on one of its
largest projects, One Nine Elms in London, according to a person close to the
matter. Work at the £900mn site in Battersea was suspended last week by contractor Multiplex.
In a joint statement, R&F Properties
and Multiplex said they “remain fully
committed to jointly and successfully
completing One Nine Elms”.
joe MIller — fRANkfuRt
peTer CAMpBell — LONDON
Mercedes-Benz is poised to post a
bumper set of earnings for 2021 even as
it sold fewer cars to customers, after
global semiconductor shortages led the
German luxury group to prioritise production of higher-end models.
Preliminary figures show adjusted earnings before interest and tax at the company’s core car and vans unit came in at
€14bn — more than double the €6.8bn
posted in 2020, and the €6.2bn
recorded in 2019. The figure also far
exceeded most analysts’ expectations.
“Our focus on profitable growth and
cost discipline combined with a desirable product line-up translated into
strong financial performance,” Mercedes chief executive Ola Kallenius said.
The company said it expected to
achieve a record profit margin of almost
13 per cent in 2021, when it publishes its
full-year results later this month.
In the final quarter of the year, that
margin rose to 15 per cent, Mercedes
said, citing a “good product mix” as well
as high used-car prices, which benefits
the manufacturer’s financing arm.
Mercedes, which for decades prided
itself on being the leading premium car
producer, sold 730,000 fewer cars last
year than in 2019, the last pre-pandemic
measure, and almost 370,000 fewer
than in 2020, a time when many of its
plants were shut because of Covid.
The relative scarcity of premium
models allowed the Stuttgart-based
manufacturer to fetch far higher prices
for its luxury line-up.
Demand for some models also
reached record highs, with about 900
ultra-luxury Maybach saloons, which
retail for about $200,000 each, sold by
the company each month in China.
Scarcity of models allowed Mercedes
to lift prices on its luxury line-up
Separately yesterday, premium competitor Volvo Cars reported record profits of SKr14.2bn ($1.5bn) on sales that of
SKr699bn. The Swedish company said
the worst of the chip crisis might be
over, though it warned of price rises as
raw material costs continued to bite.
Profits in the fourth quarter fell 60 per
cent to SKr2.3bn compared with the
same period in the previous year, as
semiconductor shortages held back production, and Volvo’s all-electric Polestar
business incurred accounting charges.
“I don’t think we’ll see a trend that
gets worse,” chief executive Hakan Samuelsson told the Financial Times, referring to the chip crisis, but stopped short
of predicting the issue would be
resolved this year.
The business listed last year and
announced that Samuelsson would
retire next month, replaced by former
Dyson chief executive Jim Rowan.
Mercedes’ figures come days after it
entered its first year as a standalone car
company, having spun-off its large
trucks unit, Daimler Trucks, last year.
The spin-off will generate a one-off
write up of between €9bn and €10bn,
Mercedes said, but would not be
included in dividend calculations.
★
12 February/13 February 2022
11
FTWeekend
COMPANIES. WEEK IN REVIEW
Staff stock grants
come back to bite a
bruised tech sector
One of the perks of working at Silicon
Valley’s hottest companies is that you
get paid in stock. Popularised in the
1980s as a lottery ticket-type
mechanism for cash poor start-ups to
lure high-paid white-collar workers,
the practice is now widely adapted by
nearly every listed company.
In theory, it’s a win-win. The
employee gets a slice of the wealth
created by the company, encouraging
them to perform to their best, while
the business does not have to spend as
much cash on salaries or bonuses.
If all goes to plan, a flywheel
develops. A rocketing stock attracts top
talent looking for riches, which makes
the business perform even better,
which makes the stock go up, which
means it can attract yet more talent.
In a way, stock compensation is not
that dissimilar to debt in its ability to
supercharge a company’s performance.
Unlike debt and the ensuing interest
The Top Line
Jamie
Powell
payments, however, the key metric is
largely out of management’s control.
And that’s a problem when a stock’s
price suddenly goes into reverse.
Since November, we’ve been in the
middle of a sell-off in any company
deemed tech. And, whether it be in
payments, software or fake meat,
nearly all of these aggressively use
stock to pay their employees.
Here are a few examples. In 2021,
PayPal dished out $1.4bn in stock to its
employees, about a fifth of its operating
cash flow. Its stock is down 55 per cent
in the past six months. Likewise, $36bn
communication software specialist
Twilio, whose shares are down 45 per
cent over the same period, paid
$632mn in stock to its workers in 2021
— roughly three quarters of its revenue.
Then there is Meta Platforms,
formerly known as Facebook. A week
ago, following shambolic fourthquarter results, Meta’s shares crashed
25 per cent, erasing some $225bn of
market cap in the largest one day
equity loss in history.
It is fair to speculate its employees
might be upset. Meta’s shares now sit at
about $232 while the weighted-average
price of all the unvested shares granted
to all of its employees at 2021’s end is
$244. It is worse for 2021 pay where
the average was $305.
In short: many of Meta’s employees
are now facing paper losses in their pay
packages.
There’s also the issue of personal
income taxes. Say you have $1,000 of
stock that vests. You choose to hold on
to it, after all, you want to show some
loyalty. Now imagine that stock halves
in six months. You have $500 of stock,
but taxes to be paid on the price it was
granted to you at: $1,000. Ouch.
Meta’s shares might bounce back.
But right now there’ll be hundreds of
thousands of tech employees nursing
Barry McCarthy has built his fourdecade career by operating as the
adult in a room of unpredictable
tech founders — Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
Barry McCarthy
Chief executive, Peloton
Barry McCarthy wants to trim
Peloton into shape.
The fitness bike company has been
“grossly mismanaged” because of its
previous chief executive John Foley’s
“unbridled optimism” and a culture
of excess, according to the activist
investor who helped oust Foley this
week.
Enter McCarthy, 68, a clinical
number-cruncher who has built his
four-decade career by operating as
the adult in a room of unpredictable
tech company founders.
McCarthy this week took over as
Peloton chief as part of a large
restructuring at the company, which
had been valued as high as $50bn in
the depths of lockdowns, but has lost
more than 70 per cent of its market
value in the past year.
Reed Hastings, co-founder and
chief executive of Netflix, is confident
his former colleague can resuscitate
the business. “If anyone can turn
Peloton into Tesla, it is Barry,”
Hastings told the Financial Times.
In typical McCarthy fashion, his
first missive to Peloton staff was to
“get real”.
“The hard truth is either revenue
had to grow faster, or spending had to
shrink,” McCarthy told Peloton
employees this week in an email seen
by the Financial Times. “We have to
be willing to confront the world as it
is . . . even when the truth is
uncomfortable or inconvenient.”
So far, his reception has been
mixed. Wall Street analysts rate him,
but his words have not gone down
well internally.
In typical
McCarthy
fashion, his
first missive
to Peloton
staff was to
‘get real’
McCarthy sought to introduce
himself at a virtual town hall. But he
was met by rowdy, frustrated Peloton
employees, including some of the
2,800 laid off in the restructuring,
who sent sarcastic messages in a chatbox for the event, according to
screenshots seen by the FT.
McCarthy declined to talk to the FT
for this story.
As finance chief at Netflix in its
early days, McCarthy built the
company alongside Hastings. In a now
infamous story, Hastings and
McCarthy in 2000 attempted to sell
Netflix to Blockbuster, which was at
the time the king of home video. But
after flying to Blockbuster’s Texas
headquarters with their offer, they
were “laughed out of the room”.
McCarthy had the last laugh. Netflix
would go on to topple the home video
rental business and a decade later
Blockbuster was bankrupt. “Barry is
so brilliant that he figured out before
the bond market that Blockbuster was
going to blow their covenants,”
Hastings quipped.
Netflix went on to become one of the
most successful stocks in recent
memory, increasing its market
capitalisation from $200mn at its 2002
public offering to $190bn today.
McCarthy later took on the top
finance job at Spotify, where he built a
reputation as a plain-spoken,
numbers-oriented executive, earning
the nickname “Professor Barry”.
Little is known about McCarthy’s
personal life. “He doesn’t share much,”
said one former colleague.
He studied history at Williams
College in Massachusetts and later for
an MBA at the University of
Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, before
starting his career trading mortgagebacked securities at Credit Suisse.
On LinkedIn, McCarthy has listed all
19 of his job titles since 1980, including
a six-month stint at failed payments
start-up Clinkle.
McCarthy left Netflix in 2010
because he wanted to be a chief
executive. With no path to the top job
at Spotify either, McCarthy went into
semi-retirement in 2019, leaving New
York for California and sitting on the
boards of companies such as Instacart.
Now at 68, he has achieved his goal
— albeit at a company in turmoil.
After riding high during the
pandemic as a way to exercise while
stuck at home in lockdowns, Peloton
has been hit by slowing sales, supply
chain issues and public relations crises.
With the company valued at about
$12.5bn, Amazon, Nike and others are
circling it as a bargain buy.
McCarthy’s Spotify playbook may
prove useful for Peloton, which has
been criticised for its bloated expenses.
When McCarthy joined Spotify in
2015, pressure was mounting from
private equity group TPG and other
early Spotify investors for a pay-off,
either through an IPO or a sale. Chief
executive Daniel Ek, then a 32-yearold tech entrepreneur from Sweden,
did not have much experience with
Wall Street.
Within two years McCarthy helped
restructure Spotify’s costs, trimming
its royalty payments to the music
industry from 88 cents per dollar in
2015 to 79 cents in 2017.
McCarthy was also the architect of
Spotify’s unconventional route to going
public through a direct listing — again
finding a way to save money by
circumventing the traditional role of
investment banks in an IPO.
“He’s very good at being cost
disciplined,” said Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn, who has known
McCarthy since his Netflix days.
Additional reporting by Patrick McGee
and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson
Under the Hood Crypto groups move in for top slots at the Super Bowl
Super Bowl advertising costs and people tuning in
Household rating* (%)
Cost per 30-second spot ($mn in 2021 prices)
50
8
40
1990
2000
2010
Estimated total expenditure on in-game commercials, $mn in 2021 prices (selected companies)
BEER
40
Jeep
Budweiser/Bud Light
Michelob
95 2000 05
10
15
Source: Kantar
10
30
30
20
20
10
10
0
95 2000 05
SOFT DRINKS
40
Pepsi
95 2000 05
20
15
20
10
15
20
95 2000 05
10
15
20
30
20
20
10
10
95 2000 05
10
15
20
95 2000 05
10
15
20
0
3 AstraZeneca, the British-Swedish multinational
pharma group, reported a 63 per cent year-on-year
rise in fourth-quarter revenues to a record $12bn,
including $1.8bn from its Covid-19 vaccine.
3 Uber shares popped 8 per cent as the ride-sharing
group posted strong earnings with revenues from
deliveries — which includes restaurant meals, groceries and alcohol — up 78 per cent year on year.
3 Peter Thiel, the tech investor and Silicon Valley’s
most prominent supporter of former president Don-
The boss of Jardine’s Mandarin
Oriental business wants his team
based outside Hong Kong, which
he says has become a poor base
3 Bernard Looney, chief executive of BP, hit back at
fresh calls for a windfall tax after the company
recorded profits of $12.8bn last year, its highest in
eight years, warning that it would deter investment
and delay Britain’s net zero ambitions.
0
3 Tesla was subpoenaed by the US securities regulator over its compliance with a settlement following a
$2.2bn
Quarterly loss
suffered by
scandal-hit lender
Credit Suisse
63%
Year-on-year rise
in fourth-quarter
revenues at
AstraZeneca
Toyota
2018 tweet by Elon Musk, the electric-car maker’s
chief executive, that declared: “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.”
95 2000 05
MOVIES
40
Paramount Pictures
Coca-Cola
0
30
0
2020
CARS
40
3 The head of the
$2.7bn Mandarin Oriental luxury hotel
group, James Riley, is
pushing for his executive team to be temporarily based outside Hong Kong, saying that the
city had become a “very poor” base owing to strict
coronavirus restrictions.
3 Declan Kelly, once an adviser to Fortune 500
chiefs, launched a Madison Avenue group months
after he was forced to quit Teneo, the PR firm he cofounded, following allegations of sexual harassment.
*The average percentage of households in the US with a television set
that were watching the game at any given minute during its broadcast
Investment by brands in Super Bowl ads
3 Brookfield Asset Management, one of the largest
alternative investment groups, is weighing a spin-off
of its asset management business into a separate
public company that
one analyst said could
be valued at more
than $75bn.
4
2
10
1980
3 Credit Suisse was hit by a SFr2bn ($2.2bn) fourthquarter loss as investors warned that they would try
to block any move to extend the tenure of vice-chair
Severin Schwan, as the lender faces growing pressure
to rebuild its reputation.
3 Twitter reported only a “modest” impact from
Apple privacy changes, with fourth-quarter sales up
22 per cent to $1.57bn, in line with expectations.
20
1970
Credit Suisse pain
6
30
0
[email protected]
ald Trump, would not seek re-election to the board of
Facebook’s owner Meta later this year, the social
media group said.
American football showpiece recaptures attention of marketers after subdued 2021 event which had lowest audience since 2007
Advertisers have forked out up to
$7mn for 30 seconds of television
airtime during the Super Bowl as
cryptocurrency platforms join the
usual parade of beer and car
companies beaming messages into
America’s living rooms.
Media buyers have rushed to
book slots for the Los Angeles
Rams’ showdown at home against
the Cincinnati Bengals — in
contrast to a subdued event last
year, when fans were warned
against holding parties due to the
pandemic and viewer numbers fell
to the lowest level since 2007.
The marketing blitz during the
biggest game in American football
will for the first time feature spots
from Crypto.com, Coinbase and FTX
promoting crypto trading.
At the same time, several
traditional advertisers will be back.
Broadcaster NBC said some
companies had paid 25 per cent
more for a half-minute spot than
the $5.6mn average last year,
according to researchers at Kantar.
The splurge is the latest sign
marketers have confidence that the
economic recovery from the
pandemic will endure.
More than 30 of the advertisers
with Super Bowl slots — about two
in five — did not take part last year.
Brett Harrison, US president of
FTX, said the ads were part of the
company’s strategy to make the
digital currencies “universally
appealing”. Crypto enthusiasts
“only represent a small
demographic compared to the total
potential user base”, he said.
Alistair Gray and Joshua Oliver
losses. It is worth thinking about what
that might mean for these businesses,
and their shareholders, down the line.
Particularly, if like Cisco or Microsoft
following the dotcom crash, the shares
take years to recover.
The obvious challenge is retaining
and attracting talent. Either the
company has to offer an employee
more stock for the same (or likely,
higher) nominal value in their
remuneration package, leading to
further dilution and lower returns for
shareholders, or pay higher base
salaries, denting the balance sheet.
Neither is a good option.
In such a situation, the stock-comp
flywheel could unwind: top employees
leave for brighter shores, draining the
talent pool, creating a drag on group
performance, leading to a lower stock
price and . . . down the drain we go.
BEST OF
BUSINESS
Numbers supremo signs up for tough workout at Peloton
Corporate
person in
the news
You have
$500 of
stock, but
taxes to
be paid on
the price it
was granted
to you at:
$1,000.
Ouch
10
15
20
Universal Pictures
3 An office leased to WeWork in London is hitting the
market with a price tag of close to £1bn, the biggest
test to date of investor faith in the co-working company since its initial public offering last year.
3 Shares of US “buy now, pay later” provider Affirm
fell more than 20 per cent after it revealed a steeperthan-expected loss driven by soaring costs for marketing and wages to fuel growth.
95 2000 05
10
15
20
3 Asset manager Abrdn was forced to delay a shareholder vote on a £1.5bn transaction owing to a shortage of paper for postal mandates caused by international supply -chain problems.
12
★
FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
COMPANIES & MARKETS
Bourse rout leaves biotechs out of pocket
Dozens of businesses face cash crunch as ‘tourists’ who delighted in sector gains during pandemic head home
JAMie sMytH ANd NiKou AsgAri
new York
HANNAH KucHler — london
Dozens of biotech companies are running low on cash and face a struggle to
raise fresh funds after “tourist” investors who snapped up their shares during
the pandemic abandoned the sector.
Biotech groups, most of them lossmaking, have raised a record $32.7bn in
initial public offerings over the past two
years, according to data from Refinitiv.
But 83 per cent of recently listed US
biotech and pharma stocks are now
trading below their IPO price. Biotech
groups that listed in 2021 are trading on
average 37 per cent below their IPO
price, compared with a 22 per cent fall
for all newly US-listed groups.
Many such companies raised money
through IPOs with the expectation that
they would be able to tap investors for
fresh funds in subsequent share sales as
their drugs progressed through the
research and development cycle.
But their ability to do so has been
hampered by a rout for biotech stocks as
retail investors and generalist money
managers — branded “tourists” by specialist funds — turn sour on the industry.
Geraldine O’Keeffe, a partner at
healthcare investment firm LSP, said
biotech shares had been hit by a “complete bloodbath across the board”.
The Nasdaq Biotechnology index has
fallen more than a fifth since peaking in
February 2021 versus a rise of 3 per cent
and 17 per cent for the Nasdaq and S&P
500 respectively.
“I think everybody is holding their
breath and waiting to see if it has bottomed out and will bounce from here,”
O’Keefe said. “It can’t get much lower —
but we thought that every day in January and it kept going down.”
Investors are bestowing some companies with a market valuation that is
lower than their cash reserves. Investment bank Jefferies recently identified
31 listed biotech groups with a market
capitalisation above $100mn that are
trading at negative enterprise values.
The biotech sell-off has been
prompted by a confluence of factors,
with investors seeking safer assets as
central banks prepare to raise interest
rates to fight soaring inflation. Others
have concluded that industry stocks
became overvalued at the peak of the
pandemic, when positive news about
Covid-19 vaccines and treatments
helped lift the sector overall.
Concerns over increased regulatory
scrutiny of drug pricing and anticompetitive practices are also buffeting
a sector that had relied on a steady
stream of dealmaking to stay afloat.
The result is that some biotech companies are facing a cash crunch, with Jefferies identifying at least 11 that have
less than one year of funds at current
spending rates. The research excluded
companies with a market capitalisation
below $200mn or share prices below $1.
One such company is Nantkwest, also
known as ImmunityBio, which cancelled a $500mn share sale in December
and secured capital via a $470mn debt
raising. Most of the funds were provided
by its controlling shareholder and executive chair Patrick Soon-Shiong.
New biotech groups lose more value
than average IPO
Holiday’s over for sector
Indices rebased
Average share price change since IPO, by year listed
All US-listed IPOs
US-listed biotech IPOs
Biotech fundraising surge in pandemic
160
Nasdaq Biotech index
0
140
-10
120
-20
100
S&P 500
-30
2021
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
80
0.5
60
-40
2020
Amount raised through IPOs and secondary offerings
($bn)
2020
21
22
0
2017
18
19
20
21
22
Source: Refinitiv
Generalist money
managers and
retail investors
have turned sour
on the industry as
central banks
prepare to raise
interest rates
Loïc Venance/AFP/Getty
“In the current economic environment, when not just our company but
the biotech sector as a whole is undervalued, it’s far more prudent for me to
make this investment myself,” said
Soon-Shiong, who also owns the Los
Angeles Times.
Pierre Kiecolt-Wahl, co-head of
equity capital markets at investment
bank Bryan Garnier & Co, said biotech
had traditionally been a specialist asset
class dominated by fund managers with
scientific backgrounds who pored over
trial data to pick stocks.
But generalist funds and retail investors had increased exposure to biotech
shares, while hedge funds saw it as a
racy trade. “The washout in the public
market is investors who maybe
shouldn’t have been in the space —
‘tourists’ — going back home.”
Kiecolt-Wahl said privately held com-
panies seeking to go public might need
to take a more cautious approach, with
smaller IPOs followed by a secondary
offering.
Already-listed companies, especially
those that had experienced setbacks in
the research clinic, could have to seek
alternative sources of capital instead of
pursuing a conventional secondary
offering, he said.
Even though sector specialists blame
“tourists” for the rout, the collapse in
valuations has especially hurt biotechfocused funds.
San Francisco-based Asymmetry
Capital’s fund fell 10.2 per cent in the
year to November 2021, according to
13F regulatory filings collated by data
tracking company Whale Wisdom.
Life science-focused fund Logos Global Management fell 31.4 per cent and
Boston-based Cormorant Asset Man-
agement lost 28 per cent over the same
period.
Logos declined to comment. Cormorant did not respond to a request for
comment.
Scott Kay, founder of Asymmetry,
which closed last month, said all biotech
and healthcare-focused managers with
a single fund with less than $2bn in
assets under management would have
to make difficult decisions on whether
to continue operating, sell or shut down.
“We are in a new world as the Fed
tightens after 12 plushy years of loose
conditions,” he said.
Kay said many biotechs came to market too early and their valuations were
not deserved as they did not yet have
clinical data.
While the pandemic highlighted the
potential for huge returns for a handful
of successful companies, it made it
‘We are in a
new world
as the Fed
tightens
after 12
plushy
years of
loose
conditions’
harder to recruit volunteers for clinical
studies. Hospitals were busy treating
patients with Covid-19, so diagnoses of
other illnesses declined, delaying trial
results and eating into company cash
piles.
Investor confidence has been shaken
by disappointing news flow from biotechs, many of which do not even have
drugs in human trials yet. In the 60 days
before the end of 2021, Jefferies noted 23
“very negative” market-moving events
and just seven “positive” announcements by biotechs.
Michael Yee, analyst at Jefferies, said
poor sales of Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug
— the first treatment approved in two
decades and the only one that purports
to slow the disease — had also shaken
the sector.
“Companies are going to be tighter on
the purse strings,” said Yee, pointing to a
$500mn cost-cutting drive announced
by Biogen, a large bellwether biotech
stock.
Yee added that this would mean there
was “less hiring, less spending, less
frothy money being thrown around”.
Some investors hope that a drop in
biotech valuations will reignite M&A in
a sector where dealmaking sank to its
lowest level in a decade in 2021.
Big US and European pharma groups
have up to $500bn of “dry powder” to
spend on acquisitions as they search for
promising drugs to replace declining
revenues from the loss of patent protection on their existing blockbuster medicines, according to SVB Leerink.
But some bankers warn that there is
no guarantee Big Pharma will turn on
the dealmaking spigot, and argue that
low valuations are not the only factor
when deciding whether to make an
acquisition.
“A very high valuation may be prohibitive or may be a bottleneck for M&A
happening, but a very low valuation
isn’t necessarily a fuelling factor for the
deals to happen,” said Eric Tokat, a partner at investment bank Centerview
Partners.
He said Big Pharma was unlikely to
adopt a bargain-hunting approach that
he described as “you can buy three for
the price of one — let’s just go shopping.”
In the meantime, biotech founders
and investors are asking when the rout
will end and how it will affect the sector
in the longer term. “I don’t think it is the
kind of bubble we saw with the [dotcom] internet bubble, where it pops and
we have a decade of reckoning,” said
Brad Loncar, a biotech investor.
“The next decade is going to be
defined by a global competition in sciences and biotech will be at the forefront
of that. Especially after Covid, all
around the world governments will prioritise investing in biotech and drug
development.”
Kiecolt-Wahl said there were enough
long-term buyers, including wellfunded venture capitalists that saw biotech as a megatrend, to keep capital
flowing into the sector.
“I don’t think we have a supply of capital problem. But the terms are obviously favouring those with the capital.
The pendulum has moved to the other
side, for now.”
Travel & leisure. Sport
Brazilian football aims to score investment as well as goals
New ownership structure
spurs clubs to revive fortunes
after years of mismanagement
MicHAel Pooler — Sao Paulo
The birthplace of some of the finest
players to have graced stadiums around
the world, Brazil has an unrivalled
record for turning out football talent.
But many of its domestic teams have
long underperformed off the pitch,
dragged down by indebtedness, mismanagement and, in some cases, alleged
embezzlement.
Change is now on the cards in the spiritual home of o jogo bonito (the beautiful
game), as a drive to professionalise the
business side of the sport gains traction.
Those pushing for reform in the $1bnturnover industry point to the kind of
commercial success achieved in major
European leagues over the past decades.
A number of sides are seeking to draw
outside capital by adopting a new kind
of corporate structure, in place of the
customary non-profit model.
The first proposed deal of its kind was
unveiled towards the end of last year,
when Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima,
one of the greatest strikers of all time,
announced plans to purchase 90 per
cent of his boyhood club Cruzeiro in the
city of Belo Horizonte. The former
superstar promised R$400mn ($75mn)
of funding through his company Tara
Sports for the once high-flying team,
which was demoted from Brazil’s first
division in 2020 amid a corruption
scandal and mounting debts.
Last month American businessman
John Textor, a major shareholder in
England’s Crystal Palace FC, signed a
binding contract to acquire 90 per cent
of Botafogo, pledging to pour R$400mn
into the Rio de Janeiro outfit. Fans celebrated in the street after the approval of
the sale.
“This is a moment in history. I know
I’m up for it and I know other foreign
investors have been inspired,” he said.
“There’s capital and people looking at
other clubs to do the same thing.”
Both pioneering agreements stem
from a law passed last year aimed at
improving transparency and governance at football clubs, as well as reducing debt levels.
Under the traditional set-up teams
are associations, exempt from certain
taxes and owned by fans who elect powerful executives. Critics say this encourages a tendency to borrow and spend
irresponsibly to attain on-field glory.
While not banned from becoming
businesses, the legislation aims to overcome resistance within club hierarchies.
It creates a special type of company,
which can sell stakes to investors, with
favourable tax treatment and a mechanism to renegotiate and resolve debts.
“With owners taking care of the
money, we will have greater financial
rationality,” said Eduardo Carlezzo, a
lawyer advising clubs on the matter.
“We will have cases where the fans
embrace it, but in others there may be a
lot of criticism. There will be a period of
cultural accommodation.”
He believes the novel template will
initially appeal to the most heavily
indebted clubs, some of which have on
occasion fallen behind on salaries.
Debts among Brazil’s top 23 sides
increased by one-fifth to R$10.3bn in
2020, according to research by EY. That
was nearly double their total turnover of
R$5.3bn, which despite taking a hit from
Covid-19 has grown significantly over
the past decade.
For fans who complain about the exodus of players to foreign clubs, the hope
is that a long-due overhaul will result in
more money to persuade them to stay.
“If you hold on to your talents, you
will have the best championship in the
world,” said Pedro Mesquita, XP’s head
of investment banking, who advised on
the Cruzeiro and Botafogo deals. “[The
law] has opened a new path . . . There
will be at least another five or six big
transactions by the end of the year”.
Kick-start: João
Paulo, right,
who plays for
Cruzeiro, which
is adopting a
new corporate
model — Fernando
Moreno/AGIF/Sipa USA
A crosstown rival of Cruzeiro, América-MG, has been linked with the USbased Kapital Football Group. “Nothing
has been decided yet,” said KFG.
Outsiders have tried to mine the seam
of Brazilian football before, but rarely
with success. A handful of partnerships
struck in the 1990s either did not last or
turned sour, such as a venture between
Bank of America and Vasco da Gama. A
notable exception was Red Bull’s 2019
takeover of Bragantino. Backed by the
energy drink brand, it gained promotion to the top national division.
Not all teams will be attracted by the
new model, say analysts. Flamengo, for
instance, is credited with reviving its
fortunes as an association after electing
a board a decade ago on a platform of
professional management.
Yet club advisers think the new legal
arrangement can have an impact on the
sector. “It is not a panacea, it is a tool
that helps those with the right mentality,” said Jorge Braga, a corporate turnround specialist appointed as Botafogo’s
chief executive last year after it was relegated. “There is a very important financial obligation for those who invest in
this structure”.
If debt reduction targets are not met,
the new owner becomes jointly responsible with the old association, which carries on running the club’s non-football
and social activities.
Early experiences at Cruzeiro, which
has almost R$1bn in debt, suggest it will
not be easy. Though the deal is yet to
complete with due diligence still under
way, Ronaldo has already installed a
new administration, which has had to
take hard decisions. Fans protested over
the dismissal of a veteran goalkeeper.
The budget was slashed in order to
match incomes, according to director
Gabriel Lima, who was brought in from
Valladolid, a Spanish club controlled by
Ronaldo. “Cruzeiro is a patient who was
in the intensive care unit. He needs
shock treatment, which is never good,
but he needs it to survive, improve and
then walk,” he said.
While sales of supporter memberships have proved strong so far, Lima
said a challenge was to rehabilitate the
club’s image in the eyes of potential
sponsors.
Marcelo Ferreira Rocha, from an
independent fan organisation, said the
main expectation was getting back to
the highest division. “We dreamt of the
club’s restructuring and there was no
other way. But as everything is new, we
don’t know what lies ahead.”
As well as the post-pandemic need to
boost ticket sales, which are down on
2019 levels, there is the potential to
bring Brazil’s clubs to an international
audience, argued Textor.
“Most of the world hasn’t heard of
Corinthians, Botafogo, Palmeiras —
these just aren’t brands. Well, why not?”
he asked.
Additional reporting by Carolina Ingizza
★
12 February/13 February 2022
13
FTWeekend
COMPANIES & MARKETS
Equities. Tech champions
Arm picks Wall Street for float in
‘huge potential blow’ to London
UK chip designer’s proposed
Nasdaq listing is seen as a vote
of no confidence in the City
HArriEt AgNEw, DANiEl tHomAS
AND pHilip StAfforD
When SoftBank swooped in six years
ago to buy Arm Holdings for £24.3bn,
Baillie Gifford opposed the deal. But the
Scottish fund manager failed to garner
enough support from fellow shareholders to rebuff the approach, said James
Anderson, joint manager of Baillie Gifford’s £20.7bn Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust.
The deal went ahead and the Cambridge-based chip designer was taken
private by the Japanese technology
group. Anderson and other investors
rued the departure of one of Britain’s
most successful tech companies from
the FTSE 100.
This week Arm was once again the
subject of serious soul-searching in the
City of London. After a $66bn sale to
Nvidia collapsed over competition concerns, SoftBank announced its plans to
bypass the UK and list the company on
the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York.
SoftBank’s decision was tantamount
to a vote of no confidence in London. It
comes as Britain is facing deep concerns
about its ability to create, scale and
retain homegrown technology champions in a post-Brexit world, and piles
pressure on Boris Johnson’s government
to speed up reforms to reverse a longterm decline in listings.
Arm’s mooted flotation on the Nasdaq
is “a huge potential blow” to London,
said Anderson, whose early bets on
Facebook, Amazon and Tesla have
made him one of the world’s most successful investors.
“It’s a real problem because if you
have the remaining large British technology company that could be quoted in
London opting not to be, your chances
of building an ecosystem, giving people
experience and having that presence
goes away to quite a large extent.”
A top executive at a multitrillion dollar asset manager echoed that concern.
“The bigger issue is not so much
whether companies list in London and
more about whether companies are
formed and grow there.”
Public companies in the UK have languished at depressed valuations since
the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Last year the London Stock Exchange
had its best year since 2007 for IPO
funding, raising £16.9bn, according to
Dealogic. But the top US exchanges
raised 14-times more than the UK, and
those in Greater China — comprising
mainland bourses and Hong Kong —
raised at least four times more.
The 37 tech stocks that floated in London last year have fallen about a tenth
from their listing price on average,
according to calculations by US investment bank Cowen. On a value-weighted
basis, the average fall is 24 per cent.
Mark Kelly, managing director at
The LSE is
expected to step
up lobbying
efforts to
convince Arm to
change its mind,
or at the least
pursue a dual
listing in the UK
and the US — Pau
Barrena/Bloomberg
Cowen, said that not only fewer stocks
chose to list in London than the US “but
the bigger ones performed even
worse . . . That’s not a particularly great
signal compared to the [US]”.
While there have been successes such
as the September initial public offering
of UK genomics group Oxford Nanopore, it is the high-profile flops and
missed opportunities that stick in investors’ minds. Last March, Deliveroo lost
more than a quarter of its value in its
London Stock Exchange debut.
GP Bullhound, a London-headquartered venture capital group that
invested in Revolut and Klarna, last
week raised €200mn for a blank cheque
company, and chose Amsterdam for the
listing rather than London.
Meanwhile SoftBank-backed ecommerce group THG, which was the UK’s
largest IPO since 2015 when it raised
£1.9bn in its 2020 flotation, has lost
about three-quarters of its value since
then as it faces criticism of its corporate
governance.
For many founders, there is just no
comparison between the UK and the US,
whose equity markets are bigger,
deeper and with a wider peer group of
companies, and where investors write
bigger tickets and ascribe higher valuations to growth stocks.
“America is the capital centre of the
world,” said a veteran UK fund manager.
Referring to Arm. “Why would you list
one of the most interesting stocks in a
pool of capital that is diminishing? If you
want to get the highest price for it then
surely you’ll list it in the country with
the highest appetite for risk?” he said.
Others shrug off the importance of
where a company is listed. “Global
investors find good companies regard-
How London’s top 2021 tech listings have fared since IPOs
% change from IPO price
-80
Devolver Digital
Baltic Classifieds
Moonpig
Wise
Eurowag
Softline
Trustpilot
Alphawave Ip
Deliveroo
Victorian Plumbing
less of where they are listed,” said Victoria van Lennep, co-founder of Londonbased Lendable, which is building a consumer lending platform spanning both
the US and Europe.
There are other structural trends at
‘Global investors find good
companies regardless of
where they are listed’
Victoria van Lennep
play. EU rules — written with UK backing — forced asset managers to split the
cost of investment research from that of
trading securities. That led to asset
managers cutting their research budgets to control their costs and investment
banks reducing their corporate coverage. Executives complain the rules have
hit equity research, cutting the volume
and quality of coverage, and disproportionately hurting smaller companies.
Meanwhile, executives have long
Zomato delivers some unappetising
quarterly revenue growth figures
Shares in food delivery group Zomato
fell more than 8 per cent yesterday
after it reported flat quarterly revenue
growth, as pressure grows on India’s
tech start-ups to deliver returns.
Zomato is among a clutch of newly listed
Indian tech stocks that have crashed off
their post-listing peaks as investors fret
that the businesses have been overvalued. SoftBank-backed Paytm’s share
price has fallen 57 per cent since its
record-setting listing in November to
Rs924 ($12.27).
“After Paytm, there was this general
distress in the market about the valuation of tech stocks,” said Satish Meena, a
tech analyst. “The valuations are very
high, and there’s no way they can
become profitable in the near future.”
Zomato shares pared losses later in
the day, but were still down more than 5
per cent at Rs89, having lost about half
of their high in November.
Shares of insurance aggregator PolicyBazaar, which is also backed by SoftBank, fell more than 8 per cent to as
much as Rs775 yesterday, while online
beauty marketplace Nykaa’s stock is
down more than 46 per cent since its initial public offering in November.
Zomato’s revenue from operations
edged up to Rs11.1bn ($147mn) for the
quarter ending in December, up
Rs10.2bn ($135mn) from the previous
quarter. But customer delivery charges
fell, leaving adjusted revenue the same
as the second quarter, which ended in
September.
It disappointed investors, who stomached Zomato’s losses while it promised
to increase revenues and market share.
Investors worry that many Indian
tech start-ups might be overvalued
-40
-20
0
20
40
Sources: Cowen; FT calculations
technology
cHloE corNiSH — mumbai
-60
Zomato reported in its results on
Thursday that it had started operations
in about 180 new cities, where it offered
free deliveries to attract consumers. But
it said the “post-Covid reopening” had
hit business, with some customers shifting from ordering in to eating out.
Zomato, which listed in July and has
never reported a profit, said it pared
quarterly net losses. This was thanks to
cash from its sale of sport business Fitso.
With $1.7bn in cash on its balance
sheet, Zomato said it would continue
investing in restaurant ordering and
delivery as well as online grocery deliveries. Zomato said it had spent about
$225mn investing in grocery delivery
companies in the past year.
In food delivery, Zomato’s biggest
rivalry is with Swiggy, which is backed
by SoftBank’s Vision Fund and remains
private at an estimated valuation of
$10bn. In the groceries sector, Zomato is
pitted against Amazon and Indian
tycoon Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance
empire.
“The competition is even more massive than food delivery,” Meena said.
With razor-thin margins, “grocery globally is a very difficult category”.
complained that, unlike their US counterparts, the UK’s domestic investor
base typically offers neither the risk
appetite for backing new ideas nor the
support for companies while they are
lossmaking. The UK market is dominated by large pension funds, which are
encouraged to prioritise stability and
dividends over growth.
Dom Hallas, executive director of
Coadec, which represents start-ups in
the UK, said that pension funds were too
conservative, which has limited the
money flowing to tech stocks in the UK.
The UK stock markets are dominated
by “old economy” sectors such as commodities and financials, and — just as in
Europe but unlike in the US — there are
far fewer specialist funds in sectors such
as tech and healthcare where most of
the action is taking place.
The UK government has been working to reform listings rules to encourage
investment in British businesses and
support the development of innovative
sectors such as tech and life sciences.
Our global
team gives you
market-moving
news and views,
24 hours a day
ft.com/markets
The government has also loosened
rules to allow founders to retain more
voting rights in companies seeking to
float, and lowered the free float requirements, meaning founders need to sell
fewer shares to list.
Tim Levene, chief executive of Augmentum Fintech, a UK-listed venture
capital fund, said the government
reforms were “additive” rather than “a
silver bullet”. He pointed to the arrival
in Europe of the big US venture capital
firms — most recently ‘Tiger cub’ Coatue
Capital — as evidence of shifting attitudes from big investors. “We’ve come a
long way on private markets,” he said.
“The public markets are not there.”
The government has already kicked
off a new review into how to make secondary fundraisings easier, and is looking at ways to encourage more retail
investors into the market. Some investors have called for it to adjust the pension fee cap — which in practice limits
savers in auto-enrolment schemes from
investing in higher-fee strategies — to
help institutional funds take riskier bets
in unlisted and early IPO companies.
In a sign of how much is at stake, the
LSE is expected to step up lobbying
efforts to convince Arm to change its
mind, or at the least pursue a dual listing
in the UK and the US, which it had
before being bought by SoftBank.
The Arm episode renews the urgency
to ensure that promising tech groups are
created and nurtured in the UK.
“Is there something here that is
endemic to British culture that we’re
trying to be small-scale imitators of
America rather than looking for our offsetting advantages?” Baillie Gifford’s
Anderson said.
Additional reporting by Bryce Elder
Equities
Australian regulator drops cartel case
against Deutsche Bank and Citigroup
Nic filDES — SydnEy
A significant cartel case levelled by the
Australian competition watchdog
against Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and
four senior bankers has collapsed after
federal prosecutors dropped criminal
charges.
The decision to abandon the charges
against the two international banks and
some of their highest-ranking executives ended a long-running case that had
shaken Australia’s financial industry.
The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions yesterday withdrew the
charges against Citigroup, Deutsche
Bank and the executives on the basis it
was unlikely to secure convictions.
The decision averted what would
have been one of the country’s largest
white-collar criminal trials. Charges
against Australian bank ANZ and two
senior bankers were dropped last year.
The case was connected to a share
placement by ANZ in August 2015 and
telephone calls between the banks that
had underwritten the A$2.5bn ($1.8bn)
fundraising. The calls included discussions over plans to sell on the stock they
still had on their books.
The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, the country’s competition watchdog, alleged the actions of
the bankers represented cartel behaviour. The banks said the trades were in
line with regulatory guidelines and part
of an established process of stabilising
the market after a large placement.
JPMorgan also worked on the ANZ
placing but was not charged as it co-
‘We respect the decision of
the CDPP and will
consider what lessons can
be learnt from this matter’
operated with the ACCC, according to a
person with direct knowledge of the situation. JPMorgan declined to comment.
Criminal charges were filed in June
2018 against the banks and bankers,
including the former head of Deutsche
Bank in Australia, Michael Ormaechea,
and the former head of Citigroup Australia, Stephen Roberts.
The executives faced up to 10 years in
jail if found guilty. One banking executive, speaking anonymously, said the jail
time put “the fear of God” into the
industry. The decision to drop the
charges, however, has forced the ACCC
to defend its own record following a
number of high-profile cases that have
backfired, including an attempt to block
the merger of telecoms companies
Vodafone and TPG.
Rod Sims, ACCC chair, maintained the
alleged actions of the bankers “stood to
damage competition and the Australian
economy” and that the agency would
pursue cartel cases in the future despite
the complexity of the law.
“We respect the independent decision
of the CDPP, and with them will consider what lessons can be learnt from
this matter,” Sims said in a statement.
The charges were brought at the
height of friction between Australian
regulators and the banking industry. A
government investigation into the Australian banking industry had revealed
unethical behaviour and rampant misconduct across the financial sector.
Citigroup said it welcomed the decision to drop the charges. Deutsche Bank
said the bank and executives had been
“vindicated” by the decision to drop the
charges.
14
★
FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
COMPANIES & MARKETS
The day in the markets
On Wall Street
Stablecoin issuers need
regulating with banks
When you buy a coin, you
are offering the provider a
dollar loan, just like when
you put money in the bank
according to a report from FDIC’s
inspector general, the bank began an
aggressive strategy of taking on
government-backed small-business and
agricultural loans. The bank decided to
sell off the guaranteed portions of the
loans, then keep the rest of the risk on its
books. Making a lot of loans quickly is a
great way to create non-performing
loans, something the Kansas examiners
told the Almena State Bank, repeatedly.
That’s not innovation. That’s just
holding crummy assets.
A stablecoin provider is a bank. It is not
like a bank; it is a bank. When you buy a
stablecoin, you are offering the provider
a dollar loan, just like when you deposit a
dollar in a bank. And, just like the bank
does, the stablecoin provider has to hold
enough performing assets to redeem
that dollar loan for an actual US dollar on
demand. Stablecoins, just like bank
deposits, are “runnable” — if people get
worried about the quality of a provider’s
assets, they will take all their dollars
back, quickly, all at the same time.
Morgan Ricks, a professor at the
Vanderbilt Law School and a former
Treasury official, calls this the “money
problem” — if you create a financial
liability that’s liquid like money, then it is
inherently runnable. If you want to
create money, you can choose not to call
yourself a bank, but you will still have the
money problem. So there is nothing
inherently dodgy about stablecoins. But
there is something inherently dodgy
about banking, which is why elaborate
regulatory regimes protect deposits.
You can read every regulation as the
history of a disaster. In the roaring 1920s
in America, hundreds of banks failed
every year. Consumers had to think
carefully about where they deposited
their money so that it did not disappear.
In 1933, at the peak of the early
Depression banking crisis, 4,000 banks
failed. In 1935 the US Congress created
the FDIC to protect deposits.
You can say that people are adults and
should do their research before buying a
dollar stablecoin, but that is not how
financial crises work out in real life.
When a lot of people watch what they
thought had been money simply
disappear, there is unrest. And so
countries have learnt how to regulate
consumer banks aggressively, and plan
for when they fail anyway. There are a lot
of problems in American finance, but
consumer deposits is not one of them.
The Treasury Department has
proposed to treat stablecoin providers
like deposit banks because they are
deposit banks, and America has already
worked out a system to keep deposits
safe. The regulatory goal for stablecoins
should be the same as for banks like the
Almena State Bank in Kansas: to keep
them from failing, and if they must fail,
to make sure they fail quietly.
Brendan Greeley is an FT contributing editor
Fertiliser and food set to be next point
of tension between EU and Moscow
I
t has now dawned on EU
authorities that the union’s
agonising dependence on Russian
natural gas will be compounded by
Russian companies’ market power
over fertiliser. As one Eurocrat told me
this week, “You do not get a Nobel
Prize for seeing this fertiliser situation
as a threat to Europe’s food security.”
Now there is strong sentiment among
some in Brussels to respond to such a
threat, perhaps through legal
challenges and competition
proceedings. This comes after the
announcement this month that the
EuroChem Group has made a binding
offer to buy the nitrogen fertiliser and
chemical assets of Borealis, now owned
by OMV, the Austrian oil and
petrochemicals company.
As a European fertiliser industry
executive pointed out: “This will make
EuroChem the second-largest fertiliser
company in Europe, after Yara [of
Norway].” The home country of
EuroChem’s management and the core
ownership group are in Russia, which,
by the way, just imposed a two-month
ban on its own fertiliser exports that
ends on April 1.
It does not help the European food
industry that Yara International and
other incumbent producers are now
increasingly dependent on Russian gas
or imported LNG that is several times
more expensive than what the Russian
fertiliser industry pays for the same
input. Natural gas accounts for about
80 per cent of the cost of European
nitrogen fertiliser. Yara was forced to
curtail production last year because of
rising gas prices.
In the year to last December, EU
farmers saw the cost of their natural
gas rise 549 per cent and nitrogen
fertilisers’ cost rise 263 per cent. Not
surprisingly, many of the farmers have
held off on buying enough fertiliser to
maintain their crop yields this year. As
one German MEP said: “Some of us are
worried about a 10 per cent decline in
food production, though the optimistic
view is that there will only be a 5 per
cent decline.”
Conditions have been in place for a
good harvest in Europe this year.
However, while the “first dressing” of
fertiliser on fields is mostly being
completed this month, agriculture and
industry people worry about the
“second dressing”, particularly for
Easing the immediate
pressure by importing
cheap foreign grain will
be a challenge
grain crops, that will be carried out (or
not, or on a reduced scale) in May and
June.
The hesitant farmers are putting the
supply risk (and the price risk) on the
fertiliser producers, who are concerned
about the “logistical crunch” that could
choke roads, warehouses and
manufacturing facilities forced beyond
their design capacity.
Easing the immediate pressure on
European food supplies by importing
cheap foreign grain will be a challenge.
In recent years Russia moved from a
communist-era grain importer to one
of the two most important grain
exporters in the world, along with
Ukraine. To maintain plentiful
domestic supplies, however, Russia has
also restricted grain exports for several
months. Given that prices of wheat and
other cereals in the EU were already up
between 38 and 59 per cent on the year,
that is not good news for Europeans.
Europe may lack fertiliser, but it has
plenty of trade lawyers and experts
who know how to manage official trade
proceedings. There have been
murmurs in Brussels about challenging
Russia’s fertiliser export restrictions at
the World Trade Organization. But as
one European official admits: “That
would take four or five years, and for
what?”
Another possibility is to launch a
“competition” proceeding to block
EuroChem’s takeover of Borealis. Most
of the discussion so far has been among
European agricultural specialists, but
as one of those says: “We work in a
collegiate manner and we would expect
our counterparts in the DG
[directorate-general] for competition
are aware and are concerned about the
risks.”
Of course Russians have lawyers too.
And the truth is that it’s not EuroChem
that caused Europe’s gas and fertiliser
crunch. The member states decided
among themselves that they did not
want to drill for more gas on their own
territory. The carbon impact of
European gas use was just being shifted
to politicised Russian wells and
pipelines and expensive LNG imports
from the US or Qatar.
Oh, and before the deep green people
in the room suggest a virtuous switch
to “organic” fertiliser, variously
defined, they should keep in mind that
grain crop yields per hectare decline by
nearly half when dressed organically.
Europe has great technology
strengths. But gas and fertiliser do not
come from a virtual reality headset.
Russians had a strategy, and they have
executed it.
[email protected]
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Poor start to the year for Wall Street stocks
Year-to-date performance (%)
5
Stocks on Wall Street fell yesterday,
continuing a poor start to 2022, after US
inflation hit its highest level in 40 years.
The S&P 500 index was 0.4 per cent
lower at lunchtime in New York, having
lost 1.8 per cent on Thursday as markets
priced in rapid US interest rate rises that
analysts said might slow the growth of
the world’s largest economy.
The broad US equity barometer is
down about 6 per cent this year, having
hit an all-time high at the turn of 2022.
The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite
dropped 1 per cent after sliding more
than 2 per cent a day earlier.
US consumer prices climbed 7.5 per
cent in the year to January, data released
on Thursday showed, leading money
markets to predict that the Federal
Reserve would raise its main funds rate to
almost 1.8 per cent by December.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year
Treasury note, which moves inversely to
its price, rose above 2 per cent on
Thursday for the first time since 2019.
“The risks are now opening to the
downside in terms of economic activity,”
said Geraldine Sundstrom, multi-asset
portfolio manager at Pimco, referring to
the possibility of the Fed tightening
monetary policy to the point it may
trigger an economic slowdown.
The inflation data “raised the small
possibility of the first inter-meeting Fed
0
S&P 500
-5
-10
-15
Nasdaq Composite
-20
Jan
2022
Feb
Source: Refinitiv
rate rise since 1994, and before that since
1979, added Jim Reid, strategist at
Deutsche Bank, referring to central banks’
usual policies of making monetary policy
decisions at their scheduled meetings.
“The market now prices some risk of an
emergency hike before March,” he added.
In Europe, core government debt also
sold off in expectation of higher interest
rates on the continent, sending the yield
on Germany’s 10-year Bund up 8 basis
points this week to 0.29 per cent.
Pressure has mounted on central banks
on both sides of the Atlantic to curb
soaring inflation caused by tight supply
chains and rising energy costs. However,
European stock markets, with heavier
weightings of commodities producers, as
well as bank stocks that are seen to
benefit from rate rises, have done better
than US peers so far in 2022.
The region-wide Stoxx 600 index is
down by about 3.7 per cent this year,
having dropped 0.6 per cent yesterday.
London’s FTSE 100, meanwhile, has
advanced almost 4 per cent since
January 1.
Brent crude, the oil benchmark, gained
2 per cent to $93.23 a barrel, close to its
highest point since 2014. Naomi Rovnick
Markets update
US
Stocks
S&P 500
Level
4490.65
% change on day
-0.30
Currency
$ index (DXY)
Level
95.716
% change on day
0.171
Govt. bonds
10-year Treasury
Yield
2.045
Basis point change on day
3.940
World index, Commods FTSE All-World
Level
476.46
% change on day
-0.47
Eurozone
Eurofirst 300
1835.09
-0.52
$ per €
1.140
-0.610
10-year Bund
0.294
1.300
Oil - Brent
93.44
2.34
Japan
Nikkei 225
27696.08
0.42
Yen per $
115.880
-0.065
10-year JGB
0.225
0.000
Oil - WTI
92.06
2.30
UK
FTSE100
7661.02
-0.15
$ per £
1.360
-0.147
10-year Gilt
1.467
1.800
Gold
1835.35
0.41
China
Shanghai Comp
3462.95
-0.66
Rmb per $
6.360
0.004
10-year bond
2.787
5.800
Silver
23.36
0.45
Yesterday's close apart from: Currencies = 16:00 GMT; S&P, Bovespa, All World, Oil = 17:00 GMT; Gold, Silver = London pm fix. Bond data supplied by Tullett Prebon.
Brazil
Bovespa
114857.62
1.31
Real per $
5.194
0.046
10-year bond
11.227
4.800
Metals (LMEX)
4877.50
1.16
Main equity markets
S&P 500 index
Eurofirst 300 index
4800
1920
7680
1840
7360
4640
FTSE 100 index
4480
4320
| |
Dec
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
2022
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Feb
1760
|
Biggest movers
%
Ups
I
n October of 2020, the Kansas
banking commission closed down a
state bank in Almena, a railroad
town just below the border with
Nebraska. The Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation, which
guarantees consumer deposits at US
banks, paid $18mn to make every
depositor whole. It was an
unremarkable intervention. The
banking commission stepped in on a
Friday, with no interruption in deposits
over the weekend. This was the last time
a bank failed in America.
The collapse of the Almena State
Bank, and the rescue of its depositors,
went unmentioned this week when
Nellie Liang, the US Treasury’s under
secretary for domestic finance, testified
in Congress. Her appearance followed a
Treasury report in November on
stablecoins, digital assets pegged to a
sovereign currency. If you hold a dollar
stablecoin — Tether, or the USD Coin, or
the Binance USD — you are holding
something that’s supposed to be exactly
as valuable as a dollar bill.
The Treasury believes that stablecoins
could make transferring dollars from
one place to another cheaper and more
efficient, a development desperately
needed and long overdue in America.
But the Treasury also recommended
that stablecoins be issued only by
insured depository institutions —
consumer banks, just like the one in
Almena. That is a more contentious
proposal, and it is also a question for the
very near future. Since January 2020, the
total supply of dollar stablecoins has
grown from $6bn to $174bn. For a sense
of scale, last quarter, one of the biggest
US consumer banks, Wells Fargo,
reported $864bn in consumer deposits.
Stablecoin supply is now at almost
exactly one-fifth of that — brand-new,
liquid financial liabilities that did not
exist two years ago.
Republicans on the committee
argued that forcing stablecoins into
FDIC-insured banks would discourage
innovation. But the problem with
innovation is that the one form of it
financiers most ardently desire is
actually just the oldest trick in finance:
borrow short-term liabilities, then
balance them against long-term assets
that are either crummy or do not exist.
Take the Almena State Bank. In 2014,
3 Yield on US 10-year Treasury firms
above 2% after high inflation reading
3 European bourses have outperformed
Wall Street peers so far in 2022
3 Brent crude nears highest level since
2014 after climbing above $93 a barrel
%
Downs
Brendan
Greeley
What you need to know
| |
Dec
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
2022
|
|
|
US
Newell Brands
Baker Hughes
Phillips 66
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
Valero Energy
12.86
4.88
3.60
3.51
3.49
Eurozone
Unilever
Bay.motoren Werke
Porsche
Henkel
Hann.rueck
Under Armour
Under Armour
Advanced Micro Devices
Xilinx
Illumina
-9.52
-8.86
-5.10
-5.09
-4.91
Novo Nordisk
Hermes Intl
Michelin
Arcelormittal
Schneider Electric
Prices taken at 17:00 GMT
|
|
|
|
7040
| |
Feb
|
4.19
2.73
2.57
2.27
1.99
-4.51
-3.53
-3.36
-3.32
-3.30
Based on the constituents of the FTSE Eurofirst 300 Eurozone
| | |
Dec
|
|
|
|
|
| | |
2022
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | |
Feb
UK
Unilever
British American Tobacco
Evraz
Flutter Entertainment
Airtel Africa
3.59
3.04
3.01
2.81
2.64
Spirax-sarco Eng
Experian
Segro
Ashtead
Halma
-3.79
-3.62
-3.48
-3.06
-2.88
All data provided by Morningstar unless otherwise noted.
Wall Street
Europe
London
On the face of it the results of Under
Armour, the sportswear company, were
decent. Fourth-quarter earnings came in
at 14 cents per share, which was double
the Refinitiv-compiled estimate, while its
$1.53bn revenue was above the $1.47bn
analysts had expected.
But its shares still tumbled after
warning that for the current quarter,
gross margins would fall 200 basis points
year on year “due to higher freight
expenses resulting from ongoing Covid19 supply chain challenges in addition to
unfavourable sales mix”.
Household goods group Newell, which
includes Sharpie markers among its
brands, rallied after posting a 4.8 per cent
rise in fourth-quarter net sales to $2.8bn,
comfortably beating the $2.7bn Wall
Street forecast.
GoDaddy, the domain registrar and
web hosting group, jumped following its
announcement of a $3bn share buyback
programme, which would start with a
$750mn accelerated stock repurchase in
the first quarter of this year.
Mark McCaffrey, chief financial officer,
said the group generated more than
“$1bn in quarterly revenue for the first
time in the company’s history” as it
reported fourth-quarter earnings per
share of $0.52, which was 11 cents higher
than consensus estimates. Ray Douglas
Rovio, maker of Angry Birds, picked up
after Alex Pelletier-Normand, chief
executive, said the Finnish group “saw
strong growth and record high revenue in
games” in the fourth quarter.
“Our top three games — Angry Birds 2,
Angry Birds Dream Blast and Angry Birds
Friends — all grew year on year,” he said.
Full-year revenue of €286.2mn beat
Jefferies’ estimate of €280mn, but Rovio
said “adjusted operating profit was
expected to be lower year on year” in
2022, which disappointed the broker as it
raised “questions on the competitive
environment and effectiveness of the
group’s UA [user acquisition] strategy”.
An earnings miss weighed on
Schibsted, the Norwegian media group.
While fourth-quarter revenue was
broadly in line with estimates, core
earnings of NKr634mn ($72mn) was
NKr31mn below the same period last year
and 4 per cent lower than Citi’s forecast.
The broker said guidance for 2022 was
also “unclear”, for example, Schibsted said
ecommerce growth would be “good”, but
lower than the past two years.
Utility EDF sank after news it was
cutting its nuclear power output. For
2023, EDF scaled down its nuclear
output estimate from a range of
340-370 terawatt hours to 300-330TWh.
Ray Douglas
Food ingredients supplier Tate & Lyle
rose sharply after an upbeat update. Its
food and beverage division delivered an
“excellent quarter with double-digit
revenue growth across all regions”, said
Nick Hampton, chief executive.
Tate & Lyle announced last year it was
selling a controlling stake in its North
American sweeteners and starches
business, which Hargreaves Lansdown
described as “easily the least profitable
part of the business”. This move, said
AJ Bell, left “the rest of Tate & Lyle as a
higher quality operation with better
growth prospects”.
A ratings downgrade helped send
Rotork lower. Jefferies cut the industrial
group’s rating to “hold” from “buy” owing
to “a number of challenges/risks”.
“Supply chains and product availability
[electronics] continue to be testing, and
we need greater confidence that some
near-term pick-up in oil and gas markets
will be sustained,” said the broker, which
noted that Rotork already traded on
“healthy multiples”.
Luxury carmaker Aston Martin stock
slid after Lawrence Stroll, its chair, told
the FT it would take longer than hoped to
build its limited-edition Valkyrie models.
“We have a complexity issue,” said Stroll.
“We overestimated the amount of cars we
could build.” Ray Douglas
★
12 February/13 February 2022
15
FTWeekend
MARKET DATA
WORLD MARKETS AT A GLANCE
FT.COM/MARKETSDATA
Change during previous day’s trading (%)
S&P 500
Nasdaq Composite
-0.30%
Dow Jones Ind
-0.71%
FTSE 100
FTSE Eurofirst 300
-0.15%
No change
Nikkei
-0.52%
0.42%
Stock Market movements over last 30 days, with the FTSE All-World in the same currency as a comparison
AMERICAS
EUROPE
Jan 12 - S&P 500
Index
All World
New York
4,659.03
Jan 12 - Feb 11
S&P/TSX COMP
Index
All World
Toronto
21,555.45
21,292.96
Jan 12 - Feb 11
FTSE 100
Hang Seng
FTSE All World $
$ per €
$ per £
¥ per $
£ per €
-0.07%
-0.47%
-0.610%
-0.147%
-0.065%
-0.475%
Index
Jan 12 - Feb 11
Xetra Dax
All World
London
7,661.02
7,563.85
Index
Month 3.09%
Year 14.69%
Nasdaq Composite
New York
15,188.39
14,085.20
Day -0.71%
Month 4.63%
Year 0.48%
Dow Jones Industrial
35,242.81
Country
Month 2.93%
16,031.59
Year 12.12%
Latest
IPC
Day -0.15%
Mexico City
52,603.85
Day 1.52%
Month 5.45%
Year 21.21%
Bovespa
Year 17.35%
FTSE Eurofirst 300
Day -0.52%
Month 0.58%
CAC 40
Day 1.31%
Month 2.63%
Year -3.72%
Latest
Previous
FTSE MIB
7,011.60
Day -1.27%
Month 0.50%
Country
Index
Year 23.64%
29579.14
46466.94
27190.20
7282.96
27579.87
1686.40
1952.22
2153.90
1889.30
6603.51
1261.58
950.06
1772.56
1570.10
52599.58
13950.56
762.65
1046.15
12413.05
47057.24
1006.88
45940.04
87559.37
7595.50
7288.50
5707.80
4053.14
4122.70
10341.74
113367.77
1307.14
21531.72
1356.90
23310.99
12280.82
8988.96
3653.11
285.68
3485.91
2409.14
1165.19
1260.21
2011.29
Index
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Egypt
Estonia
Finland
France
stock
traded m's
Tesla
99.8
Advanced Micro Devices
72.7
Nvidia
62.3
Apple
53.3
Microsoft
39.5
Meta Platforms
38.4
Amazon.com
37.9
Alphabet
15.1
Alphabet
14.4
Micron Technology
11.9
close
price
886.10
119.35
248.73
171.75
300.37
224.88
3127.97
2760.22
2758.40
92.95
Day's
change
-18.45
-6.42
-9.51
-0.37
-2.01
-3.19
-52.10
-11.83
-14.00
1.93
BIGGEST MOVERS
Ups
Newell Brands
Baker Hughes
Phillips 66
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
Valero Energy
Close
price
Day's
change
Day's
chng%
24.79
28.78
92.68
639.94
93.03
2.83
1.34
3.22
21.72
3.14
12.86
4.88
3.60
3.51
3.49
Downs
Under Armour
Under Armour
Advanced Micro Devices
Xilinx
Illumina
18.11
15.80
119.35
205.52
340.50
-1.91
-1.54
-6.42
-11.03
-17.58
-9.52
-8.86
-5.10
-5.09
-4.91
Based on the constituents of the S&P500
Milan
Country
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Saudi-Arabia
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
South Africa
South Korea
Spain
Sri Lanka
Sweden
Switzerland
Month 1.12%
Shanghai Composite
Latest
Manila Comp
Wig
PSI 20
PSI General
BET Index
Micex Index
RTX
TADAWUL All Share Index
FTSE Straits Times
SAX
SBI TOP
FTSE/JSE All Share
FTSE/JSE Res 20
FTSE/JSE Top 40
Kospi
Kospi 200
IBEX 35
CSE All Share
OMX Stockholm 30
OMX Stockholm AS
SMI Index
7270.36
67627.07
5590.86
3866.91
13373.88
3546.62
1470.10
12268.71
3428.95
405.55
76509.86
77811.84
69809.75
2747.71
368.61
8798.10
12459.80
2293.77
931.06
12231.97
Country
7432.62
67939.86
5671.70
3949.58
13439.12
3655.76
1546.79
12205.47
3428.00
405.55
76585.19
78218.67
69944.22
2771.93
371.57
8886.20
12207.46
2314.26
940.49
12313.16
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
UAE
UK
USA
Venezuela
Vietnam
Month 4.97%
Year -11.38%
Singapore
3,428.95
Day 0.03%
Shanghai
Month 5.26%
Year 16.94%
BSE Sensex
Mumbai
61,150.04
3,462.95
Day -0.66%
Previous
Seoul
3,246.37
Year -17.27%
3,586.08
Year 15.82%
Index
Month 5.06%
All World
FTSE Straits Times
24,906.66
Day -0.07%
26,966.10
Day -0.82%
STOCK MARKET: BIGGEST MOVERS
AMERICA
ACTIVE STOCKS
Year 9.08%
27,844.45
FTSE Italia All-Share
29335.12
CSE M&P Gen
68.46
68.68
Italy
FTSE Italia Mid Cap
46418.40
PX
1468.42
1477.59
FTSE MIB
26966.10
OMXC Copenahgen 20
1645.58
1682.74
EGX 30
11578.54
11596.29
Japan
2nd Section
7308.52
Nikkei 225
27696.08
OMX Tallinn
1989.82
1996.95
Austria
S&P Topix 150
1693.47
OMX Helsinki General
12136.39
12207.30
Belgium
Topix
1962.61
CAC 40
7011.60
7101.55
Jordan
Amman SE
2160.57
SBF 120
5424.51
5491.78
Brazil
Kenya
NSE 20
1896.76
Germany
M-DAX
33403.54
33527.38
Canada
Kuwait
KSX Market Index
6633.44
TecDAX
3339.57
3383.25
Latvia
OMX Riga
1271.98
XETRA Dax
15425.12
15490.44
Lithuania
OMX Vilnius
949.56
Chile
Greece
Athens Gen
971.00
964.05
China
Luxembourg
LuxX
1771.52
FTSE/ASE 20
2375.98
2360.94
Malaysia
FTSE Bursa KLCI
1578.89
Hong Kong
Hang Seng
24906.66
24924.35
Mexico
IPC
53400.51
HS China Enterprise
8784.39
8789.92
Morocco
MASI
13991.47
HSCC Red Chip
4371.22
4356.32
Netherlands
AEX
761.50
Hungary
Bux
52141.58
52566.76
AEX All Share
1039.73
India
BSE Sensex
58152.92
58926.03
New Zealand
NZX 50
12173.78
Nifty 500
14891.30
15112.20
Colombia
Nigeria
SE All Share
47157.23
Indonesia
Jakarta Comp
6815.61
6823.64
Norway
Oslo All Share
1017.37
Croatia
Ireland
ISEQ Overall
8504.08
8513.67
Pakistan
KSE 100
46079.37
Israel
Tel Aviv 125
2084.03
2083.87
(c) Closed. (u) Unavaliable. † Correction. ♥ Subject to official recalculation. For more index coverage please see www.ft.com/worldindices. A fuller version of this table is available on the ft.com research data archive.
89703.98
7515.80
7217.30
5732.60
4017.14
4080.41
10243.30
114857.62
1313.11
21647.00
1367.63
23518.00
12205.14
9000.71
3629.05
285.22
3462.95
2367.76
1158.41
1261.61
2013.05
Country
Month 1.55%
Index
Day -0.87%
Hong Kong
24,429.77
0.41%
2,747.71
Year -6.16%
Hang Seng
8,798.10
Day -0.99%
Paris
105,529.50
Madrid
Month 2.63%
1.43%
2,962.09
27,696.08
Day 0.42%
Gold $
Jan 12 - Feb 11
Kospi
All World
Tokyo
28,765.66
Year NaN%
Ibex 35
Year 15.83%
7,201.14
Month 1.89%
8,816.90
1,835.09
Index
15,425.12
Day -0.42%
Europe
1,890.05
São Paulo
114,025.19
Month 2.29%
Previous
Merval
All Ordinaries
S&P/ASX 200
S&P/ASX 200 Res
ATX
BEL 20
BEL Mid
IBovespa
S&P/TSX 60
S&P/TSX Comp
S&P/TSX Div Met & Min
S&P/CLX IGPA Gen
FTSE A200
FTSE B35
Shanghai A
Shanghai B
Shanghai Comp
Shenzhen A
Shenzhen B
COLCAP
CROBEX
Previous
Year 17.69%
Latest
Argentina
Australia
Index
Month 5.64%
53,951.14
New York
36,290.32
Day 0.00%
Day 0.54%
Jan 12 - Feb 10
Nikkei 225
Frankfurt
4,490.65
Day -0.30%
ASIA
All World
Oil Brent $ Sep
Month 0.87%
Year -5.26%
Index
Latest
Weighted Pr
Bangkok SET
BIST 100
Abu Dhabi General Index
FT 30
FTSE 100
FTSE 4Good UK
FTSE All Share
FTSE techMARK 100
DJ Composite
DJ Industrial
DJ Transport
DJ Utilities
Nasdaq 100
Nasdaq Cmp
NYSE Comp
S&P 500
Wilshire 5000
IBC
VNI
58,152.92
Day -1.31%
Previous
18310.94
1699.20
2051.05
8333.19
2858.70
7661.02
7056.57
4286.38
6407.51
11723.13
35242.81
15315.96
931.44
14575.42
14085.20
16881.02
4490.65
45403.83
5548.38
1501.71
Country
18338.05
1703.00
2038.67
8358.50
2871.90
7672.40
7078.33
4296.96
6421.41
11726.48
35241.59
15390.70
924.05
14705.64
14185.64
16855.96
4504.08
45518.21
5521.08
1506.79
Month 2.13%
Index
DJ Global Titans ($)
Euro Stoxx 50 (Eur)
Euronext 100 ID
FTSE 4Good Global ($)
FTSE All World ($)
FTSE E300
FTSE Eurotop 100
FTSE Global 100 ($)
FTSE Gold Min ($)
FTSE Latibex Top (Eur)
FTSE Multinationals ($)
FTSE World ($)
FTSEurofirst 100 (Eur)
FTSEurofirst 80 (Eur)
MSCI ACWI Fr ($)
MSCI All World ($)
MSCI Europe (Eur)
MSCI Pacific ($)
S&P Euro (Eur)
S&P Europe 350 (Eur)
S&P Global 1200 ($)
Stoxx 50 (Eur)
Cross-Border
Year 13.19%
Latest
Previous
510.21
4153.38
1324.03
11189.06
476.46
1835.09
3519.73
2917.91
1983.88
4440.00
3134.20
858.09
4844.35
5796.63
726.31
3087.98
1898.20
3062.40
1924.87
1889.59
3397.30
3763.77
513.20
4197.07
1336.23
11255.58
478.69
1844.72
3534.04
2936.61
2021.05
4432.20
3175.48
861.74
4860.31
5850.52
733.20
3124.93
1900.59
3054.05
1945.35
1900.93
3407.42
3781.87
UK MARKET WINNERS AND LOSERS
LONDON
ACTIVE STOCKS
EURO MARKETS
ACTIVE STOCKS
stock
traded m's
Unilever
382.3
Astrazeneca
352.2
Bp
303.9
Evraz
272.1
Rio Tinto
232.0
Avast
229.3
British American Tobacco
196.9
Glaxosmithkline
173.8
Shell
171.1
Glencore
170.7
close
price
3914.50
8510.00
417.20
444.70
5726.00
623.40
3368.50
1619.40
2039.00
417.75
Day's
change
135.50
-140.00
6.50
13.00
-81.00
-0.60
99.50
-21.60
20.50
-3.30
BIGGEST MOVERS
Ups
Tate & Lyle
Unilever
British American Tobacco
Evraz
Pz Cussons
Close
price
Day's
change
Day's
chng%
756.00
3914.50
3368.50
444.70
208.00
65.80
135.50
99.50
13.00
6.00
9.53
3.59
3.04
3.01
2.97
Ups
Bay.motoren Werke Vzo
Bay.motoren Werke Ag St
Henkel Ag+co.kgaa St O.n.
Henkel Ag+co.kgaa Vzo
Eni
Downs
Wizz Air Holdings
Reach
Oxford Biomedica
Petropavlovsk
Trustpilot
4619.00
247.00
771.00
15.00
156.00
-248.00
-12.00
-37.00
-0.71
-6.60
-5.10
-4.63
-4.58
-4.52
-4.06
Downs
Novo Nordisk B A/s
Sartorius Ag Vzo O.n.
Essilorluxottica
Prosus
Hermes Intl
Based on the constituents of the FTSE 350 index
Nestle N
Intesa Sanpaolo
Asml Holding
Siemens Ag Na O.n.
Bnp Paribas Act.a
Lvmh
Unicredit
Novartis N
Totalenergies
Sap Se O.n.
stock
traded m's
489.5
451.6
411.7
360.9
356.1
310.9
308.3
294.9
291.0
275.2
close
price
113.02
2.85
569.50
141.44
64.90
685.00
15.69
75.58
52.25
107.50
Day's
change
1.19
-0.07
-14.60
-3.24
-1.66
-21.20
-0.16
-0.36
0.32
-1.80
Close
price
Day's
change
Day's
chng%
79.70
95.30
72.00
75.62
13.53
2.25
2.53
1.60
1.30
0.23
2.91
2.73
2.27
1.75
1.73
88.04
420.00
168.78
68.96
1202.00
-4.15
-19.30
-6.40
-2.53
-44.00
-4.51
-4.39
-3.65
-3.54
-3.53
BIGGEST MOVERS
Based on the constituents of the FTSEurofirst 300 Eurozone index
TOKYO
ACTIVE STOCKS
stock
close
traded m's
price
Softbank .
1544.2 5483.00
Toyota Motor
956.1 2254.00
Tokyo Electron
916.9 57150.00
Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha
678.1 9760.00
Sony
642.1 12855.00
Mitsubishi Ufj Fin,.
492.4
746.10
Sumco
444.5 2168.00
Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha,
415.1 7340.00
Mitsui O.s.k.lines,
361.1 9140.00
Shiseido ,
356.4 6453.00
BIGGEST MOVERS
Day's
change
-129.00
-63.50
1020.00
80.00
275.00
-6.30
85.00
70.00
90.00
409.00
Ups
Fujikura
Kajima
Nisshinbo Holdings .
Shiseido ,
Honda Motor Co.,
Close
price
Day's
change
Day's
chng%
679.00
1462.00
1057.00
6453.00
3613.00
54.00
98.00
67.00
409.00
192.00
8.64
7.18
6.77
6.77
5.61
Downs
Yamato Holdings Co.,
Mitsui Eng & Shipbuilding Co.,
Terumo
Yamaha Motor Co.,
Toyota Motor
2185.00
361.00
3989.00
2767.00
2254.00
-300.00
-21.00
-203.00
-86.00
-63.50
-12.07
-5.50
-4.84
-3.01
-2.74
Based on the constituents of the Nikkei 225 index
FTSE 100
Winners
Int Consolidated Airlines S.a.
Antofagasta
Informa
Whitbread
Itv
Entain
Anglo American
Flutter Entertainment
Melrose Industries
Rio Tinto
Rolls-royce Holdings
Intercontinental Hotels
Feb 11
price(p)
%Chg
week
%Chg
ytd
174.64
1366.50
613.40
3243.00
123.65
1698.50
3579.50
11360.00
158.85
5726.00
120.90
5140.00
12.6
11.4
10.4
9.3
8.9
8.0
7.7
7.4
7.2
6.7
6.4
6.1
Losers
Evraz
Ocado
Spirax-sarco Eng
Croda Int
Dechra Pharmaceuticals
Airtel Africa
Jd Sports Fashion
Experian
Electrocomponents
Sage
Aveva
Halma
444.70
1293.50
12195.00
7298.00
3820.00
147.80
174.65
2925.00
1036.00
685.40
2799.00
2359.00
-8.9
-8.3
-6.5
-5.6
-4.9
-4.6
-4.0
-3.7
-3.6
-3.6
-3.2
-3.0
Based on last week's performance. †Price at suspension.
Feb 11
price(p)
%Chg
week
%Chg
ytd
10.5
30.0
11.0
24.5
26.8
9.8
20.7
8.7
19.2
-3.0
-6.2
3.2
FTSE SmallCap
Winners
Menzies(john)
Clipper Logistics
Hyve
Ted Baker
Superdry
Saga
Hunting
Slf Realisation Fund
Kin And Carta
Stagecoach
Bank Of Georgia
Senior
482.00
804.00
115.00
90.50
209.50
315.00
256.50
12.95
235.00
98.00
1580.00
152.10
70.9
19.3
13.9
12.8
12.6
12.4
11.8
10.7
9.3
9.1
9.0
8.6
59.3
12.1
23.3
17.5
60.3
12.9
-2.8
9.3
Feb 11
Industry Sectors
price(p)
Winners
Health Care Equip.& Services 8448.72
Oil & Gas Producers
7187.81
Gas Water & Multiutilities index 6061.50
Tobacco
35476.41
Banks
3641.53
Pharmaceuticals & Biotech.
18326.71
Beverages
28801.80
Industrial Metals
7239.73
General Retailers
3169.08
Media
9725.21
Aerospace & Defense
4311.84
Electricity
9613.12
12.1
-16.2
0.8
7.7
-8.6
Losers
Henderson Eur Focus Trust
Lowland Investment
Funding Circle Holdings
Luceco
Made.com
Lamprell
Medica
Ediston Property Investment
Xps Pensions
Rm
Target Healthcare Reit
Lindsell Train Investment Trust
158.50
139.50
82.80
276.00
88.00
32.30
152.50
81.80
135.00
177.00
108.40
1215.00
-89.8
-89.8
-12.8
-8.9
-7.9
-7.1
-6.2
-4.9
-4.6
-4.6
-3.9
-3.8
-5.9
-3.2
-5.3
-6.8
-8.1
-6.5
Losers
Automobiles & Parts
Mining
Travel & Leisure
Household Goods
Food Producers
Chemicals
Life Insurance
General Financial
Software & Computer Services
Industrial Engineering
Food & Drug Retailers
Personal Goods
Feb 11
price(p)
%Chg
week
%Chg
ytd
21.7
0.4
18.5
7.5
10.9
0.4
18.5
-6.2
1.7
17.0
-1.8
7.1
FTSE 250
Winners
Carnival
Cineworld
National Express
Tui Ag
Easyjet
Wizz Air Holdings
Ssp
Greencore
Virgin Money Uk
Tbc Bank
Ferrexpo
Pz Cussons
1583.00
41.61
284.20
286.30
706.00
4619.00
297.10
141.00
216.90
1600.00
284.20
208.00
18.9
16.1
14.9
13.3
12.6
11.9
11.6
11.6
11.5
10.7
10.2
9.4
10.7
-17.8
-
Losers
Moonpig
Auction Technology
Oxford Biomedica
Hammerson
Dr. Martens
Moneysupermarket.com
Synthomer
Elementis
Genus
Uk Commercial Property Reit
Marks And Spencer
Ultra Electronics Holdings
276.00
895.00
771.00
37.57
279.40
192.20
337.80
133.50
3490.00
80.90
196.65
2898.00
-9.6
-9.5
-6.9
-5.4
-4.8
-4.8
-4.7
-4.6
-4.1
-3.6
-3.5
-3.3
3254.52
17501.75
8046.15
15246.65
6853.31
13024.93
7532.17
11716.26
1896.80
15448.14
4242.28
34780.19
%Chg
week
%Chg
ytd
36.1
29.6
28.6
27.9
26.7
22.6
22.0
21.7
19.9
19.4
17.7
16.9
2.7
1.3
2.0
4.8
3.5
1.2
-0.7
5.7
4.4
2.7
3.9
0.1
-32.0
-28.4
-14.8
-13.9
-9.3
-8.9
-8.4
-2.0
-1.9
-1.2
1.1
1.6
1.0
3.3
8.7
2.5
2.9
-3.4
-0.2
-1.3
-1.3
-4.4
1.6
4.2
CURRENCIES
Feb 11
Argentina
Australia
Bahrain
Bolivia
Brazil
Canada
Chile
China
Colombia
Costa Rica
Czech Republic
Denmark
Egypt
Hong Kong
Hungary
India
Currency
Argentine Peso
Australian Dollar
Bahrainin Dinar
Bolivian Boliviano
Brazilian Real
Canadian Dollar
Chilean Peso
Chinese Yuan
Colombian Peso
Costa Rican Colon
Czech Koruna
Danish Krone
Egyptian Pound
Hong Kong Dollar
Hungarian Forint
Indian Rupee
DOLLAR
Closing
Mid
106.0945
1.3934
0.3768
6.9100
5.1944
1.2686
806.7500
6.3595
3914.5050
643.5600
21.3957
6.5240
15.7173
7.7986
310.0276
75.3800
Day's
Change
0.0875
0.0115
-0.0002
0.0024
0.0030
6.3250
0.0002
-0.5000
-0.5300
0.1753
0.0364
0.0330
0.0058
1.3204
0.4275
EURO
POUND
Closing
Day's
Closing
Day's
Mid
Change
Mid
Change
120.9854
-0.5781 144.3207
-0.0243
1.5890
0.0042
1.8955
0.0137
0.4297
-0.0026
0.5126
-0.0007
7.8799
-0.0442
9.3997
-0.0093
5.9235
-0.0305
7.0660
-0.0038
1.4467
-0.0047
1.7257
0.0023
919.9813
2.0943 1097.4250
7.5216
7.2521
-0.0404
8.6509
-0.0083
4463.9250 -25.6063 5324.9157
-5.9754
733.8868
-4.7231 875.4370
-1.5918
24.3986
0.0641
29.1046
0.2097
7.4397
0.0000
8.8746
0.0407
17.9233
-0.0626
21.3803
0.0237
8.8932
-0.0432
10.6085
-0.0026
353.5415
-0.4684 421.7317
1.3787
85.9600
0.0082 102.5397
0.4802
Feb 11
Indonesia
Israel
Japan
..One Month
..Three Month
..One Year
Kenya
Kuwait
Malaysia
Mexico
New Zealand
Nigeria
Norway
Pakistan
Peru
Philippines
Currency
Indonesian Rupiah
Israeli Shekel
Japanese Yen
Kenyan Shilling
Kuwaiti Dinar
Malaysian Ringgit
Mexican Peso
New Zealand Dollar
Nigerian Naira
Norwegian Krone
Pakistani Rupee
Peruvian Nuevo Sol
Philippine Peso
DOLLAR
Closing
Mid
14351.5000
3.2363
115.8800
115.8800
115.8798
115.8783
113.6000
0.3020
4.1895
20.4010
1.4960
417.0000
8.7970
174.5000
3.7319
51.3425
Day's
Change
9.0000
0.0174
-0.0750
-0.0751
-0.0754
-0.0784
-0.0500
-0.0001
0.0060
0.0063
0.0079
0.0336
-0.3500
-0.0595
0.1075
EURO
POUND
Closing
Day's
Closing
Day's
Mid
Change
Mid
Change
16365.8086 -81.4517 19522.4039
-7.1678
3.6905
-0.0007
4.4024
0.0193
132.1443
-0.8270 157.6320
-0.2588
132.1444
-0.8269 157.6319
-0.2590
132.1444
-0.8268 157.6316
-0.2595
132.1445
-0.8266 157.6319
-0.2615
129.5443
-0.7838 154.5305
-0.2217
0.3443
-0.0020
0.4107
-0.0005
4.7775
-0.0199
5.6990
0.0025
23.2644
-0.1233
27.7516
-0.0191
1.7060
-0.0005
2.0350
0.0087
475.5280
-2.6666 567.2466
-0.5638
10.0317
-0.0178
11.9666
0.0338
198.9919
-1.5172 237.3730
-0.7125
4.2556
-0.0921
5.0764
-0.0861
58.5487
-0.2050
69.8414
0.0770
Feb 11
Currency
Poland
Polish Zloty
Romania
Romanian Leu
Russia
Russian Ruble
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Riyal
Singapore
Singapore Dollar
South Africa
South African Rand
South Korean Won
South Korea
Sweden
Swedish Krona
Switzerland
Swiss Franc
New Taiwan Dollar
Taiwan
Thailand
Thai Baht
Tunisia
Tunisian Dinar
Turkey
Turkish Lira
United Arab Emirates
UAE Dirham
United Kingdom
Pound Sterling
..One Month
DOLLAR
Closing
Mid
3.9691
4.3371
76.0738
3.7517
1.3435
15.1069
1198.5500
9.2534
0.9255
27.8455
32.6975
2.8750
13.4725
3.6731
0.7351
0.7351
Day's
Change
0.0470
0.0261
1.4950
0.0024
0.0738
2.0500
0.0299
0.0012
0.0220
0.0700
0.0023
-0.0347
0.0007
0.0007
EURO
Closing
Mid
4.5261
4.9458
86.7511
4.2783
1.5320
17.2272
1366.7724
10.5522
1.0554
31.7538
37.2868
3.2785
15.3634
4.1886
0.8383
0.8374
POUND
Day's
Closing
Day's
Change
Mid
Change
0.0285
5.3991
0.0586
0.0021
5.8998
0.0296
1.2279 103.4834
1.9328
-0.0240
5.1035
-0.0051
-0.0058
1.8275
0.0015
-0.0120
20.5500
0.0800
-5.3136 1630.3921
1.1709
-0.0249
12.5874
0.0282
-0.0045
1.2590
0.0005
-0.1528
37.8783
-0.0077
-0.1288
44.4785
0.0511
-0.0157
3.9108
-0.0008
-0.1260
18.3267
-0.0655
-0.0235
4.9965
-0.0050
-0.0039
-0.0047
-
Feb 11
..Three Month
..One Year
United States
..One Month
..Three Month
..One Year
Vietnam
European Union
..One Month
..Three Month
..One Year
Currency
United States Dollar
Vietnamese Dong
Euro
DOLLAR
Closing
Mid
0.7351
0.7348
22687.5000
0.8769
0.8769
0.8766
0.8750
Day's
Change
0.0007
0.0007
-6.5000
0.0049
0.0049
0.0049
0.0048
EURO
POUND
Closing
Day's
Closing
Day's
Mid
Change
Mid
Change
0.8380
-0.0039
0.8367
-0.0039
1.1404
-0.0064
1.3603
-0.0014
1.1403
-0.2213
1.3603
-0.0014
1.1401
-0.2213
1.3602
-0.0014
1.1384
-0.2214
1.3600
-0.0014
25871.8155 -152.5693 30861.9115
-39.5777
1.1929
0.0055
1.1920
0.0046
1.1926
0.0055
1.1913
0.0054
Rates are derived from WM Reuters Spot Rates and MorningStar (latest rates at time of production). Some values are rounded. Currency redenominated by 1000. The exchange rates printed in this table are also available at www.FT.com/marketsdata
UK SERIES
FTSE ACTUARIES SHARE INDICES
www.ft.com/equities
Produced in conjunction with the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries
£ Strlg Day's
Euro
£ Strlg
£ Strlg
Year
Div
Feb 11 chge%
Index
Feb 10
Feb 09
ago yield%
FTSE 100 (100)
7661.02 -0.15 7121.75 7672.40 7643.42 6528.72 3.09
FTSE 250 (250)
22048.71 -0.72 20496.68 22207.75 22184.01 21017.85 2.05
FTSE 250 ex Inv Co (181)
22891.27 -0.77 21279.93 23069.25 23029.87 21517.81 2.01
FTSE 350 (350)
4314.19 -0.24 4010.50 4324.64 4310.23 3746.98 2.92
FTSE 350 ex Investment Trusts (279) 4230.69 -0.21 3932.88 4239.80 4224.45 3638.42 2.98
FTSE 350 Higher Yield (112)
3582.12
0.38 3329.97 3568.44 3551.99 2967.20 4.11
FTSE 350 Lower Yield (238)
4692.75 -0.95 4362.42 4737.80 4728.87 4298.74 1.56
FTSE SmallCap (249)
7244.09 -0.39 6734.17 7272.18 7254.16 6494.04 2.64
FTSE SmallCap ex Inv Co (130)
6127.67 -0.19 5696.34 6139.29 6113.16 5139.07 2.15
FTSE All-Share (599)
4286.38 -0.25 3984.65 4296.96 4282.76 3726.46 2.91
FTSE All-Share ex Inv Co (409)
4164.63 -0.21 3871.47 4173.58 4158.42 3579.62 2.96
FTSE All-Share ex Multinationals (530) 1306.60 -0.61 1007.87 1314.63 1312.97 1227.23 2.62
FTSE Fledgling (82)
13136.30 -0.03 12211.62 13139.99 13135.65 11233.39 2.29
FTSE Fledgling ex Inv Co (34)
17861.52
0.17 16604.23 17831.51 17859.76
125.74 1.92
FTSE All-Small (331)
5044.55 -0.37 4689.46 5063.12 5051.16 4510.33 2.62
FTSE All-Small ex Inv Co (164)
4604.26 -0.18 4280.16 4612.36 4593.75
115.73 2.14
FTSE AIM All-Share (764)
1084.27 -0.68 1007.95 1091.73 1095.06 1218.80 1.04
FTSE All-Share Technology (22)
2042.67 -1.20 1913.50 2067.40 2077.98 2179.48 1.73
FTSE All-Share Telecommunications (7) 2207.69
0.27 2068.09 2201.67 2210.71 1897.89 4.06
12857.25 -1.47 12044.24 13049.60 12764.91 11060.62 3.14
FTSE All-Share Health Care (13)
FTSE All-Share Financials (254)
5078.05 -0.42 4756.95 5099.70 5101.85 4548.84 2.61
FTSE All-Share Real Estate (53)
1158.33 -1.60 1135.13 1177.18 1171.29
980.74 2.57
FTSE All-Share Consumer Discretionary (90) 5409.08 -0.29 5067.04 5424.94 5395.01 4991.89 1.61
FTSE All-Share Consumer Staples (25)19945.43
1.61 18684.21 19629.87 19691.68 18134.12 3.76
FTSE All-Share Industrials (88)
6768.42 -1.55 6340.43 6874.75 6871.48 6103.27 1.77
FTSE All-Share Basic Materials (24) 8956.28 -0.96 8389.94 9043.11 8918.26 7787.00 5.20
FTSE All-Share Energy (13)
7436.86
1.21 6966.60 7348.09 7365.95 4783.24 2.85
FTSE All-Share Utilities (10)
8716.09
0.16 8164.94 8702.40 8654.66 7078.47 4.14
FTSE All-Share Software and Computer Services (20) 2194.27 -1.23 2055.51 2221.64 2232.81 2353.89 1.73
FTSE All-Share Technology Hardware and Equipment (2) 5868.44 -0.19 5497.35 5879.90 5924.67 4955.08 1.74
FTSE All-Share Telecommunications Equipment (2) 535.49 -0.34
501.63
537.30
538.86
620.53 1.84
FTSE All-Share Telecommunications Service Providers (5) 3447.94
0.29 3229.92 3437.94 3452.17 2933.05 4.12
FTSE All-Share Health Care Providers (3) 8695.86 -1.25 8145.99 8805.62 8723.47 6276.11 0.12
FTSE All-Share Medical Equipment and Services (2) 5640.10 -1.05 5283.46 5699.83 5696.69 7003.86 2.25
FTSE All-Share Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology (8)18261.86 -1.50 17107.09 18540.33 18109.73 15313.07 3.22
FTSE All-Share Banks (11)
3594.38
0.37 3367.10 3581.09 3570.67 2544.99 2.22
FTSE All-Share Finance and Credit Services (7)10119.54 -1.50 9479.64 10273.53 10288.84 12779.30 1.45
FTSE All-Share Investment Banking and Brokerage Services (33) 9980.73 -0.85 9349.61 10065.98 10119.92 9847.37 3.96
FTSE All-Share Closed End Investments (190)13229.60 -0.70 12393.05 13323.35 13341.60 13444.31 2.20
FTSE All-Share Life Insurance (6)
7661.07 -1.53 7176.63 7780.04 7779.81 7247.13 3.52
FTSE All-Share Nonlife Insurance (7) 3814.85
0.23 3573.62 3806.19 3849.97 3693.80 3.73
FTSE All-Share Real Estate Investment and Services (13) 2787.49 -0.12 2611.23 2790.90 2786.51 2491.04 1.73
FTSE All-Share Real Estate Investment Trusts (40) 2902.41 -1.91 2718.88 2958.99 2942.06 2426.93 2.75
FTSE All-Share Automobiles and Parts (2) 3271.19 -1.73 3064.34 3328.63 3323.55 4945.04 1.56
FTSE All-Share Consumer Services (3) 2993.11 -0.78 2803.85 3016.65 2999.28 2374.42 0.78
FTSE All-Share Household Goods and Home Construction (13)12808.36 -0.24 11998.44 12839.33 12909.85 13506.23 5.81
FTSE All-Share Leisure Goods (2)
20817.59 -1.40 19501.21 21112.21 21625.58 26375.69 1.93
FTSE All-Share Personal Goods (5) 29948.92 -0.19 28055.13 30004.95 29503.16 25876.66 1.75
FTSE All-Share Media (11)
10024.12 -0.06 9390.25 10029.84 10003.43 8220.85 1.71
FTSE All-Share Retailers (21)
2520.07 -0.84 2360.72 2541.32 2537.48 2350.37 1.51
FTSE All-Share Travel and Leisure (33) 7948.69
0.00 7446.06 7948.47 7833.51 7965.28 0.10
FTSE All-Share Beverages (5)
28914.92 -0.64 27086.52 29101.52 29377.16 23850.61 1.96
FTSE All-Share Food Producers (10) 7038.77
1.97 6593.68 6902.62 6925.10 7185.48 2.15
FTSE All-Share Tobacco (2)
35476.47
2.77 33233.16 34519.95 34342.78 28493.30 6.62
FTSE All-Share Construction and Materials (15) 8622.92 -0.94 8077.66 8704.93 8730.89 7492.45 2.17
FTSE All-Share Aerospace and Defense (9) 4555.80 -0.05 4267.72 4558.19 4511.22 3544.57 2.08
FTSE All-Share Electronic and Electrical Equipment (10)12024.46 -1.64 11264.11 12225.25 12386.92 12086.83 1.44
FTSE All-Share General Industrials (9) 5635.41 -1.70 5279.06 5733.08 5664.72 5346.30 2.30
FTSE All-Share Industrial Engineering (5)16883.81 -2.01 15816.18 17230.70 17379.02 17204.20 1.13
FTSE All-Share Industrial Support Services (32)10851.05 -1.99 10164.90 11071.38 11079.08 9952.82 1.52
FTSE All-Share Industrial Transportation (8) 5895.44 -2.21 5522.65 6028.56 6070.59 5009.91 1.46
FTSE All-Share Industrial Materials (1)18653.48 -1.58
663.84 18953.54 18403.43 20878.90 1.71
FTSE All-Share Industrial Metals and Mining (10) 7796.71 -0.85 7303.70 7863.28 7738.41 6447.79 5.52
FTSE All-Share Precious Metals and Mining (6)16756.30 -1.40 15696.73 16994.08 16858.63 23786.55 5.26
FTSE All-Share Chemicals (7)
14537.32 -1.77 13618.07 14799.02 14834.45 15983.65 2.27
FTSE All-Share Oil. Gas and Coal (13) 7217.39
1.21 6761.01 7131.25 7148.57 4642.09 2.85
FTSE Sector Indices
Non Financials (345)
5145.47
-0.19
4783.27
5155.37
5132.47
91.80
3.01
P/E
Cover
ratio
2.07 15.62
2.98 16.32
0.90 55.07
2.17 15.73
1.86 18.05
1.53 15.95
4.14 15.48
4.41
8.59
1.67 27.79
2.24 15.33
1.86 18.16
3.25 11.73
6.65
6.56
-2.91 -17.89
4.52
8.45
1.52 30.78
1.57 61.29
0.64 90.99
0.30 82.26
0.74 43.30
5.23
7.33
2.13 18.29
0.19 319.08
1.28 20.79
2.54 22.21
2.22
8.67
1.58 22.20
1.62 14.96
0.63 92.37
0.89 64.26
2.46 22.13
0.27 89.17
53.19 15.78
1.07 41.42
0.70 44.17
5.91
7.62
1.64 42.02
2.77
9.11
9.64
4.73
2.23 12.75
1.75 15.34
3.14 18.36
1.99 18.27
-7.62 -8.44
1.71 75.44
1.71 10.09
2.46 21.12
1.78 32.08
1.32 44.26
4.07 16.30
-92.48 -10.43
1.56 32.72
2.32 20.07
1.52
9.93
0.57 80.86
7.20
6.69
2.17 32.06
1.21 35.93
2.51 35.14
1.93 34.08
3.16 21.61
2.64 22.21
2.24
8.09
1.54 12.35
2.56 17.24
1.58 22.20
1.45
22.94
X/D
adj
3.06
36.19
32.38
2.59
2.25
2.14
2.86
24.45
10.78
2.95
2.30
1.80
30.26
44.25
16.73
8.22
1.48
9.38
0.00
0.00
5.13
1.60
5.22
0.00
4.67
3.70
0.00
32.24
10.44
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.20
15.60
13.39
35.29
0.00
0.00
0.00
4.88
0.00
22.86
0.57
157.98
16.03
0.40
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
2.10
0.00
0.00
0.00
15.05
8.24
0.00
0.50
63.66
32.45
0.00
Total
Return
7590.46
17880.17
18919.69
8495.80
4302.64
7863.84
5660.78
11849.36
10423.83
8525.49
4300.81
2691.10
27710.64
36641.89
10583.98
9920.18
1258.09
2911.85
3193.16
11586.68
5457.92
1183.15
5609.84
17649.28
7669.82
11478.43
8710.88
12795.11
3309.67
7460.72
750.49
4538.67
8027.99
5309.12
14813.23
3054.08
13362.76
13428.93
8108.20
8992.69
7824.71
8173.66
4262.76
3378.42
3776.68
10709.89
22441.66
23049.40
6889.86
3196.88
8168.79
22709.83
6687.68
31567.64
10193.96
5443.37
11710.28
7224.78
22308.95
12262.98
6068.24
23082.38
11190.14
11457.88
14266.78
8767.29
3.04
9007.18
8.00
9.00
10.00
11.00
12.00 13.00 14.00 15.00 16.00 High/day Low/day
Hourly movements
FTSE 100
7613.49
7605.55
7608.56
7620.86
7611.55
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
7647.14
7596.24
FTSE 250
22023.67 21973.48 21947.68 21991.90 21975.80
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00 22068.76 21941.38
FTSE SmallCap
7254.32
7231.05
7222.32
7218.08
7225.92
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
7254.32
7217.12
FTSE All-Share
4264.26
4258.68
4259.09
4265.95
4261.56
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
4280.21
4254.21
Time of FTSE 100 Day's high:08:15:30 Day's Low09:35:30 FTSE 100 2010/11 High: 7672.40(10/02/2022) Low: 7297.15(24/01/2022)
Time of FTSE All-Share Day's high:08:16:00 Day's Low09:36:00 FTSE 100 2010/11 High: 4296.96(10/02/2022) Low: 4099.16(24/01/2022)
Further information is available on http://www.ftse.com © FTSE International Limited. 2013. All Rights reserved. ”FTSE®” is a trade mark of the
London Stock Exchange Group companies and is used by FTSE International Limited under licence. † Sector P/E ratios greater than 80 are not shown.
For changes to FTSE Fledgling Index constituents please refer to www.ftse.com/indexchanges. ‡ Values are negative.
UK RIGHTS OFFERS
Amount
Latest
Issue
paid
renun.
price
up
date
High
Low
Stock
There are currently no rights offers by any companies listed on the LSE.
FT 30 INDEX
FTSE SECTORS: LEADERS & LAGGARDS
Jan 18
2858.70
-
Jan 17
2871.90
-
Jan 14
2832.90
-
Jan 13
2844.10
-
Jan 12
2840.90
-
Yr Ago
0.00
0.00
0.00
FT 30
FT 30 Div Yield
P/E Ratio net
FT 30 hourly changes
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
2871.9 2850.8 2849.7 2857 2858.6 2860.9 2862.8 2860.5 2860.4
FT30 constituents and recent additions/deletions can be found at www.ft.com/ft30
High
2880.10
3.93
19.44
Low
2808.10
2.74
14.26
High
2871.9
Low
2843.1
FT WILSHIRE 5000 INDEX SERIES
Feb 10
Feb 10
FT Wilshire 5000
46035.03 FT Wilshire Mid Cap
5950.46
FT Wilshire 2500
5894.35 FT Wilshire Small Cap
5536.97
FT Wilshire Mega Cap
5939.36 FT Wilshire Micro Cap
5575.84
FT Wilshire Large Cap
5941.19
Source: Wilshire. Wilshire Advisors LLC (Wilshire) is an investment advisor registered with the SEC. Further
information is available at https://www.wilshire.com/solutions/indexes . Wilshire® is a registered service
mark. Copyright ©2022 Wilshire. All rights reserved.
Year to date percentage changes
Oil & Gas Producers
25.40
Oil & Gas
25.39
Oil Equipment & Serv
24.05
Mobile Telecomms
21.80
Tobacco
21.12
Telecommunications
19.98
Banks
19.42
Fixed Line Telecomms
15.55
Mining
13.60
Basic Materials
8.92
Travel & Leisure
6.40
Nonlife Insurance
4.35
FTSE 100 Index
3.74
Aerospace & Defense
3.13
Financials
1.97
FTSE All{HY-}Share Index 1.86
Food Producers
1.81
Gas Water & Multi
NON FINANCIALS Index
Utilities
Beverages
Consumer Goods
Personal Goods
Consumer Services
Life Insurance
Media
Pharmace & Biotech
Health Care
FTSE SmallCap Index
Construct & Material
Electricity
Financial Services
Food & Drug Retailer
Health Care Eq & Srv
Real Est Invest & Tr
+or-
FTSE 250 Index
Equity Invest Instr
Beverages
Industrial Transport
Industrials
Automobiles & Parts
Household Goods & Ho
Real Est Invest & Se
General Retailers
Software & Comp Serv
Technology
Support Services
Industrial Eng
Tech Hardware & Eq
Leisure Goods
Industrial Metals &
Electronic & Elec Eq
Chemicals
-6.10
-7.15
-7.37
-8.14
-8.83
-10.29
-10.74
-11.46
-11.80
-12.79
-13.18
-13.50
-13.84
-16.95
-18.01
-18.30
-18.65
-21.02
FTSE GLOBAL EQUITY INDEX SERIES
No of
US $
Day
Mth
YTD
Total
YTD Gr Div
YTD Gr Div Feb 11
stocks indices
%
%
%
retn
% Yield
% Yield Sectors
-3.8
1.8 Oil Equipment & Services
25 266.18
-0.3
-0.3
13.8 476.38
14.2
4.2
-3.8
1.8 Basic Materials
368 685.28
0.7
0.7
1.9 1211.26
2.0
3.8
-3.6
1.8 Chemicals
172 926.37
0.5
0.5
-4.4 1594.60
-4.3
2.3
-3.5
1.9 Forestry & Paper
22 316.63
-0.8
-0.8
3.7 619.95
3.9
2.8
-5.6
1.6 Industrial Metals & Mining
96 593.95
1.3
1.3
7.4 1083.60
7.7
5.8
-3.6
1.8 Mining
78 1020.43
0.8
0.8
9.6 1874.56
9.7
5.2
-3.9
1.8 Industrials
757 558.12
-0.9
-0.9
-7.1 873.58
-7.0
1.6
-4.1
1.8 Construction & Materials
143 682.60
-0.5
-0.5
-7.6 1125.43
-7.6
1.9
-0.7
2.5 Aerospace & Defense
35 846.61
-0.2
-0.2
5.4 1303.04
5.4
1.4
-3.9
1.8 General Industrials
71 268.13
-0.2
-0.2
-3.4 462.67
-3.3
2.1
-4.0
1.8 Electronic & Electrical Equipment
143 718.88
-0.8
-0.8 -10.6 1017.74 -10.6
1.3
-4.3
1.8 Industrial Engineering
149 1079.95
-1.0
-1.0
-6.6 1685.46
-6.6
1.7
-4.4
1.7 Industrial Transportation
126 1073.08
-0.9
-0.9
-3.4 1693.25
-3.4
1.6
-4.4
1.8 Support Services
90 610.15
-1.8
-1.8 -14.1 896.58 -14.1
1.2
-1.2
2.5 Consumer Goods
545 656.77
-0.8
-0.8
-4.7 1083.10
-4.6
1.9
-4.2
2.3 Automobiles & Parts
130 716.65
-1.8
-1.8
-7.3 1141.54
-7.3
1.1
-5.2
2.0 Beverages
68 789.09
-0.3
-0.3
-2.1 1315.18
-2.1
2.1
-5.7
1.4 Food Producers
133 766.76
-0.3
-0.3
-2.4 1294.29
-2.3
2.3
-4.2
1.5 Household Goods & Home Construction
61 606.93
-1.3
-1.3
-7.2 1000.43
-6.9
2.4
-6.1
1.3 Leisure Goods
48 307.83
0.1
0.1
-3.3 430.01
-3.3
1.2
-5.4
1.4 Personal Goods
90 1066.05
-0.8
-0.8
-7.6 1614.48
-7.6
1.5
-1.8
2.5 Tobacco
15 1055.46
0.5
0.5
9.8 2855.54
9.8
5.7
-2.5
2.1 Health Care
338 734.57
-1.0
-1.0
-7.0 1152.91
-6.9
1.7
-1.3
2.3 Health Care Equipment & Services
129 1520.31
-1.5
-1.5
-8.6 1849.48
-8.6
0.9
-3.3
2.5 Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology
209 468.75
-0.6
-0.6
-5.7 787.12
-5.5
2.3
-2.2
2.2 Consumer Services
446 664.88
-0.7
-0.7
-5.6 940.13
-5.6
0.9
68 342.28
0.0
0.0
-0.6 533.30
-0.4
2.3
0.5
2.4 Food & Drug Retailers
-1.8
2.7 General Retailers
152 1189.20
-1.2
-1.2
-7.0 1612.39
-6.9
0.7
83 427.71
-0.1
-0.1
-8.9 608.49
-8.8
0.9
-5.6
2.2 Media
143 511.61
-0.1
-0.1
-0.3 739.72
-0.2
0.9
0.3
2.4 Travel & Leisure
88 152.64
-0.6
-0.6
3.0 348.13
3.5
4.1
2.4
2.6 Telecommunication
34 115.54
-0.4
-0.4
2.5 301.15
3.3
5.8
3.1
2.5 Fixed Line Telecommuniations
54 183.48
-0.8
-0.8
3.2 361.54
3.6
3.2
2.4
3.2 Mobile Telecommunications
195 329.25
-1.3
-1.3
-4.1 749.61
-3.8
3.3
-3.0
2.4 Utilities
140 364.86
-1.5
-1.5
-5.4 819.48
-5.1
3.4
2.2
5.6 Electricity
55 341.43
-1.0
-1.0
-1.0 801.15
-0.9
3.2
10.6
5.8 Gas Water & Multiutilities
865 311.64
-0.4
-0.4
3.9 582.84
4.0
2.6
7.2
2.5 Financials
268 248.47
0.2
0.2
9.8 513.75
10.0
3.0
3.3
3.0 Banks
72 366.76
-0.7
-0.7
4.7 595.72
4.7
2.8
-5.8
1.3 Nonlife Insurance
53 261.96
0.0
0.0
8.4 486.41
8.5
3.2
-1.9
2.5 Life Insurance
213 504.51
-1.0
-1.0
1.1 754.99
1.2
1.6
-1.7
2.2 Financial Services
349 619.49
-1.8
-1.8
-8.7 801.66
-8.6
0.8
-2.4
2.1 Technology
189 957.31
-1.8
-1.8 -10.5 1151.96 -10.5
0.5
-3.1
2.4 Software & Computer Services
160 535.41
-1.7
-1.7
-6.6 742.92
-6.5
1.1
15.9
3.7 Technology Hardware & Equipment
16 181.25
-1.6
-1.6 -13.0 259.02 -13.0
0.6
18.1
3.7 Alternative Energy
Real Estate Investment & Services
158 334.73
0.8
0.8
1.7 634.41
1.7
2.9
Real Estate Investment Trusts
101 538.40
-1.8
-1.8
-9.7 1224.59
-9.7
3.0
FTSE Global Large Cap
1801 731.27
-0.9
-0.9
-3.7 1184.35
-3.6
1.8
The FTSE Global Equity Series, launched in 2003, contains the FTSE Global Small Cap Indices and broader FTSE Global All Cap Indices (large/mid/small cap) as well as the enhanced FTSE All-World index Series (large/
mid cap) - please see https://research.ftserussell.com/Products/indices/Home/indexfiltergeis?indexName=GEISAC&currency=USD&rtn=CAP&segment=global-developed–emerging. The trade names Fundamental Index®
and RAFI® are registered trademarks and the patented and patent-pending proprietary intellectual property of Research Affiliates, LLC (US Patent Nos. 7,620,577; 7,747,502; 7,778,905; 7,792,719; Patent Pending Publ.
Nos. US-2006-0149645-A1, US-2007-0055598-A1, US-2008-0288416-A1, US-2010- 0063942-A1, WO 2005/076812, WO 2007/078399 A2, WO 2008/118372, EPN 1733352, and HK1099110). ”EDHEC™” is a trade mark
of EDHEC Business School As of January 2nd 2006, FTSE is basing its sector indices on the Industrial Classification Benchmark - please see www.ftse.com/icb. For constituent changes and other information about FTSE,
please see www.ftse.com. © FTSE International Limited. 2013. All Rights reserved. ”FTSE®” is a trade mark of the London Stock Exchange Group companies and is used by FTSE International Limited under licence.
Feb 11
Regions & countries
FTSE Global All Cap
FTSE Global All Cap
FTSE Global Large Cap
FTSE Global Mid Cap
FTSE Global Small Cap
FTSE All-World
FTSE World
FTSE Global All Cap ex UNITED KINGDOM In
FTSE Global All Cap ex USA
FTSE Global All Cap ex JAPAN
FTSE Global All Cap ex Eurozone
FTSE Developed
FTSE Developed All Cap
FTSE Developed Large Cap
FTSE Developed Europe Large Cap
FTSE Developed Europe Mid Cap
FTSE Dev Europe Small Cap
FTSE North America Large Cap
FTSE North America Mid Cap
FTSE North America Small Cap
FTSE North America
FTSE Developed ex North America
FTSE Japan Large Cap
FTSE Japan Mid Cap
FTSE Global wi JAPAN Small Cap
FTSE Japan
FTSE Asia Pacific Large Cap ex Japan
FTSE Asia Pacific Mid Cap ex Japan
FTSE Asia Pacific Small Cap ex Japan
FTSE Asia Pacific Ex Japan
FTSE Emerging All Cap
FTSE Emerging Large Cap
FTSE Emerging Mid Cap
FTSE Emerging Small Cap
FTSE Emerging Europe
FTSE Latin America All Cap
FTSE Middle East and Africa All Cap
FTSE Global wi UNITED KINGDOM All Cap In
FTSE Global wi USA All Cap
FTSE Europe All Cap
FTSE Eurozone All Cap
FTSE EDHEC-Risk Efficient All-World
FTSE EDHEC-Risk Efficient Developed Europe
Oil & Gas
Oil & Gas Producers
No of
stocks
9337
9337
1801
2284
5252
4085
2658
9042
7518
7946
8672
2206
5830
885
237
351
731
255
412
1330
667
1539
172
337
882
509
961
902
2005
1863
3507
916
963
1628
87
259
333
295
1819
1489
665
4085
588
134
93
US $
indices
814.22
814.22
731.27
1034.78
1079.48
478.69
861.74
859.43
595.07
849.14
858.56
788.88
822.18
740.47
443.92
738.22
1046.01
982.39
1251.91
1237.89
640.15
309.55
444.61
605.57
672.37
181.79
837.86
1112.56
686.98
662.76
900.82
847.56
1175.08
939.08
421.77
783.04
853.79
371.53
1096.64
524.61
509.20
532.46
400.32
378.74
374.04
Day
%
-0.9
-0.9
-0.9
-0.8
-0.8
-0.9
-1.0
-1.0
0.3
-1.0
-1.0
-1.1
-1.1
-1.2
0.1
0.3
0.1
-1.8
-1.4
-1.4
-1.7
0.2
0.0
0.4
0.3
0.1
0.8
0.5
0.1
0.8
0.8
0.9
0.8
0.2
0.0
1.6
0.7
0.9
-1.7
0.1
0.1
-0.8
0.2
-0.2
-0.2
Mth
%
-2.1
-2.1
-2.1
-1.3
-2.9
-2.0
-2.2
-2.3
0.2
-2.0
-2.3
-2.5
-2.5
-2.7
0.6
-1.7
-1.8
-3.7
-1.7
-3.3
-3.3
-0.6
-3.0
-1.3
-1.9
-2.7
0.5
-1.1
-3.3
0.3
2.1
2.5
2.4
-1.4
0.9
14.4
5.4
2.6
-3.6
0.0
0.1
-1.5
-1.0
9.0
10.1
YTD
%
-3.9
-3.9
-3.7
-3.5
-5.7
-3.7
-4.0
-4.2
-0.8
-4.0
-4.1
-4.4
-4.6
-4.5
-1.2
-4.3
-5.3
-5.8
-4.3
-6.2
-5.5
-1.8
-2.5
-1.4
-3.3
-2.3
0.5
-1.8
-5.6
0.3
2.3
3.0
2.2
-3.1
1.8
10.4
7.2
3.3
-5.9
-2.0
-1.8
-2.5
-3.1
15.5
17.7
Total
retn
1279.62
1279.62
1184.35
1529.84
1528.89
796.54
1924.67
1325.54
1027.46
1346.76
1320.99
1249.71
1283.50
1194.01
853.52
1235.61
1682.31
1456.76
1712.79
1627.80
970.07
575.81
637.71
824.65
949.23
291.94
1484.82
1899.09
1141.70
1248.14
1521.09
1439.43
1994.40
1518.05
849.85
1429.71
1519.70
734.59
1567.91
969.09
933.76
820.42
684.25
743.96
752.21
UK COMPANY RESULTS
closing
Price p
1.80
1.45
0.16
31.66
-0.38
-1.08
-1.18
-1.52
-1.67
-2.37
-2.54
-2.89
-4.20
-4.70
-4.71
-4.82
-4.84
-5.97
FTSE 100 SUMMARY
Company
British American Tobacco
CC Japan Income & Growth Trust
Scottish American Investment Co (The)
FTSE 100
Closing Day's
Price Change FTSE 100
3I Group PLC
Abrdn PLC
Admiral Group PLC
Airtel Africa PLC
Anglo American PLC
Antofagasta PLC
Ashtead Group PLC
Associated British Foods PLC
Astrazeneca PLC
Auto Trader Group PLC
Avast PLC
Aveva Group PLC
Aviva PLC
B&M European Value Retail S.A.
Bae Systems PLC
Barclays PLC
Barratt Developments PLC
Berkeley Group Holdings (The) PLC
BP PLC
British American Tobacco PLC
British Land Company PLC
Bt Group PLC
Bunzl PLC
Burberry Group PLC
Coca-Cola Hbc AG
Compass Group PLC
Crh PLC
Croda International PLC
Dcc PLC
Dechra Pharmaceuticals PLC
Diageo PLC
Electrocomponents PLC
Entain PLC
Evraz PLC
Experian PLC
Ferguson PLC
Flutter Entertainment PLC
Fresnillo PLC
Glaxosmithkline PLC
Glencore PLC
Halma PLC
Hargreaves Lansdown PLC
Hikma Pharmaceuticals PLC
HSBC Holdings PLC
Imperial Brands PLC
Informa PLC
Intercontinental Hotels Group PLC
Intermediate Capital Group PLC
International Consolidated Airlines Group S.A.
Intertek Group PLC
1360
246.00
3054
147.80
3579.5
1366.5
4969
1930
8510
637.00
623.40
2799
444.40
571.40
601.80
206.10
625.60
4125
417.20
3368.5
545.20
198.70
2687
1976
2502
1806.5
3779
7298
6416
3820
3717.5
1036
1698.5
444.70
2925
11025
11360
622.40
1619.4
417.75
2359
1347
1965.5
567.20
1818.5
613.40
5140
1842
174.64
5202
-10.50
-2.70
18.00
3.80
-20.00
22.00
-157.00
-6.50
-140.00
-10.80
-0.60
-79.00
-1.10
11.20
4.80
-2.55
-3.40
8.00
6.50
99.50
-7.20
0.20
-60.00
-0.50
-29.00
-14.00
-33.00
-132.00
-70.00
-70.00
-22.50
-29.00
18.50
13.00
-110.00
-200.00
310.00
-9.20
-21.60
-3.30
-70.00
-15.50
-39.50
5.50
28.00
-2.40
-4.00
-15.00
-3.66
-102.00
Closing Day's
Price Change
Itv PLC
Jd Sports Fashion PLC
Kingfisher PLC
Land Securities Group PLC
Legal & General Group PLC
Lloyds Banking Group PLC
London Stock Exchange Group PLC
M&G PLC
Meggitt PLC
Melrose Industries PLC
Mondi PLC
National Grid PLC
Natwest Group PLC
Next PLC
Ocado Group PLC
Pearson PLC
Pershing Square Holdings LTD
Persimmon PLC
Phoenix Group Holdings PLC
Polymetal International PLC
Prudential PLC
Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC
Relx PLC
Rentokil Initial PLC
Rightmove PLC
Rio Tinto PLC
Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC
Royal Mail PLC
Sage Group PLC
Sainsbury (J) PLC
Schroders PLC
Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust PLC
Segro PLC
Severn Trent PLC
Shell PLC
Smith & Nephew PLC
Smith (Ds) PLC
Smiths Group PLC
Smurfit Kappa Group PLC
Spirax-Sarco Engineering PLC
Sse PLC
St. James's Place PLC
Standard Chartered PLC
Taylor Wimpey PLC
Tesco PLC
Unilever PLC
United Utilities Group PLC
Vodafone Group PLC
Whitbread PLC
Wpp PLC
123.65
174.65
321.40
794.80
281.10
53.96
7038
215.50
748.00
158.85
1909
1095.8
253.00
7194
1293.5
638.80
2745
2449
670.60
1109.5
1214
5894
2273
500.40
635.00
5726
120.90
442.90
685.40
280.60
3349
1082.5
1246.5
2875
2039
1220
379.10
1547
4073
12195
1547
1546.5
558.00
152.00
298.15
3914.5
1065.5
138.90
3243
1214
0.40
-4.20
3.90
-6.40
-4.60
0.56
-140.00
-1.90
-1.00
-2.35
-41.50
4.80
-0.50
-66.00
-28.50
-1.20
-35.00
-1.00
-2.20
-18.50
-30.00
61.00
6.00
-8.60
0.20
-81.00
-1.82
2.30
-5.20
-0.70
-58.00
-20.00
-45.00
4.00
20.50
-17.50
-7.10
-10.50
-77.00
-480.00
-8.00
-20.50
-8.00
-1.00
1.15
135.50
4.00
0.46
21.00
-10.00
UK STOCK MARKET TRADING DATA
Feb 11
Feb 10
Feb 09
Feb 08
Feb 07
Yr Ago
Order Book Turnover (m)
64.33
274.51
104.58
256.54
118.95
118.95
Order Book Bargains
826531.00 910952.00 941238.00 788903.00 848516.00 848516.00
Order Book Shares Traded (m)
1418.00
1478.00
1450.00
1524.00
1472.00
1472.00
Total Equity Turnover (£m)
5423.90
10368.82
5172.31
4680.40
4786.21
4786.21
Total Mkt Bargains
1077762.00 1174415.00 1197211.00 1026902.00 1110586.00 1110586.00
Total Shares Traded (m)
6612.00
5353.00
6468.00
8052.00
5993.00
5993.00
† Excluding intra-market and overseas turnover. *UK only total at 6pm. ‡ UK plus intra-market turnover. (u) Unavaliable.
(c) Market closed.
All data provided by Morningstar unless otherwise noted. All elements listed are indicative and believed
accurate at the time of publication. No offer is made by Morningstar or the FT. The FT does not warrant nor
guarantee that the information is reliable or complete. The FT does not accept responsibility and will not be
liable for any loss arising from the reliance on or use of the listed information.
For all queries e-mail [email protected]
Data provided by Morningstar | www.morningstar.co.uk
UK RECENT EQUITY ISSUES
Turnover
Pre 25684.000 25776.000
Pre
Pre
Pre-tax
9163.000 8672.000
22.850L
45.901
86.500
158.762
Figures in £m. Earnings shown basic. Figures in light text are for corresponding period year earlier.
For more information on dividend payments visit www.ft.com/marketsdata
EPS(p)
Div(p)
Pay day
Total
Feb 9 107.800 105.200
296.900 280.000 53.90000 52.60000
17.600L 3.35000 3.20000 Mar 18
4.600
33.450
4.750
55.450 3.37500 3.00000
Apr 8
6.000
91.990
6.450
Issue
date
02/09
02/07
02/04
02/02
01/17
01/11
01/06
01/05
Issue
price(p)
76.00
3.75
50.50
1000.00
8.00
3.00
21.50
50.00
Sector
AIM
AIM
AIM
AIM
Stock
code
IX/
ARV
HERC
HMA1
GENF
ELEG
GPL
ADF
Stock
i(x) Net Zero PLC
Artemis Resources Ltd
Hercules Site Services PLC
HIRO Metaverse Acquisitions I SA
Genflow Biosciences PLC
Electric Guitar PLC
Graft Polymer (UK) PLC
Facilities by ADF PLC
§Placing price. *Intoduction. ‡When issued. Annual report/prospectus available at www.ft.com/ir
For a full explanation of all the other symbols please refer to London Share Service notes.
Close
price(p)
77.00
3.88
50.50
1002.00
12.25
3.35
21.90
81.00
+/-0.76
-0.11
0.40
6.00
-1.05
0.05
0.20
-2.10
High
77.60
5.00
55.00
1010.00
13.50
3.50
22.20
88.80
Low
76.00
3.50
48.55
998.00
11.50
3.22
21.80
60.00
Mkt
Cap (£m)
6087.4
5379.8
2961.8
11868.7
3583.2
193.8
2279.7
6115.5
16
★
FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
MARKET DATA
FT500: THE WORLD'S LARGEST COMPANIES
Stock
52 Week
High
Low
Price Day Chg
Australia (A$)
ANZ
27.82
BHPBilltn
48.86
CmwBkAu
98.55
CSL
248.50
NatAusBk
29.84
Telstra
4.02
Wesfarmers
52.80
Westpc
22.78
Woolworths
33.77
Belgium (€)
AnBshInBv
55.86
KBC Grp
79.06
Brazil (R$)
Ambev
14.96
Bradesco
17.63
Cielo
2.39
ItauHldFin
23.09
Petrobras
36.81
Vale
92.76
Canada (C$)
Bausch Hlth
32.80
BCE
66.65
BkMontrl♦
152.62
BkNvaS
93.76
Brookfield
75.82
CanadPcR
92.24
CanImp
164.23
CanNatRs
66.65
CanNatRy
156.77
Enbridge
55.23
GtWesLif
40.30
ImpOil
56.77
Manulife
27.83
Nutrien
96.33
RylBkC♦
146.98
SHOP
1112.85
Suncor En
37.50
ThmReut
132.24
TntoDom
108.69
TrnCan
66.76
China (HK$)
AgricBkCh
3.13
Bk China
3.20
BkofComm
5.55
BOE Tech
0.74
Ch Coms Cons
4.98
Ch Evrbrght
3.09
Ch Rail Cons
5.86
Ch Rail Gp
5.03
ChConstBk
6.18
China Vanke
21.50
ChinaCitic
3.88
ChinaLife
14.94
ChinaMBank
70.20
ChinaMob
56.35
ChinaPcIns
25.50
ChMinsheng
3.28
ChMrchSecs
16.99
Chna Utd Coms
4.00
ChShenEgy
22.35
ChShpbldng
4.08
ChStConEng
5.60
ChUncHK
4.32
CNNC Intl
7.69
CSR
3.70
Daqin
7.14
GuosenSec
11.31
HaitongSecs
7.26
Hngzh HikVDT
46.00
Hunng Pwr
4.39
IM Baotou Stl
2.51
In&CmBkCh
4.93
IndstrlBk
22.99
Kweichow
1849.97
Midea
0.50
New Ch Life Ins
24.45
PetroChina
4.14
PingAnIns
69.30
PngAnBnk
17.10
Pwr Cons Corp
9.06
SaicMtr
19.08
ShenwanHong
0.06
ShgPdgBk
8.74
Sinopec Corp
4.21
Sinopec Oil
2.19
Denmark (kr)
DanskeBk
132.80
MollerMrsk
23430
NovoB
655.00
0.11
0.58
-2.23
-5.21
0.17
-0.03
-0.59
0.16
-0.40
29.64
54.55
110.19
319.78
30.30
4.20
67.20
27.12
42.66
24.72
35.56
81.56
242.00
24.41
3.04
49.01
20.00
32.46
-0.06
-0.78
65.86
86.50
46.66
56.68
0.21
0.28
0.01
1.32
1.21
-1.11
19.86
24.57
4.45
30.15
37.80
120.45
Yld
3.83
4.40
2.59
1.15
3.06
2.56
3.22
3.97
3.08
P/E MCap m
13.34 56214.78
15.97 177506.82
20.33 120683.27
34.76 85377.9
15.61 69419.72
25.02 33893.4
24.38 42963.29
16.28 59974.25
26.86 29372.22
0.94 22.70 110658.62
0.57 13.18 37584.75
13.35 3.15 15.57 45344.34
16.06 2.98 11.40 16530.94
2.01 4.69 7.26 1250.03
18.91 3.79 8.08 22040.44
20.60 6.53 3.57 52740.8
61.85 15.40 5.06 91653.85
0.15 43.97
0.17 68.17
1.01 152.87
0.56 95.00
-0.18 79.04
-0.36 100.00
0.98 167.50
0.97 69.46
0.24 168.66
0.68 55.40
-0.08 41.50
1.80 57.20
-0.06 28.09
-0.14 99.10
1.36 148.26
-22.29 2228.73
0.79 37.96
-0.44 156.62
0.85 109.08
1.22 68.20
28.47
54.42
96.67
70.26
51.17
82.12
112.52
32.90
125.00
42.98
30.48
25.23
22.76
66.05
105.10
990.00
21.90
101.02
74.72
53.20
5.24
2.82
3.90
0.86
0.83
3.61
2.78
1.56
6.06
4.39
1.74
4.07
2.43
2.99
2.26
1.54
2.95
5.18
0.05
3.30
0.02
3.20
0.02
5.55
-0.01
1.21
-0.13
5.17
0.01
3.54
-0.01
5.99
0.01
5.20
0.02
6.74
1.00 35.00
0.03
4.29
0.48 17.28
1.50 72.45
0.05 59.20
0.40 42.75
0.02
5.01
0.03 23.85
-0.01
4.60
0.55 22.70
-0.04
5.08
0.14
5.77
-0.01
5.50
-0.06
8.92
-0.02
4.14
-0.03
7.25
-0.01 13.29
0.03
7.81
-0.99 70.44
-0.07
5.74
-0.04
4.14
0.04
5.75
0.34 28.07
-23.03 2627.88
-0.01
0.85
0.45 33.20
0.05
4.20
2.60 99.80
0.11 25.16
-0.35
9.96
-0.04 23.45
0.11
0.05 11.24
0.02
4.69
0.01
2.90
2.54
2.67
4.33
0.65
3.57
2.63
4.57
3.53
5.03
16.84
3.28
12.22
55.55
45.90
20.85
2.56
16.01
3.70
14.18
3.78
4.38
3.82
4.62
3.19
5.80
10.32
6.36
45.24
2.50
1.16
4.08
17.08
1525.5
0.46
20.55
2.51
48.80
15.82
3.74
18.03
0.05
8.41
3.40
1.94
7.27 4.02 12337.03
7.42 3.87 34312.73
6.95 4.00 24916.89
- -62.29
18.88
4.36 3.38 2821.55
8.27 3.90 5023.57
4.77 2.93 1560.17
4.37 4.11 2713.72
6.41 4.34 190518.71
7.07 5.33
5241.4
7.98 3.39 7404.32
5.09 5.85 14255.28
2.17 13.13 41325.55
6.10 8.56 147948.88
5.68 7.30 9074.73
8.00 4.02 3499.43
4.51 15.01 19828.41
1.66 19.27 19344.68
9.79 7.87 9679.53
- -292.94 14167.86
3.81 4.51 35958.4
4.05 8.52 16949.83
1.68 19.41 20647.2
5.97 8.00 2073.81
6.67 10.27 16691.37
2.02 13.40 15698.41
8.91 5.52
3174.1
1.73 27.05 58899.52
4.85 -52.78 2645.94
28.87 12502.36
6.58 4.45 54867.72
3.46 6.33 70909.92
1.04 46.69 365423.44
45.30
19.11
6.91 4.14 3242.11
6.42 7.47 11200.56
3.99 8.32 66180.73
1.05 10.19 52179.55
1.02 18.19 15876.65
3.23 9.22 35052.84
- -11.21
70.77
5.45 5.40 40338.98
3.69 4.54 13773.17
- 245.78 4672.75
0.25
160.00
-30.90
100.70
12160
420.15
1.54 10.88 17550.29
1.46 5.20 31991.08
1.46 31.94 177962.82
133.25
24070
773.70
-7.84
21.63
12.98
11.99
27.81
19.66
11.61
13.33
23.41
19.25
11.32
74.92
8.10
18.96
13.08
32.40
23.20
7.96
13.86
34.60
9266.42
47757.58
77997.6
89014.67
98046.92
67595.33
58353.54
61330.21
86681.95
88211.91
29566.87
30344.16
42618.26
41861.86
164654
99998.77
42622.27
50670.76
156332.7
51615.38
Stock
52 Week
High
Low
Price Day Chg
Finland (€)
Nokia
5.01
SampoA
45.10
France (€)
Airbus Grpe
118.50
AirLiquide
143.68
AXA
28.42
BNP Parib
64.90
ChristianDior 649.00
Cred Agr
14.06
Danone
55.39
EDF
8.40
Engie SA
14.54
EssilorLuxottica 168.78
Hermes Intl
1202
LOreal
363.95
LVMH
685.00
Orange
10.92
PernodRic
191.70
Renault
35.94
Safran
115.02
Sanofi
93.83
Sant Gbn
62.30
Schneider
146.46
SocGen
35.97
Total
52.25
UnibailR
69.07
Vinci
102.22
Vivendi
11.76
Germany (€)
Allianz
229.55
BASF
68.69
Bayer
54.12
BMW
95.30
Continental
89.58
Daimler
70.16
Deut Bank
14.40
Deut Tlkm
17.77
DeutsPost
52.73
E.ON
12.18
Fresenius Med
57.70
Fresenius SE
36.87
HenkelKgaA
72.00
Linde
264.60
MuenchRkv
271.75
SAP
107.50
Siemens♦
141.44
Volkswgn
255.00
Hong Kong (HK$)
AIA
87.30
BOC Hold
32.45
Ch OSLnd&Inv
24.85
ChngKng
52.75
Citic Ltd
8.97
Citic Secs
20.55
CK Hutchison
59.90
CNOOC
9.95
HangSeng
168.00
HK Exc&Clr
444.40
MTR
42.70
SandsCh
22.80
SHK Props
98.60
Tencent
477.00
India (Rs)
Bhartiartl
715.15
HDFC Bk
1518.85
Hind Unilevr
2258
HsngDevFin 2426.35
ICICI Bk
790.80
Infosys
1721.35
ITC
232.45
L&T
1871.25
OilNatGas
168.15
RelianceIn
2376.4
SBI NewA
529.60
SunPhrmInds 880.10
Tata Cons
3694.95
Israel (ILS)
TevaPha
28.83
Italy (€)
Enel
6.39
ENI
13.53
Generali
18.62
IntSPaolo
2.85
Unicred
15.69
Japan (¥)
AstellasPh
2029
Bridgestne
5258
Canon
2853
5.71
47.33
3.20
35.80
0.20
-4.32
-0.19
-1.66
-14.50
-0.10
0.51
-0.21
-0.03
-6.40
-44.00
-0.05
-21.20
0.07
1.20
-0.56
-0.06
0.97
-0.32
-5.00
-0.81
0.32
-2.86
-0.54
-0.04
121.00
157.40
29.09
68.07
733.50
14.27
65.30
13.25
14.60
195.00
1678
433.65
741.60
10.94
214.50
41.42
127.74
95.16
64.93
173.78
37.68
52.50
85.65
103.74
12.09
89.54
124.25
18.88
44.69
449.00
10.54
51.42
8.00
10.98
128.95
872.80
302.20
518.70
8.93
156.10
27.48
96.17
74.92
41.77
121.40
17.44
33.91
53.86
82.94
5.27
1.96
5.15
4.20
0.95
5.83
7.47
2.56
3.73
1.35
0.39
1.13
0.90
6.56
2.13
0.38
3.49
2.19
1.82
1.57
5.31
2.04
5.23
21.68 106225.1
25.65 77879.71
11.96 78480.35
9.49 91351.69
29.40 133591.87
10.06 49906.97
17.62 43436.96
5.16 31030.6
70.98 40373.32
53.86 85156.59
55.37 144704.69
48.69 231451.96
35.64 394287.71
32.31 33124.83
37.51 57247.8
-26.79 12119.99
35.89 56038.67
19.91 135200.36
14.87 37228.36
27.49 95037.91
8.01 34337.64
14.55 157326.13
-2.27 10916.29
25.46 69110.41
10.93 14860.12
0.30
0.13
-0.47
2.53
-2.79
0.23
-0.06
0.21
-0.46
0.05
-1.36
-0.43
1.60
-7.90
0.95
-1.80
-3.24
0.20
232.50
72.88
57.73
96.40
132.68
76.80
14.64
18.92
61.38
12.54
71.14
47.60
86.50
306.00
282.25
129.74
156.98
357.40
182.52
57.06
43.91
68.87
82.36
48.69
8.73
14.60
40.68
8.27
52.06
32.91
65.25
201.80
215.25
100.46
124.96
179.70
4.28
4.93
3.78
2.04
1.99
3.46
2.63
3.96
2.38
2.45
2.60
1.39
3.70
1.76
2.54
1.93
10.78 106921.39
11.45 71945.34
-6.86 60631.29
5.19 65422.32
18.28 20431.21
6.29 84434.57
16.51
33934
15.20 101023.36
13.32 74505.77
7.87 36692.67
17.92 19279.24
11.64 19012.31
19.42 21330.68
44.05 154657.19
16.35 43415.46
21.71 150600.06
21.97 137098.02
7.00 85809.31
1.05
0.35
0.50
1.05
0.07
-0.15
1.00
0.09
3.10
-5.40
-0.30
-0.10
-7.40
106.20
32.50
25.50
56.05
10.24
21.52
65.80
10.60
168.20
587.00
49.00
40.55
126.00
775.50
77.40
22.20
15.42
40.05
6.14
14.89
48.80
7.55
131.00
421.00
40.50
14.64
92.35
412.20
1.53 19.94 135417.72
3.78 14.54 43993.34
4.80 5.20 34875.32
3.37 10.78 24645.31
5.38 3.57 33459.91
2.37 11.03
6003.6
3.82 6.78 29452.56
4.57 7.75 56964.35
3.24 20.82 41185.55
2.08 43.58 72247.17
2.85-143.96 33911.32
- -20.22 23661.25
4.96 10.83 36637.47
0.34 20.16 587737.34
-8.90 781.80 490.34
-6.25
1725
1353
-25.15 2859.3
2120
-50.20 3021.1
2354
-14.70 867.00 531.15
-48.25 1909.8 1244.75
0.20 265.30 199.10
-29.75
2008
1306
-0.95 174.90 95.60
-4.65 2751.35 1876.7
-10.95 549.00 321.30
-14.20 902.85 562.10
-75.40 3989.9
2880
Short
term
-0.67 -0.37
-54.44 55826.03
25.32 111691.3
61.67 70381.77
20.72 58293.33
25.59 72860.92
34.30 96038.39
19.56 37999.75
29.61 34874.71
5.74 28062.83
29.21 213302.02
16.10
62702
33.17 28013.47
36.62 181318.77
40.02
24.96
-
13.44
9879.06
-0.04
0.23
-0.03
-0.07
-0.16
8.77
13.80
19.35
2.92
15.93
6.27
8.63
15.36
2.06
7.98
5.74
5.08
5.55
1.28
0.78
29.70
32.99
11.58
88.30
26.84
74129.64
55622.5
33571.49
63226.73
40029.47
1.50
-12.00
29.50
2052
5467
2938
1590
4104
2182
2.38 30.05 32577.87
2.89 16.85 32362.77
3.13 13.65 32816.41
Day
change change %
0.55
2.52
0.19
0.82
0.09
0.48
2.60
3.90
0.64
1.46
0.00
0.00
0.45
1.88
-0.13
-2.54
0.34
1.50
-2.86
-3.98
0.48
3.32
0.67
1.87
3.10
1.88
-0.06
-0.77
-4.66
-1.68
-0.18
-0.24
16.50
0.80
0.16
0.36
1.00
1.70
-0.06
-0.05
Week
change change %
3.27
17.1
3.35
16.8
2.35
14.3
8.40
13.8
4.69
11.8
0.01
10.5
2.30
10.4
0.46
10.2
2.11
10.1
6.30
10.0
1.32
9.7
3.14
9.4
14.10
9.2
0.64
9.1
22.70
9.1
6.11
8.8
166.00
8.7
3.47
8.5
4.70
8.5
8.86
8.3
Month
change %
10.40
22.93
20.20
12.16
16.33
8.62
7.73
9.69
7.33
3.83
9.54
10.77
7.28
7.10
12.45
12.91
11.34
10.10
8.91
6.48
Current
0.00-0.25
4.75
2.65
0.00
0.50
0.00-0.10
-1.25-0.25
52 Week
High
Low
Yld
P/E MCap m
Stock
0.86 -22.33 28033.98
1.72 20.45 58147.08
1.46 -5.63 23418.09
2.05 29.21 40223.42
0.78 37.09 58829.69
2.92 15.05 13333.13
1.99 9.77 50718.46
4.50 6.70 56441.65
6.32 10.19 40662.32
3.34 12.73 74895.03
0.35 54.75 126600.97
3.58 12.80 51879.56
1.78 15.58 20532.27
2.91 11.78 26674.51
1.80 11.38 21348.77
3.66 7.91 85461.54
4.93 6.21 36099.8
1.50 16.80 48984.71
3.34 10.87 102986.28
3.34 10.87 102986.28
47.50 23135.6
15212
4.42-234.07
4.05 3.98 16993.59
2.13 10.18 26093.04
1.82 22.57 43506.02
1.59 20.23 68686.21
0.84 3.04 81470.87
0.49 16.25 139806.01
4.80 10.23 51783.78
5.37 11.17 48031.81
3.25 12.71 42726.42
2.37 9.61 317140.19
2.02 12.34 40672.51
2.26 825.00 16880.72
0.81 31.03 63910.65
0.50
0.76
0.92
2.33
42.08 263977.57
47.08 62072.08
13.10 59683.79
26.39 162549.07
4.03 13.82 37362.43
1.52 36.46 101855.97
9.69 12.21 22200.11
2.10 16.24 54667.65
-
-
101588.49
62461.41
43537.03
66305.36
76595.47
77538.37
16154.94
1.62
2.07
2.69
3.47
26.77
20.99
17.81
20.43
99821.43
56454.42
97555.77
62158.48
2.33
2.81
3.06
2.94
2.35
15.19
91.26
12.07
40.61
17.02
71212.73
43007.5
44568.82
31337.21
40572.32
1.76 13.10 24161.75
43.65 23314.35
0.24 4.25 69124.4
2.21 8.85 18227.35
5.52 -12.97 12051.39
0.91 11.00 80177.14
4.11 14.21 373064.73
1.01
0.81
0.81
4.58
0.86
5.08
9.10
10.58
10.55
4.32
18.17
27.11
14.65
2.41
Last
1.00-1.25
5.25
2.75
0.00
0.25
0.00
-0.75--0.25
Mnth Ago
1.50-1.75
5.25
2.75
0.00
0.25
0.00--0.10
-1.25--0.25
Year Ago
1.25-1.50
4.25
1.75
0.00
0.25
0.00--0.10
-1.25--0.25
Day
0.000
-0.064
-0.005
Change
Week
-0.001
0.000
0.000
Month
0.001
0.001
0.000
-0.002
0.000
-0.005
0.000
0.000
0.000
One
month
0.12371
-0.61943
0.48020
-0.77540
-0.06375
-0.55200
0.50000
0.13000
-0.53000
Three
month
0.39486
-0.58057
0.78360
-0.75300
-0.02063
-0.52800
0.63000
0.38000
-0.53000
Six
month
0.66443
-0.55600
1.24590
-0.70280
0.03960
-0.46700
0.78500
0.60000
-0.49000
One
year
1.12457
-0.48571
0.81363
-0.55320
0.04867
-0.32500
7 Days
notice
-0.68 -0.38
One
Three
Six
One
Feb 11
month
month
month
year
Euro
-0.68 -0.38 -0.68 -0.38 -0.64 -0.34 -0.46 -0.16
Sterling
0.45 0.55 0.58 0.68 0.71 0.86 0.90 1.05
US Dollar
0.11 0.31 0.01 0.21 0.03 0.23 0.28 0.48 0.50 0.70 0.85 1.05
Japanese Yen
-0.20 0.00 -0.20 0.00 -0.15 0.15 -0.15 0.15 -0.15 0.15 -0.15 0.15
Libor rates come from ICE (see www.theice.com) and are fixed at 11am UK time. Other data sources: US $, Euro & CDs:
Tullett Prebon; SDR, US Discount: IMF; EONIA: ECB; Swiss Libor: SNB; EURONIA, RONIA & SONIA: WMBA.
COMMODITIES
Energy
Price*
Crude Oil†
Mar
91.22
Brent Crude Oil‡
93.44
RBOB Gasoline†
Mar
2.69
Heating Oil†
Natural Gas†
Mar
3.93
Ethanol♦
Uranium†
Carbon Emissions‡
Diesel†
Base Metals (♠ LME 3 Months)
Aluminium
3152.00
Aluminium Alloy
2550.00
Copper
9894.00
Lead
2273.00
Nickel
23035.00
Tin
43795.00
Zinc
3632.00
Precious Metals (PM London Fix)
Gold
1835.35
Silver (US cents)
2335.50
Platinum
1027.00
Palladium
2292.00
Bulk Commodities
Iron Ore
151.57
GlobalCOAL RB Index
232.50
Baltic Dry Index
1977.00
www.ft.com/commodities
Change
1.29
2.14
0.03
-0.01
-86.00
25.00
-288.00
-7.00
-365.00
-205.00
-52.00
Agricultural & Cattle Futures
Corn♦
Wheat♦
Soybeans♦
Soybeans Meal♦
Cocoa (ICE Liffe)X
Cocoa (ICE US)♥
Coffee(Robusta)X
Coffee (Arabica)♥
White SugarX
Sugar 11♥
Cotton♥
Orange Juice♥
Palm Oil♣
Live Cattle♣
Feeder Cattle♣
Lean Hogs♣
7.55
10.50 S&P GSCI Spt
-3.00 DJ UBS Spot
25.00 TR/CC CRB TR
LEBA EUA Carbon
3.93 LEBA UK Power
6.00
37.00
Feb
May
Apr
Price*
647.25
782.25
1590.00
459.80
1797.00
2742.00
2287.00
253.40
489.00
18.13
125.55
140.75
142.53
134.88
103.50
Change
5.50
11.00
17.00
6.50
-10.00
-30.00
5.00
-1.65
-2.80
-0.20
-0.04
1.00
-0.30
-1.83
Feb 10
636.97
109.24
278.12
58.91
1048.00
% Chg
Month
2.03
1.57
4.26
-1.98
-37.43
% Chg
Year
38.86
30.88
42.19
129.94
-39.60
Mar
Mar
Mar
Mar
Mar
Mar
Mar
Mar
Mar
Mar
Sources: † NYMEX, ‡ ECX/ICE, ♦ CBOT, X ICE Liffe, ♥ ICE Futures, ♣ CME, ♠ LME/London Metal Exchange.* Latest prices, $
unless otherwise stated.
Price Day Chg
52 Week
High
Low
Nordea Bk
111.86 -0.16 114.64
SEB
124.85
0.15 141.85
SvnskaHn
98.14 -0.28 108.15
Swedbank
171.50 196.70
Telia Co
38.00
0.19 39.97
Volvo
216.85 240.80
Switzerland (SFr)
ABB
32.44 -0.49 35.30
CredSuisse
8.61 -0.02 13.50
Nestle
119.28
1.26 128.90
Novartis
79.77 -0.38 86.92
Richemont
133.15 -1.15 146.10
Roche
348.75 -6.65 384.20
Swiss Re
100.35 -0.35 102.20
Swisscom
550.00
4.60 562.40
UBS
19.61 -0.14 19.90
Zurich Fin
451.70
5.60 454.00
Taiwan (NT$)
Chunghwa Telecom 119.50 120.00
Formosa PetChem
98.70
1.10 117.50
HonHaiPrc
106.00
0.50 134.50
MediaTek
1150 -5.00
1200
TaiwanSem
650.00
3.00 668.00
Thailand (THB)
PTT Explor
40.25 -0.25 42.50
United Arab Emirates (Dhs)
Emirtestele
33.10
0.02 36.90
United Kingdom (p)
AscBrFd
1930 -6.50
2528
AstraZen
8510 -140.00
9523
Aviva
444.40 -1.10 448.80
Barclays
206.10 -2.55 217.63
BP
417.20
6.50 419.15
BrAmTob
3368.5 99.50
3373
BT
198.70
0.20 206.70
Compass♦
1806.5 -14.00 1820.5
Diageo
3717.5 -22.50 4364.1
GlaxoSmh
1619.4 -21.60 1696.9
Glencore
417.75 -3.30 428.40
HSBC
567.20
5.50 567.20
Imperial Brands 1818.5 28.00
1822
LlydsBkg
53.96
0.56 54.50
Natl Grid
1095.8
4.80 1105.6
Natwest Group 253.00 -0.50 258.10
Prudential
1214 -30.00 1598.5
ReckittB
5894 61.00
6778
RELX
2273
6.00 2634.82
RioTinto
5726 -81.00 6876.26
RollsRoyce
120.90 -1.82 161.91
RylDShlA
1895.2 -24.00 1930.8
StandCh
558.00 -8.00 573.60
Tesco
298.15
1.15 314.03
Vodafone
138.90
0.46 142.74
WPP
1214 -10.00 1231.5
United States of America ($)
21stC Fox A
44.16
0.16 44.95
3M
160.40
0.66 208.95
AbbottLb♦
126.71 -1.05 142.60
Abbvie♦
142.53 -0.18 144.42
Accenture♦
335.47 -6.92 417.37
Adobe
486.43 -8.59 699.54
AEP
88.38
0.99 91.66
Aetna
- Aflac
66.20
0.65 66.97
AirProd♦
248.33 -4.05 316.39
Alexion
182.50
3.05 187.45
Allstate
123.63
0.35 140.00
Alphabet
2758.4 -14.00 3030.93
Altria
50.58
0.40 52.59
Amazon
3127.97 -52.10 3773.08
AmerAir
18.80
0.09 26.09
AmerExpr
195.18 -0.34 198.72
AmerIntGrp
62.47
0.25 63.54
AmerTower
240.72 -1.80 303.72
Amgen
230.35
1.53 261.00
Anthem
456.89 -0.71 472.01
Aon Cp♦
288.05
0.77 326.25
Apple
171.75 -0.37 182.13
Aptiv
135.90 -0.02 180.81
ArcherDan
77.06
0.62 78.03
AT&T
24.28
0.03 33.88
AutomData
206.18
0.64 248.96
Avago Tech
588.76 -2.60 677.76
BakerHu
28.78
1.34 29.09
BankAm
49.14
0.09 50.11
Baxter
86.54 -1.22 89.70
BectonDick
272.89
0.95 280.62
BerkshHat 483454.66 3349.66488399.85
Biogen
217.25 -2.79 468.55
BkNYMeln
63.83
0.36 64.63
45371.63
68844.95
31124.09
69329.4
91517.81
20671.37
29121.95
1.70 29.50 18968.22
1.83 18.09 38774.34
32.39 29016.44
1.32 2.37 39654.4
Yld
P/E MCap m
70.98
93.48
84.12
144.14
33.75
182.00
7.64
3.50
4.46
4.51
5.34
2.95
11.88
10.47
9.75
8.80
-10.47
12.15
25.79
8.23
95.00
73.01
85.94
293.05
77.26
456.30
13.23
352.80
2.44 34.40 71965.56
2.78 286.82 24665.84
2.27 27.75 362801.96
3.88 19.73 209825.78
1.50 29.58 75099.19
2.57 21.77 264742.02
5.90 25.31 34425.56
4.00 15.01 30784.52
3.50 9.91 78448.97
4.44 15.35 73433.67
108.00
90.30
96.50
821.00
518.00
3.63
0.60
3.80
3.24
1.59
26.05
17.93
10.45
18.82
29.54
47937.81
29278.64
20625.98
20980.29
16792.27
37225.07
33291.39
33765.34
52772.53
66031.94
605295.2
34.00
4.89 12.59 35160.48
19.74
2.43 30.78 78371.49
1719
6499.8
344.30
111.83
254.75
2478
121.25
1369.5
2805.28
1190.8
263.10
329.55
1330
36.27
805.40
167.35
1203
4905.16
1484.9
4354
86.69
16.51
406.20
2.74
106.30
11.00
0.32 31.90 20784.5
2.44 103.37 146606.45
6.08 14.81 24260.8
1.46 5.64 47839.8
3.72 17.33 113110.26
6.28 12.49 85432.53
19.29 26818.1
90.33 40413.95
1.89 32.78 127305.43
4.94 19.02 108334.26
1.04 36.07 81971.04
2.86 13.66 154699.6
7.60 6.08 23592.71
1.06 8.30 52900.97
4.49 25.54 50033.71
2.37 12.34 41181.79
0.96 16.87 42726.64
2.96 -25.50 56460.54
2.07 32.85 59830.59
5.88 6.86 104468.74
2.64 3058.71
2.92 43.31 118189.98
1.59 13.58 25024.19
3.36 22.76 33207.33
5.57-310.74 50399.09
1.98 30.84 20908.67
31.36
159.02
105.36
102.05
244.44
420.78
74.80
46.13
247.91
99.91
102.55
1990.23
42.53
2746.37
14.91
126.08
41.17
197.50
198.64
287.40
221.82
116.21
127.63
53.96
22.02
164.24
419.14
18.75
32.55
73.12
235.13
359750
212.56
41.58
1.07 14.64 13946.01
3.72 15.73 91604.44
1.36 31.17 224059.64
3.60 34.12 251875.53
1.11 33.92 220850.9
40.74 229764.1
3.38 18.40 44512.74
1.94 10.62 43793.17
2.37 26.99 55059.08
59.43 40336.01
2.42 5.90 35441.76
26.35 829602.33
6.94 33.65 92914.89
60.641591650.05
-3.55 12173.27
1.11 20.19 151173.92
2.07 9.72 51868.69
2.11 43.38 109624.91
3.01 23.54 129745.48
0.96 20.29 110893.91
0.68 71.56 63466.75
0.50 30.352802863.99
46.13 36762.87
1.92 16.50 43110.54
8.64 185.12 173346.35
1.82 32.34 86602.83
2.43 39.55 243083.68
2.52 44.57 25037.68
1.54 14.58 402165.89
1.22 36.04 43327.51
1.23 39.49 77711.18
8.63 299711.92
20.61 31927.67
2.01 16.10 52712.16
Stock
52 Week
High
Low
Price Day Chg
BlackRock
782.96
4.77 973.16 670.28
Boeing
220.69
1.94 278.57 183.77
Booking Holdings 2645.65 17.27 2687.29 2053.58
BrisMySq
66.86
0.35 69.75 53.22
CapOne
159.22
2.31 177.95 115.31
CardinalHlth
52.75 -0.06 62.96 45.85
Carnival
23.31
0.19 31.52 16.32
Caterpillar♦
203.78
0.71 246.69 186.98
CharlesSch
91.93 -0.92 96.24 55.41
Charter Comms 608.78
2.26 825.62 549.59
Chevron Corp 138.07
2.03 139.43 90.08
Chubb
206.91 -1.69 211.78 155.08
Cigna
231.52
1.25 272.81 191.74
Cisco
54.69 -0.19 64.29 44.15
Citigroup
68.55
1.05 80.29 57.59
CME Grp
242.54 -1.52 256.94 179.69
Coca-Cola
60.87 -0.51 62.33 48.97
Cognizant
89.17 -1.09 92.44 66.19
ColgtPlm
79.87
0.15 85.18 74.01
Comcast
48.64 -0.28 61.80 45.47
ConocPhil
92.07
0.62 94.93 45.21
Corning
42.61
0.12 46.82 34.25
Costco
515.39 -3.09 571.49 307.00
CrownCstl
172.24 -0.81 209.49 146.15
CSX
33.92 -0.07 37.76 29.05
CVS
105.17 -0.15 111.25 68.02
Danaher
276.74 -5.46 333.96 211.22
Deere
399.40
6.25 400.34 298.54
Delta
44.54
0.64 52.28 33.40
Devon Energy
53.36
1.14 55.44 18.69
DiscFinServ
125.86
1.09 135.69 88.66
Disney
152.95
0.79 203.02 129.26
DominRes
79.23
0.98 81.67 67.85
DukeEner
100.31
0.52 108.38 85.56
DuPont
81.32
0.99 86.28 66.37
Eaton
153.53 -1.27 175.72 121.46
eBay
58.93
0.12 81.19 51.51
Ecolab
188.17
0.82 238.93 180.37
Emerson
97.38
0.51 105.99 83.64
EOG Res
115.13
2.47 116.53 58.16
EquityResTP
87.24
0.27 92.54 65.11
Exelon
42.51
0.47 44.02 27.36
ExxonMb
79.14
0.90 83.08 48.78
Facebook
224.88 -3.19 384.33 216.15
Fedex
235.13 -5.28 319.90 216.34
FordMtr♦
18.16
0.08 24.91 11.13
Franklin
31.47
0.08 38.27 24.91
GenDyn
212.64
1.12 216.21 161.57
GenElectric
99.68
0.89 116.17 88.05
GenMills
67.91
0.83 69.85 54.31
GenMotors
50.62
0.28 65.18 47.07
GileadSci
62.26
0.47 74.12 61.39
GoldmSchs
372.56
1.99 426.16 299.17
Halliburton
33.18
0.77 33.49 17.82
HCA Hold
241.12
1.11 263.92 170.13
Hew-Pack
37.99 -0.12 39.07 25.96
HiltonWwde 154.54
0.34 157.49 108.50
HomeDep
355.25
0.16 420.61 246.59
Honywell
190.77 -0.98 236.86 188.03
HumanaInc
429.49 -2.68 475.44 365.34
IBM
133.95
0.43 152.84 114.56
IllinoisTool
221.30
1.47 248.11 196.36
Illumina
340.50 -17.58 555.77 318.07
Intcntl Exch
126.23 -0.49 139.79 109.04
Intel
48.74 -0.12 68.49 46.30
Intuit
549.12 -8.46 716.86 365.15
John&John
168.80 -0.62 179.92 151.47
JohnsonCn
67.84 -0.50 81.69 51.59
JPMrgnCh
157.18
1.23 172.96 138.22
Kimb-Clark
131.97
1.02 144.47 125.27
KinderM
17.51
0.31 19.29 14.45
Kraft Heinz
34.78
0.49 44.95 32.79
Kroger
45.94
0.77 48.89 32.00
L Brands
79.92 -0.15
LasVegasSd
46.59 -0.07 66.77 33.75
LibertyGbl
28.22 -0.05 30.58 23.19
Lilly (E)
237.17 -2.47 283.91 178.58
Linde
302.06 -6.79 346.50 241.88
Lockheed
389.23
3.80 397.62 324.23
Lowes
228.62
1.22 263.31 150.84
Lyondell
103.20
1.11 118.02 84.17
Marathon Ptl
81.17
1.43 81.39 48.66
Marsh&M
154.05
0.54 175.12 111.77
MasterCard
375.26
0.87 401.50 306.00
McDonald's
257.76
0.89 270.17 202.73
McKesson
272.89 -0.64 282.73 169.34
Medtronic
104.72 -0.16 135.89 98.38
Merck
77.20
0.64 91.40 68.38
Metlife♦
72.26
1.76 72.50 54.37
Microsoft
300.37 -2.01 349.67 224.26
Mnstr Bvrg
83.71 -0.12 99.89 80.92
BONDS: HIGH YIELD & EMERGING MARKET
Close
Prev
price
price
Hermes Intl
1202.00
1246.00
Midea
0.50
0.50
Bradesco
17.63
17.35
AirProd
248.33
252.38
Fuji Hvy Ind
2010.00
1999.00
Adobe
486.43
495.02
Facebook
224.88
228.07
Fresenius Med
57.70
59.06
Illumina
340.50
358.08
Qualcomm
170.74
174.07
S&P Global
395.55
396.45
CrownCstl
172.24
173.05
Pfizer
50.67
50.60
Seven & I
5691.00
5670.00
Tesla Mtrs
886.10
904.55
HsngDevFin
2426.35
2476.55
Danaher
276.74
282.20
DukeEner
100.31
99.79
Alphabet
2758.40
2772.40
Enel
6.39
6.43
Based on the FT Global 500 companies in local currency
Month
change %
-7.00
-1.00
-5.22
-10.58
-3.62
-6.09
-25.44
-5.13
2.52
2.37
-2.72
-4.74
-6.75
6.01
4.74
-2.60
-1.57
-4.26
3.51
-4.40
Day
change change %
-44.00
-3.53
-0.01
-1.00
0.28
1.61
-4.05
-1.60
11.00
0.55
-8.59
-1.74
-3.19
-1.40
-1.36
-2.30
-17.58
-4.91
-3.33
-1.91
-0.90
-0.23
-0.81
-0.47
0.07
0.13
21.00
0.37
-18.45
-2.04
-50.20
-2.03
-5.46
-1.93
0.52
0.52
-14.00
-0.50
-0.04
-0.59
Week
change change %
-108.00
-8.2
-0.04
-6.6
-1.14
-6.1
-14.75
-5.6
-117.50
-5.5
-27.11
-5.3
-12.21
-5.1
-3.06
-5.0
-17.88
-5.0
-8.73
-4.9
-18.84
-4.5
-8.06
-4.5
-2.34
-4.4
-244.00
-4.1
-37.22
-4.0
-101.45
-4.0
-10.89
-3.8
-3.94
-3.8
-107.46
-3.7
-0.25
-3.7
Month's
change
Year
change
Return
1 month
Return
1 year
BOND INDICES
Since
15-03-2020
30-10-2019
30-09-2019
16-03-2016
03-02-2022
01-02-2016
15-01-2015
INTEREST RATES: MARKET
Feb 11 (Libor: Feb 10)
US$ Libor
Euro Libor
£ Libor
Swiss Fr Libor
Yen Libor
Euro Euribor
Sterling CDs
US$ CDs
Euro CDs
1.41
0.97
0.26
1.63
4.74
0.99
2.19
0.30
0.77
0.87
1.11
Price Day Chg
CntJpRwy
15780 125.00 18455 14660
Denso
8557 -176.00
9575
6388
EastJpRwy
7185 31.00
8626
6442
Fanuc
23100 220.00 29700 21720
FastRetail
64310 -430.00 110500 62230
Fuji Hvy Ind
2010 11.00
2413
1943
Hitachi
6074 83.00
7460
4755
HondaMtr
3613 192.00
3685 2911.5
JapanTob
2357.5 17.50
2417
1898
KDDI
3769
7.00
3899
3200
Keyence
60360 860.00 76210 47150
MitsbCp
4049
2.00
4070
2836
MitsubEst
1711 23.00 2047.5
1546
MitsubishiEle 1440.5 18.50
1817 1337.5
MitsuiFud
2564 53.50 2816.5
2211
MitUFJFin
746.10 -6.30 770.30 516.00
Mizuho Fin
1648.5 12.00 1732.5
1397
Murata Mfg
8405 -66.00 10535
7994
Nippon T&T
3297
5.00
3391
2663
NipponTT
3297
5.00
3391
2663
Nissan Mt
635.60
9.00 654.30 501.00
Nomura
545.50 -1.80 721.00 471.00
Nppn Stl
2073.5 16.50
2381
1440
Panasonic
1233
8.50
1541 1163.5
Seven & I
5691 21.00
6083
4035
ShnEtsuCh
19115 95.00 21480 16965
Softbank
5483 -129.00 10695
4584
Sony
12855 275.00 14745
9989
SumitomoF
4369 -8.00
4461
3530
Takeda Ph
3520 46.00
4365
2993
TokioMarine
7103 29.00
7170
4907
Toyota
2254 -63.50 2375.5 1557.2
Mexico (Mex$)
AmerMvl
19.02
0.37 21.89 13.25
FEMSA UBD 159.35
1.40 180.66 136.21
WalMrtMex
74.67
1.20 79.99 58.72
Netherlands (€)
ASML Hld
569.50 -14.60 777.50 422.25
Heineken
94.50
0.38 103.80 80.84
ING
13.41 -0.18 14.00
7.75
Unilever
46.66
1.88 51.05 43.00
Norway (Kr)
DNB
212.00
1.00 220.50 163.25
Equinor♦
275.05
8.45 277.45 150.30
Telenor
139.55 159.95 131.80
Qatar (QR)
QatarNtBk
21.55 -0.05 21.95 16.35
Russia (RUB)
Gzprm neft
326.45 -3.75 24450.71 186.00
Lukoil
6858 -149.16 7554.91
7.45
MmcNrlskNckl
21555-1082.461681283.31 343.80
Novatek
1661.26 1984.96 1280.4
Rosneft
549.80 -23.20 39143.78 116.00
Sberbank
273.25 -4.66 568.52 221.04
Surgutneftegas
34.40 49.50 29.80
Saudi Arabia (SR)
AlRajhiBnk
149.80
1.80 151.00 79.10
Natnlcombnk
70.60 -0.20 75.00 44.80
SaudiBasic
122.00
0.60 136.60 101.20
SaudiTelec
116.60
0.40 139.80 103.20
Singapore (S$)
DBS
37.25
0.40 37.44 25.40
JardnMt US$
60.21 -0.14 68.88 49.13
OCBC
13.33
0.09 13.33 10.45
SingTel
2.55 2.63
2.21
UOB
32.60
0.06 32.99 23.45
South Africa (R)
Firstrand
65.07
1.07 65.61 48.97
MTN Grp
186.92 -0.93 196.39 70.20
Naspers N
2397.77 -37.48 3844.25 1262.66
South Korea (KRW)
HyundMobis 231000 -500.00 338000 220000
KoreaElePwr
22500 -450.00 27450 20050
SK Hynix
132000 2500 150500 90500
SmsungEl
74900 -500.00 86200 68300
Spain (€)
BBVA
5.97 -0.09
6.29
4.22
BcoSantdr
3.48 3.51
2.65
CaixaBnk
3.39 -0.01
3.43
2.20
Iberdrola
9.44 -0.11 11.74
8.59
Inditex
25.75 -0.48 32.85 24.80
Repsol
11.87
0.12 11.88
8.61
Telefonica
4.42
0.02
4.45
3.52
Sweden (SKr)
AtlasCpcoB
449.80 -11.90 534.40 404.90
Ericsson
116.78
0.18 121.80 91.00
H&M
183.82
0.84 229.50 157.90
Investor
201.40 -1.40 228.75 154.50
- -15.75 32269.44
3.86 33.84 28500.04
-0.92
INTEREST RATES: OFFICIAL
Over
night
0.07757
-0.64957
0.18063
Stock
FT 500: BOTTOM 20
Close
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price
price
ChShenEgy
22.35
21.80
Carnival
23.31
23.12
AmerAir
18.80
18.71
PingAnIns
69.30
66.70
Delta
44.54
43.90
ShenwanHong
0.06
0.06
New Ch Life Ins
24.45
24.00
Ch Coms Cons
4.98
5.11
IndstrlBk
22.99
22.65
UnibailR
69.07
71.93
ChinaLife
14.94
14.46
ViacomCBS
36.55
35.88
HangSeng
168.00
164.90
CNNC Intl
7.69
7.75
Sberbank
273.25
277.91
Brookfield
75.82
76.00
Nppn Stl
2073.50
2057.00
21stC Fox A
44.16
44.00
CK Hutchison
59.90
58.90
Safran
115.02
115.08
Based on the FT Global 500 companies in local currency
Rate
Fed Funds
Prime
Discount
Repo
Repo
O'night Call
Libor Target
P/E MCap m
-0.05
0.25
FT 500: TOP 20
Feb 11
US
US
US
Euro
UK
Japan
Switzerland
Yld
Red
date Coupon
Markit IBoxx
ABF Pan-Asia unhedged
Corporates( £)
Corporates($)
Corporates(€)
Eurozone Sov(€)
Gilts( £)
Global Inflation-Lkd
Markit iBoxx £ Non-Gilts
Overall ($)
Overall( £)
Overall(€)
Treasuries ($)
Index
218.72
374.95
233.47
245.06
337.64
341.20
237.93
-
0.12
-0.63
-0.29
-0.53
-1.05
-0.92
-0.47
-
0.25
-2.20
-2.00
-2.61
-2.30
-2.23
-2.43
-
-0.49
-5.27
-3.34
-3.68
-6.07
-5.74
-3.54
-
0.52
-4.07
-2.90
-3.03
-3.74
-3.70
-2.97
-
-3.26
-6.76
-4.30
-6.16
-7.52
-7.18
-5.65
-
FTSE
Sterling Corporate (£)
Euro Corporate (€)
Euro Emerging Mkts (€)
Eurozone Govt Bond
104.47
757.89
110.04
-0.05
-8.24
-0.19
-
-
0.54
-2.36
-0.34
-1.73
5.74
-0.64
Index
Day's
change
Week's
change
Month's
change
Series
high
Series
low
323.84
66.59
52.95
75.31
9.31
1.93
0.00
1.58
9.28
1.53
0.37
1.60
74.86
16.54
5.20
17.35
331.81
68.61
55.00
78.13
238.24
47.15
45.63
54.29
CREDIT INDICES
Markit iTraxx
Crossover 5Y
Europe 5Y
Japan 5Y
Senior Financials 5Y
Markit CDX
Emerging Markets 5Y
216.27
9.54
5.86
9.54
221.97
168.20
Nth Amer High Yld 5Y
360.35
19.33
12.29
53.77
360.35
287.02
Nth Amer Inv Grade 5Y
65.50
4.01
2.94
12.41
65.50
48.82
Websites: markit.com, ftse.com. All indices shown are unhedged. Currencies are shown in brackets after the index names.
BONDS: INDEX-LINKED
Price
Month
Value
No of
Yield
Feb 10
Feb 10
Prev
return
stock
Market
stocks
Can 4.25%' 26
123.16
-0.512
-0.592
-0.35
5.25
77373.46
8
Fr 2.10%' 23
107.75
-3.046
-3.105
-0.19
18.05 265353.88
17
Swe 1.00%' 25
121.91
-1.791
-1.775
-0.61
35.88 211142.33
6
UK 0.125%' 24
108.02
-3.508
-3.558
-0.80
15.24 808616.71
31
UK 2.50%' 24
363.98
-2.867
-2.917
-1.02
6.82 808616.71
31
UK 2.00%' 35
299.24
-2.340
-2.396
-2.17
9.08 808616.71
31
US 0.625%' 23
103.90
-2.630
-2.445
0.18
47.03 1718261.43
45
US 3.625%' 28
127.29
-0.693
-0.785
-1.73
16.78 1718261.43
45
Representative stocks from each major market Source: Merill Lynch Global Bond Indices † Local currencies. ‡ Total market
value. In line with market convention, for UK Gilts inflation factor is applied to price, for other markets it is applied to par
amount.
BONDS: TEN YEAR GOVT SPREADS
Bid
Yield
Spread Spread
vs
vs
Bund T-Bonds
Australia
2.11
- Netherlands
Austria
0.67
- New Zealand
Canada
- Norway
Denmark
- Portugal
Finland
0.52
- Spain
Germany
- Sweden
Ireland
- Switzerland
Italy
1.65
- United Kingdom
Japan
0.39
- United States
Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data LLC, an ICE Data Services company.
Bid
Yield
0.18
2.72
0.48
-1.51
-
Spread Spread
vs
vs
Bund T-Bonds
-
-
P/E MCap m
Stock
2.06 20.64 118945.07
- -14.70 128662.22
- 284.42 108639.61
2.96 -27.85 145735.6
0.95 5.88 67765.42
3.74 13.48 14614.99
-2.84 22992.14
2.08 21.60 110233.08
0.79 34.52 166513.38
27.64 109148.82
3.84 26.42 266155.59
1.54 10.43 89124.68
1.31 9.72 76732.16
2.67 20.48 230639.81
3.00 6.43 138937.95
1.48 35.46 87166.15
2.77 29.72 262923.11
1.06 24.90 46834.07
2.25 25.21 67318.32
2.03 15.50 220036.95
1.88 27.08 121428.84
2.23 41.82 36363.73
0.57 46.27 228540.67
3.12 56.35 74442.69
1.09 21.15
75234
1.92 18.19 138036.72
0.30 35.30 197752
0.90 21.19 123093.72
- -367.90 28506.22
0.83 30.22 36124.72
1.46 7.44 36885.05
- 250.53 278465.88
3.21 24.77 64056.45
3.90 25.76 77172.25
1.49 30.07 42532.35
1.98 29.55 61195.07
1.20 20.42 38307.79
1.03 47.58 53923.37
2.09 25.27 57931.36
1.38 22.03 67361.41
2.79 31.65 32716.42
3.63 24.64 41567.67
4.44 -56.43 335044.48
15.94 519265.91
1.22 12.59 62302.24
25.71 71410.79
3.59 8.74 15801.85
2.74 18.11 59049.7
0.32 74.85 109462.31
3.09 18.19 40963.77
6.71 73551.94
4.55 10.51 78091.65
1.56 6.09 124730.47
0.55 73.09 29814.6
0.60 12.21 74993.82
2.02 7.18 41132.63
- 1178.34 43072.26
1.80 23.91 370965.97
1.97 24.34 131330.45
0.64 20.56 55204.19
4.80 23.37 120062.07
2.12 25.51 69460.24
55.24 53220.15
1.03 23.08 70922.62
2.84 9.38 198469.28
0.44 72.52 155492.61
2.47 25.01 444382.37
1.59 32.02 47677.94
2.37 9.85 464508.72
3.43 22.25 44434.82
6.14 22.54 39703.65
4.64 18.43 42566.08
1.62 34.29 33773.96
- -25.37 35590.46
1.36 4992.28
1.40 35.89 226875.02
1.38 44.09 154822.28
2.70 17.78 105997.81
1.22 19.95 154032.08
4.26 5.96 34343.3
2.88 110.22 49967.25
1.61 28.86 77779.13
0.58 45.75 365769.34
2.02 26.34 192609.98
0.64 -9.11 40878.48
2.29 30.41 140802.09
3.40 22.98 195002.87
2.62 11.84 60783.75
0.75 33.302251833.77
29.01 44294.24
52 Week
High
Low
Price Day Chg
MondelezInt
67.10
0.33 69.47
Monsanto
9.76
0.02 10.00
MorganStly
107.67
0.10 109.73
Netflix
396.86 -9.42 700.99
NextEraE
75.88
0.43 93.47
Nike
142.64 -2.18 179.10
NorfolkS
273.73
1.40 298.75
Northrop
387.01
4.99 408.75
NXP
194.05 -5.00 239.91
Occid Pet
41.82
1.14 42.31
Oracle
80.52 -1.34 106.34
Pepsico
168.84
0.47 177.24
Perrigo
37.90 -0.07 50.90
Pfizer♦
50.67
0.07 61.71
Phillips66
92.68
3.22 94.34
PhilMorris
107.47
2.40 107.55
PNCFin
211.18
0.55 224.52
PPG Inds
153.95
0.14 182.97
ProctGmbl♦
156.35 -0.82 165.35
Prudntl
122.17
0.79 124.22
PublStor
358.66 -0.43 376.56
Qualcomm
170.74 -3.33 192.68
Raytheon
95.36
0.30 96.96
Regen Pharm 639.94 21.72 686.62
S&P Global
395.55 -0.90 484.21
Salesforce
212.51 -5.16 311.75
Schlmbrg
40.31
1.14 41.04
Sempra Energy 136.82
1.26 144.93
Shrwin-Will
277.58 -2.35 354.15
SimonProp
145.19
1.21 171.12
SouthCpr
67.77
0.57 83.29
Starbucks♦
95.55
0.24 126.32
StateSt
102.01
0.62 103.76
Stryker
254.28 -1.16 281.16
Sychrony Fin
44.52
0.39 52.49
T-MobileUS
125.87
0.74 150.20
Target
214.26
0.42 268.98
TE Connect
146.27 -1.12 166.44
Tesla Mtrs
886.10 -18.45 1243.49
TexasInstr
168.29 -2.37 202.26
TheTrvelers
173.16
0.73 174.55
ThrmoFshr
574.88 -5.41 668.94
TJX Cos♦
70.29 -0.35 76.94
Truist Financial Corp
64.80
0.18 66.10
UnionPac
242.92
0.80 256.11
UPS B
217.12 -3.56 232.31
USBancorp
59.57
0.36 63.01
UtdHlthcre
483.94 -2.79 509.23
ValeroEngy
93.03
3.14 93.06
Verizon
53.12
0.08 59.85
VertexPharm 235.07 -0.83 254.93
VF Cp
61.94 -0.64 90.79
ViacomCBS
36.55
0.67 101.97
Visa Inc
226.81
1.22 252.67
Walgreen
49.74
0.52 57.05
WalMartSto 135.98 -0.10 152.57
WellsFargo
59.84
0.79 60.30
Williams Cos
30.60
0.46 31.02
Yum!Brnds
124.53
0.38 139.85
Venezuela (VEF)
Bco de Vnzla
0.35
0.02 594.00
Bco Provncl
1.94 -0.02 798000
Mrcntl Srvcs
5.50
0.50 601.00
Yld
52.91
9.51
72.78
351.46
68.33
125.44
238.62
288.08
164.19
21.62
61.08
128.32
35.34
33.36
63.19
83.98
157.71
132.10
121.54
80.00
226.54
122.17
71.17
441.00
322.37
201.51
24.52
114.66
218.06
104.12
54.92
93.79
71.37
227.84
36.45
101.51
166.83
123.31
539.49
161.67
144.44
433.52
61.15
51.87
195.68
156.59
46.85
320.35
58.85
49.69
176.36
61.49
28.29
190.10
43.62
126.28
32.37
22.09
101.94
P/E MCap m
1.95 21.18 93602.63
244.00
1.64 13.57 193204.34
35.47 176188.98
2.00 63.20 148886.96
0.81 36.41 225555.96
1.48 23.35 65634.28
1.57 13.45 60413.01
1.07 33.92 51604.35
0.10 -56.02 39059.08
1.53 22.70 215011.04
2.51 28.51 233447.12
2.52 -12.08 5069.36
2.99 23.60 284375.89
3.92 -79.88 40603.13
4.55 18.56 167312.27
2.25 16.00 89253.29
1.45 25.65 36547.86
2.14 28.28 378358.84
3.76 6.59 46180.26
2.25 42.47 62892.67
1.57 21.50 192096.42
2.08 40.74 142732.73
10.16 67654.3
0.76 33.80 95327.55
87.58 209322.35
1.25 34.15 56540.12
3.20 38.53 43688.91
0.71 35.33 72780.42
4.73 23.40 47711.05
4.02 16.47 52394.27
1.90 26.75 109911.17
2.11 14.89 37297.83
1.00 50.71 95888.04
1.99 6.24 24363.98
46.90 157218.37
1.36 15.88 102657.09
1.35 21.41 47728.22
- 285.17 889879.09
2.45 21.41 155423.74
2.02 12.03 42598.86
0.18 26.45 226528.39
1.10 32.34 83847.42
2.85 15.15 86494.3
1.69 25.78 154712.31
1.89 29.44 158314.75
2.91 11.86 88322.84
1.13 29.76 455794.78
4.25 -85.38 38033.98
4.79 9.90 222985.75
27.94 59842.07
3.19 23.89 24088.57
2.65 7.42 22175.12
0.57 39.93 376147.06
3.91 7.03 42934.83
1.60 47.91 377191.99
0.84 14.09 245727.61
5.37 36.99 37179.91
1.60 23.83 36503.87
0.08 284.63 1.80 - -14.95
2.5933337.12 0.00
283.78
163.13
75.08
Closing prices and highs & lows are in traded currency (with variations for that
country indicated by stock), market capitalisation is in USD. Highs & lows are
based on intraday trading over a rolling 52 week period.
♦ ex-dividend
■ ex-capital redistribution
# price at time of suspension
BONDS: GLOBAL INVESTMENT GRADE
Bid
yield
Day's
chge
yield
Mth's Spread
chge
vs
yield
US
Feb 11
High Yield US$
HCA Inc.
S*
Ratings
M*
F*
Bid
price
04/24
8.36
BB-
Ba2
BB
113.75
4.24
0.00
0.12
-
High Yield Euro
Aldesa Financial Services S.A.
04/21
7.25
-
-
B
71.10
28.23
0.00
0.64
25.98
Emerging US$
Peru
Colombia
Brazil
Poland
Mexico
Turkey
Turkey
Peru
Russia
Brazil
03/19
01/26
04/26
04/26
05/26
03/27
03/27
08/27
06/28
02/47
7.13
4.50
6.00
3.25
11.50
6.00
6.00
4.13
12.75
5.63
BBB+
BBB+
-
A3
Baa2
Ba2
A2
Baa1
Ba2
B2
A3
Baa3
Ba2
BBB+
BBBBBABBBBB+
BBBBB+
BBB
BB-
104.40
109.50
115.15
111.22
149.00
101.26
102.88
103.50
168.12
101.48
2.60
2.33
2.78
0.98
1.61
5.82
5.43
3.66
2.48
5.52
0.16
-0.01
0.03
0.00
0.00
0.14
0.01
0.07
0.08
0.52
0.65
0.16
-0.12
0.17
0.83
-0.02
0.05
0.80
0.34
1.28
1.73
-0.07
0.56
3.07
4.38
0.80
-
Emerging Euro
Brazil
04/21
2.88
BBBa2
BB- 103.09
0.05
0.01
-0.09
-1.19
Mexico
04/23
2.75
BBB+
A3
BBB+ 107.76
0.76
0.00
-0.07
-1.56
Mexico
04/23
2.75
Baa1
BBB- 106.48
-0.26
-0.36
Bulgaria
03/28
3.00
BBBBaa2
BBB 117.04
1.00
0.02
-0.15
-1.42
Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data LLC, an ICE Data Services company. US $ denominated bonds NY close; all
other London close. *S - Standard & Poor’s, M - Moody’s, F - Fitch.
VOLATILITY INDICES
Day's
change
Yld
Feb 11
Day Chng
Prev
52 wk high
52 wk low
VIX
24.42
0.51
23.91
38.94
14.10
VXD
22.45
0.09
22.36
39.58
2.67
VXN
30.65
0.58
30.07
44.05
18.01
VDAX
23.07
2.13
20.94
93.30
† CBOE. VIX: S&P 500 index Options Volatility, VXD: DJIA Index Options Volatility, VXN: NASDAQ Index Options Volatility.
‡ Deutsche Borse. VDAX: DAX Index Options Volatility.
BONDS: BENCHMARK GOVERNMENT
Red
Bid
Bid Day chg Wk chg Month
Year
Date Coupon
Price
Yield
yield
yield chg yld chg yld
Australia
04/24
2.75 103.62
1.07
-0.01
0.20
0.36
0.96
05/32
1.25 92.06
2.11
0.00
0.24
0.19
0.80
Austria
05/34
2.40 120.30
0.67
0.06
0.18
0.37
0.78
02/47
1.50 113.97
0.88
0.04
0.16
0.23
0.65
Belgium
10/23
0.20 100.91
-0.34
0.03
0.07
0.24
0.33
Canada
03/24
2.25 101.56
1.47
0.11
0.16
0.32
1.20
Denmark
11/23
1.50 103.11
-0.27
0.04
0.06
0.30
0.31
Finland
04/23
1.50 102.29
-0.46
0.02
0.03
0.14
0.24
04/31
0.75 102.04
0.52
0.07
0.17
0.41
0.80
France
05/23
1.75 102.85
-0.47
0.01
0.03
0.14
0.20
05/27
1.00 103.67
0.30
0.06
0.15
0.49
0.79
Germany
08/23
2.00 103.78
-0.50
0.01
0.01
0.15
0.24
08/27
0.50 102.29
0.08
0.06
0.14
0.42
0.74
08/50
0.00 88.22
0.44
0.03
0.13
0.19
0.41
Greece
01/28
3.75 111.83
1.65
0.05
0.53
0.76
1.22
Ireland
03/24
3.40 107.54
-0.20
0.05
0.06
0.30
0.40
Italy
07/24
1.75 103.00
0.48
0.06
0.17
0.44
0.75
08/27
2.05 104.56
1.18
0.09
0.25
0.56
1.07
05/31
6.00 137.02
1.65
0.11
0.25
0.55
1.14
03/48
3.45 120.24
2.40
0.08
0.22
0.35
1.05
Japan
04/23
0.05 99.97
0.07
0.01
0.01
-0.03
-0.01
02/28
0.05 98.83
0.35
0.00
0.04
0.09
12/34
1.20 110.17
0.39
0.02
0.06
0.13
0.13
12/49
0.40 88.84
0.85
0.03
0.08
0.15
0.18
Netherlands
07/23
1.75 103.20
-0.50
0.01
-0.01
0.14
0.20
07/27
0.75 103.06
0.18
0.06
0.15
0.45
0.74
New Zealand
04/27
4.50 109.39
2.55
-0.02
0.16
0.19
1.66
05/31
1.50 90.11
2.72
-0.01
0.21
0.20
1.31
05/31
1.50 90.11
2.72
-0.01
0.21
0.20
1.31
Norway
Portugal
10/23
4.95 108.66
-0.15
0.02
0.15
0.41
0.45
04/27
4.13 118.52
0.48
0.07
0.23
0.54
0.76
Spain
10/23
4.40 107.68
-0.09
0.02
0.09
0.38
0.44
Sweden
11/23
1.50 102.59
0.02
-0.07
0.00
0.17
0.35
12/27
0.13 121.40
-1.57
-0.02
0.17
0.47
0.21
06/30
0.13 119.20
-1.51
-0.02
0.18
0.44
0.14
Switzerland
06/24
1.25 103.47
-0.24
0.03
0.04
0.25
0.49
United Kingdom
07/23
0.75 99.31
1.23
0.08
0.20
0.57
1.23
07/27
1.25 99.46
1.35
0.08
0.16
0.38
1.12
07/47
1.50 96.78
1.66
0.08
0.14
0.29
0.60
United States
03/23
0.50 99.25
1.20
0.20
0.35
0.62
1.07
03/27
0.63 93.57
1.95
0.14
0.28
0.40
1.29
04/32
3.38 140.78
02/50
0.25 103.32
0.13
0.09
Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data LLC, an ICE Data Services company.
Feb 11
US$
FleetBoston Financial Corp.
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
NationsBank Corp.
GTE LLC
United Utilities PLC
Barclays Bank plc
Euro
Electricite de France (EDF)
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
Finland
Yen
Mexico
£ Sterling
innogy Fin B.V.
innogy Fin B.V.
Red
date Coupon
Bid
yield
Day's
chge
yield
Mth's Spread
chge
vs
yield
US
F*
Bid
price
01/28
02/28
03/28
04/28
08/28
01/29
6.88
5.00
6.80
6.94
6.88
4.50
BBB+
BBB+
BBB+
BBB+
BBB
A
Baa1
A3
Baa1
Baa2
Baa1
A1
AA
AAAA+
129.00
117.21
127.69
128.27
130.43
96.46
2.54
2.47
2.72
2.80
2.62
5.02
-0.01
0.00
-0.01
0.00
-0.07
0.00
-0.05
0.32
0.06
-0.11
-0.22
0.02
-
04/30
02/31
02/31
04/31
4.63
3.00
3.00
0.75
ABBB+
BBB+
AA+
A3
A3
A3
Aa1
AA
A
AA+
137.45
121.70
124.42
111.08
0.82
0.93
0.68
-0.27
-0.01
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.10
0.02
-0.11
-0.05
-0.87
06/26
1.09
-
Baa1
BBB-
98.73
1.34
-0.02
-0.14
0.27
06/30
06/30
6.25
6.25
BBB
BBB
Baa2
Baa2
AA-
137.45
128.68
2.19
3.20
-0.03
0.00
0.02
-0.01
0.40
S*
Ratings
M*
Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data LLC, an ICE Data Services company. US $ denominated bonds NY close; all other London
close. *S - Standard & Poor’s, M - Moody’s, F - Fitch.
GILTS: UK CASH MARKET
Red
52 Week
Change in Yield
Price £
Yield
Day
Week
Month
Year
High
Low
Tr 1.75pc '22
100.55
0.76
-2.56
-12.64
80.95 -1620.00 104.27 100.51
Tr 0.75pc '23
99.23
1.29
4.88
12.17 115.00 12800.00 101.08
99.23
Tr 0.125pc '24
97.54
1.40
3.70
11.11
84.21 2700.00 100.19
97.54
Tr 2pc '25
102.11
1.39
2.96
11.20
67.47 3375.00 119.99
99.56
Tr 0.125pc '26
95.25
1.36
1.49
9.68
58.14 946.15
99.88
95.25
Tr 1.25pc '27
99.39
1.37
1.48
7.87
50.55 552.38 106.38
99.39
Tr 0.875pc '29
96.03
1.42
0.71
7.58
40.59 255.00 103.58
96.03
Tr 4.25pc '32
125.49
1.56
1.30
8.33
38.05 173.68 139.48 125.49
Tr 4.25pc '36
132.72
1.64
1.23
10.07
34.43 110.26 148.21 132.72
Tr 4.5pc '42
149.47
1.67
0.60
8.44
30.47
72.16 169.96 149.47
Tr 3.75pc '52
151.07
1.62
0.62
8.72
31.71
58.82 180.27 151.07
Tr 4pc '60
171.87
1.51
0.67
10.22
37.27
54.08 213.01 171.87
Gilts benchmarks & non-rump undated stocks. Closing mid-price in pounds per £100 nominal of stock.
Feb 11
Amnt
£m
29.68
33.73
34.12
38.33
33.89
39.34
41.87
38.71
30.41
27.21
24.10
24.12
GILTS: UK FTSE ACTUARIES INDICES
Price Indices
Fixed Coupon
1 Up to 5 Years
2 5 - 10 Years
3 10 - 15 Years
4 5 - 15 Years
5 Over 15 Years
7 All stocks
Index Linked
1 Up to 5 Years
2 Over 5 years
3 5-15 years
4 Over 15 years
5 All stocks
Yield Indices
5 Yrs
10 Yrs
15 Yrs
Day's
chg %
-0.07
-0.11
-0.15
-0.12
-0.13
-0.11
Feb 11
85.10
169.15
197.14
175.22
330.06
170.17
Feb 11
313.57
829.99
517.58
1088.19
739.60
Feb 11
1.36
1.54
1.67
Day's
chg %
-0.07
-0.29
-0.26
-0.30
-0.27
Feb 10
1.34
1.52
1.66
Yr ago
0.10
0.52
0.84
Total
Return
2415.42
3529.07
4408.11
3744.92
5562.12
3729.61
Month
chg %
0.13
-4.30
-1.82
-5.28
-3.83
20 Yrs
45 Yrs
Year's
chg %
3.77
3.33
2.06
3.44
3.32
Return
1 month
-1.07
-2.42
-3.68
-2.85
-6.87
-4.05
Total
Return
2628.98
6301.18
4161.93
8028.13
5724.66
Feb 11
1.70
1.42
Return
1 year
-2.75
-6.47
-8.30
-6.98
-10.71
-7.45
Yield
1.36
1.44
1.62
1.52
1.59
1.56
Return
1 month
0.13
-4.24
-1.64
-5.28
-3.79
Return
1 year
4.92
3.69
2.83
3.66
3.77
Feb 10
1.69
1.41
inflation 0%
inflation 5%
Feb 11
Dur yrs Previous
Yr ago
Feb 11
Dur yrs Previous
Real yield
Up to 5 yrs
-2.92
2.21
-2.94
-2.74
-3.29
2.22
-3.33
Over 5 yrs
-2.06
23.16
-2.07
-2.13
-2.08
23.20
-2.09
5-15 yrs
-2.41
9.49
-2.43
-2.63
-2.48
9.49
-2.51
Over 15 yrs
-2.01
28.52
-2.02
-2.07
-2.02
28.53
-2.03
All stocks
-2.07
20.93
-2.08
-2.13
-2.09
20.99
-2.10
See FTSE website for more details www.ftse.com/products/indices/gilts
©2018 Tradeweb Markets LLC. All rights reserved. The Tradeweb FTSE
Gilt Closing Prices information contained herein is proprietary to
Tradeweb; may not be copied or re-distributed; is not warranted to be
accurate, complete or timely; and does not constitute investment advice.
Tradeweb is not responsible for any loss or damage that might result from the use of this information.
Yr ago
1.01
0.95
Yr ago
-3.12
-2.14
-2.71
-2.08
-2.15
All data provided by Morningstar unless otherwise noted. All elements listed are indicative and believed accurate
at the time of publication. No offer is made by Morningstar, its suppliers, or the FT. Neither the FT, nor
Morningstar’s suppliers, warrant or guarantee that the information is reliable or complete. Neither the FT nor
Morningstar’s suppliers accept responsibility and will not be liable for any loss arising from the reliance on the
use of the listed information. For all queries e-mail [email protected]
Data provided by Morningstar | www.morningstar.co.uk
★
12 February/13 February 2022
17
FTWeekend
FINANCIAL TIMES SHARE SERVICE
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18
★
12 February/13 February 2022
Twitter: @FTLex
Markets on edge over
central bank action
to curb inflation
Solvency II:
capitalising on reforms
Wireless charging technologies
Britain’s new “Brexit opportunities
minister” is crowdsourcing ideas for
possible wins. True, arcane insurance
rules seem unlikely to feature on the
public’s list of red tape gripes. But the
repercussions of reforming Solvency II
could dwarf the impact of other plans.
Ministers are close to agreeing a deal
with watchdogs over reforms to the
six-year-old rules, which determine
how much capital insurers must hold.
The case for reform is clear, Bank of
England governor Andrew Bailey said
on Thursday. A one-size-fits-all regime
does not suit the idiosyncrasies of
individual markets.
The two sides do have some overlap.
Insurers and regulators agree that the
risk margin — aimed at ensuring
liabilities are transferable to another
insurer if required — is too large and
too volatile. The bigger reform
concerns the “matching adjustment”.
This allows writers of long-term
business such as annuities to match
predictable cash flows from assets
against their liabilities. Reforming that
accounts for nearly two-thirds of the
£95bn of capital that the Association of
British Insurers reckons could be freed
up by Solvency II reform.
The insurance industry would like to
see a lot more assets qualify for this
treatment. It says reform will support
transition to a net-zero economy and
the government’s levelling-up agenda.
Moreover, it notes that Brussels has
proposed its own reforms of Solvency
II, designed to create a short-term
€90bn capital boost for Europe’s
insurers. Unless the UK embraces
ambitious reform, there will be a Brexit
penalty, not a dividend, insurers moan.
Regulators may put a brake on
lawmakers’ ambition in the EU. As in
the UK, officials are cautious about
weakening policyholder protections to
benefit investors. Yet there is room for
manoeuvre. Enough prudence is built
into the regime to allow insurers more
flexibility. If done sensibly, reform
could yield long-term benefits for the
sector and economy alike.
SMIC:
chip shot
China’s biggest chipmaker may lack
leading-edge tech and be under the
yoke of US sanctions but it is getting a
surprise boost from previously one of
its biggest drawbacks. Semiconductor
Manufacturing International
Corporation’s sales last year hint at
what to expect this year.
Profit from operations quadrupled to
$1.4bn last year over the year as its top
line rose 39 per cent to a record $5.4bn.
SMIC has what the market needs most:
the older, low-tech chips widely used in
cars, mobile network gear and
smartphone cameras. Carmakers
cannot meet demand. Couple that with
a boom in electric-car sales in China,
up 160 per cent last year, and Beijing’s
push to treble its 5G network coverage
in the next three years. It has kept the
supply of chips as tight as ever.
Risks remain. US sanctions mean
SMIC bears the constant risk of parts
supply disruptions. It could lose
important suppliers and clients such as
US chip designer Qualcomm, which
uses SMIC to fabricate some chips.
These US obstacles could also slow
Roadside transformer
takes power from the
National Grid
As the car passes over the
coils, energy is transferred
to the battery via magnetic
induction
Charging lane
Control unit
Control units along the roadside
send electricity through coils in
pads buried in the road
So you have bought into the green
dream: a fully electric vehicle. Juice it
up on your drive or at a local charging
point if there is one. Then all you
have to do on longer journeys is find a
scarce roadside charging station —
assuming you find one and that any
equipment needed is compatible.
Dynamic or induction charging
offers one seemingly clever solution.
Imagine the road itself powering
and charging your vehicle as you
drive along. Visions of a grown-up
version of slot-car racing toys such as
Scalextric spring to mind.
In this case, the idea is to generate a
magnetic charge in the road that
vehicles pick up and turn into
electricity to drive their wheels.
Holcim has announced a partnership
to develop magnetisable concrete.
Could this be the way to close the
charging-supply gap? In the UK, for
example, the government recognises
there is a lack of chargers. In order to
meet the UK’s 2050 net zero carbon
goals it must intervene. There are
only 25,000 charge points in the UK,
or 34 per 100,000 people. That
number must rise to almost half a
million by 2030.
Unfortunately, dynamic charging
does not offer a mass market
solution. The technology requires
compromises on efficiency and
intensity. That requires more power
with longer charging times than with
rapid charge plug-in technologies.
The biggest problem with magnetic
tarmac is that deploying the
technology widely would mean
replacing a lot of road. Waiting in
traffic at roadworks would only
increase range anxiety for EV owners.
SMIC’s development and production of
any advanced chips. It relies heavily on
ASML Holding, the Dutch maker of
chipmaking equipment. ASML has
previously had difficulties securing
approval to export to SMIC, reportedly
due to US influence.
SMIC will want to pump out all the
chips it can. Operating margins soared
in 2021 to 25 per cent, treble that of the
previous year. Three new fabrication
plants opening this year should keep
that trend up. As pricier contract
makers, such as Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing Company, are
overwhelmed with orders, clients once
wary of US-China political crossfire
may well turn back to SMIC.
Investors have an opportunity.
SMIC’s Hong Kong-listed shares have
dropped this past year and trade at a
discount on a forward earnings basis to
peers. As most car companies warn of
longer delivery times, SMIC’s shares
could soon stage a reversal.
Last year, Zillow made $8.1bn in
revenue and reported an adjusted
ebitda margin of just 2 per cent.
Caution is warranted. Barton has
overpromised and underdelivered
before. In 2018, he bullishly predicted
that Zillow Offers, the company’s illfated homebuying unit, could generate
$20bn in annual revenue by 2024.
Instead, last November Zillow shut
down Offers after racking up big losses.
Despite yesterday’s rally — it has
recently managed to sell off houses for
more than expected — Zillow is worth a
quarter of its February 2021 peak.
Zillow lost an average $27,609 for
every home it flipped during the fourth
quarter including interest expenses,
renovation and holdings costs. Losses
at the homes division were $881.5mn
before taxes for the whole of 2021. The
group also took an asset writedown,
worth almost half that, in the second
half of last year. It still has 10,000
homes left in its inventory to sell off.
Zillow’s legacy property listing and
advertising remains a bright spot. Sales
were up 14 per cent during the fourth
quarter and the business enjoys a
healthy 46 per cent adjusted ebitda
margin. Clearly just having a solid roof
overhead does not appeal to Zillow.
Instead of creating Zillow 2.0,
management should work on better
stewardship of shareholders capital.
“Innovation is a bumpy road,” wrote
Barton in his letter to shareholders.
Perhaps. But some of that depends on
who is driving.
Zillow/super app:
flipping out
The folks at Zillow have lots of big
ideas. The last, house flipping, struck
out big time. Now the online property
listing company has found a new plan
to lift it from the ashes of its home
trading fiasco: a “housing super app”.
Details are vague. Boss Rich Barton
wants to bring together “all the
fragmented pieces of the moving
process” on to one platform. Despite a
lack of details, the company believes
the super app can help the group
deliver $5bn of revenue and a 45 per
cent adjusted ebitda margin by 2025.
Lex on the web
For notes on today’s stories
go to www.ft.com/lex
China’s monitoring agency reports that air quality in its cities has improved dramatically
PM2.5 pollution (micrograms per cubic metre)
of mainland China cities over 10mn population
10
20
30
40
50
2020
60
70
80
90
2013
100
110
Shijiazhuang
Tianjin
Baoding
Linyi
Harbin
Shenzhen
Beijing
Wuhan
Chengdu
Suzhou
Chongqing
Shanghai
Guangzhou
Nanyang
Source: China’s National Air Quality
Monitoring Network
Follow @ftclimate on Instagram
Since China began its
“war against pollution” in
2014, China’s Air Quality
Monitoring Network has
reported a 40 per cent
reduction in pollution across
the country.
Levels of the most dangerous
category of particulate
pollution in Beijing are half of
what they were when the
country took radical steps to
improve air quality before
hosting the summer Olympics
in 2008 according to the
agency. Other parts of China
also reported their lowest
levels of pollution in two
decades.
Visual journalism: Cleve Jones, Developer: Ændra Rininsland
For the FT’s latest
climate change stories
ft.com/climate
Katie Martin
The Long View
W
e are approaching the
point of peak handwringing over inflation
and peak scrutiny of
central bankers. This
can only go badly for financial markets.
US inflation data released this week
gave the strong impression that policymakers have been caught napping. The
annual inflation rate exceeded economists’ expectations and struck yet
another 40-year high at 7.5 per cent in
January, up from 7 per cent in the
previous month.
Traders have been repeatedly
smacked in the face by surprisingly high
inflation readings for a year. You would
think they might be getting used to it by
now. Apparently not, judging from the
market reaction.
Bets on an even more aggressive
pushback from the US Federal Reserve
hit new extremes; selling pressure in
benchmark 10-year US government
bonds took the yield above 2 per cent for
the first time since 2019. In the more
interest rate-sensitive bits of the market, chiefly two-year debt, moves were
even more chunky. Yields there, which
hovered at just 0.4 per cent as recently
as November, leapt to a high of 1.64 per
cent in the biggest sell-off since 2009.
But the scale of the moves was not just
down to the inflation numbers themselves. Fanning the flames, the St Louis
Fed president, James Bullard, a voter on
the Fed’s rate-setting committee, told
Bloomberg he would like to see the
benchmark interest rate rise by a full
percentage point by July, including a
half-point rise for the first time in more
than 20 years. He even sounded amenable to the Fed stepping in and raising
rates now, before its next scheduled
rate-setting meeting. This is like the
crisis-fighting easing mode of 2020 but
in reverse.
His intervention meant that just as
stocks were recovering from the initial
shock of the data, they stumbled further. “Bullard killed it,” as one banker
put it. “Well played.”
It is a point that bears repeating: central bankers do not exist purely to make
long-only equity fund managers’ lives
easier. If they did, then they would be
failing on their mandate pretty badly by
now: the S&P 500 benchmark index of
US stocks is down more than 6 per cent
already this year, while the tech-filled
Nasdaq Composite has dropped more
than 10 per cent.
Nonetheless, the scale of the recalibration in markets is extraordinary. As
recently as October, market participants dared to bet that we might see one
rate rise from the Fed this year. They are
The difficulty in decoding
what the tough talk means
bolsters the case for 2022’s
only certainty: volatility
now pricing in six or more.
Goldman Sachs is expecting seven, up
from five before the inflation numbers
landed. “We see the arguments for a
[half-point] rate hike in March,” Jan
Hatzius, chief economist at the bank,
wrote, noting the central bank has not
kicked off a rate-raising cycle in that
manner since the 1980s and has not
delivered an emergency rise in rates
since 1994.
The trick here is figuring out how
much of the tough talk from central
bankers is just for show. This is not easy,
for investors or for the policymakers
themselves, and that further bolsters
the case for the only certainty in markets this year: volatility.
Karen Ward, chief market strategist
for Europe at JPMorgan Asset Management, is not convinced. “We are in peak
inflation hysteria at the moment,” she
says. “As soon as the numbers are at
least heading down, that will take the
pressure off the central banks.”
She adds: “There’s a scenario where
central banks do slam on the brakes
rather than easing off the accelerator.
That’s not what we’re expecting. I think
some of the statements we’ve heard
recently are rhetoric rather than intention. They want to show that they are
not asleep on the job, that they will do
whatever it takes, and I understand that
pressure to do that.”
A slower, steadier series of quarterpoint rises through this year and
beyond, landing at a higher point than
the market is pricing, is the more likely
outcome, says her colleague Mike Bell.
So what do central bankers say next?
In retrospect, it might be better if the
answer was nothing. The scope for misunderstandings, exaggerations and missteps is arguably not worth the bother.
But this genie is well and truly out of the
bottle.
Back in 2014, on his way out of the
Fed, governor Jeremy Stein offered
some thoughts that resonate now. “In
some circumstances there are very real
limits to what even the most careful and
deliberate communications strategy
can do to temper market volatility,” he
said in a speech.
“This is just the nature of the beast
when dealing with speculative markets.
There is always a temptation for the
central bank to speak in a whisper,
because anything that gets said reverberates so loudly in markets. But the
softer it talks, the more the market leans
in to hear better and, thus, the more the
whisper gets amplified.”
Nobody wants to inject needless,
avoidable shake-ups in to asset prices.
But monetary policy is data-dependent
and the data are pretty wild. It increasingly feels like there’s no way out of this
situation without a mess.
[email protected]
Saturday 12 February / Sunday 13 February 2022
SUPPLEMENT OF THE YEAR
The BBC at 100 Lionel Barber on the past and future of a British institution — PAGE 8
Follow us on Instagram @ft_weekend
that the post-Olympics hotel quarantine
would be free.
Beijing’s Winter Olympics is an event
where the healthiest people seem to be
the most afraid of the virus. “To be negative for Covid,” replied Claudia Pechstein, a German flag-bearer competing
at her eighth Olympics, when asked
about her main ambition at the Games.
One member of the winning Norwegian
mixed relay biathlon team did not
attend the press conference when his
team won gold; he had been isolating
due to a possible coronavirus contact. In
the same room, social-distancing signs
advised keeping one metre from each
other, and two metres from the athletes.
If the cold war was reflected in the
1956 water polo match between Hungary and the Soviet Union, there was
more than a hint of the war on Covid at
the women’s ice hockey match between
Canada and the Russian Olympic Committee. Proceedings were delayed by
nearly an hour after players for the
former refused to take to the ice while
Zero-Covid is something
you feel rather than see, an
ongoing sacrifice that
quickly locks you into its
almost meditative rhythms
Tales from the
Beijing bubble
The Winter Olympics are showing just how far
China is prepared to go to keep Covid at bay.
Thomas Hale reports from inside the ‘closed loop’
T
he gate that seals off the
FT’s Olympic hotel from the
rest of Beijing is padlocked
not once but twice. Each
morning, after removing
the padlocks and a supplementary 10ft
pole that looks as if it belongs in a siege,
masked guards open it to let the bus in.
The gate is momentarily bolted shut
again while a handful of guests board. It
is then briefly reopened, so that the bus
can leave for the media centre. Then it is
locked again.
The entire process takes a matter of
minutes, is repeated many times a day
and is typical of life within the “closed
loop” system that has been established
in the Chinese capital for the Winter
Olympics. Its aim is simple: to stop the
Covid-19 virus spreading from the rest
of the world — embodied by the athletes
and journalists attending the Games —
into the real China.
Like many of the pageants, fairs and
exhibitions that mapped out history
before it, the Beijing Winter Olympics of
2022 condenses an era into a moment. It
is the culmination of the most extraordinary anti-pandemic machine ever
assembled. Two years after the virus
emerged in the city of Wuhan, China is
the last major country on earth still trying to eliminate it entirely. Through a
combination of quarantine, mass testing and the lockdown of whole cities, it
has recorded 107,000 cases in total —
fewer than the US recorded on New
Year’s Day alone.
Any Olympian unaware of the tenor
of China’s “zero-Covid” policy would
have been in for a shock at Beijing’s
international airport, where all the staff
From top: hazmat-suited
staff are a frequent sight at
the Games; mask-wearing
spectators at the men’s
slopestyle finals earlier
this week — Roman Pilipey/EPA-EFE/
Shutterstock; AP Photo/Lee Jin-man
were wearing full hazmat suits. Arrivals,
if they had submitted proof of negative
tests and vaccination before flying, were
spared the three weeks of solitary hotel
confinement that mainland China and
Hong Kong have typically imposed. But
they might at any moment be isolated if
one of their daily tests comes back positive — an anxiety-inducing prospect for
people who realise years of work in a
single day. One unidentified figure in the
airport appeared to be wearing a full
oxygen mask. Several athletes have
already missed their events.
Tokyo also introduced a bubble for
the summer Olympics last year, but it
was porous and guests could walk
around. Beijing’s bubble is on a different
level and has a slight doomsday theme.
Hotel rooms usually provide guests with
one complimentary bottle of water; my
room provided 24 litres. As I stepped
out the first morning, an employee in a
hazmat suit was heavily dousing the
corridor carpets with disinfectant. The
hotel restaurant serves food with disposable plates and cutlery. Masks are
not only obligatory; they must be a certain kind: N95, KN95 or FFP2. Many
staff supplement them with a visor.
Rather than a territory in its own
right, the “closed loop” is a constellation
of hotels and sporting venues dotted
across the city, reachable on special
buses that authorities have instructed
people to avoid interacting with even if
they crash. Beijing remains a city you
never quite arrive in: a medley of highrise flats and national headquarters
where the austerity of the architecture
is matched only by the austerity of the
winter cold; a place of growing but
uneasy geopolitical power, where athletes have been warned to watch what
they say and nearly every journalist has
a burner phone.
The borders of the loop are flexible,
but never penetrable. At the opening
ceremony, western political leaders
were absent but some of the attendees
were drawn from what insiders quickly
began thinking of as the outside world.
Authorities last month cancelled ticket
sales but have since invited 150,000
people to attend events.
Yan Jiarong, a spokesperson for the
organisers, this week said spectators
come from inside and outside the
closed loop. Venues are sometimes
divided between inside and outside sectors. Near the media centre — close to
an 846ft tower completed on the back
of the last, very different Chinese Olympic Games — there is a section of fence
where those on the outside congregate
to take photos of the loop’s interior.
One of the burdens of the closed system, in a city that feels like the capital
of something far more than a single
country, is the constraints on dining.
There are no shops except for those
in hotels and a kind of frontier-town
general store at the media centre, which
stocks items such as beer, calculators
and chocolate (which sold out rapidly).
The food choices are adequate but
limited, and must be consumed at
tables where plastic panes block off
fellow diners in every possible direction, in keeping with an atmosphere
where some lifts have signs saying
“don’t talk”.
At the media centre, certain meals —
such as burgers and fries — are assembled by robots in an apparent bid to prevent virus transmission. But these
robots seem to generate rather than
replace jobs: the burgers must be passed
to you by a human server and involve
some sort of behind-the-scenes activity.
Across the canteen there is a cocktail
bar — an incongruous glimpse of luxury
that has been widely shared online,
where a robot shakes the cocktails but,
again, the staff hand them over.
In fact, the entire closed-loop operation depends on vast manpower,
especially from the thousands of volunteers who are often drawn from nearby
universities, though their youth is at
first disguised by their masks. Like
other workers at the Games, they will
have to quarantine for weeks when they
go home. But their spirits are high. At
the curling, one bagpipe player from
Henan province said that, for the Olympics, quarantine is “very much worth it”.
In a taxi — an occasional alternative to
the buses that allow you to travel
between hotels — the driver explained
they waited for the Russian Olympic
Committee’s Covid test results, given
several recent positives. Eventually, the
game was played with both teams wearing face masks beneath their helmets.
But it was difficult to ascertain what
had happened. A chill typically
descends on press conferences within
the loop; everyone is striving as hard as
possible to say as little as possible on
topics outside sport. The Canadian
coach told reporters that he had no
information on the delay, other than
“health and safety concerns”.
Aside from the consolation of worldclass winter sports, the loop feels a bit
like being trapped in an airport. It is the
continual journeys on buses that offer
the clearest window into actual Beijing
and beyond — on one journey we
flashed past locals skating on a frozen
river. Several skiing events take place a
three-hour drive outside of the city in
the mountains of Zhangjiakou — which,
Continued on page 2
2
★
FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
Life
Note from the
FTW editor
“Stepping around the block I find a
large window-sized ventilator
cooling a drab and windowless
garden shed. I wonder why in
Siberia someone might need to aircondition a shed.”
When readers ask for one word
to describe what we do, I often
reply “global”. This week’s edition
is brimming with examples of this,
not least the wonderful piece on
Page 17 which yielded the opening
quote. What better global story for
the FT than a tale of cryptomania
in Siberia?
Elsewhere in the edition, Lionel
Barber, the FT’s former editor,
returns and levels his sights on the
BBC at 100. He has not held back
but even more than his critiques of
it and its detractors, I was struck
by his reminder of the remarkable
characters who worked at the BBC
in the mid-20th century.
The BBC’s is just one of many
striking centenaries this year.
They are on our mind for our May
7 festival in Washington. We will
take on 1922, the birth of the
modern, James Joyce and more. I
look forward to seeing you. Thank
you as ever for reading us.
Alec Russell
A picture of confidence, Richard
Nixon strode down the stairs of Air
Force One after landing in Beijing on a
brisk winter morning in February 1972
and stuck out his hand so fast it was
impossible to miss the goodwill. There
to greet him was premier Zhou Enlai
and an honour guard of Chinese
soldiers. Nixon had arrived in what his
right flank in the Republican party
considered enemy territory.
There were no crowds, as there had
been for the visit of Ethiopian dictator
Haile Selassie, months earlier. And,
beneath the cheery demeanour, Nixon
was nervous, unsure. He had received
no word about a meeting with Mao
Zedong, the leader he had come to
visit. A photo with Mao was essential
for Nixon’s planned geopolitical tour de
force — the US and China teaming up
against the Soviet Union.
When the two leaders eventually
met, Mao was on his best behaviour. He
regaled Nixon with aphorisms and
jollied him with the remark that he
liked “rightists”. The encounter set in
train a rapprochement that shifted the
global balance of power, with
Washington and Beijing on one side
and Moscow, alone, on the other.
Fifty years on, Nixon’s adventurous
diplomacy is as relevant as ever. In
what seems reminiscent of the old
China-Soviet Union axis, presidents
Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are
finding common cause as the Ukraine
crisis heats up. They met for the 38th
time last week. The world is again
being carved into competing blocs.
How they align or balance against each
other will define the century. But it is
China in the driving seat at the
moment. A nod from America is no
longer required, or desired.
I beat Richard Nixon to China by five
years. A group of 50 Australian
university students of mixed
ideological backgrounds — and some,
like myself, with none in particular —
arrived in early 1967. The Cultural
Revolution, that we later learnt
claimed millions of lives, was in full
throttle. We saw Mao at his worst.
Massive demonstrations denouncing
“running dogs of capitalism” filled the
streets of the cities. Factories were idle,
the countryside in upheaval. Mao’s
foreign minister, Chen Yi, with
apparently nothing better to do, met us
in the Great Hall of the People and tried
to humour us with interpretations of
The inference was that the
endowment was behind the
demonstrations. I did a little research
and found that it had spent just under
$640,000 in Hong Kong that year, a
modest figure for an organisation its
size. I knew after that lunch the
relationship had changed irrevocably.
Richard Nixon and Zhou Enlai toast in the Great Hall of the People, Beijing, 1972 — Bob Daugherty/AP
A week that changed the world
Jane Perlez beat
Nixon to China by
five years. After
decades following
the country’s
fortunes, she asks
what the historic
1972 visit can teach
today’s leaders
Mao’s “thought”. Later, Mao cruelly
demoted him.
On our last day in China before
crossing back into Hong Kong, several
of us snuck into a crowded stadium in
Canton, now the powerhouse city
Guangzhou. Two men and a woman in
their sixties, who were described to us
as bourgeois “revisionists”, stood on a
podium, their heads bowed. Thousands
of people yelled slogans and several
excited Red Guards harangued them.
They were then escorted out a side
door and taken off for what we knew
must have been a terrible fate.
That taste of China implanted in my
head its size, importance and the
power of the Communist party to
mobilise people. I sensed there was no
way China was going to stay in a Maoinduced impoverished condition. From
that experience, I also saw the origins
of the propaganda machine Xi
harnesses to stoke brittle nationalism
and stir the anti-Americanism that
taunts the US as a nation in decay.
I returned to Beijing half a dozen
times before secretary of state Colin
Powell visited in the weeks before 9/11.
It was his first time there in nearly two
decades. During a news conference, he
told reporters about his astonishment
at the crowded Beijing skyline. I can
remember thinking as I listened: why is
he so surprised? China has been like
this for a while.
After China joined the World Trade
Organization in 2001, the new
confidence surged across Asia. You
could feel the wellspring of China’s
clout everywhere. Conferences of
sleepy regional groups — the
Association for Southeast Asian
Nations, for example — suddenly
became showcases for China’s most
senior leaders. They turned up,
sometimes the Americans didn’t.
I arrived in Beijing in 2012 as a New
York Times correspondent at the
moment Xi assumed the leadership of
China. I already had clues about how
he would be received in Washington. I
had attended a state department lunch
in honour of Xi when he was in the last
days of his vice-presidency. The formal
dining room on the seventh floor was
packed with America’s pre-eminent
China hands. They were exuberant
about the economic relationship. It
would be a while before reality set in.
Once I settled in Beijing, I looked for
one of the interpreters who had
accompanied us on our student trip in
the 1960s. Back then, Mr Li — I will call
him only by his last name — had been
helpful in explaining the intricacies of
the Cultural Revolution. Always neatly
dressed in a Mao-style suit of blue
cotton, he was a gifted English speaker.
Now in his early eighties, Mr Li and
his wife came to my apartment one
afternoon. They brought a beautiful
gift, a miniature ceramic tea set. As
they were leaving, Mr Li told me that
when he served as our interpreter he
had been in military intelligence.
I saw him a couple of times after that
but then he no longer answered my
calls. I suspect that as Xi started his
purge of the military, and as China’s
surveillance system gathered steam, he
could not risk a connection with a New
York Times reporter.
I had another relationship going back
to that first trip. Chen Xiaolu — the son
Chen warned me: Xi
believes America is a nation
in decline, he’s going to take
advantage. He was right
of Chen Yi, the foreign minister —
became an occasional lunch
companion. We ate at his favourite
Italian restaurant in one of the big
western hotels. I had written about Xi’s
major programmes designed to
compete with the US: the Belt and
Road Initiative, and the Asian
Infrastructure and Investment Bank.
Washington had failed to deter some of
its Asian allies from joining the bank, a
mis-step that was duly noted in Beijing.
Chen warned me: Xi is confident in
China’s ambitions, Barack Obama
should watch out. Xi believes America
is a nation in decline, he’s going to take
advantage. Chen, who later died from a
heart attack which friends said was
brought on by a clash with Xi’s
apparatchiks, was right.
As I was leaving China in the autumn
of 2019, a friendly government official
invited me to lunch. I looked forward
to a warm farewell. Instead, I received
a lecture on the perfidies of the US. The
protests were under way in Hong Kong.
My lunch partner told me Washington
was to blame and, in particular, Allen
Weinstein. Fortunately, I knew of
Weinstein. “He’s dead,” I replied. He
had died four years earlier. “It doesn’t
matter. He was head of the National
Endowment for Democracy.”
Nixon, the architect of the opening to
China, and Henry Kissinger, the
organiser, had worked hard for three
years to bring about the meeting with
Mao. In Islamabad in July 1971,
Kissinger went along with the indignity
of being squashed into a 1960s VW
Beetle, belonging to the son of
Pakistan’s foreign secretary, Sultan
Mohammad Khan, for the drive to the
airport for the flight to Beijing. It was
imperative his trip be kept secret so as
not to inflame the doubters in his party.
Nixon stayed in China for a sevenday televised spectacular brought live
into American living rooms. America’s
network news anchors trailed Nixon to
the Great Wall, to banquets where he
spoke glowingly of the new
rapprochement, to a lake in Hangzhou
where he fed goldfish. When he got
home, his ratings in the polls had
soared by seven points. Ronald Reagan,
then governor of California, joked that
Nixon’s trip should be a pilot for a
television series.
After his resignation in disgrace,
Nixon kept a constant interest in
China. He visited Mao before he died in
1976. But he had few illusions that
China would become democratic: that
goal was for sentimentalists. And he
intuited that his achievement in prying
China away from the Soviets could
eventually end up to America’s
disadvantage. He could see that China
would catch up with the US militarily
and economically.
His biographer, Richard Reeves,
recalled that Nixon believed there
would eventually be conflict between
the US and China, and in that situation,
the outlook for the US was grim.
“It might be a shooting war. It might
be an economic war,” Reeves told an
audience at the John F Kennedy
Library in Boston in 2006. “But their
interests were fundamentally different
over the long term. And, eventually,
they would clash.” It was up to his
successors, Nixon believed, and the job
of the west to prevent that from
happening, or prevent that for as long
as possible, Reeves said. “The east
would win that confrontation,” was
Nixon’s assessment.
Now the hardliners in Washington
say Nixon was misguided. They argue
the relationship with China helped its
economy too much, and hurt
America’s. The Communist party could
not have survived into the 21st century,
they insist, if the US had not backed
China’s integration into the
international system. They are
dismissive of the joint intelligence
relationship aimed against the
Soviet Union that unfolded after
Nixon left office.
It’s the lack of diplomacy today we
need to worry about. There’s no hint of
talks between Washington and Beijing,
or attempts to find a path on critical
issues, including China’s increasing
nuclear arsenal.
“China is a full-service competitor,”
says Charles Kupchan of Georgetown
University. “Look at the indicators —
AI, quantum computing. They have
1.4bn people and a market growing by
leaps and bounds . . . I understand
Biden saying: ‘We’re going to dig in,
we’re going to compete.’ I would like to
see the other side of the coin.”
Xi and Biden have known each other
for more than a decade. Will either be
able to work up the nerve of Nixon? It
was one minute to midnight with the
Soviets when Nixon went to China. Will
Xi or Biden rise to the new reality 50
years later?
Jane Perlez’s podcast ‘The Great Wager:
How Nixon and Kissinger Made Friends
with China and How It’s All Unraveling’ is
on NPR’s ‘Here and Now’ (wbur.org/
hereandnow) from Feb 18
Tales from the Beijing bubble
Continued from page 1
after a few days in the loop, feels like a
form of freedom.
Last weekend, the road between
Zhangjiakou and Beijing was almost
entirely deserted. It was unclear
whether this was because it was the last
day of the Spring Festival, or whether no
one used this particular road much anyway. The journey conveyed a sense of
the desire, so dominant at the 2008
Olympics, to impress on outsiders the
miracle of China’s rise.
But the roads and bridges have this
time been overshadowed by the less visible and more astonishing infrastructure of the coronavirus system — one
that aims to impress a domestic rather
than foreign audience, and one that
surely could not be replicated anywhere
else. Low infections, like high GDP
growth, have become a kind of mandate
to govern; the costs, like off-balancesheet debts, are difficult to pinpoint.
As with China itself, the closed-loop
system was not always quite what it
seemed. I asked the guards outside my
hotel why, one morning, they were no
longer using the 10ft pole that usually
barricaded the gate — perhaps the
harshness of the measures was being
relaxed? They explained it was because
the wind was low; it had only been there
to stop the hastily assembled fencing
from being blown over. But there were
at least 10 visible cameras in the
small area where the bus drove in to
collect us. The borders of the loop
might have been clearly demarcated,
but the lines where its ambitions and
pressures blurred into a wider climate of
state control were ambiguously drawn.
In the bar — an incongruous
glimpse of luxury — a robot
shakes the cocktails but the
staff hand them over
Zero-Covid is something you feel
rather than see, an ongoing sacrifice
that quickly locks you into its almost
meditative rhythms. After a week, daily
cases at the Olympics, which number in
the hundreds combined and at one
point overtook those in all of neighbouring China, had fallen to almost zero. But
it is difficult to celebrate the staving off
of disaster, even if it is usually a greater
achievement than mere success.
At the speedskating stadium, I
took off my KN95 mask for slightly too
long while drinking a Costa coffee,
one of the few daily joys of life within
the loop. A volunteer swiftly rushed
over. I apologised, gesturing at the
drink. “But quickly,” he nodded
solemnly. He paused, as though searching for a word that might guide me
through the entire system. “You cannot
enjoy it.”
Thomas Hale is the FT’s Shanghai
correspondent
★
12 February/13 February 2022
3
FTWeekend
Life
Lunch with the FT David Chalmers
‘We are the gods of the
virtual worlds we create’
The Australian techno-philosopher
has spent a career unpicking the
mysteries of human consciousness.
Over floating sushi in the metaverse,
he tells John Thornhill about the
promise of VR, why we may already be
living in a simulated world — and how
companies have colonised our brains
A
rranging Lunch with the FT
in the metaverse is a tricky
business. But it seems the
appropriate place to meet
David Chalmers. One of the
world’s best-known philosophers and
cognitive scientists, he has stirred up
something of a cyber-squall recently by
arguing that “virtual reality is genuine
reality”. So it is that, with an Oculus
Quest 2 headset clamped firmly to my
face, I find myself seated at a desk in
central London staring across a virtual
table at a lifelike avatar of Chalmers,
physically located some 3,500 miles
away in New York.
The metaverse’s critics have panned it
as an escapist fantasy. The 55-year-old
co-director of New York University’s
Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness is one of those urging us to take it
very seriously — even if he does not
always take himself quite so seriously.
As the lead singer of the Zombie Blues
band, Chalmers has been known to bash
out the immortal lyrics: “I act like you
act, I do what you do/But I don’t know,
what it’s like to be you/What consciousness is, I ain’t got a clue.”
His avatar suddenly materialises,
with long silver hair and stylish stubble,
declaring that our restaurant has a “nice
diner quality” to it, even though it seems
eerily quiet. The VR researchers at Barcelona University’s EventLab have not
only designed the avatars of Chalmers
and me but also teleported us into a 3D
restaurant complete with plates of vivid
salmon sushi. As I swivel my head left
and right, I can see a spotlessly clean restaurant boasting white brick walls and
wooden floors; through the plate-glass
windows I see a deserted parking lot
outside. We appear to have the joint
entirely to ourselves.
Through my earphones, I can hear
Chalmers’ resonant Australian voice as
clearly as if he were sitting opposite me,
although his lip movements do not quite
synchronise with his speech. It takes
him a little while to fix his seating
arrangements to stop his virtual hands
disappearing through the table. During
that time, his avatar, dressed in black
T-shirt and leather jacket, contorts itself
around the table like Neo evading Agent
Smith’s bullets in The Matrix.
O
nce settled, I ask Chalmers
whether he feels “present”
in this artificial world. He
says it takes time for one’s
body and brain to adjust to
virtual reality but he feels there is something quite powerful about the experience, even when his avatar floats six feet
into the air. “When I was up in the air, I
still felt like, oh my gosh, here I am up
here in the air.” I also experience an
uncanny sense of bodily presence and
quickly forget about the unwieldy lump
of plastic attached to my head.
Chalmers’ interests in technology and
philosophy have run through most of
his life and have now fused into “techno-philosophy”, the subject of his current research and latest book. Age-old
philosophical thinking can help us
explore some of the challenges thrown
up by new technology, while new technology can help us reframe some of
those age-old philosophical debates. He
claims to have been inspired by the
example of the Canadian-American
philosopher Patricia Churchland, who
in the 1980s talked about the interaction of philosophy and neuroscience in
creating “neurophilosophy”.
Growing up in Adelaide in the 1970s,
Chalmers was something of a maths and
computer geek, who started writing
computer code at the age of 10. During
his adolescence, he also experienced
what he later understood to be synaesthesia: his brain would mash up music
and colours. So, for example, he “saw”
the Beatles track “Here, There and Everywhere” as a deep shade of red.
But it was his reading of Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach soon after
this “amazing book” was published in
1979, that introduced him to the concepts of mind, consciousness and artificial intelligence. “I guess that planted
G o su sh i
delivered to David Chalmers
in New York
‘Salmon Lover’ sushi $24.95
Total (inc tax, delivery
and service)
$29.16
st i c ks’n ’s u s h i
delivered to John Thornhill
in London
‘Shake’ salmon sushi
Crispy ebi
Total (inc delivery
and service)
£10
£9.20
£23.65
the seed for me,” he says. After graduating in mathematics at the University of
Adelaide, he then hitchhiked around
Europe for six months devouring philosophy books, before going on to continue his studies at Oxford as a Rhodes
scholar. He quickly realised his “obsession” with consciousness had taken
hold. It would have been fascinating, he
says, to have studied maths and physics
when Isaac Newton was still trying to
figure out the basic principles. But by
our own times, a lot of the field seemed
to have turned into a “clean-up job”.
So he decided to focus instead on the
biggest remaining scientific mystery
and wrote to his intellectual hero Hofstadter, who accepted him as a doctoral
student at Indiana university to study
consciousness. “This was the most
important thing in the world that was
the least understood,” Chalmers says.
As an academic philosopher, he is perhaps best known for his writings on the
so-called “hard problem” of consciousness, a subject subsequently explored in
Tom Stoppard’s play of the same name.
“I’ve somehow ended up getting a lot of
credit for this, whereas all I really came
up with was a catchy phrase,” he says.
As he explains it, the hard problem,
which has exercised philosophers for
centuries if not millennia, concerns how
physical processes in the brain give rise
to the subjective experiences in the
mind. “By the mid-19th century, you
have [Thomas Henry] Huxley saying
how consciousness emerges as a result
of brain processes is as mysterious as
how the djinn appeared when Aladdin
first rubbed his lamp. And that’s a wonderful statement of the hard problem
right there,” he says.
In spite of the best efforts of philosophers, neuroscientists and psychologists, we remain a long way from satisfactorily resolving how the mind
David Chalmers’ and John Thornhill’s avatars at lunch — ERC MoTIVE
project/Universitat de Barcelona
generates subjective experiences, such
as a sense of a deep shade of red or a feeling of anger.
But at the Center for Mind, Brain and
Consciousness, Chalmers is helping lead
one of the most intensive interdisciplinary efforts to advance our understanding. Backed by the Templeton World
Charity Foundation, which is investing
$20mn in research into consciousness,
the centre sponsors a number of “adversarial collaborations” to test the most
promising theories. “I think in principle
the hard problem ought to be soluble by
somebody. And I’m not territorial about
who does it,” he says.
Chalmers has also written extensively
about “extended minds”, as we outsource an expanding share of our cognition to computers. This can be useful: a
smartphone can help us remember telephone numbers or reach a destination.
A brain-computer interface can help us
hear better or counter Parkinson’s disease. But with our growing reliance on
ubiquitous technology, he suggests we
are in effect now developing an “exocortex”, an external device-driven brain
that is increasingly controlled by the
giant tech companies.
“These corporations are basically now
becoming part of my extended mind. I
mean, Apple maybe is 20 per cent of it,
and Google 20 per cent and Facebook 10
per cent. Who’s to say?” His hope is that
we will find alternative ways of augmenting our intelligence that are not so heavily intermediated by such companies.
A
t this point, we break off the
conversation to experiment with our sushi meal.
Chopsticks are a little
beyond us in virtual reality
so we have to use our handsets to pick
up the synthetic sushi and guide it
towards our mouths. Released close to
the throat, the sushi then magically disappears. It takes me some time to master the process and I leave one piece of
sushi floating in suspended animation
over my right shoulder before I can
reclaim and dispatch it. We then try to
eat some physical sushi that we have
both separately ordered. But it is a
messy process (for me at least) and we
quickly abandon the attempt.
Our Lunch with the FT remains more
virtual than physical. I find myself
immersed in the tantalising promise of
VR as a medium for conducting intense
and intimate communication, as well as
occasionally experiencing its absurd
clunkiness. But I am also mesmerised
by the dizzying sweep of Chalmers’ conversation. It must count as one of the
most mind-bending experiences of my
life, and no drugs were involved.
We move on to discuss his latest book
Reality+, an engrossing philosophical
exploration of the virtual worlds we are
creating. Some commentators, such as
the tech entrepreneur and investor Phil
Libin, have argued that the very concept
of the metaverse is something of a sick
corporate joke. “I’m calling bullshit on a
persistent, decentralised, skeuomorphic, interconnected 3D world, experienced primarily through VR,” Libin
tweeted last month.
But Chalmers says he likes the idea of
the metaverse and thinks it “can be as
meaningful and important as a physical
world”. He sees it as a powerful means of
communication, education and entertainment and a mechanism for exploring the outer edges of identity and perception. This can especially benefit disabled, ageing, gender-fluid or oppressed
peoples, giving them access to experiences and networks they would not otherwise enjoy. “I think virtual reality
offers so many possibilities, new forms
of embodiment, new kinds of experiences, new communities. That’s so
exciting,” he says.
Some reviewers have attacked
Chalmers for espousing “virtual utopianism” but he rejects the charge. He
accepts that VR can be just as wonderful, or awful, as the physical world. In
particular, he worries about cyberbullying in VR, threats to privacy and the
domination of the giant tech companies,
or what he calls the “corporatocracy”.
The promise of VR is that we should be
able to create a world of digital abundance for all, given the trivial costs of
marginal production. But companies
are already looking to impose artificial
scarcity in the metaverse by creating
markets for digital assets, or non-fungible tokens, as they are called.
“That’s just one example of the way
that markets can enter into this virtual
space and sometimes turn utopia into
something that might be more of a dystopia,” he says.
In his 1974 book Anarchy, State and
Utopia, the libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick discussed the possibility of
creating a “meta-utopia” in which people would ultimately be able to choose
the societies or worlds in which they
wanted to live. In theory, it might be
possible to build just such a meta-utopia
in VR, Chalmers says, but that remains a
very optimistic vision. In practice, it
seems more likely that only a relatively
small number of people might ever
enjoy such genuinely free choices. “The
path from here to there is very, very
unclear,” he says.
One subject of his book I am keen to
discuss is the simulation hypothesis,
which suggests that we might already be
living in an artificial world, as so vividly
depicted in The Matrix. For centuries,
philosophers have questioned whether
our world might be illusory, imagined
by a butterfly or an evil demon. But the
appearance of massively powerful computers and the creation of rich virtual
worlds has added a new perspective to
this eternal debate. In 2003, the philosopher Nick Bostrom advanced a “quasistatistical” argument that so many simulated worlds will be created in the history of the universe that the chances of
us living in an unsimulated one are
extremely low. “So technology has made
this philosophical issue come alive,”
says Chalmers.
For what it’s worth, he believes that
we may indeed be living in a simulated
world. At the very least, we cannot disprove the possibility. But even if that is
the case, that does not mean our lives
would be meaningless, as some have
argued. To Chalmers’ mind, it just
implies that what we assume to be physical is in fact digital, but it will be no less
real for that. Within 100 years, he predicts virtual reality will be so good as to
be near indistinguishable from physical
reality in any event.
If that is the case, then the human
designers of virtual worlds will assume
almost divine powers. “Yes, we are the
gods of the virtual worlds that we create.” But what rights should our simulated avatars, or sims, enjoy? What happens if, as Chalmers believes is possible,
these sims acquire consciousness? He
envisages a world in which simulated
AIs will freely mix with biological creatures and this could unleash “one of the
great civil rights struggles in history”.
“I’d like to think there could be a society
in which artificial and non-artificial
beings coexist, just as there are societies
‘Corporations are basically
now becoming part of my
extended mind. I mean,
Apple maybe is 20 per cent
of it, and Google 20 per
cent and Facebook 10 per
cent. Who’s to say?’
where people of different nationalities
and races and religions coexist,” he says.
As we near the end of our undernourished and overstimulated lunch, I ask
Chalmers how our VR experience
matches his five-point philosophical
“checklist” to assess whether or not
something is real. Looking at what
remains of our virtual sushi, he asks: do
these physical bits of sushi exist? Yes,
they are real digital objects inside a virtual world. Do they have causal powers
— or, in other words, can they interact
with each other? Partially, yes. Are they
independent of our minds? Yes, they
will still be there when he has taken off
his headset. Are they illusions? Yes, they
are somewhat illusory. And are they real
bits of real sushi? No.
“So, 50 per cent. Not bad for a first
effort,” he concludes, thanking the
“god” of Barcelona’s Event Lab, Mel
Slater, and his “demiurge”, Ramon
Oliva, for staging this VR experience.
“Of course, eating in VR is fundamentally ridiculous,” he concludes. “Eating
is going to be one of the very last things
that people manage to get right in VR.”
We may be on our way to an allimmersive metaverse in which virtual
and physical realities blur, but we are
not there yet. It is perhaps worth
remembering Hofstadter’s Law: “It
always takes longer than you expect,
even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”
John Thornhill is the FT’s innovation editor
4
★
FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
Style
‘We’re trying to
make fashion
less horrible’
Left: Collina Strada
founder Hillary Taymour,
photographed for the FT
by Nicholas Calcott
ways at New York Fashion Week, with
models representing a wide range of
races, genders, ages, physical abilities
and sizes. Taymour often casts family
members alongside one another and
works with the same creatives season in
and season out, creating relationships
that lend the brand a sense of
infectiously genuine camaraderie
and community.
For all the cultural waves it makes,
none of this has turned Collina Strada
into the biggest brand in New York from
a financial standpoint. The label
employs three people full-time and has
“always been a little profitable”, Taymour says. “No one is out here buying
mansions or Lamborghinis.”
But it’s that measured approach —
make a little money, reinvest it in the
brand, repeat — that Taymour believes
Interview | A values-led ethos is — finally — getting
Collina Strada noticed. Whitney Bauck reports
H
illary Taymour had been
running her brand Collina
Strada for less than a year
when Target asked her to
collaborate on a bag collec-
tion in 2009.
To scale up production, she soon
found herself sifting through $30,000
worth of leather hides at a supplier’s
warehouse in New York. The hides
reeked of chemicals; many would be
rendered unusable due to tick marks
and other imperfections. Taymour was
so overwhelmed by a sense of being
“surrounded by death” that she broke
down in tears.
“It was a profound thing, to be just
surrounded by all these skins,” she says.
“I was like, this is not for me. And if I’m
gonna keep doing what I’m doing, I
want to do it in the way that feels good
for me . . . I wanted to make sure if I
ever had a voice I would use my voice
for the right thing.”
That early experience was formative
in shaping Taymour’s approach to her
label, but it wasn’t until more than a
decade later that her perspective began
to attract the attention of the industry
at large.
Best known for its colourful, chaotic
prints, diverse casting, irreverent sense
of humour and memorable runway
shows, Collina Strada has become an
inspiring new voice in American fashion. In 2019 the brand was named a
CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist; in
2020 it was personally selected by
Gucci designer Alessandro Michele to
be part of the virtual film festival GucciFest; and in 2021 the label made its
Met Gala debut with pop singer Kim
Petras, and appeared again at the
after-party on the singer-songwriter Lorde.
Though Taymour is now in her
thirties, and one of her most consistent muses is the 70-yearold mother of her longtime collaborator and
photographer Charlie Engman, the
brand has become a
kind of symbol of
youth culture by virtue of embodying
the values of the next
generation.
One of the most prominent of these values is
responsible production.
Taymour’s early experiences convinced her to
pivot away from
leather handbags and
begin focusing on
ready-to-wear garments
made in smaller batches in
New York City.
The brand has an ongoing partnership with the
Ghana-based textile-waste
non-profit The OR Founda-
‘My goal with Collina is to
teach people and have fun.
You can’t teach people
without positivity’
tion, and according to Taymour
95 per cent of its products feature
materials selected for their
lower environmental impact, such
as “rose sylk”, a fabric made from
“the natural waste of rose bushes
and stems”.
She has used her runway shows to
address climate change explicitly —
sometimes in the form of a cheerful
song about climate change and
farming, at other times imploring
attendees in her show notes to
become part of the solution by learning
to compost.
“My goal with Collina is to teach people and have fun. You can’t teach people
without positivity, so I try to underlay
Above: Collina Strada’s
catwalk shows are always
among the most inclusive
at New York Fashion
Week, often featuring
friends and family
groups — Alessandro Viero/
Gorunway.com; Peter White/Getty Images;JP
Yim/Getty Images
positivity in everything we do,” she says.
“We’re just trying to make fashion a little less horrible.”
Improving fashion, to Taymour, has
also meant embracing an everyone-iswelcome attitude that flies in the face of
the industry’s historical exclusivity.
Collina Strada’s casting consistently
makes it one of the most inclusive run-
has enabled her to steadily build out her
vision for 14 years. “We’ve had the most
organic type of growth possible,” she
says. “I don’t need to be huge, and I’m
OK with that.”
When the pandemic and its attendant
hardships hit, Taymour quickly pivoted
to digital, making a trippy and creative
video presentation for her spring 2021
collection that rivalled the offerings of
much bigger brands.
This — plus a fan base that continued
to shop for both practical face masks
and fanciful pieces including $2,000
gowns — contributed to Collina Strada
“blowing up” during the pandemic,
Taymour says. In this way, she capitalised on what is becoming the signature
of a new wave of American designers,
many of whom are attracting an audience by prioritising innovation, community and social values over building a
financial empire.
Taymour is full of dreams for what’s
next. She wants to open a Collina Strada
store, and she loves the idea of someday
taking the helm as creative director at a
larger company. How she would do that
while maintaining the integrity and DIY
spirit she’s become known for she won’t
say, beyond hinting that she’d be prepared to “make big changes” to the
operating procedures of any brand
she joined.
But what she’s most excited about
right now is that Collina Strada has
earned the respect that leads industry
heavy-hitters to seek her out for advice,
especially on sustainability and other
future-of-fashion questions. That it’s
happened while the brand remains relatively small proves she can punch above
her weight.
“The true success is the fact that we
have a really massive voice in the industry at the moment,” she says. “If we can
start a ‘trend’ to get anyone to make better products, that’s all I care about. I
don’t really care about what anyone
thinks of me — I just want to do the
right thing.”
The democratic new face of watch design
Accessories | Manufacturers are opening their creative doors to the public — and learning a lot about their core customers, finds Ming Liu
T
o create the first women’s
model of its bestselling DS
PH200M, a £785 sports
watch popular for its precision and shock resistance,
Swiss watchmaker Certina bypassed its
in-house designers last March and took
to social media, asking fans to vote on
key aspects of the design, including the
bezel, dial, hands, strap and packaging,
with a chance to win the final model.
The winning design, which featured a
39mm dark mother-of-pearl dial offsetting a black bezel, surprised chief executive Marc Aellen, who was sure only
light, feminine tones would resonate.
“The outcome was not expected and
that alone was a good reason to do the
campaign — to change our mind and
vision,” he says. “We’re experienced
people in the watch industry but sometimes we have ideas that are, just
maybe, outdated.”
Polling the peanut gallery might
sound like a marketing executive’s
nightmare but a handful of forwardthinking watchmakers are doing just
that — engaging customers and sourcing
unexpected design ideas along the way.
Seiko also launched a competition last
year, inviting fans to build their own
Seiko 5 Sports watch via an online configurator, which received more than
48,000 entries. Seiko made 2,021 pieces
of the winning design, which sold out.
And, in 2020, avant-garde Belgian
watchmaker Ressence piggybacked on
the lockdown trend for colouring books,
asking fans to submit a coloured-in
sketch of its popular Type 1 Slim watch.
The winning submission was a pastel
blue creation by Raymond Ramsden, a
Yorkshire-based interior designer,
which sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong for
HK$375,000 (about £35,500), with all
proceeds going to Covid-19 research.
Ressence’s founder, Benoît Mintiens,
knew designing by public committee
was uncertain — he feared there
wouldn’t be enough submissions. The
campaign received nearly 500 entries,
from children to industry insiders.
“First, we had to have a potentially
good design and, secondly, we had to sell
at auction,” says Mintiens. “So you
expose yourself as a brand. When you
are a small organisation like ours —
we’re not all Patek Philippe — you do
these things.”
Some watchmakers are taking a more
targeted approach, creating custom
watches for a loyal collector base. Brei-
I Certina
I IWC
PH200M,
£785,
certina.com
Pilot’s
Chronograph
C. 03 for
Collective,
£6,450,
collective
horology.
com
I Breitling
I Panerai
Endurance
Pro
Ironman
Edition,
£2,720,
breitling.
com
Radiomir
Venti
‘Paneristi’
45mm,
£5,800,
panerai.
com
tling sponsors the Ironman triathlon,
and its special-edition Endurance Pro
watch (£2,720) comes in a black-andgold version available only to race finishers. Meanwhile in 2020, Panerai created a special-edition Radiomir Venti —
with a 45mm case versus the usual
47mm — to mark the 20th birthday of
Paneristi.com, an online community of
Panerai fans. Some 1,020 pieces were
made, including a dozen specially
engraved for key community members.
Chief executive Jean-Marc Pontroué is
quick to point out that communitydesigned watches will always be a niche
offering. “Our bestsellers are those that
have existed for many years,” he says.
Custom-made watches will ultimately
be the preserve of the top end — watches
priced at more than £50,000 (Panerai’s
core product is the 44mm Luminor
Marina, £6,800) — and sought after by
clients used to personalising their toys.
In 2018, two Facebook executives
founded Collective Horology, a membership-based watch collecting club
rooted in the idea of creating exclusive
collaborative watches.
Co-founders Asher Rapkin and Gabe
Reilly act as a bridge between members
and brands, sharing ideas and concepts
for designs, as well as participating in
revisions once the watchmakers come
back with drawings. (Collective Horology receives a percentage of the retail
sales.) The debut watch, the Zenith El
Primero Chronomaster C. 01, was limited to 50 pieces. “We believed in their
concept and the strong members’ community of creatives, executives and
makers from the Bay Area,” says Zenith
chief executive Julien Tornare.
Collective has since produced five
watches in partnership with brands,
priced from $6,850 to $62,500, all of
which have sold out. Membership has
grown from 50 to 180 members — purchase of a collaborative watch is
required to join — and includes Oscar
and Grammy-winning talents, but also
doctors, lawyers and a kitchen remodeller. Co-founder Reilly calls its members “a little focus group on watches”
that offers a pulse on members’ tastes
and interests.
In the end, community-designed
watches are about inclusivity and transparency. “It’s not necessarily to provide
input and feedback but to be along for
the ride,” says Rapkin. “They love a
window into the process, out of sheer
curiosity.”
★
12 February/13 February 2022
5
FTWeekend
Style
Why is Jeff Bezos such a terrible dresser?
He chooses clothes that
stand out, when he should
be doing the opposite,
writes Robert Armstrong
I
t is an uncontroversial but nonetheless interesting fact that the
richest man in the world is a terrible
dresser. Good clothes and style consultants can be bought for quite a
bit less than, say, a yacht so enormous
that a historic bridge must be dismantled so it can be put to sea. But Jeff Bezos,
with more treasure than Scrooge
McDuck, looks like hell. What gives?
That is not to say that, for your modern multibillionaire, the problem of
clothes is easy to solve. For most of us —
the late André Leon Talley aside — a key
aspect of dressing well is looking good
while not drawing too much attention to
just how good you look. But if you have a
billion dollars, everyone has all their
attention pointed directly at you, all day
long. Sprezzatura is not an option.
This is why many of the super-rich
default to simple uniforms: Elon Musk’s
inoffensive dark-suit-white-shirt
combo, for example. Warren Buffett
gets it. He manages to make Zegna suits
look like they came from Sears, and
you can be damn sure that is part of
the I’m-just-capitalism’s-sweet-oldgrandpa schtick he carefully honed
while making enough money to buy
Switzerland without financing.
Bezos doesn’t want to be anyone’s
sweet old anything, and he is not content with a uniform. This was most evident last summer, when he went in for a
little space tourism aboard a giant flying
dildo. The bright blue flight suit was not
enough. He also wore a conspicuously
beat-up cowboy hat and boots (whose
job it was to put the patina of wear on
these items is not recorded).
Style writers slammed on the brakes,
rubberneckers at a particularly gruesome car crash. The New York Times’
Jacob Bernstein coined the term “a
Bezos” for any middle-aged man who
has stumbled deep into “dentist with a
Lamborghini” territory. In GQ, Eileen
Cartter found the get-up less pathetic
than menacing, lending a “general air of
out-of-touch villainy”.
There are elements of truth in both
interpretations, but I don’t think they
quite solve the riddle (the pundits also
failed to note the watch worn over the
cuff of the flight suit, which may have
been an astronaut thing, but came off as
Craig Green returns
to the runway
Report | In a gritty urban setting, the designer showed a
collection that emphasised self-care, writes Alexander Fury
P
rotection, preservation,
insulation, isolation. They’re
heavy themes everyone has
been considering for the
past two years — whether relating
to self, family or industry. In a
disused factory space in east
London, next door to the Tate
& Lyle sugar refinery, the
young designer Craig Green
presented an autumn/winter
2022 menswear collection
that explored all those
themes and much more. It
was his first physical show in
over two years; the last was
held in January 2020 in Paris,
where he’ll return to show
again in June.
Green is just a decade
into his career, but his clothes
— l aye re d , wo r kwe a r influenced jackets and wide-cut
‘Are you buying things
for yourself or because
you’re suddenly going
to see other people?’
trousers that sometimes resemble
judo gear, decorated with vertical
quilting, stocked at more than 80
retailers worldwide — have been
highly influential. (In 2017 Giorgio Armani withdrew a series
of designs from the spring/
summer 2018 Emporio
Armani collection following reports that they were
remarkably close to
Green’s garments from
the previous year.)
In this collection, the
idea of self-care was evident from the outset, in
looks hooded and
muffled, wrapped
and padded. Fuzzy
mohair balaclavas
with the texture of
floating plankton were
yanked up over chins;
coat collars were
hyperinflated with air-filled
pockets like miniature life-rafts;
and sweaters were flocked until
they resembled fluffy cavitywall insulation.
Underneath were slithery, silky
layers — reversed satin separates
laid shiny-side against the body.
The looks, in short, fell part way
between a hazmat suit and a
pair of pyjamas. Which, at
least ideologically, feels like
what we want to be wearing.
The wider idea of the collection was about projection, as well as protection. It
originated with a humble
mohair jumper. “We turned
it inside out,” Green said
backstage after the show.
“I always think it’s
weird, if people wear
From top: a reversible
piece in fuzzy mohair
and satin; a layered,
workwear-influenced jacket;
self-care was a theme, with
models wearing padding
Filippo Fior/Imaxtree.com
fluffy things on the outside, they’re not
experiencing the actual material.
They’re trying to seem more fluffy to
other people, rather than experiencing it themselves.”
Hence the vast majority of
pieces were reversible —
despite the complications
that this adds to the manufacturing process.
And hence also that satin
against skin — because
Green never understood
why people wore flashy
pyjamas with it on the outside, when it would feel so
much nicer the other
way. “Are you buying
things for yourself, or buying things because you’re
suddenly going to see other
people?” Green asked. “It’s a
strange place.”
So was the show’s factory
venue, stranded out in the
seeming wasteland — Green is
moving his studio there later
this year, when the site will be redeveloped to become a series of creative studios.
The industrial reference wasn’t
throwaway, nor was it confined to the
sweet scent wafting from the
neighbours. To create this collection, Green enlisted an unlikely
bunch of British manufacturers. His bags were made
by a medical factory that
usually produces anaesthetic pumps; valves
inserted into pockets of
coats were created by a
latex factory that normally outfits deep-sea
divers. There was also a
Scottish manufacturer of
gear sticks for tractors.
It sounds like a motley
crew, but it’s a testament to
Green’s talent that he can synthesise this strange bunch and
create something compelling
and appealing.
There was also a somewhat
more conventional collaboration — he creates shoes with the
German sportswear company
Adidas — designing puffy ankle
boots with soccer-shoe soles that were
blown up and could be deflated and
flat-packed for travel.
Green’s other accessories were
also esoteric. Or maybe they just
seemed that way, once you
knew their origins: one
drawstring bag took its
shape from an anaesthesia
bladder, a pragmatic decision given its manufacturing origin. Green
intends to produce them
for sale.
“We’re an independent
brand,” he said. “How do we
do accessories and trims and
things to compete [against the
major luxury houses]?”
The answer, for him, is to
execute work with ingenuity,
passion and feeling. These
clothes looked arresting, often
desirable and utterly unique.
They have hidden depth and
plenty of layers. They will surely
guarantee his survival.
Dressed for space, 2021; with Lauren Sánchez, 2020 — Joe Raedle/Getty Images; Rafiq Maqbool/AP
a foul parody of Gianni Agnelli). It may
help to look back a decade or two, to
when Bezos went in for pleated trousers
and baggy sportcoats, and had not
traded in the fuzz round the perimeter
of his bald head for a full shave. In pictures of this earlier incarnation, he
looks gentle, geeky and natural.
Something went wrong thereafter.
One problem is that he got in shape, and
decided that his clothing should make
much of his muscles, starting with snug
fitting. This has it backwards. As Daniel
Craig showed in his James Bond films,
muscles and tight fits are an awful combination. All those poor, strained seams.
It’s a shame, because other than the
cut, Bezos’s taste in suits is pretty good.
He chooses attractive, textured cloth.
There are photos of him in a classic,
shawl-collared tuxedo looking almost
dashing. The problem is his desire to
make his business clothes stand out,
when he should be running the other
way. Enormous tie knots are a speciality.
He also goes in for the tragic jeans-andblazer combination which, on rich and
poor alike, shoots for informal and hits
try-hard.
The problem gets worse on casual Friday (doesn’t it always?). There is the
notorious picture of Bezos in Sun Valley
a few years ago, wearing a black waistcoat over a biceps-emphasising black
polo short, along with aviator glasses — a
sort of action-hero get-up (Terminator:
The Dorkening).
It is a bit unfair to make fun of Bezos’s
outfit from New Year’s Eve 2021: white
Brunello Cucinelli jeans and a tight,
shiny shirt patterned, apparently, on
the tile floor of a louche Moroccan hotel.
His heart-shaped sunglasses make it
clear that this is basically fancy dress.
He’s having some dumb fun.
And that’s just it. Bezos is a recently
divorced nerd with a ton of money.
Doesn’t he have a right to dress the part?
Where’s the harm?
At the risk of getting serious in a basically trivial context, I think there may,
in fact, be some harm. Bezos is not just
any rich guy. He controls a company
that touches every part of American life.
He employs 1.6mn people.
There is something about Bezos’
goofy, slightly crass style that just
clashes with the massive role his
choices play in so many lives. Once
again, in unexpected ways, clothes turn
out to matter.
Robert Armstrong is the FT’s US financial
editor
6
★
FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
Travel
P
ity, if you will, Bernhard
Zangerl. He was 25 when two
years ago he took over the
running of the Kitzloch bar in
Ischgl from his parents, keen
to prove he was ready to take responsibility for a part of the family business.
Two weeks later, the Austrian alpine
village, best known for its raucous
après-ski scene, found itself at the crest
of the first European wave of Covid-19.
And the Kitzloch — with its shot-serving
waitresses, whistles and alcohol-fuelled
sing-alongs — might as well have been
Europe’s epidemiological ground zero
for the headlines it got. The calls from
journalists — I was one of them — did not
stop coming.
“I leave you alone for one moment. . .”
Zangerl recalls his dad saying, half in
jest, half not.
An aeroplane of Icelanders triggered
the recriminations. In late February
2020, 15 of them, arriving home after a
week of winter sports, tested positive in
Reykjavik. They’d all been partying at
the Kitzloch. Soon after, Iceland
declared the region of Tyrol to be on a
par with Wuhan and Iran when it came
to the risk of coronavirus infection.
Half of Norway’s initial cases were
then claimed to have come from Ischgl.
One-third of those in Denmark. Onesixth of those in Sweden. Neighbouring
Germany — and Bavaria’s government
in particular — were quick to heap preemptive blame on the Austrians for
being the source of their own incipient
Covid disaster.
Partying skiers very rapidly became a
powerful shorthand across Europe for
official ignorance and public carelessness. A headline in Der Spiegel, Germany’s agenda-setting news magazine,
declared Ischgl “Die Brutstätte” — “The
Breeding Ground”.
And so, here I am, two years on, in the
Kitzloch — as a crowd of revellers belt
out half-remembered Europop ski classics like Jägermeister DJ Alex & Matty
Valentino’s “Auffe aufn Berg” — talking
to Zangerl in a little office at the back of
the bar. “A lot of people are coming, but
it’s still 50-60 per cent of what a regular
season would be like,” says Zangerl, who
shrugs off the negative attention the Kitzloch got with remarkable grace.
Attitudes towards the village are shifting, he thinks, but it is a slow process. “At
Back to the ‘breeding ground’
Austria | The ‘Ibiza of the Alps’, Ischgl made headlines for all the wrong
reasons at the onset of the pandemic. Can it reinvent itself? By Sam Jones
‘We need to start making
our own judgments about
[risk] again and not
judging others’
the beginning, public opinion was that
we in Ischgl were not doing what we were
told to — that we were deliberately ignoring the problem. But in March 2020,
people didn’t know about this — it was
new for everyone. Now I think there’s
more understanding.” Ultimately, he
says, the lesson everyone is learning is
that “you can’t control a virus.”
Ischgl sits towards the end of the
Paznaun valley, high in western Austria,
at the base of the Silvretta massif that
divides the country from neighbouring
Switzerland. From my home in Zurich
it’s a three-hour, picturesque journey by
train and then taxi to my hotel. Many
visitors reach the resort by flying into
nearby Innsbruck, Tyrol’s capital,
which is only about 90 minutes away by
car or public transport.
The Pacha nightclub might be closed,
and the huge mountaintop concert that
ordinarily starts the ski season was postponed, but the village’s libidinous reputation is still in evidence this January:
the bars here, in the “Ibiza of the Alps”
as it has been called, are rowdy from the
late afternoon onwards.
Nevertheless, Ischgl is a compact
place, and not without charm. Indeed, if
there is an opportunity to have risen out
of the pandemic, it is that Ischgl’s
authorities now think that they could do
with refocusing on some of the village’s
original draws. There’s more to bring
visitors to Ischgl than carousing.
From top: Ischgl in
Austria; the ‘Top of
the Mountain’
concert in 2015 (the
season opening and
closing concerts
have been on hold
for two years);
Kylie Minogue
performs in 2009;
Bernhard Zangerl
at his Kitzloch bar
Getty; Jan Hetfleisch/Getty; Felix
Hoerhager/Alamy;
Sean Gallup/Getty
On a beautifully clear, crisp first day, it
is not hard to see what has made the
town so attractive as a ski destination:
three separate high capacity gondolas
take visitors directly from the high
street up to the Idalp plateau — a broad
expanse 4km or so distant from town,
full of glorious broad red and blue ski
runs, criss-crossed with modern chair
lifts. In all, the Ischgl-Samnaun area has
239km of pistes, and almost all of the
runs end at 2,000m or higher, maximising the chances of good and early snow.
Ischgl, I read before coming, is also
one of the best places in the Alps for ski
touring, which I have signed up to try on
day one. After some gentle skiing
towards our route off the piste, we stop
in the sun to attach the skins to the bottom of the skis. Soon the odd sensation
of sliding uphill dissipates as my guide
Stefan leads me high above Idalp and we
glide towards the Filmspitz — 2,928m
above sea level — with stunning views
into the Swiss canton of Graubünden.
We stop on the lip of a steep snowpacked ridge and, having discovered
from Stefan that the goal is to ski off over
the edge of this, share a brief exchange
about the meaning of the word “vertical”. But, it’s good to try new things. It’s
good to try new things. It’s good to try
new things . . . So off we go, sailing down
the slope in deep powder towards Switzerland, with only one minor tumble.
Back in town for the evening, I head
over to the Schlosshotel to have a glass
of champagne with Arnold Tschiderer,
its owner, before dinner. The next door
Champagnerhütte (champagne hut) —
which Tschiderer also owns — certainly
gets lively, but the hotel lobby is a far cry
from the Ischgl many people think they
know by reputation. Tschiderer says
that Ischgl is changing. “Not in what it
basically offers — the location and the
skiing — but in the quality level,” he
says. Ultra-luxurious hotels are one element of this. An increasing number of
high-end restaurants in town, such as
the Stiar or the Stüve at the Hotel Yscla,
are another.
For now, though, the focus for Ischgl is
very much on restoring confidence.
Another lockdown, Tschiderer says,
would be disastrous. As a result, safety
measures are still needed, he believes —
such as the rigorously enforced checks
on vaccination status everywhere in
town — but he questions whether some
of these are not just performative.
For example: during my stay there is a
10pm curfew in place. The village’s
tagline — “Ischgl: Relax — if you can” —
doesn’t quite ring true when authorities
are enforcing bedtime.
“It is damaging for night-time gastronomy,” says Tschiderer. “It’s cosmetic — we are talking about venues full
of people who have been checked, fully
vaccinated and have probably already
been sitting together for three hours,
and then you are saying at 10pm if they
stay any longer it becomes risky. That
does not make sense.”
Then there are the mask police. Mask
wearing is compulsory outdoors in the
village, as I am repeatedly reminded.
Nothing during the pandemic has done
more to make me militate against having to wear a mask than being chastised
by uniformed officials for not having
one over my nose on an empty street in
the mountain air. (I have, at this point,
had four doses of vaccine — too complicated to explain here — and one festive
dose of London Omicron). I suspect at
this stage in the pandemic, this kind of
policy does far more harm than actual
good. Masks are also compulsory on all
the chair lifts — not just the gondolas.
Back at my hotel for dinner — the
Sonne, which offers an excellent fivecourse nightly menu as part of its fullboard package — the curfew is gently
but firmly in force. Our group is moved
to the lounge at 10, and after one final
round of drinks, no more are served.
On day two in Ischgl, I take up an offer
from my hosts to do some cross-country
skiing. For this we head to Galtür, a
neighbouring village higher in the
Paznaun valley but included on the
Ischgl lift pass. It is another stunning
day, and up at Bielerhöhe pass, which we
reach to my total delight by riding in a
piste basher, the panorama is stunning.
Franz, our instructor, points out that the
Silvretta range is known for its blueness
and today it is obvious why: even by
alpine standards the peaks circling the
lake are a prismatic shade of Windolene-blue.
After a morning embarrassing myself
and discovering cross-country skiing to
be much harder than I realised — like
balancing on matchsticks on ice — we sit
down for lunch on a sun-soaked terrace
below Piz Buin, of sun cream fame,
behind which rise the peaks surrounding Davos and Klosters in Switzerland.
Après-ski begins in earnest at the
Champagnerhütte at 3pm, having only
had the 30-minute journey back down
the mountain to try and recover a little
from lunch. The rest of the afternoon is
passed with liquid alacrity — with only a
credit card statement the next morning
to prove to me that somehow, at a venue
I shall not disclose, we seem to have
sweet-talked our way into dodging the
10pm curfew rule.
Leaving the village after a further couple of days of wonderful skiing, Markus,
the cab driver taking me back to Landeck station, reminded me that for most
locals there is much more at stake than
wanting to have some fun after two
years of restrictions. Ischgl’s economy —
like that of many villages in the Alps — is
utterly dependent on winter sports. For
a second job Markus is a musician, but
in the past year he’s played only two gigs,
compared with more than 40 in any
normal year. Many locals are still facing
serious economic hardship.
Most are extremely opposed to any
more lockdowns or travel restrictions as
a result. Which is not to say they have
not taken the virus seriously. Quite the
contrary. Ischgl now has one of the highest vaccination rates anywhere in Austria (with 61 per cent of the village population triple-jabbed). Ischgl’s role in
spreading coronavirus back in the
spring of 2020 has meanwhile been
meticulously pored over. In November
Munich
GERMANY
Zürich
St Anton
AUSTRIA
Ischgl
Davos
SWITZERLAND
Innsbruck
Obergurgl
ITALY
Bolzano
©Mapcreator.io/©HERE
50 km
— after an exhaustive investigation —
Austrian state prosecutors announced
they were ending their probe into
Ischgl’s authorities. “There is no evidence that anyone did anything or failed
to do anything to increase the risk of
contagion,” the prosecutor said.
I recall what Zangerl told me at the
Kitzloch when I arrived: he couldn’t
understand why skiing was still being
regarded by so many, including some
governments, as being frivolous and
risky. I suggested it was because, underlying our quite genuine public health
concerns in the past two years, a subtler,
harder to shift purity narrative has also
taken hold: one that judges harshly
those who catch Covid while enjoying
themselves.
“But daily life is all about risk,”
Zangerl said. “And now we need to start
making our own judgments about that
again and not judging others. We need to
get on with life.”
Sam Jones is the FT’s Austria and
Switzerland correspondent
i / D e TA I l S
Sam Jones was a guest of the Ischgl tourist board
(ischgl.com). The Hotel Sonne (sonne-ischgl.at)
has double rooms from £86 per night; a six-day
adult lift pass covering Ischgl, Samnaun, Galtür
and Kappl costs from £270. For more on skiing in
the area, see tyrol.com and austria.info
Moonlighting in the mountains: BBC Newsnight’s diplomatic editor on his secret second life as a ski instructor
My first client? He was a Darfuri
man taking advantage of a Swiss
government scheme that
introduces refugees to skiing.
In Switzerland, access to the
mountains is a cherished right and
an essential part of fitting in —
even for someone fleeing conflict
in Sudan.
If there is one point of
comparison between my
journalistic work [as
diplomatic and defence editor
of BBC Newsnight] and my
side hustle as a ski instructor, it is
that you never know quite what
each day will bring. As for the
points of difference, there are
many and it was with a kind of
escape from the pressures of my
regular work in mind that I
embarked on this route in 2015.
At that time I had been covering
the post-9/11 conflicts in
Afghanistan and Iraq for many
years and often at considerable
personal risk. I felt completely
drained mentally and sought
peace in the mountains.
There was going to be a
reordering of priorities. Skiing
gives me joy and a sense of
freedom — I needed more of that,
not just the single week carved
out of a busy family and
professional life that most of us
make do with.
There were more relatable
aspects too, a typical mid-life
“now or never” moment in terms
of the physical fitness required,
and a profound nostalgia about
my childhood initiation into the
sport. The place where I first skied
as a child is visible from the
Dual roles: Mark Urban
mountain in the canton of Valais
where, decades later, I joined
the Swiss Ski School in order to
teach others.
If you’d told me in my youth I
would one day be one of those
red-jacketed demigods, it would
have seemed like an unimaginable
dream. It involved many courses
(a bizarre mixture of British, Swiss
and Irish training in my case) and
a personal introduction to the ski
school in question.
My journey puzzled some of my
friends — they could understand
why I might want to ski more, but
not the urge to consume so much
precious leave time trying to
coach wailing brats or indeed their
“stuck at this level” parents who
defy all advice and example.
While such clients do exist, the
satisfaction of raising someone’s
skiing game in a short space of
time is profound, and the riddle of
unlocking their potential, as in any
form of teaching, is a key part of
Matthew Cook
the challenge. And the rewards?
Working with someone who was
frozen in fear due to a previous
injury and had a disability, and
getting her to the point where she
announced, brimming with
emotion, that the run we’d just
done was her “best ever”. Or
taking the Dutch father and his
two teenage sons from beginner
to parallel skiing in seven and a
half hours of lessons.
Often the person who has never
skied before, like that Darfuri
refugee, can be the most
satisfying of lessons. You will see
a rate of progress in those two or
three hours that it will be hard
ever to match again.
Veysonnaz, the resort where I
have taught for the last four
years, is linked to Verbier and
Nendaz, but is much smaller and
has a more down-to-earth vibe.
One of the fringe benefits of being
a moniteur de ski is participation,
to the degree possible for a
foreigner, in Swiss village life.
It has not all been plain sailing.
I’ve failed a course or two. At
times I have wondered how on
earth I’m going to teach my
charges anything useful; another
lesson under a Swiss government
programme, designed to get
inner-city teens on to the
snow, was like an exercise in
herding cats.
Payback of the financial kind is,
shall we say, adequate. It can
cover the cost of courses — and
there are many that you have to
do to get licensed — and perhaps
your gear. But if you are a mid-life
instructor eking out a few weeks
here and there, you will certainly
not be doing it for the money! For
instructors who teach for a whole
season, the economics are a little
different and you can come away
with some cash at the end of it.
Currently, “living the dream” is
on hold for me and thousands of
other British ski instructors in the
Alps. Brexit has brought a raft of
complexities around work permits
and recognition of professional
qualifications, often varying
between regions as well as
countries. While many British
instructors are still working, the
careers of others are on ice as the
authorities untangle the red tape.
Following that story has been
one of those rare areas where my
usual work has collided with my
Alpine life. Usually, I relish the
anonymity of being another guy
in a red jacket. Though I did have
one client ask, “Has anyone ever
told you that you look like that
bloke on the BBC?”
Mark Urban
For updates on post-Brexit rules
for British ski instructors, and
training courses, see
blog.basi.org.uk
★
12 February/13 February 2022
7
FTWeekend
Travel
Walking with camels
A
re you on a quest for Zenlike simplicity? A slow,
mindful walk through a
vanishing wilderness,
unencumbered by the
heavy load of modern civilisation — or
the need to carry your own bags?
It is easily arranged. All you will need
is a light aircraft, a helicopter (optional,
but preferable), 15 camels to schlep the
gear, eight men to tend to the camels
and to set up camp, plus two wildlife
experts to guide your experience and
keep you safe. Simplicity, it turns out,
can be a logistically complex affair.
I recently joined just such an expedition for four days on the edge of the
Laikipia Plateau in central Kenya,
dropped by helicopter (the pilot had
been instructed to “look for the hills
that look like brains”) in what to my
urbanite mind was the ends of the earth.
Certainly, at the measured pace at which
In all our time there, we saw
no obvious sign of modern
activity. Nothing from our
own era was evident
we trudged through the arid acacia
scrubland, we were several days from
the nearest human settlement.
In all our time there, we saw no vehicle nor any obvious sign of modern
activity, though the landscape itself had
been shaped by millennia of pastoralists
and their grazing herds. We encountered shards of jet-black obsidian tools
and some chalk-white cave paintings in
what was once a stone-age settlement,
now colonised by a troupe of rowdy
(and pungent) baboons. Their shrieks
and clambering lent a Planet of the Apes
feel to a setting where homo sapiens has
resided for some 300,000 years.
Nothing from our own era was evident, save the stump of a burnt tree —
possibly the work of a modern honey
poacher. Once we were shocked to discover a piece of plastic litter, a mysterious milky-white coil from some
unknown packaging. It turned out to be
the discarded skin of a cobra.
The only real plastic of note was the
shiny black object in my pocket. Once a
mobile phone, with no signal and no
electricity it was now just an inert slab.
This is an ancient land. Lava flowed
here 12 million years ago on to rocks
some 800 million years old. Once as
high as the Himalayas, the landscape
has eroded to its present elevation of
around 6,500 feet above sea level, flat
but punctuated with red granitic
upthrustings called kopjes. In the distance is Mount Kenya, a volcanic laggard at just three million years old.
Our guide is Gabriel Ewoi, a pastoralist from the Samburu people, close
cousins of the Maasai. As a boy Gabriel
gained a Wikipedic knowledge of the
bush from a hunter-gatherer who took
him under his wing after his father died.
He learnt English at a mission school a
six-kilometre walk from home. He is
now in his early forties, and for him the
land is as readable as any book.
“Look, smell, listen,” he entreats.
“Try to get all the information you can
from the bush.”
Where we scour the middle-distance
for potential animal sightings — perhaps
a rare Grevy’s zebra, of which we see
several — Gabriel searches out smaller
clues: the footprints of an animal, the
trail marks of an insect, a zebra hair
caught on a rubbing post, the scatterings
of dung, the holes and burrows in the
red soil, the scuffed earth.
Where we see flowers, plants and
insects, Gabriel sees a pharmacy: a leaf
that quells fevers, a biting ant used to
clamp wounds, an eardrop of aloe oil in
an unfurled Commelina flower. Where
we see nothing, he sees a hyena’s colourcoded calling card on a single blade of
grass. “White means ‘be back in five
minutes,’” he says, smiling at his own
anthropomorphism. “Brown means
‘this is my territory.’”
Kenya | Amid the ancient landscape of the Laikipia Plateau, a camel-supported
hike ventures ‘off-map’ in search of wonders big and small. By David Pilling
From top:
David Pilling
(far right), guide
Gabriel Ewoi
and other
members of the
group set off in
the early
morning; an
evening around
the fire; the dry
river beds of
the northern
Lower Ewaso
Wilderness; a
leopard tortoise
and rufous
elephant shrew
— two of the
‘Small Five’;
approaching
the Mathews
Mountains — Will
Jones; Karisia Walking Sarfaris
On our first evening, we camp on an
open plain with Mount Kenya just visible behind the cloud. Ostensibly simple,
the set-up — organised by Karisia Walking Safaris, a local operator — is decidedly luxurious given our remoteness
and the amount of camel-power and
manpower it takes to transport and
assemble.
There are comfortable green-canvas
tents tall enough to stand up in and
equipped with a spongy mattress, sheets
and blankets. There is a portable canvas
shower for each guest and a canvas toilet, replete with raised-box toilet seat
over a freshly dug pit. The shower is
deliciously hot, the water heated over
an open fire and released, with the tug of
a cord, on to tired limbs and dusty hair.
The other guests in the group are not
new to adventure. Will Jones is a fellow
of the Royal Geographic Society and
founder of Journeys by Design, which
offers tailored safaris and what he
calls “off-map” or “off-Google” experiences. Laura Marshall-Andrews, his
wife, is a GP in Brighton, an author and a
student of different cultural approaches
to medicine.
Our routine becomes soothingly predictable. Each day, the camp is dismantled, loaded on to the camels and carried
to the next site, where it is magically reerected before we arrive. After breakfast, we set off at early light and walk for
about six hours, reaching the new camp
by lunchtime, followed by a postprandial rest and an evening stroll of perhaps
three hours.
The walking is easy and addictive. On
the first day, we were full of excited chatter. Now our voices have fallen to a
librarian’s whisper. We spend long spells
in silence with only the synchronised
i / D e TAI lS
David Pilling was a
guest of Journeys
by Design
(journeysbydesign.
com). It offers a fournight camelsupported walk with
Karisia Walking
Safaris, including
private charter flights
from Nairobi to the
airstrip at Tumaren,
from $5,950 per
person. A private
two-week safari
including the four
nights’ walking and
also helicopter
transfers into Kenya’s
northern deserts
would cost from
$19,100 per person
crunch of our feet on the parched earth
to mark time.
Most of the camels go on ahead, but
three stay back to carry daypacks, water
and — if we fancy — us. We yield to
temptation just once, for a faintly ridiculous lurch into camp on the second
day. I had the impression of camels as
bad-tempered and aggressive. These
ones are placidness itself, long-eyelashed and serene as they delicately pick
their way, munching cactus plants as
they go.
It was at dinner on the first evening
that we decided ours would be a quest
for the “Small Five”. Gabriel had just
spotted an elephant shrew scurrying
across the path. A long-snouted, rodentlike creature, the elephant shrew,
despite its modest proportions, is more
closely related to the larger animal of its
name. It is one of the so-called Small
Five — miniature counterparts to the
“Big Five” marketed as the must-sees of
a conventional safari. As Gabriel has
been teaching us to think small, it seems
fitting that we seek out the remaining
four mini-attractions: the antlion, the
rhinoceros beetle, the buffalo weaver
bird and the leopard tortoise.
The next morning we set off brightly
on what, to my mind, has become our
Horton Hears a Who safari. In the 1954 Dr
Seuss story, Horton the elephant helps
the nanoscopic people of Whoville
residing on a speck of dust. Though
invisible in Horton’s eyes, the citizens of
Whoville are perfectly proportioned in
their own.
An odd thing happens to scale on our
safari, too. As in the scene from TV comedy Father Ted when Father Dougal
struggles with the concept of perspective, the faraway elephants, eland and
waterbuck appear tiny to the naked eye,
inch-tall creatures only properly discernible through binoculars.
The little tykes a few inches away, by
contrast, become terrifying monsters.
On one occasion, Gabriel finds a giant
(well, satsuma-sized) hairy baboon spider. Mesmerised by its menacing anatomy, I wonder how nervous I’d be if it
were the size of a car. Later, we watch
fascinated as a bottle-green dung beetle
lifts off, hovers and then buzzes
horizontally as zippily as any Whoville
helicopter.
Gabriel regularly tests our growing if
still superficial knowledge of paw and
hoof prints or, better yet, our dungidentification skills. “Poo Safari”, I
write in my notebook. This one is
chalky white from digested bones
(hyena), this scattered with the heads
of termites (aardvark), this black peppercorn-sized (a miniature dik-dik
antelope), and this one fluffy cotton
wool (leopard).
He directs our attention to a thumbsized concave funnel in the sandy earth:
an antlion trap. Ants stumble in and,
sensing the vibration, the antlion larva,
hiding below, pounces, snapping its jaws
and injecting a paralysing venom.
We entice one out with a fake-ant
vibration. Given its fearsome mandibles
and killer instincts, I’m glad it is smaller
than a pea.
Our quest for the Small Five falters,
but there are plenty of other things to
distract us. Like some Sherlock Holmes
of the bush, Gabriel is forever reconstructing crimes. Here is the Mystery of
the Impala Horns Stuck in a Tree. We
discover them via a leopard’s paw
prints, the scuffed scene of a kill, the
dragging of a carcass and the claw marks
up a trunk. More detective work solves
the Case of the Scattered Eggs. The culprit turns out to be a mongoose and the
victims five turtle hatchlings.
Gabriel’s investigations are ably
assisted by his own Watson, camelhandler and sharp-eyed spotter Ntation
(the “N” is silent). On the third day, as
we approach the Ewaso Ng’iro river,
which flows from Mount Kenya
towards Somalia, Ntation suddenly
whistles. Not far away is a leopard tortoise in plain sight. About the size of a
dinner plate, it is a female, discernible
from the rough patch on the back of the
shell where she has been mounted,
evidently quite often.
After a swim in the fast-flowing river
— not for the faint-hearted — we find the
fourth of our Small Five, a rhino beetle.
There are two of them on a cowpat (evidence of cattle herding, and therefore
humans after all) like a battling pair in
some Japanese video game.
The next morning’s walk is my last.
The earth has turned from red to black.
Gabriel and Ntation have their eyes
peeled for a buffalo weaver bird to complete the set. We spot a giant land snail,
which can grow up to eight inches long,
LAIKIPIA
COUNTY
Tumaren Camp
Nanyuki
Mt Kenya
Nakuru
K E N YA
Mt Kenya
National
Park
Nairobi
©Mapcreator.io/©HERE
20 km
though this one is smaller than my fingernail. “Not a good ambassador for his
species,” quips Will.
We scour and squint for several hours,
but there’s no buffalo weaver bird to be
found. The sight of an actual buffalo is
small consolation.
There is, however, one last adventure.
Waiting for us at Tumaren camp,
Karisia’s main base, is an H130 helicopter and celebrated bush pilot Jamie
Roberts. A rough-talking, grizzlehaired man in his fifties, Roberts has
the swagger of a ranch hand and a nicotine-throated laugh. The son of a croco-
dile hunter, he started Tropic Air 31
years ago with just one de Havilland
Beaver but now has a fleet of planes and
helicopters. When he’s not ferrying
tourists around, he’s spraying the
swarms of locusts now menacing parts
of east Africa.
We clamber in and within seconds the
helicopter is hovering with the poise of
any dung beetle, before whooshing off at
speed a few hundred feet above the
ground as a huge flock of egrets scatter
like confetti at a wedding.
Roberts manoeuvres the machine like
a motorbike as we chase here and there,
following the river, rounding hills, ducking below the treeline and zipping off to
see herds of elephant or a black eagle’s
nest perched on the craggy pinnacle of a
spindly kopje. About half the helicopter
is window, so the views are spectacular
and the sensation of the ground rushing
beneath our feet palpable. I can only
imagine this is what it’s like to ride a
broomstick.
We approach another of the bulbous
rock protrusions, several hundred feet
high, and I gasp as I realise that Roberts
is going in to land. He approaches but
the wind drives us back and he steers
tightly around the rock for another go.
“It’s a bit of an old dog to fly around corners,” he growls. He comes in again, this
time successfully. We get out on the very
spot where David Attenborough filmed
the opening shot of his Africa series.
Roberts knows because he brought him
here himself.
After a cup of coffee, we take off again
and, 20 minutes’ heart-stopping
manoeuvres and jaw-slackening views
later, we drop off Will and Laura at the
base of another kopje. They are continuing their adventure.
I carry on to the town of Nanyuki,
from where I am flown, this time by
prop plane, back to Nairobi. Later my
WhatsApp dings with a message from
Will. Minutes after my helicopter left
the ground, he writes, Gabriel finally
spotted a white-headed buffalo
weaver bird. However thrilling it is to
take to the air, I think, it always pays to
be grounded.
David Pilling is the FT’s Africa Editor
Endangered Grevy’s zebras with Mount Kenya in the distance — Karisa Walking Safaris
8
★
FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
Clockwise from
main: BBC radio
announcer
Alvar Lidell,
famous for his
second world
war broadcasts;
behind the
scenes of the
radio drama
‘The Archers’:
‘Strictly Come
Dancing’ in 2016
and ‘Top of the
Pops’ in 1982
Corbis/Getty; Christopher
Thomond/Guardian/eyevine;
Joe Giddens/PA; Alamy
The BBC at 100
Essay | Part broadcasting history, part social history, a new work traces
the institution’s development to today’s crossroads. By Lionel Barber
E
veryone has an opinion about
the BBC. One day, it is pandering to the masses; the next
it is arrogant, elitist and out of
touch. Then again, the “middlebrow” path can be perilous too. In the
early days of radio, the author Virginia
Woolf worried that BBC studio heads
were too busy catering to an audience
not in her native edgy Bloomsbury but
in respectably dull South Kensington.
In 2022, when the BBC celebrates its
centenary and its future lies in some
doubt, it is time for a little perspective.
Therein lies the value of David Hendy’s
new history of the BBC. His is a tale of
creative endeavour and technological
innovation, beset by a constant tension
between leading and following the audience. In the UK, where jealous newspaper rivals and hostile politicians have
kicked lumps out of the institution
known semi-affectionately as “Auntie”,
holding the nation’s attention and
respect has seemingly become an
impossible task.
In the founding years, in the aftermath of first world war, life was more
straightforward. The BBC was guided by
a “High Victorian paternalism” embodied by its first director-general, John
Reith. A strict Presbyterian Scot standing 6ft6, Reith cut an intimidating figure
with a three-inch gunshot wound from
the war scarring his face. His edict was
“to bring the best in every department
of human knowledge, endeavour and
achievement” into every home in the
land. The mission to inform, educate
and entertain — accompanied by inevitable stumbles — was the basis for the
BBC’s evolution into a model of public
service broadcasting.
At various moments, the BBC has con-
tributed indelibly to the national consciousness: the televised coronation of
Queen Elizabeth II; the funeral of Winston Churchill; David Attenborough’s
Life on Earth series; and the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics which
brought together the “Beeb” and the
NHS in a celebration of “Britishness”.
The BBC embodies the national identity,
but its influence stretches worldwide.
The World Service — where my father
spent two happy decades in the 1960s
and 1970s — still reaches 468mn people
per week, broadcasting in 42 different
languages. Alongside the monarchy, the
BBC remains one of the two main pillars
of British “soft power”.
At the beginning of his book, Hendy, a
media historian, asks: “Is a history of
the BBC even possible?” The BBC has
already broadcast between 10mn and
20mn programmes. (Any attempt to
count precisely would take years, he
claims). Asa Briggs, a fellow academic,
took 35 years and five volumes to write
an earlier history, The Birth of Broadcasting, which he started in 1957. Hendy
packs 100 years into just over 600 pages
— enough space to squeeze in The Archers, the 1926 general strike and Strictly
Come Dancing, but no room for Brexit
news coverage or Match of the Day.
His approach is part broadcasting history, part social history. Listeners, viewers and broadcasters are joined umbilically via “A People’s History”, very
much a BBC standards-compliant subtitle. At times, the author feels obliged to
refer to Margaret Thatcher’s “Maoist
phase” (really?) or take a swipe at Kenneth Clark’s 12-part series Civilisation. In
1969, this was a cultural awakening for
the British public, but Hendy castigates
his “great man” theory for excluding
The BBC: A
People’s History
by David Hendy
Profile £25
638 pages
Africa, Asia and Islam and giving short
shrift to women. In retrospect, he may
have a point but Clark, the arch toff, was
a creature of his times.
Hendy does capture the idealism of
the extraordinary group of people led by
Reith making a new world: Cecil Lewis, a
handsome 20-something flying ace
married to the daughter of an exiled
White Russian general; Arthur Burrows,
a former teacher turned wireless expert;
Guglielmo Marconi, whom Hendy
sniffly dismisses as “a young Italian with
little knowledge of physics but a limitless gift for self-promotion”; and Hilda
Matheson, a fluent linguist, MI5 counter-espionage agent and social networker who became the first head of the
radio phenomenon known as “Talks”.
The new format involved eminent
speakers reading aloud meticulously
edited scripts in front of a microphone
in a box room in Savoy Hill near the
Strand, the BBC’s first headquarters.
Star writers turned up such as JB Priestley, EM Forster and George Bernard
Shaw, as well as David Lloyd George
(though the former prime minister, a
natural orator, suffered speaker’s cramp
in the absence of a physical audience).
A fresh influx of talent arrived in the
1930s as thousands of refugees fled fascism in Europe. The BBC Empire Service (later renamed the World Service)
and the BBC Monitoring Service (an
The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg poses a question to UK prime minister
Boris Johnson in September — Toby Melville/AFP/Getty
eavesdropping operation harvesting
vast amounts of information from the
world’s airwaves) included luminaries
such as Martin Esslin, the Austrian
author, George Weidenfeld, the future
publisher, and Ernst Gombrich, the art
historian. It was Gombrich who first
guessed Hitler was dead after hearing
German radio playing a Bruckner symphony. (He knew the piece had been
written to mark Wagner’s death — a
reminder to BBC mandarins about the
value of institutional memory.)
As a public corporation dependent
since 1946 on a licence fee levied on the
public, the BBC remains both financially
dependent on the state but nominally
editorially independent. This has
always been an awkward compromise,
especially at times of national crisis
such as the general strike, the second
world war and Suez in 1956.
As the BBC grew bigger,
the boundaries of
good taste and sound
judgment expanded
Alan Bullock, the Oxford historian
who worked at the BBC during the war,
describes the relationship as “a constant
pull and push”. The government’s
efforts to turn the BBC into a propaganda outfit foundered on passive
resistance and back-channel compromises. But the BBC did agree to allow
secret code to wartime resistance fighters to be inserted into its news broadcasts. After the war, it engaged at times
in self-censorship, generously interpreting matters of “controversy” and sticking too long to the 14-day rule prohibiting discussion of any issue arising in
Parliament over the next fortnight.
As the BBC grew bigger, with radio
and television channels proliferating,
the boundaries of good taste and sound
judgment expanded. The broadcasting
monopoly became untenable. Hendy
highlights, a little grudgingly, the benefits of competition. ITV forced the BBC
to up its game in TV drama and documentary; pirate radio operating off the
coast of England obliged the BBC to pick
up the pace with pop music, hiring stars
such as Tony Blackburn, Annie Nightingale and the lugubrious John Peel.
Hendy is less sure-footed in his
assessment of BBC journalism. While he
singles out triumphs such as coverage of
the fall of the Soviet Union, he does not
give enough credit to John Birt’s reforms
emphasising specialism or enough criticism to coverage of the Brexit referendum, where a weak-kneed BBC
embraced neutrality in the face of falsehoods on both sides, especially the
Leave campaign.
Since Thatcher, the voices calling for
the BBC to be cut down to size have
grown louder. Successive governments
have tried to pack the board of governors overseeing the BBC. The Daily
Mail, a critic since the 1920s, has
accused the BBC of smugness and “cultural Marxism”. Rupert Murdoch’s
newspapers have never ceased to take
potshots, rarely conceding they are
hopelessly conflicted because of their
own rival print and television interests
in the UK.
Toward the end, Hendy portrays an
institution under siege. Top managers
have wilted in the face of scandals, notably the Jimmy Savile affair involving a
paedophile TV personality gone rogue.
These low points overshadow real technological breakthroughs such as the
iPlayer and “Project Kangaroo”, the
2007 initiative that would have brought
together the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 in
a single UK-based point-of-delivery
video on demand service.
Director-general Mark Thompson’s
visionary plan was blocked by the Competition Commission after lobbying
from commercial operators such as
Murdoch’s Sky and Virgin Media. In retrospect, this looks like a serious misjudgement. A BBC platform operating at
scale would have offered first-mover
advantage against US giants led by Amazon, Disney and Netflix now dominant
in the content and streaming space.
Instead, the BBC has been put on
rations. Since 2010, Conservative governments have forced the BBC to swallow a 30 per cent real cut in funding,
including taking on the cost of the World
Service, previously funded by the Foreign Office. Last month, culture secretary Nadine Dorries, a pulp fiction
author and one-time reality TV show
contestant, suggested scrapping the TV
licence fee levied on the public by 2027,
without any serious discussion about
alternatives. This act of vandalism was
blocked by the rest of the cabinet.
In a fragmented media landscape,
where disinformation and social media
hold sway, the BBC’s role is arguably
more important than ever. The government last year boasted that the BBC
was the world’s most trusted broadcaster, an essential part of “Global Britain’s” aim to be a “soft power superpower” — an all-too-familiar mismatch
of rhetoric and action.
By all means, open the debate about
future funding mechanisms for the BBC.
But beware benign neglect or, worse, yet
another act of self-harm. The BBC — and
the nation — deserve better.
Lionel Barber is a former editor of the
Financial Times
That’s a bit rich
A tutor tells all in a funny,
farcical account of teaching
the offspring of the superwealthy. By Chris Allnutt
W
hen I used to give private English lessons in
Italy, I found clients
sporadically by word of
mouth, charged €10 an
hour — which was often part-paid in garden produce — and never once set foot
on a private jet. However, after reading
A Class of Their Own, Matt Knott’s
curiously compelling account of tutoring well-to-do London families in the
wake of the 2008 financial crisis, it
quickly became clear that I’d been doing
it all wrong.
Drawn to the job by the lacklustre
employment market and assisted by a
kind of academic matchmaking agency,
Knott plunges into a world where £30
an hour is the base rate, prep-school
coaching begins at age seven and writing
UCAS personal statements for university applications is contracted out to
consultants.
Millions of British parents spent more
on their children’s education last year in
an attempt to reconcile an increasingly
uneven system with record competition
for university places. It is no surprise
that private tuition and summer schools
are finding favour in a country where
successive lockdowns have caused
severe disruption to learning and
greater opportunities are already
afforded to those who are willing to pay
for them. As rising living costs force
A Class of
Their Own:
Adventures in
Tutoring the
Super-Rich
by Matt Knott
Trapeze £16.99
336 pages
poorer families to tighten their belts,
wealthy Londoners are adding another
notch to theirs in the form of a tutor.
Having himself attended a private
school on a scholarship, Knott
approaches tutoring with a “minor victim complex, and a lifelong insecurity
around rich people”, proving a suitably
self-effacing foil to his clients’ outlandish behaviour. This ranges from an oligarch spanking him with birch in the
family’s private banya to the advances
of a tight-trousered butler and the
appalling interior design of a restaurant
which his hosts invite him to and subsequently reveal they own.
Of course, he is often just as complicit
in the absurdity of the job. Asked to help
a student with a long-division problem,
he is stumped and ends up texting his
father for the answer. After all, he
inhabits a world where the right university on your CV is worth more than relevant qualifications. “Don’t worry about
your experience,” the woman from the
agency tells him. “You went to Cambridge. Clients love that.”
Parents pay Knott handsomely in the
hope that his alma mater will fix waning
grades by osmosis — though academic
improvement isn’t always their only
motivation. What they actually seem to
want for their children is a friend, or a
nanny, or a father figure. And for many,
private tutoring is as much a totem of
social status as it is a learning aid. “To be
honest, they barely need me,” he tells
one Kensington mother. “No,” she
replies, “but everyone else in their class
has a tutor.”
The demand for tutors is rising
accordingly. Between 2009 and 2019, the
proportion of students in England and
Wales receiving private tuition doubled.
This is likely to have grown further during the pandemic: online platform
MyTutor reported that its customer base
had trebled during school closures, with
higher-income families disproportionately likely to make use of such services.
Not everyone that Knott tutors is
uber-wealthy. Many of the students who
actually seem to benefit from his presence are from less well-off families and
lack the confidence to make use of their
talents in school. In these lessons, the
stakes are higher: “Here the cost of the
lesson was palpable, rather than a
rounding error in a vast weekly budget.”
Still, A Class of Their Own is not so
much an in-depth analysis of inequality
in education as it is a tongue-in-cheek
observation of an unfamiliar side to
London, entertainingly narrated and
full of farce. Not long before he calls
time on his tutoring career, the woman
at the agency offers Knott the chance to
go full-time — with a proper salary and a
pension. “It’s a real game-changer,” she
says, delighted at her ingenuity and
blissfully unaware that she has just
invented the teacher.
★
12 February/13 February 2022
9
FTWeekend
Books
I
Radical roots
n 2020 University College London
renamed a lecture theatre that had
previously borne the name of
Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis
Galton, widely considered the originator of modern eugenics, a word he
coined in 1883. Galton’s ideas about
eugenics, a UCL committee decided,
were too steeped in prejudice and racism for the university to continue honouring him this way.
As writer, broadcaster and geneticist
Adam Rutherford, who was on that
committee, explains in Control, eugenics
lost most of its appeal and advocates
after its association with the Nazis’ genocidal treatment of “inferior races” and
of people with mental and physical disabilities. In the early 20th century, the
idea of improving the genetic stock of
the population by selective breeding,
weeding out the “feeble-minded”, weak
and degenerate (such as criminals and
alcoholics), was widely embraced by
scientists, politicians and intellectuals.
Admirers included Winston Churchill, Arthur Balfour, George Bernard
Shaw, Marie Stopes and Julian Huxley,
grandson of Darwin’s staunch supporter
Thomas Henry Huxley and brother of
the author of Brave New World, a satire
on such dreams of scientific social control. Eugenics was especially popular on
the progressive left — Beatrice and Sidney Webb, founders of the New Statesman, were supporters too.
In the age of gene editing
and embryo screening,
these thorny issues are
more pertinent than ever
This is all a familiar story, but Rutherford tells it with great concision and
with clarity, both scientific and moral.
He recognises that it is a cautionary tale
of science’s fallibility and of the dangers
that lurk at the intersection of science
and social policy. This is not, Rutherford
says, a reason to keep science out of politics. On the contrary, it shows — as we
should hardly need reminding in this
pandemic — how science is irreducibly
political, and we must deal with it.
Nor is this simply a tale from science’s
murky past. Rutherford shows that in
the age of genomics, gene editing and
embryo screening, the thorny issues
raised by eugenics are more pertinent
than ever to how future individuals and
populations might be selected and
shaped. As with his previous books on
population genetics and misconceived
ideas about the “biology of race”,
Rutherford condenses tricky concepts
into smart and often witty prose, combining erudition with humility.
Galton’s idea seemed at the time
firmly rooted in Darwin’s theory of
inheritance and evolution by natural
selection. The blending of that theory
with genetics in the early 20th century
— the so-called Modern Synthesis —
seemed only to confirm it. If we are what
our genes make us, then the defective
gene variants that produce, say, schizophrenia or indolence will spread ever
more widely in the population if individuals bearing them have more children
than those with better genes. As Rutherford says, such fears resonated with
forebodings around the turn of the century of the degeneration of western civilisation, exemplified by Oswald Spengler’s two-volume The Decline of the West.
These concerns led to laws being
passed in the US, Canada and Scandinavia to permit enforced sterilisation of
“imbeciles”, “morons” or “idiots” (these
being considered precise categorisations of mental disability). In California
alone, about 20,000 people were forci-
From Chartist petitions to internet message boards,
how do new ideas take hold? By Boyd Tonkin
T
Francis Galton, who coined the term eugenics, during a visit to a criminal identification laboratory in 1893 — Alamy
Unnatural selection
Adam Rutherford takes a clear-sighted look at the
past and present dangers of eugenics. By Philip Ball
Control: The
Dark History
and Troubling
Present of
Eugenics
by Adam Rutherford
Weidenfeld
and Nicolson
£12.99, 288 pages
bly sterilised between 1909 and 1979;
the procedure was banned in prisons
only in 2014. Sterilisation of First
Nation women has allegedly happened
in Canada as recently as 2019, while in
China it is reported to still be happening
to the Uyghur minority.
Despite Churchill’s efforts, coercive
sterilisation was never enacted in the
UK. The future prime minister evidently shared the popular notion of a
hierarchy of races, with white Europeans at the top and “African Negros” at
the bottom. It is not for their eugenic
enthusiasms per se that Galton and the
pioneer of statistics Karl Pearson had
their names removed from UCL buildings, but because of the virulent racism,
even by the standards of their time, that
underpinned them.
Some scientists, such as JBS Haldane,
a pioneer of biology, recognised the
problems with eugenics from the outset
— not least, the difficulties of separating
innate from socially mediated characteristics. In 1935 US biologist Hermann
Muller called it “a hopelessly perverted
movement . . . lending a false appearance of scientific basis to advocates of
race and class prejudice . . . Fascists,
Hitlerites and reactionaries generally.”
That prejudice persisted in others long
after the Nazis had demonstrated the
consequences.
In 1963 Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of the molecular structure of
gene-carrying DNA, floated the idea of
eugenics by stealth via a tax on children,
reminding us that brilliance can happily
coexist with stupidity by claiming that
on the whole wealthy people tend to be
those with more socially desirable characteristics.
His former colleague James Watson
has advocated ideas about women’s freedom to decide about genetic selection
that sound to some uncomfortably close
to eugenics. Watson’s casually racist and
groundless assertions about a genetic
basis of intellectual abilities between
ethnic groups led to his suspension
in 2007 as chancellor of Cold Spring
Harbor Laboratory. That New York
research centre was already painfully
aware of having once been the epicentre
of American eugenics under the leadership of the infamously racist biologist
Charles Davenport.
All this is a reminder that eugenics
hasn’t gone away. The UCL decision on
Galton was prompted by the discovery
that one of its honorary academics had
in 2017 hosted on campus a closed meeting about “intelligence” that drew, in
Rutherford’s words, “a small cabal of
researchers, writers and oddballs for
whom race and eugenics are the enduring passions of their lives”. Some scientists and social commentators now
believe the “improvement of the species” desired by early eugenicists might
be accomplished through modern technologies, such as choosing which IVF
embryos to implant by analysing their
genomes and looking for those with
gene variants thought to correlate with
high IQ. Dominic Cummings, former
chief adviser to Boris Johnson, is among
those who flirt with these ideas.
One of the most valuable parts of
Rutherford’s honest, informed and
humane book explains why such
approaches are unlikely to have much
efficacy. The traits that we might most
wish to “improve” tend to correlate with
many genes dispersed widely in the
genome, most of which have other roles
too. Not only would these interventions
have very little (and uncertain) effects
on the target trait, but we wouldn’t
know what else we’d be selecting for.
Actively trying to edit a genome to boost
traits would probably be even less effective, and potentially dangerous.
Eugenics was a scientific idea that science itself has discredited: Rutherford
calls it a “busted flush, a pseudoscience
that cannot deliver on its promise”.
Unfortunately, there’s little chance of it
going away while the prejudice that created it remains.
Philip Ball’s latest book is ‘The Modern
Myths’, University of Chicago Press
From Rochdale with love
How a boy growing up in a
book-free household began
a life-long obsession with
reading. By Suzi Feay
A
ny individual who owns
thousands of books, not
just on designated shelving
but packed in the attic, on
the stairs and stacked in
corners, goes through conflicting feelings when contemplating their stash.
There is pride, excitement and a deep
sense of comfort, but also guilt and
shame. A sense of superiority over the
phone-twiddling masses perhaps, tempered with anxiety, even panic. Americans have an acronym for it, Bable: Book
Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy,
and novelist, publisher, former journalist and musician Mark Hodkinson
frankly owns up to the label. Now in his
late fifties, how much reading time does
he have left?
It is entirely characteristic of the collector mindset that Hodkinson nevertheless rationalises his possession of
3,500 volumes. “I am a bibliophile and
not a bibliomaniac,” he explains, the latter being a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Crunching the numbers
and assuming he began collecting at the
age of 13, he arrives at a modest rate of
acquisition: “I am mystified how anyone
can go through life and manage not to
bring home 1.5 books per week.”
Hodkinson’s memoir, like Kerry Hudson’s Lowborn (2019), aims to puncture
the publishing industry’s traditional
bias towards the middle and upper
classes. Born in Manchester in the mid1960s, moving to Rochdale 12 miles
away with his parents a few days before
his 10th birthday. It was not a bookish
household. “I have never seen them [his
parents] read a book, not even on holiday or over Christmas,” he writes. There
was just one book in the house, Folklore,
Myths and Legends of Britain bought by
mail order and kept on top of a wardrobe. Instead, the trader “Dirty Ray-
Mark Hodkinson as a boy and family
he revolution would
not be televised, it
would be glued, stapled and Xeroxed.
Around 1990 in
America’s Pacific north-west,
groups of middle-class teenage
girls peeled off from the macho
punk subculture to make homemade “zines”. These bedroom bulletins voiced their anger and alienation about stifling gender roles
that, as Gal Beckerman writes, left
them “standing on the edge of
society itself”.
The “messy DIY creativity” of
this movement, quickly dubbed
“Riot Grrrl”, soon spun out into a
loose national network of activist
self-publishers. They shared a
low-tech, dogma-free feminism
and yearned for “a politics that
came out of the hurt”. Then
arrived the magazine features, the
TV profiles, the pundits’ “prefabricated narratives”. If, by 1996, the
Spice Girls were telling the world
“what I really, really want”, the
true death-knell for authentic
“girl power” had probably tolled
earlier — with “the scratchy sound
of a modem connecting to AOL” in
millions of homes.
How do new ideas take root and
grow? Often, not in the blazing
sunshine of mass exposure, argues
Beckerman, but in the shadows of
a semi-private space. From Riot
Grrrl to the Soviet samizdat underground; from the mischievous free
press of colonial-era west Africa to
the email chains of US scientists as
president Donald Trump denied
the hurtling catastrophe of Covid:
The Quiet Before frames the
dynamics of innovation not as an
all-out race for followers but a
slow, deep nurturing of newness.
That requires high trust, niche
media and firm “guard rails” to
keep bands of pioneers on track.
In place of a “social contagion”
model for the spread of ideas,
Beckerman advocates the “intense
heat of incubation”, as bold visions
mature far from the limelight
thanks to “embedded patience”. In
this perspective, “going viral”
tends to bring not triumph but disaster. So the virtual communities
of first-wave cyber space appear
here as a paradise now lost.
Like other works on the “smart
thinking” shelf that swing
between cultural history and
how-to manual, The Quiet Before
scavenges past events and present
trends on a pattern-seeking quest.
Authors such as Malcolm Gladwell
and Steven Johnson have perfected the formula. To his credit,
Beckerman puts a much less spin
on his disparate material as he
advocates for “built-in slowness”.
For a start, he knows that bad
ideas also bloom in the semi-darkness of small-scale debate. The
Discord server hosted alt-right and
neo-Nazi coteries before their fatal
Charlottesville rally of 2017 (when
Trump saw “fine people on both
sides”). Deep incubation can
breed not miracles but monsters.
Even when the “passionate
whispering” of a tight-knit group
has noble aims, history may frus-
trate it. A moving chapter charts
the carbon-paper rebellion of the
Soviet samizdat reformers: dissidents constrained by scarcity and
surveillance to practise a glacierpaced resistance, one onionskin
sheet at a time. Within two decades, their “slow peeling away of
obfuscation” helped shatter a
monolithic system. But, in 2013,
samizdat heroine Natasha Gorbanevskaya returned to Red
Square to re-enact her 1968 protest — this time against Putin.
Beckerman, an editor at the
New York Times Book Review,
chooses historical examples with
an intriguingly eccentric eye. It
widens his horizons but scrambles
any simple message. His gaze
veers from the Chartist agitation of
19th-century England, which
made petition-signing the private
heart of a mass movement, to the
maverick feminist revolt of writerpainter Mina Loy against the mili-
The Quiet
Before:
On the
Unexpected
Origins
of Radical
Ideas
by Gal
Beckerman
Bantam Press
£20/Crown
$28.99
352 pages
taristic bluster of her fellow Futurists in 1910s Italy.
With the internet, The Quiet
Before finds a more consistent line.
In 1980s California, the earliest
chatroom architects fostered
mutual respect and solidarity.
They grasped that their virtual
coffee-house demanded “a nearconstant gauging of civility”.
“Cyber space needed bouncers”:
an insight soon mislaid. In Egypt,
after the Arab Spring, social media
— with their “penchant for performance” and “incessant one-upmanship” — replaced focused
incubation with the din of a “single
noisy room”. First, the betterdrilled Islamists harvested kudos
from chaos. Then, even more disciplined, the military elite.
In the US, Beckerman traces the
arc of Black Lives Matter. He pinpoints local campaigns for justice
that kept their focus as a “great
burst of visibility” saw the wider
cause flare and fade in national
spasms of “trauma porn”. His
book echoes a now-familiar
lament for the squandered hopes
of the early internet: before the
hunt for blanket impact tangled
the search for a “common world”
(Hannah Arendt’s phrase) in the
social media “rat’s maze of
rewards and punishment”.
Beckerman ends with a plea for
a human-scaled “table” where free
exchange can flourish away from
“our current cacophony”. The
Quiet Before can’t offer any fail-safe
recipe for slow-cooked innovation. It can help readers to imagine
— and join — a better kind of conversation in the kitchen of ideas.
FTWeekend Festival: US Edition
No One Round
Here Reads
Tolstoy:
Memoirs of a
Working-Class
Reader
by Mark Hodkinson
Canongate £16.99
368 pages
mond” at the market (he sold porn as
well as battered paperbacks) proved a
crucial contact for the teenager, with his
random bin of books marked “Brainy”.
As Hodkinson explains, “I thought it
was the best classification ever — still do
— for a certain type of book.” Here he
found JD Salinger, a life-changer.
Rather like the reader who picks up a
crime novel, then swaps it for a few
pages of a biography, reads a couple of
poems then settles on a short-story collection, No One Here Reads Tolstoy leaps
around, keeping to the memoir format
but frequently spinning off into entertaining digressions. The author riffs on
the head-spinning appeal of Morrissey’s
lyrics in the heyday of The Smiths and
Sylvia Plath’s prose, the proletarian
novel of the 1950s and 1960s, the invention of the paperback, the ideal author
photo, the art of the blurb and not least
the woes of the small independent pub-
lisher, particularly with regard to contracts and agents. “Dear Mark, Please
don’t talk about what you have given up
in this martyrish way,” runs one wounding missive.
Hodkinson avoids the clichés of the
“gritty northern” genre by concentrating as much on the burning inner life of
reading as the taxing outer one of getting a living in a series of rapidly altering
industries: local journalism, live music
and publishing. He culminates with a
resounding defence of the physical book
and the thankless enthusiasts who bring
it into existence.
He has made one peculiar decision: to
interrupt the flow with a separate, italicised narrative strand about his grandfather, John Duffy, who suffered a lifelong mental illness. Duffy is a unpredictable and unnerving presence, yet it’s
hard to think of a reader who will be as
fascinated by the tale as his grandson is.
Still, he can be excused, after his
description of a frustrating encounter
with an agent when he was trying to
publish a novel himself. The requested
rewrite was turned down with the airy
comment that it had now “lost some of
the sparkle and pace of the original”,
and Hodkinson vowed that “I would
never again . . . write by committee or
to order . . . I would do what I wanted”.
A little too much Grandad seems a small
price to pay.
Join Henry Kissinger, Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie and others, live from our
inaugural FTWeekend Festival: US
Edition on Saturday, May 7 in
Washington DC.
Book your pass today at:
ftweekendfestival.com
10
★
FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
Books
W
Twerk shy
ith diplomatic relations
between Russia and the
west at one of its lowest
ebbs since the cold war,
there could hardly be a
better moment to publish Vesna Goldsworthy’s teasingly titled new novel, Iron
Curtain: A Love Story. A bittersweet tale
of loyalty, love and the siren-call of freedom, it offers a timely reminder of how
much is at stake for countries whose
memories of life under Soviet rule — or
in its shadow — are still raw.
Set in an unnamed communist bloc
state in the 1980s, the novel is narrated
by twentysomething Milena, the daughter of a high-ranking member of the
Politburo, who is cosseted and controlled in equal measure. She lives with her
parents in a luxurious villa attended by
a driver, cleaner, cook and assorted others. “‘Servants’ was a term we studiously avoided,” she notes, “underpinned by our care for the dignity of
labour.” Unlike most of her compatriots,
Milena has access to hard currency,
Coca-Cola, and western designer brand
Houman Barekat on a collection of stories that renders the
low-key indignities of middle age with humour and poignancy
I
‘Iron Curtain’ is more dark
comedy than Greek
tragedy, but a serious seam
runs through the novel
Grace Russell
clothing. But her home is bugged, her
movements monitored, and her choice
of friends severely circumscribed.
After her boyfriend, Misha, blows his
brains out during a game of Russian roulette, Milena’s life goes into freefall. Her
increasing disaffection with the contradictions of her privileged imprisonment
is accelerated by the arrival of a handsome young poet, Jason Connor, flown
in from London as part of a carefully
choreographed cultural event.
Jason is everything Milena is not: idealistic, passionate, feckless and free. His
scruffy clothing, wholly inadequate for
the freezing temperatures, confirms
Milena’s father’s belief in his country’s
superiority over Britain: “Here was the
proof . . . the imperialists dispatched
their poets abroad in rags.” Appointed
as translator to this golden-haired foreigner, Milena’s icy cynicism starts to
thaw and when Jason flies home a
few days later, she finds herself bereft —
and pregnant.
This is Goldsworthy’s third novel (she
is also an award-winning poet, memoirist and non-fiction author) and in many
ways her most daring for the questions
it poses about ideological prejudice and
national stereotypes. Goldsworthy grew
up in Belgrade, then part of Yugoslavia,
moving to London in 1986 at the age of
24, and the novel draws on her time
under pre-Glasnost communism.
“All Communist countries were supposed to be alike,” Milena acerbically
observes. “Socialism was scientific after
all, a repeatable experiment.” Goldsworthy plays with this idea by making
the country she depicts in Iron Curtain a
composite of former satellite states of
the Soviet Union, a parody of the west’s
long history of cultural appropriation of
the Balkans, which was itself the subject
of her acclaimed non-fiction book
Inventing Ruritania.
“Have I gone back in time?” Jason asks
on his first day behind the Iron Curtain,
and the flattened precision of Goldswor-
Lifting the veil
A cold war tale about love and loyalty
poses timely questions. By Rebecca Abrams
Iron Curtain
by Vesna
Goldworthy
Chatto & Windus
£14.99, 336 pages
thy’s prose seems to provide an answer.
There is a glacial quality to the first half
of the novel, which powerfully enacts
Milena’s sense of entrapment but
impedes momentum. The pace picks up
when Milena decides to follow her heart
and defects to England. Cut loose from
the suffocating protection of family and
state, her narration acquires vitality, but
the allure of capitalist freedom, “vibrant
and welcoming on the surface, but feral
underneath”, rapidly loses its shine.
London in the early 1980s is gleefully
conjured in all its unadorned awfulness:
chilly bedrooms, bone-numbing damp,
woodchip wallpaper, disgusting food.
Ensconced with her penniless wannabeShelley in a dismal basement flat in
Shepherd’s Bush, Milena soon realises
that her beloved’s embrace of socialism
is skin deep. “In Marxist-Leninist parlance, he was a genuine opportunist”.
His parents, meanwhile, are fallen aristocrats, more obviously devoted to their
dogs than their children, happier spending money on champagne than heating
their crumbling country pile.
Like the Russian oligarchs in Goldsworthy’s 2015 novel Gorsky, a playful
reworking of The Great Gatsby relocated
to 1990s London, Milena is on a steep
learning curve about what money can
and can’t buy. Except in her case, the
only money she has access to are the
occasional wads of cash delivered by her
father’s agent to drive home the point
that freedom is a costly business.
In case we miss the earlier allusions to
Euripides’ Medea, Goldsworthy has
Jason working on a poetry collection
called The Argonauts. Like her ancient
Black Sea princess counterpart, Milena
is every bit the defiantly disloyal daughter, abandoning family and country for
love of her thieving heart-throb, and
going on to bear him two sons — but
when Jason proves as fickle as his
namesake, Milena is equally ruthless in
her revenge.
Goldsworthy writes with a light
touch and understated humour, and
Iron Curtain is more dark comedy than
Greek tragedy, but a serious seam runs
through the novel. Living in grinding
poverty in Thatcher’s Britain is no joke.
“The poorest workers in my homeland
have warm homes to go to, even at
minus twenty,” Milena observes, “and
here I was freezing at well above zero.”
Jason flirts with impecunity, secure in
the knowledge of the safety net provided by membership of the English
social elite. The stakes are altogether
higher for Milena, who must choose
between one imperfect freedom
and another.
The novel’s last words are given to
Milena’s father Comrade Urbansky, in a
symbolic assertion of the supremacy of
state control. But in the blank space
beyond the final full-stop, the reader is
left with the knowledge that only two
years later the curtain will fall and
Urbansky’s world will be swept away.
The question now is: for how long?
Rebecca Abrams is the author of ‘Touching
Distance’ (Picador)
n the title story of Dance Move,
Wendy Erskine’s second collection
of short fiction, a mother looks on
despondently as her 13-year-old
daughter records twerking videos
on her smartphone with a pal. The girls’
exuberant vitality is cruelly juxtaposed
with her own inertia: she watches “a
romantic film where people, compelled
by passion, repeatedly do rash and ridiculous things. Wouldn’t have done that,
she says to herself. Or that. Or that. And
definitely not that.”
Like many of Erskine’s characters,
the mother cuts a faintly ridiculous but
essentially sympathetic figure. The
low-key indignities of early middle age,
as well as its minor triumphs and
consolations, are rendered with wry
humour and poignancy in these absorbing tales set mainly in the author’s
native Belfast.
Several stories involve the wistful
revisiting of past selves. The eponymous
protagonist of “Mrs Dallesandro”, a
former teacher who became a stay-athome mum after marrying a wealthy
lawyer, periodically visits a scuzzy tanning salon on the sly; she passes the
afternoon of her 23rd wedding anniversary on a sunbed, masturbating to
the memory of a fling she had when she
It is the very lack of
explication that allows
the stories’ quiet
melancholia to breathe
was 18. In “Nostalgie”, a former pop
singer turned IT consultant is invited to
play a one-off show in Belfast by veterans of a paramilitary battalion who have
adopted one of his old B-sides as their
anthem. Before the realisation hits him
that his hosts are terrible people, he rapturously rolls back the years: “Life glorious and at full tilt: it’s not so very dead
and gone.”
Awkward but tender intergenerational friendships are another running
theme. A cleaning lady happens upon a
seemingly abandoned child and takes
her under her wing; a lad on a work
placement at an industrial estate lodges
with a lonely older woman and they
form an unlikely bond. Such scenarios
would typically be mined for schmaltz
in middlebrow fiction, but they are subtly wrought here: the dialogue has a
halting, elliptical quality and is all the
more convincing for it.
“His Mother”, in which a woman who
lost her son to suicide painstakingly
removes the “missing” posters that had
been plastered around town when he
disappeared, is unusual among the stories for its straightforward sentimentalism. More often, the emotional timbre is
complicated by hints of whimsy or sardonicism. In “Memento Mori”, a woman
is nursing her terminally ill partner
when an area of pavement in front of
their home becomes a shrine to a
Dance Move
by Wendy Erskine
Picador £14.99
240 pages
murder victim; the register shifts from
tragedy to black farce when the protagonist, nonplussed at the obstruction of
their driveway by constant vigils, tangles with a mourner.
Erskine’s storytelling style is economical and, by contemporary standards,
thin on interiority. A description of a
little girl with “a basic face, as if someone in a hurry had drawn quick features
on a pebble” feels like a winking
acknowledgment of the author’s brisk
technique.
But while the stories are lightly
sketched, they are by no means insubstantial. Small, telling details conjure
the visual texture of a time or place: the
“curved velour plush” of the seats in a
cheap hotel; a slot machine “with a
backlit and saturated image of a scantily
clad woman leaning against a limousine”; sachets of tanning lotion “with
names like Tantric and X-ta-C”; the window display of a Polish grocery shop,
“partially concealed by an adhesive
panel displaying close-ups of cheese
and apples”.
“Cell”, a story about a wayward Irish
undergraduate in London who falls in
with an unsavoury posse of bohemian
freeloaders, features a sensitive portrayal of a socially isolated young
woman. A passing reference to the faded
cartoon characters adorning her
pyjama bottoms signifies, with minimal
fuss, her immaturity and vulnerability.
Indeed, it is the very lack of explication that makes these stories so pleasingly taut and allows their quiet melancholia to breathe: Erskine is less interested in dispensing wisdom than in
evoking the ambient pathos of
ordinary lives. The understated yet distinctive sensibility first showcased in
her 2018 debut collection, Sweet Home,
is well honed in this impressive
follow-up.
Author Wendy Erskine — Khara Pringle
An ear for the modernist classic
Unbowed voices
t’s a big year for literary anniversaries, and not merely
because of the individual
titles, but because 1922 crystallised the impact that modernism was to leave on fiction,
drama and poetry. Perhaps the
most significant centenary is of
the publication of James Joyce’s
Ulysses. A recent audio version of
the novel is the Penguin Classics
from 2019 (32hr 38min), which is
read by actor Patrick Gibson, but
very much worth hunting out is
the older version by Naxos Audio
(27hr 16min), read by Jim Norton
and Marcella Riordan, two Irish
actors with huge experience in
productions of Joyce’s work.
Meanwhile, there is a brandnew production of another of
1922’s most celebrated works: TS
Eliot’s The Waste Land & Other
Poems (Faber & Faber, 47min),
performed by actor Edoardo Ballerini, who has previously
recorded all 135 hours of Karl Ove
Knausgaard’s My Struggle.
What’s so impressive about Ballerini’s reading is the way he
ducks portentousness — always a
risk with Eliot — and captures the
sense of play that runs throughout The Waste Land. Register and
tone are constantly switching, the
tempo alters, snatches of demotic
English give way to German and
French. Sometimes Ballerini proceeds trippingly, catching the gossipy, mocking, conspiratorial
interludes in the poem; at other
times he is mournful and
beseeching. Also here are poems
Short stories by Afghan
women offer snapshots
of a country beset by
war. By Lucy Popescu
I
WEEKLY
ROUND-UP
AUDIO BOOKS
By Alex Clark
including “The Love Song of J
Alfred Prufrock” and “Journey of
the Magi”, all of which will repay
repeated listening.
From Joyce to something a little
more contemporary, and Brian
Bilston’s Alexa, What Is There to
Know About Love? (Picador, 1hr
8min), in which the pseudonymous poet, his identity carefully
shrouded, narrates his characteristic ruefulness and self-deprecation to amusing and often comforting effect. As the title suggests, there are poems about love,
the collection opening with “The
Caveman’s Lament” (“Me say to
her how much me love her/She
tell me love invent not yet”). But
Bilston’s real subject is the tricks
that language plays on us, the fun
we can have in return and the
abiding importance of books (see,
for example, “There’s a Supermarket Where Once the Library
Stood”: “I asked them last week if
they had any Flaubert/A blank
look, then a shrug: ‘The cheese
counter’s there’ ”).
Richard E Grant is surely the
first call if you want a narrator for
a preposterously tall tale, filled
with outlandish characters, hints
of debauchery and decadence and
freewheeling adventures, and he
does a tremendous job with James
Birch’s memoir Bacon in Moscow
(Profile Audio, 6hr 12min). The
source material is highly promising, taking us to the heart of the
1980s art world and gallerist
Birch’s attempts to capitalise on
Richard E Grant is the
narrator you want for a
tall tale filled with
outlandish characters
the dawning age of glasnost and
perestroika to mount an exhibition in a newly thawing Russia,
aided by a family association with
the painter Francis Bacon. What
Birch hadn’t quite bargained for
was managing the attentions of
his KGB gatekeeper, Sergei
Klokov, whose fondness for lobbing Birch curveballs Grant
brings wonderfully to life.
The star turn, of course, is
Bacon himself, remembered by
Birch’s parents as a man with “a
gentle disposition, and charming
manners”, but heard here in
rather more querulous, dyspeptic
vein. With the constant question
of whether the exhibition can
possibly ever come off hovering
over the narration, it’s also unexpectedly suspenseful.
Finally, one of the year’s most
anticipated works of fiction is
Monica Ali’s Love Marriage
(Hachette Audio UK, 15hr
51min), her first novel for 11
years, and nearly two decades
after her acclaimed debut Brick
Lane. Love Marriage is perfect for
audio in that it is an ensemble
piece populated by idiosyncratic
characters — most notably, the
two mothers, Anisah and Harriet,
whose children, doctors Yasmin
and Joe, are shortly to marry.
Narrator Ayesha Dharker has a
whale of a time shifting from
vignette to vignette, animating
terrifyingly upfront feminist icon
Harriet at one moment, Yasmin’s
quiet yet implacable father
Shaokat the next, the two bewildered would-be newly-weds
caught in between. Yet though
Love Marriage has many comic
interludes, it’s also a serious and
often sad novel; and the chapters
in which Joe sits desperately confiding in his psychotherapist are
also ably and movingly depicted,
as are the clashes between Yasmin’s brother Arif and his parents, as he fails to live up to their
expectations for him. It’s an ideal
book to lose yourself in as the seasons begin to turn — although it’s
probably not entirely suitable for
those about to enter into a prolonged bout of wedding planning.
U
ntold is a development programme
that works with marginalised writers,
particularly those in
areas with recent or ongoing conflict. Between 2019 and 2021,
Untold’s Write Afghanistan
project worked with 18 emerging
female writers to develop and
translate their creative writing.
The result is this arresting collection of stories.
Contributors came from
Afghanistan’s major cities as well
as rural parts of the country and
the editorial process took place
online. Untold founder Lucy
Hannah tells how one story was
“written by hand, photographed
and sent via WhatsApp messages
through a chain of people.” Sadly,
the Taliban takeover in August
2021 interrupted Untold’s work.
Since then, the writers’ safety has
become paramount; some have
had to destroy their work, and it
was deemed too dangerous to
include profiles of the contributors within the book.
The collection’s lyrical title is a
quote from one of the writers,
Batool Haidari, which is worth
repeating in full: “My pen is the
wing of a bird; it will tell you these
My Pen Is
the Wing of
a Bird: New
Fiction by
Afghan
Women
MacLehose
Press £14.99
256 pages
thoughts we are not allowed to
think, these dreams we are not
allowed to dream.”
The first of Haidari’s two memorable stories is about a young
man who, conflicted by his sexual
identity and frustrated by an
unforgiving culture, yearns to
dress in women’s clothing and
wear make-up. The second,
“Khurshid Khanum, Rise and
Shine”, is about a father who,
desperate to return to his family
after having been kidnapped
for six years, discovers that his
wife, believing him dead, has
remarried.
Each of the works in this collection is written in simple, direct
prose and offers vivid snapshots
of a country beset by war and violence, where misogyny is rife but
women continue to dream of a
better future. The bombings are
relentless and death is a constant
companion through these pages
but there’s an honesty in the
choice of themes. Some fiction is
inspired by real events: Elahe
Hosseini describes the aftermath
of a suicide bombing in a Kabul
wedding hall, while Zainab
Akhlaqi draws on the horrific
bombing of a girls’ high school
for her tale. As Lyse Doucet
(the BBC’s chief international
correspondent, and an experienced reporter on Afghanistan)
writes in her introduction: this is
“literature drawn from real life,
real loss.”
Patriarchy and male violence
are recurring themes. Wives who
don’t do what they are told are
bullied and burnt. Daughters as
young as 12 are sold as wives to
old men. Poverty haunts many
families who cannot afford food,
shoes or school. However, the
women’s extraordinary resilience
is also celebrated. In “The Late
Shift”, Sharifa Pasun describes
the routine of Sanga, a news presenter who doesn’t deviate from
her script as bombs fall all around
her. Fatema Khavari’s “Ajah”, set
in the 1940s, is about one
woman’s determination to save
her village from flooding.
Writing helped many contributors make sense of a harsh world.
For one, sharing their work
became an act of moral support
and defiance: “War won’t take our
creativity away.” As the current
humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan grows, with millions at risk of
starvation, it seems more important than ever to read the work of
these courageous writers. Hannah says that many of them continue to write. Let’s hope they find
a way to share their stories with
us again.
★
12 February/13 February 2022
11
FTWeekend
‘Riots would break out in front of you’
our paintings she called “Political Landscapes”, which explored racism in
Europe, and her Feminist Series, the
first of her cloth-framed acrylic paintings inspired by the Tibetan tankas she
had first seen during a visit to Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.
Ringgold did not make her first story
quilt until 1984 with “Who’s Afraid of
Aunt Jemima?”, which reframed the
derogatory archetype of a large female
house slave as a strong, admirable black
entrepreneur. She went on to create
well-known story quilts, such as the 12
pieces in her 1991-97 “French Collection”, which will be shown in the new
retrospective as a complete series for
the first time in almost 25 years. These
works centre on the fictitious character
of Willia Marie Simone, a young black
woman in Paris in the early 1900s who
has adventures while developing as an
artist and socialising with literary and
artistic greats: a vision of life beyond the
strictures of race and gender.
Ringgold is also a prolific author and
illustrator. “I started to write my autobiography in the early 1980s,” she says.
“I just thought I should begin to put all
the pieces together. We Flew Over the
Bridge is the title. It took me [about] 12
years to get it published.”
She has also published some 17 children’s books, including the bestselling
Tar Beach (1991), about a fictional little
girl named Cassie. In 1999 it was made
into an animated film for HBO. The
book followed a 1988 story quilt,
“Woman on a Bridge, #1 of 5: Tar
Beach”, which she says is probably her
most popular painting.
“You know, Tar Beach has been in my
head since we started talking,” she tells
Faith Ringgold | The artist
talks to Enuma Okoro about
Harlem in the 1960s, her
activism and having her
first full retrospective at 91
I
n her home in Englewood, New Jersey, Faith Ringgold is energetic and
ready to chat over Zoom. Thick,
long strands of her grey dreadlocks
poke out from a colourful red and
green headscarf and curl down one
shoulder. At 91, the artist, activist,
writer and educator is preparing a show
at the New Museum in New York:
although her work is now in the Met,
MoMA and other leading institutions,
this will be her first full retrospective.
Entitled Faith Ringgold: American People,
it showcases almost 50 years of her
career, from 1962 to 2010.
Besides 135 of her works, ephemera
and photographs bear witness to Ringgold’s pivotal role as an art activist who
courageously spoke out against the discrimination and exclusion of black and
brown people and women in the art sector and society at large.
Although she has worked in multiple
genres, from oil to watercolour, soft
sculpture and more, Ringgold is best
known for her story quilt paintings,
blending patchwork quilting and storytelling traditions from her African
American heritage with painting traditions. “I always thought it interesting —
why condemn a medium just because
you don’t know how to use it? You can
use the materials that craftspeople use
to do anything you want to do,” she says.
For the story quilts, she paints on to
unstretched canvas using acrylics.
Then, typically, she or an assistant
writes her narratives on the dried
painted canvas, or along the fabric borders. Some quilts incorporate appliqué
or silk screening. All the stories are narrated by women.
Whether through textile, paint, dollmaking, performance art or language,
Ringgold has always been unafraid to
share her truth about her country, and
to weave a range of human emotions
through her work. From racism and
sexism to the celebration of fellow black
truthtellers, fictional stories inspired by
life events and her childhood in Harlem,
Ringgold’s art is an open book to her
thoughts and experiences, and a visual
history of a country, culture and people.
“I’m so happy that I have all the
work,” she says. “All those years when
people weren’t interested in me, I made
the work anyway. And if I hadn’t, I’d be
offered this retrospective but I wouldn’t
be able to do it.”
Born in 1930 into the last years of the
Harlem Renaissance, the golden age of
20th-century African American culture, Ringgold moved with her family to
the comfortable environs of Sugar Hill
in 1940. She was the last of three children; her mother, Willi Posey, was a
fashion designer. Both her parents nurtured her interest in the arts. “I had
asthma as a child and I would get really
sick, so I stayed at home a lot. My father
gave me my first easel and my mother
made sure I had paints and brushes.”
In 1950, Ringgold was one of the first
black people to study art at the City College of New York. As a woman she
THE LIFE
OF A SONG
TRANS-EUROPE
EXPRESS
P
opular music and railways
are inseparable. The boogiewoogie tunes of the 1920s
and ’30s, and songs such as
Louis Jordan’s “Choo Choo
Ch’Boogie” (1946), made an explicit
connection between their rhythms and
the sound of steel wheels on a track.
In 1977, Kraftwerk brought trains
and music into the electronic age with
“Trans-Europe Express”. It was themed
around the first-class rail network that
criss-crossed Europe from the 1950s, a
manifestation of the vision of a new
borderless postwar continent. The
network ran close to Kraftwerk’s Kling
Klang studio in Düsseldorf, where the
four members of the group, founded in
1969 by Ralf Hütter and Florian
Clockwise from
main: Faith
Ringgold;
‘Between
Friends’ (1963);
‘Jo Baker’s
Birthday’
(1993); ‘Die’
(1967) — Daily Mail/
Solo Syndication; ACA
Galleries; Jonathan Muzikar/
MoMA
wasn’t allowed admission to the School
of Liberal Arts, so she enrolled at the
School of Education. Later, she worked
for 18 years in the New York public
school system before taking a full professorship in the visual arts department
at University of California, San Diego, in
the 1980s.
“If I was going to teach anything it was
going to be art.” She says this, and sighs,
as if remembering again how challenging those times were. “Oh my goodness,”
she says. “There was so much racism
and sexism. A lot of problems in that
regard. But, um, we got past it.”
It was in the 1960s that Ringgold’s
activism began to challenge racial and
gender barriers in museums and the art
world in general. She organised demonstrations, protesting in 1968 at the Whitney Museum’s exhibition The 1930s:
Painting and Sculpture in America
because no black artists were included.
She then went on to be part of activist
groups such as the Artist Workers’ Coalition, and the Women Students and
Artist for Black Art Liberation, which
she helped found with her daughter,
among many other campaigns.
Giving artistic voice to the civil rights
Schneider, worked. (They said of
themselves: “We are not artists or
musicians. We are workers.”)
Their groundbreaking 1975 track
“Autobahn” had, in its deadpan way,
documented the experience of driving
on Germany’s motorways. Two years
later, Kraftwerk boarded the “TransEurope Express”. In neutral tones, they
chanted the title phrase like robotmonks, their voices treated at times
with vocoders. Snippets of spoken
narrative told of a cosmopolitan
lifestyle: “Rendezvous on the
Champs-Elysées.”
Chugging rhythms simulated, in a
simplified way, the movement of
wheels on tracks, consciously
echoing, and referencing, the
previous year’s “Station to Station”
by David Bowie — in which he had
announced that “The European
canon is here”. Later in “TransEurope Express”, the travellers meet
Bowie and Iggy Pop, by then
collaborating in Berlin, in Düsseldorf.
It was the title track to Kraftwerk’s
1977 album (edited down and released
as a single) and its synthesiser motif
era (and later to second wave feminism), Ringgold began painting her
“American Series” in what she called her
new style of “Super Realism”. The first
in the series, “Between Friends”, was
inspired by interracial social events
hosted by some members of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In a mix of bold
orange and blue against a darkened
background, a black and a white woman
stare at one another, the tension and dis-
runs through the album. Side two of
the album is a “suite”, with three
consecutive tracks at its heart: the song
itself, followed by the clanging “Metal
on Metal” and the pure rhythm of
“Abzug”, a journey lasting more than 13
minutes. The metal-bashing of “Metal
on Metal” was achieved, according to
Uwe Schütte’s book Kraftwerk: Future
Music from Germany, by hammering
wheelbarrows and banging zinc
shelving. This was the sound of
Germany’s industrial Rhine-Ruhr
heartland. This was also explicitly
European music.
Yet it soon made its way across the
Atlantic to New York and Detroit,
where young, predominantly black
clubbers on a nascent electro/techno
scene danced to “Trans-Europe
Kraftwerk, circa 1970
Frãhling/Kraftwerk/Getty Images
comfort obvious. “If something was
happening, you could talk about it with
art,” she observes. “And it was a time
when a lot of things were happening.”
In 1967, for her first solo gallery show
at Spectrum in New York, Ringgold
painted three of her most famous largescale works, “The Flag is Bleeding”, “US
Postage Stamp Commemorating the
Advent of Black Power”, and “Die”,
inspired by the social conditions of
those years. “You know, in the ’60s you
could be walking around in the streets,
in Harlem or some part of the city, and
riots would break out right in front of
you. And nothing in the papers about it.
Nothing,” she says.
The painting is a violent scene of a riot
involving black and white protesters;
blood is splattered everywhere. Caught
in the mayhem, crouched and hugging
one another in fear, are two children, a
little black girl and a little white boy.
MoMA purchased the work in 2018.
Remembering a day in 1971 when she
was protesting at the Whitney, she tells
me that was the day she was called the
N-word for the first time. “There was
this little girl with her father. He got very
annoyed with her, I remember. Then
called me that.”
In response, she painted a Confederate flag black with the words “Hate is
Sin” in bold letters across the X. Around
the border is an inscription describing
the incident. The painting was later purchased by the Whitney Museum.
During the 1970s, Ringgold began to
focus on the challenging relationships
between black men and black women,
and the latter’s struggle for equality. In
1971, she made two protest posters of
support for the imprisoned activist
Angela Davis, and created her first
mural featuring a group of women, “For
the Women’s House”, for the Women’s
House of Detention on Riker’s Island.
That decade also included watercol-
Express” and “Metal on Metal”.
Kraftwerk were delighted.
In the US, it was picked up by a
producer and a key figure in the rising
hip-hop scene, Afrika Bambaataa, and
he and fellow producer Arthur Baker —
with the help of a Roland drum
machine — created the groundbreaking
“Planet Rock”, on which Bambaataa
and others rapped over a version of
“Trans-Europe Express”, interpolated
with another Kraftwerk
track, “Numbers”. Its
impact was electrifying,
and “Planet Rock” has
been acclaimed as a key
driver of hip-hop.
Over the ensuing decades,
“Trans-Europe Express” has
travelled far and wide.
Washington DC go-go band
Trouble Funk made it, well,
funky in their “Trouble Funk
Express” (1984). It has been
sampled by hip-hop acts such
as 2 Live Crew and Jurassic 5,
though many seemed to miss
the essence of the original,
which is that it uses empty space so
‘I’m so happy that I went
ahead and did this because
so many artists stop, or
don’t fulfil their dream’
me. “It’s such an important part of my
childhood. It’s what we called the roof of
the apartment where I lived as a child in
Harlem. We would go up there as a family and have picnics. I could see the
George Washington Bridge from up
there, and I used to dream I could fly
over it.”
The 1988 painting depicts a family on
an apartment rooftop in Harlem on a
summer night. Four adults sit playing
cards at a table while two children, a little black girl and her brother, lie on a
mattress, gazing up at the night sky.
Another little girl flies magically over
the bridge. On one side, a line of laundry
hangs neatly, a comforting reminder of
home routines. The painting feels tender, warm and familiar. Now it is in the
Guggenheim. “They wrote a letter once
saying it was the most requested work in
their collection for loan by another
institution,” Ringgold tells me.
I ask her if at 91 she is still making
work. “Yes! Yes! But right now is a difficult time. I’ve started a number of series
but I’m not able to complete them yet
because I want to see what’s going to
happen in the world. But I’ve done so
many works that it’s not a problem.”
She shakes her head thoughtfully.
“I tell you, I couldn’t be happier that I
did [all this]. Every day of my life I’m
saying: ‘Oh my God, I’m so happy that I
went ahead and did this because so
many artists stop, or don’t fulfil their
dream. But I’ve done mine.’” She laughs.
“I have done some work!”
February 17-June 5, newmuseum.org
effectively. Covers have come from
esoteric acts such as Slovenian band
The One You Love, whose creepy ghosttrain-like ride features on a niche 1994
compilation album of Kraftwerk covers
by Slovenian metal and industrial
bands. German electro-troubadour
Uwe Schmidt recorded a sparky
“electrolatino” version in 2000 under
one of his alter-egos, Señor Coconut y
su conjunto, with cumbia rhythms.
Kraftwerk themselves re-recorded it
for their 1991 album The Mix, with
punched-up digital sound, the bangings
and clangings of “Metal on Metal”
created electronically rather than
through manual labour. The Trans
Europe Express itself ceased to exist in
the 1990s, eclipsed by the continent’s
growing network of high-speed trains.
But Kraftwerk persist — they tour
Europe and North America this spring
and summer, Hütter the one original
member in the line-up — with this
trailblazing, groundbreaking suite at
the heart of their set.
David Cheal
More in the series at ft.com/life-of-a-song
12
★
FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
Arts
Impressionism’s outsider
Pissarro | The Ashmolean
pays tribute to the undersung
artist’s pivotal role in French
19th-century painting.
By Jackie Wullschläger
T
he dealer Paul Durand-Ruel
made fortunes from and for
Monet and Renoir while
keeping their fellow
Impressionist Pissarro
impoverished and struggling until his
last breath. “I am hardly besieged by
demands!” ran Pissarro’s final letter to
his son in 1903. “We are far from being
understood.” But when Durand was
dying he forgot about Monet and Renoir
and “imagined paradise as having the
serene sweetness of a landscape by
Camille Pissarro”.
There are many candidates for paradise in Pissarro: Father of Impressionism
at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
“Spring: Plum Trees in Bloom” bursts
white staccato flakes across the canvas,
superimposing them on to a hillside
ridge of houses, firm and static. “Landscape near Pontoise” is a natural harmony: bands of grey-blue sky, muted
If he was father to younger
artists, he was a most openminded one, learning as
enthusiastically from them
yellow meadow, green foreground with
haycart, rickety fence and a path inviting us to amble into the painting.
Or there is “Apple Harvest, Éragny”:
figures under the shade of the branches
surrounded by a field of orange, pink,
lavender, blue dots and dabs evoking a
warm early autumn afternoon. All celebrate the ordinary; all contain nature
within an architectonic frame — deliberate, unified.
Steady, steadfast, overlooked, refusing to be showy, collaborative: what
exactly was Pissarro’s role in the revolution of 19th-century French painting?
The Ashmolean — which, thanks to the
emigration of the artist’s eldest son to
England, has an exceptional Pissarro
collection — joins forces with Basel’s
Kunstmuseum to explore the question.
The show’s title comes from Cézanne,
memorialising a period when the pair
worked together.
But if Pissarro was father to younger
artists, he was a most open-minded one,
learning as enthusiastically from them.
Loans here of works by Cézanne, Monet,
Degas and Seurat chart the artistic
exchanges, rivalries, disappointments
and illuminations that fuelled Pissarro’s
thinking and made him, also in
Cézanne’s words, “the humble and
colossal Pissarro”.
He was an outsider, needing to make
French pastoral tradition his own. Born
in 1830 on the Caribbean island of St
Thomas to French-Jewish merchants,
Pissarro did not settle in Paris until 1855,
Clockwise from
main: ‘Apple
Harvest,
Éragny’, 188788; ‘Self-Portrait
with Palette’,
c1896; ‘The
Village Screened
by Trees’, 1869;
‘Barges on the
Seine’, c1863
Dallas Museum of Art; private
collection; Musée Camille
Pissarro/Musées de Pontoise
and fell immediately under the influence of Corot’s fresh, delicate realism —
his silvery, gentle “Duck Pond” opens
the show. The debt is clear in Pissarro’s
earliest painting here, “Barges on the
Seine” (1863) — sober hues and lively
handling of water. Already his interest
in the workaday world — chugging
steamer, busy labourers — is distinctive.
Almost all of Pissarro’s work before
1870 disappeared when German officers
ransacked his home during the FrancoPrussian war. We re-encounter him in
the fully fledged Impressionist 1870s
heyday on the Seine: he settled at Pontoise, and attracted Cézanne to move
nearby; Monet and Renoir painted a few
kilometres upstream at Argenteuil.
They shared fragmented brushstrokes
capturing fleeting light effects: snowscapes enlivened by coloured shadows
and softening, blurring strokes, for
example, in Pissarro’s “Snow Scene at
Pontoise” and “Farm at Montfoucault”
and Monet’s “The Boulevard de Pontoise at Argenteuil”.
Pissarro homes in on the shivering
peasant with his bundle, the traveller
battling uphill with his cart. And while
Monet and Renoir painted regattas at
Argenteuil, popular Impressionist leisure scenes, Pissarro depicted Pontoise’s
billowing potash factory in “Quai du
Pothuis at Pontoise”, and peasants
working in the beautifully modulated
hamlet view “A Corner of l’Hermitage”.
An interest in social cohesion had its
equivalent in cohesive pictorial
structure. In this aspect of Pissarro,
Cézanne, seeking to “make of Impressionism something solid and durable,
like the art of museums”, saw a master,
and then pushed beyond him. Paired
rhythmic compositions of a sloping
bank and houses glimpsed through
screens of trees in Pissarro’s “The Côte
des Boeufs, Pontoise” and Cézanne’s
“The Côte Saint-Denis at Pontoise”,
both 1877, show influence, and difference — Cézanne’s compressed monumentality, his greater translucency. The
impact was two-way: Pissarro’s “The
Quarry”, with its glowing patch of yellow laid on with a palette knife, has
Cézanne’s fierceness.
By 1879, a depressed market, and
questions of how to develop an art ren-
dering the passing instant, pushed all
the Impressionists into crisis. Cézanne
retreated to Provence, and Pissarro the
political radical collaborated in printmaking with Degas, the conservative
anti-Semite. Their complex, densely
textured etching and drypoint studies
yield lavish dramas of light and darkness, Degas in figure pieces, Pissarro in
landscapes: willows in “Setting Sun”,
peasants in a downpour in “Rain
Effect”, the airy, luminous “Wooded
Landscape at l’Hermitage”.
In the 1880s, ways separated again:
Degas towards pastel, Monet refining
seascapes by expressive contortions,
which Pissarro thought “romantic, retrograde”. He instead fell under the spell
of pointillist Seurat, forcing his admission to the eighth, final Impressionist
exhibition in 1886 — from which Monet
and Renoir withdrew. Seurat’s technique of tiny vibrant dots in complementary colours attempted to rationalise impressionism — his “Channel at
Gravelines”, anchor, sailing boat and
gaslight positioned like props in a composition mysteriously alternating flatness and depths, is a star Oxford loan
from MoMA.
Pissarro spent years painstakingly
producing scant, unsaleable pictures in
what he called the “primitive-modern”
pointillist mode. The masterpiece,
depicting fields, orchards, barn, red roof
and poplars, slotted together with jigsaw precision, is the joyful “View from
My Window, Éragny” — Pissarro’s
recent farmhouse home. He bought it
thanks to a loan from Monet, whose fortune soared after inventing the series
painting with “Haystacks”.
Bemused, Pissarro watched his
friend’s success in 1891: “This is a bad
moment for me. People want nothing
but Monets. Worst of all they all want
‘Haystacks in the Setting Sun’! I don’t
understand how Monet can submit to
this demand that he repeat himself.” But
soon Pissarro grasped series painting as
an apotheosis of the Impressionist fixing of the instant. Birmingham’s “Boieldieu Bridge at Rouen, Sunset” (1896)
and the Ashmolean’s “The Tuileries
Gardens, Rainy Weather” (1899) represent the two magnificent symphonic
urban series of Pissarro’s final years — a
return to freer mark-making, achieving
grandeur through his instinct for construction. These won acclaim mostly
after his death, and “The Tuileries” is
especially poignant: from the Hôtel du
Louvre, Pissarro, almost 70, calmly
painted the gardens of the royal palace,
epicentre of French history, as his own
place in it was threatened by the Dreyfus Affair. Degas cut him off, anti-Semitic mobs harassed him, but “despite
all these anxieties, I must work at my
window as if nothing has happened”.
Degas skipped Pissarro’s funeral four
years later. “What did he think of the
embarrassment one felt in his company . . . Did he think only back to the
times when we were more or less unaware of his terrible race?” he wondered.
Yet Degas was unsettled: he dreamt he
met Pissarro “and as if I were awake, I
had the presence of mind to stop myself
just as I was going to say to him: ‘I
thought you were dead.’” The dream
held the truth: Pissarro remains alive,
enriching, enraptured, to artists, history and art lovers.
February 18-June 12, ashmolean.org
Bacon triptych could fetch sizzling £55mn
The Art Market | Sadie Coles lends space in London free of charge; price records tumble for Outsider Art at Christie’s; Pace takes on Hermann Nitsch. By Melanie Gerlis
Francis Bacon’s late “Triptych 1986-7”
is up for auction for the first time,
estimated at between £35mn and
£55mn. Its March 1 sale at Christie’s
London coincides with the artist’s wellreceived show at the nearby Royal
Academy of Arts (until April 17).
The central panel of the Christie’s
work shows John Edwards, Bacon’s
partner from the 1970s until the artist
died in 1992. He is flanked by an image
of American president Woodrow
Wilson leaving the Treaty of Versailles
negotiations in 1919 and, on the
right, by the bloodied study of Leon
Trotsky, based on a photograph taken
after the assassination of the
revolutionary in 1940.
The weighty imagery reflects Bacon’s
mindset at the time, says Katharine
Arnold, head of postwar and
contemporary art at Christie’s Europe.
“He lived through most of the 20th
century and is looking back at the
critical decisions that changed the
course of history as well as those that
changed his life.”
Bacon painted 28 large-scale
triptychs and these ambitious works
are his most sought-after on the
market. His auction record was set in
2013 when a 1969 triptych of fellow
artist Lucian Freud sold for $142.4mn,
the priciest public sale at the time. The
latest Christie’s painting, guaranteed by
a third party to sell, was in the 2019-20
exhibition at the Centre Georges
Pompidou in Paris. It is being sold by a
European private collection.
Sadie Coles HQ gallery has ramped
up a programme to lend its small
ground-floor exhibition space in Soho
to UK galleries free of charge. “We were
using it for storage and it felt a bit of a
crime,” says Sam Will, a recent fine arts
graduate and sales assistant at the
gallery who is running what is known
as The Shop.
From this weekend, Queerdirect, a
platform that has supported LGBTQI+
artists since 2017, will be in the Kingly
Street space for a month and will show
seven emerging London artists,
including gallery founder Gaby
Sahhar. Next in The Shop will be
Plaza Plaza, a gallery and artist studio
that normally runs out of a garage in
south-east London.
“I’ve hired out spaces a bit but had to
move mostly online since the
pandemic,” says Sahhar. “I wanted a
more stable venue. When I got an email
[from Sadie Coles gallery], I was very
surprised.” Queerdirect is not
primarily a commercial enterprise but,
Sahhar notes, “even a project space
needs to make money”.
They describe the platform as
“something that works all year
round for artists, not just during
Pride month”.
Will says the project works for the
bigger gallery too, by bringing in a
new audience. “It’s a two-way street,”
he says.
Auction records tumbled at Christie’s
February 3 auction of Outsider Art, a
loose category for artists who have had
no access to formal fine art training.
Leading the pack with seven prices
above his 2015 record of $18,000 was
the Louisiana artist David Butler (18981997). Butler left school early to care of
his siblings, became partially disabled
by an accident at a factory and went on
to make outdoor sculptures out of
tin and other objects that surrounded
his home.
Most of the Butler works came from
the collection of William Fagaly, a
longtime curator at the New Orleans
Museum of Art who died last year.
Fagaly’s collection is being sold,
partly through Christie’s, to benefit the
city’s Prospect triennial. His Butler
works were led by “Walking Stick with
Figure” (c1975), an elaborated
umbrella handle that sold for $50,000
($62,500 with fees), far ahead of its
$4,000-$8,000 estimate.
The February 3 sale made a total
$2.2mn (including fees) from 143 lots.
These were topped by “Untitled (Man
and Woman)” (1939-42) by Bill
Traylor, an African American born into
slavery around 1853 who began to
make art when he was 86. This sold for
$140,000 ($175,000 with fees, est
$80,000-$120,000).
Cara Zimmerman, Christie’s head of
Americana and Outsider Art, says she
doesn’t see an oxymoron as Outsider
Art becomes more mainstream.
“I look at art history from the
bottom up,” she says. “These artists
lived at the same time, in the same
culture and often in the same
Francis Bacon’s
‘Triptych
1986-7’ has
an estimated
sale price of
£35mn-£55mn
Steve Ward/Dalim
country as [well-known] fine artists.
They give us a chance to fill in the
gaps in our art history.”
Pace gallery has taken on
representation of the confrontational
Austrian painter Hermann Nitsch. The
83-year-old artist is best known for
performances that incorporate animal
carcasses, blood and gore to evoke
sacrifice and provoke visceral
reactions, in keeping with the Vienna
Actionism movement he founded in
the 1960s. “We went to visit his
museum [in Austria] a couple of years
ago,” says Marc Glimcher, president of
Pace. “There’s some radical shit. And
no one in America knows about it.”
He confirms his gallery will work
alongside Vienna’s Galerie Kandlhofer,
which already represents Nitsch. The
artist will have a major showing of his
so-called “20. painting action”
performance, first presented in
Vienna in 1987, in a warehouse venue
on the Giudecca in Venice (Oficine 800,
April 19 to July 20) during this year’s
art Biennale.
Glimcher also confirms that Pace
plans a “major historic show” in its
New York gallery next year. No animal
sacrifices are on the cards but,
Glimcher teases, “we are in the
Meatpacking District”.
★
12 February/13 February 2022
13
FTWeekend
Arts
‘Creating
music is all
about selfdiscovery’
speaks to me as an older person. I am
drawn to Antony, a man who has a
heroic past as a soldier and now wants to
enjoy life, as if he had retired to Hawaii
or Las Vegas. Then he encounters young
Octavius Caesar, who reminds me of the
young masters of the universe, like the
ones in Silicon Valley.
“Cleopatra is also an extraordinary
person. People seem to expect that my
Cleopatra will come out of the grand
opera tradition, but my take on her is
much more mercurial, sexy, vain, a bit
like the main character in Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf? I wrote to Julia Bullock
[who will sing the role at the premiere]
and said I hope you have kept the summer free because I have written for you a
role as big as Isolde.”
Adams’ students are lucky to have a
mentor who has led a life of constant
‘Now composers are much
more concerned about
communicating and the
social message of the music’
Opera | American composer John Adams
tells Richard Fairman about the inspiration
for his new take on ‘Antony and Cleopatra’
C
an we imagine Beethoven
struggling with the demands
of 21st-century media? The
question is on John Adams’
mind as he catches up with a
backlog of interviews after a winter
storm delayed his concert last week in
Cleveland. “He had little patience for
dealing with anybody,” notes the American composer of his irascible forebear,
“even the counts and princes who were
the source of his income.” Adams, by
contrast, sounds relaxed even though
his interviews have overrun.
One reason for all the interest is the
announcement of San Francisco Opera’s
programme for its centennial season.
After a gala concert, the opening night
in September will be the premiere of
Adams’ new opera, Antony and Cleopatra. Based on Shakespeare, with some
help from Virgil and Plutarch, it marks
the breaking of new ground for its composer, a resident of California.
Before that, there is the small matter
of a landmark birthday. On February 15,
Adams turns 75. However difficult this
is to believe, given his bright personality
and youthful outlook, the young composer who came to notice in the late
1970s in the wake of minimalists such as
Steve Reich and Philip Glass is now an
elder statesman of American music.
As an artist, he has travelled further
than most. After a youthful dabbling
Right: John
Adams turns 75
this week
Below: a
rehearsal for
‘Girls of
the Golden
West’ in 2019
Carlos Chavarria/Redux/
Eyevine; Martin Walz
with modernism, Adams soon saw the
minimalists’ new simplicity of musical
style as the way forward. In the past decade or two he has blossomed into a different species of composer. How does
his music sound now? “That’s John
Adams!” is the only answer that fits.
“I have always found it hard,” he says.
“I just met with some students and said
to them: ‘The most difficult thing about
composing is starting a piece. And I have
to tell you it never gets easier.’ Some
composers write so much, always
another symphony, another concerto,
and I wonder if they have any self-criticism. I would rather experience the pain
of doubt and have to live with that. It is
one thing to give audiences what they
expect, but branding myself like that
never appealed to me. Creating music is
all about self-discovery, however pretentious that may sound.”
It may not be a coincidence that the
past half century has seen an explosion
of cultural activity on the West Coast. In
1971, when Adams moved to California,
the orchestras in Los Angeles and San
Francisco had distinguished histories
and two of the 20th century’s “greats” —
Stravinsky and Schoenberg — had lived
there, but there was no sign of the wellspring of creativity that there is now.
“It has been a slow slog,” says Adams,
“but I am a proud Californian and
deeply involved in music there. Califor-
nia has a liberal political climate and a
rich population . . . I have written several
pieces [about California] — The Dharma
at Big Sur, City Noir and the opera Girls of
the Golden West — and I would be happy
if people in years to come say: ‘Adams is
to California as Dvorak is to the Czechs,
or Bartok to Hungary.’
“The one thing that makes me
extremely upset is what is happening to
the landscape because of climate
change. I have a place in the country
where I compose [what Adams calls his
“Mahler hut” is three hours from Berkeley] and from July to November it has
become a dangerous place to be.”
The premiere of Antony and Cleopatra
Review
TELEVISION
Bel-Air
Peacock/Sky
AAeee
In 2019, a trailer was released on
YouTube for a film called Bel-Air. It
took the comic premise of a boy
moving from tough west Philadelphia
to ritzy west Los Angeles and turned it
into something much darker: this was
1990s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
made over for the age of Black Lives
Matter. But there was a catch. No such
film was in development — the trailer
was just a well-made fan film.
Then fantasy became reality: Will
Smith, star of the original, liked the
idea, backed the development of a
reboot and came on board as executive
producer. Now the director of the
trailer, Morgan Cooper, has turned his
concept into a fully fledged TV series.
Bel-Air has many of the same
characters as the old show, but we have
moved on to post-George Floyd
America. The climate crisis and
Michelle Obama are among the hot
topics referenced. While The Fresh
Prince was family-friendly, the language
in Bel-Air befits a hardcore rap song:
the N-word is used liberally.
It is also a full-on drama. The
comforting architecture of the sitcom is
gone; there is no laugh track and
episodes are closer to an hour rather
than 25 brisk minutes. At the start,
Will, now played by Jabari Banks, is a
charismatic high-school basketball star
set to win a college scholarship. But
after a violent confrontation with a
drug dealer and a night in jail, he is
sent by his mom to live with his
wealthy aunt and uncle in LA.
This Banks family don’t live in a “big
house” like the 1990s Bankses, but in a
celebrity-style mansion. Geoffrey is no
longer a campy and posh butler but a
gravel-voiced Cockney who comes over
as a diminutive Idris Elba. Similarly,
Uncle Phil, once a homely and portly
figure, is now earnestly ambitious and
toned. His wife, Vivian, is a college
professor who teaches art history.
From the outside they look like the
perfect African-American family, the
Obamas of LA.
But beneath the surface there are
cracks. Carlton (Olly Sholotan), the
couple’s son, is an intellectual and
sporting star of Bel-Air Academy yet he
is also surly, may have a drug problem
and is OK with his white friends saying
Olly Sholotan as Carlton, left,
and Jabari Banks as Will
the N-word. He is also viciously jealous
of Will, who catches the eye of Carlton’s
ex-girlfriend. The rivalry between the
two cousins is one of the flashpoints of
the drama. Another is Phil’s campaign
to become district attorney. When he
appears on a radio phone-in show,
many black callers want to know just
how rich he is. He is coy on the subject.
This highlights one of the key issues
raised in the show: belonging. Can Will
find a place in Bel-Air? Can Carlton
hold on to his privileged status? And
can Phil successfully reconcile being a
high-net-worth lawyer with becoming a
tribune of deprived communities?
One reason why this update came
into being is that the US is undergoing a
reckoning with race. The old version
was great, the argument goes, but it
was too light-hearted. It obscured the
grinding prejudice of 1990s America:
hard-hitting Spike Lee movies played
in the cinema while Smith did silly
dances on TV. The new version, by
contrast, presents a more unvarnished
truth. It’s a tempting view, but it misses
important things.
The first is that this reboot is just as
confected as the original, but
differently so. It has many of the tropes
of 21st-century teen drama, and none
is used to particularly gripping effect:
the petty sexual jealousies and earnest
melodrama quickly start to grate.
Many will watch it precisely because
of its connection to the original, but it
doesn’t hold its own as a distinct work.
For a drama that aims to explore
contemporary black America
authentically, the characters are too
thinly drawn. Nor is there enough wit
or levity to balance the gloomy subject
matter. Comedy can be just as moving
and truthful as “serious” drama, and
The Fresh Prince, amid all its cottoncandy lightness, also incisively touched
on racism and other serious subjects.
One episode from season one stands
out. Will and Carlton are arrested by
the LAPD on their way to visit one of
Uncle Phil’s wealthy white friends. The
naive Carlton doesn’t think the cops
were motivated by racism at all and
they were pulled over simply for
driving too slowly. Later he asks his
dad: “If you saw a car driving two miles
per hour, wouldn’t you stop it?”
Phil responds: “I asked myself that
question the first time I was stopped,”
and walks away. Carlton, now alone,
says: “I would stop it.” There is no
laughter or applause after this line, and
the scene fades to the credits. Comedy
has transitioned perfectly to pathos.
There is very little comedy in Bel-Air
and also very little genuine pathos.
Tomiwa Owolade
On Peacock in the US from February 13,
Sky and Now in the UK from February 14
will fall in the middle of that period. It
will mark a big change for Adams, who
sparked a trend for American operas
about modern political events, first with
Nixon in China, then a Palestinian hijacking in The Death of Klinghoffer.
He says he found the experience of
setting short scenes from Shakespeare
in his previous opera, Girls of the Golden
West, so inspiring that he wanted to do
more. In particular, he was keen to try
what he calls “straight-out drama”,
where the characters interact instantly.
“Here are two lovers who are not
Romeo and Juliet,” he says. “They both
have pasts and in the course of the play
do terrible things to each other. This
artistic evolution. Not standing still has
served him well and given us a corpus of
works in which no two are predictably
the same. Does he have any advice for
young composers today?
“One thing makes me most optimistic,” he says. “When I was at school in
the late 1960s it was what I call the bad
old days of modernism, when [you were
judged on] what style you wrote in. Now
composers are much more concerned
about communicating and the social
message of their music.”
Although it may have been tempting
to view Antony and Octavius Caesar
through a 21st-century lens, he says the
opera will keep them in the Roman era.
“I don’t agree with people who say a
composer can create political change.
Think of Joe Manchin [Democratic senator from West Virginia] — his one vote
could make Biden’s agenda happen. I
say to students, you may think that by
writing pieces with great political sentiment you will create change, but you
will still not change Manchin’s mind.
Music and art do something different.
Everybody needs music and I firmly
believe it should form part of our lives.”
‘Antony and Cleopatra’ performed by the
San Francisco Opera premieres
September 10; sfopera.com
14
★
FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
Arts
From the
Tramp to
TikTok
Charlie Chaplin
is mobbed by
crowds as he
arrives at The
Ritz, London,
in 1921 — SSPL via
Getty Images
gifts were endlessly honed. As a director, he grew brilliantly sophisticated.
Yet in the wider Chaplin story, the
films are of secondary importance.
They always were. Few movie stars were
ever bigger than the movies. Chaplin
was. In that, his true descendent is a figure like Rihanna, originally a pop star
but her stardom has floated free of any
category but herself.
The Chaplin of 1921 had done the
same already. A complex man and multiform talent had carved himself into a
brand — an avatar. It was the 21st century foretold. “Contemporary fame
begins with Chaplin,” Spinney says.
Charlie Chaplin | A documentary on
the early screen superstar examines
his legacy and finds traces in today’s
social media. By Danny Leigh
P
olitically, the mood is fractious. Russia is on everybody’s mind. Even the
world’s best-loved star is
nipped by controversy. It is
September 1921. Charlie Chaplin is
returning to London from the US for the
first time since becoming the biggest
name in the hottest novelty of the age —
the movies. On arrival in the city of his
birth he is mobbed by well-wishers, but
the questions he faces en route from
reporters — recounted in a quick-fire
memoir My Trip Abroad — fish for a
scoop. “Are you a Bolshevik?” he is
asked. (“An artist,” Chaplin says.)
“What do you think of Lenin?” (“Very
remarkable.”) Repetition sets in. “Do
you believe in Bolshevism?”
‘Whenever the Tramp
broke the fourth wall,
these screen-literate
kids adored it’
Above: Charlie
Chaplin in ‘A
Dog’s Life’
(1918)
A hundred years and five months
later, here we are again. Western nerves
jangle over Moscow’s next move, celebrities navigate hot-button issues. 1921
would not be the last time Chaplin was
asked to pick a side. In 1952, the mood
was darker. Accused in the US of having
communist sympathies, he again sailed
to England. This time he journeyed on,
to an estate on Lake Geneva and nearpermanent exile from the US. Finally,
that third act gave way to the uncontrollable verdict of history. To you and me.
Armchair judges should seek The Real
Charlie Chaplin, a fine new documentary
spun out of archive artefacts and good
questions. At the start of the project,
London-based directors Peter Middleton and James Spinney began with an
existential one. The fame of their sub-
Left: Charlie
Chaplin with
fourth wife
Oona and
children arrives
in France en
route to
England, 1952
PictureLux/Eyevine;
Bettmann Archive
ject — at least his character, the Tramp
— has burnt long and bright. But now,
how much do we remember Chaplin?
One answer came when the filmmakers staged a workshop at a primary
school in Southend, south-east England.
“What was fascinating,” Spinney says,
“was that every child recognised the
trademarks — hat, cane, moustache.
They knew they meant something. But
only a few had heard of Chaplin. And
none had seen the films.”
The films will always be part of why
Chaplin matters, from his first scruffy
one-reelers to the watchmaker intricacy
of City Lights and Modern Times. I once
heard The Beatles called the most
underrated overrated band in history. A
similar label could be applied to Chaplin
on film. As a performer, vast natural
“This image exploding around the
world not just through film but a set of
new technologies.”
This Chaplin is wildly, deeply modern. Oddly, that feels like news itself. For
the longest time, he has been a little out
of fashion — sniffed at as sentimental.
Again, cycles turn. Of course, you can
overdo how much we owe the movie
stars of our great-grandparents. But
genius has rolling relevance, and Chaplin’s influence is in plain sight. If some
might consider it trite to draw a line
from Chaplin to TikTok, the line is also
real. The physical comedy he made into
art is now the language of social media
skits and bits, the most successful often
made by people like him: obsessive finetuners, pathological performers.
And then there is the emotional connection Chaplin made with global millions. Much of the snobbery about his
work came from its lingering theatrical
elements, his endless playing to the
crowd. Now, that is what makes him of
the moment. He didn’t just repurpose
old stage routines. The audience was
made part of the scene, ushered in by
winks and grins to camera. Other movies evolved to act as if the camera wasn’t
there. Chaplin never stopped acknowledging it. I am of you, said all those impish looks. Now the same dynamic is the
heart of YouTube, a billion addresses
straight down the barrel: I am also of
you, please like and subscribe.
Back at the school in Southend, Middleton and Spinney have shown the children their first Chaplin movie, the 1918
short A Dog’s Life. The laughter was
uproarious. “And whenever the Tramp
broke the fourth wall,” Middleton says,
“these screen-literate kids adored it.”
How much it must have scalded to be
banished from the US, where he first
became a movie star. Yet were Chaplin
around in 2022, he would surely
encounter another downfall. He would
be disgraced by the black spot of his
relationships with women (Lita Grey for
one, pregnant at 16 — when he was 35 —
then mistreated during their marriage).
If it were ever possible to quarantine
art from the flaws of artists or murk of
politics, it isn’t now and it wasn’t in
Chaplin’s lifetime. But, as Middleton
points out, it took a particular context to
derail him. “Chaplin’s predatory behaviour was identified back in the ’20s, but
it was only when he stopped playing the
Tramp that his political enemies could
use it to help bring him down.”
Chaplin gave up his alter-ego in 1940.
The cue was another moment when he
was asked to pick a side. The response
was the fearless best of him. Making his
anti-Nazi satire The Great Dictator before
the US joined the war against Hitler, the
Tramp (or someone very like him)
became explicitly Jewish. In the process,
the character as was — the universal
underdog — vanished. He had been
made specific. But the universal was not
lost altogether. In the ghetto, street and
shop signs were written in Esperanto,
the hopeful language of a global unity
yet to be realised. If Chaplin remains
with us now, he also keeps signalling
towards a different future.
In UK cinemas from February 18
Diversions
BRIDGE PAUL MENDELSON
CHESS LEONARD BARDEN
Gibraltar’s Battle of the
Sexes, a 10-a-side series of
100 games between evenly
matched teams of men and
women, provided a
fluctuating and entertaining
struggle. The women’s team
began strongly with 13-7 in
the first two rounds, before
the men gradually
overhauled them for a final
53-47 margin. This small
lead earnt the victors 75 per
cent of the £100,000 prize.
The women were almost
all ranked in the women’s
world top 50, and in many
cases knew each other from
events such as the World
Cup, the Olympiads, or the
world rapid and blitz
championships.
In contrast, the men were
often meeting teammates for
the first time, were invited
from a range of countries,
and had rankings in the top
500 or top 1000. Zambia’s
Gillan Bwalya, whose day job
is as a policeman in Lusaka,
lacked experience of high
level chess and totalled 1.5/9
POLYMATH 1,165 SET BY GOZO
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
after arriving a day late.
The overall score table
shows a crucial difference
between the teams in the
pattern of results. All but
H
one of the individual totals
of 7/10 or 6.5/10 came from
men. They included
England’s rising star Ravi
Haria, 23 this week, who
edged closer to a place on
the national team.
2456
James Aitken v Roland
Payne, Whitby 1962. White
to move and win. Aitken, 10
times Scottish champion,
was also a Bletchley codebreaker. Can you find his
sharp sequence here?
Solution, back page
When bridge professionals
and amateurs got together
online in a fundraiser for the
Norway Junior team, many
astonishing contracts were
reached.
Former World Pairs
champion, Mikael Rimstedt
sat South, and was in freewheeling mood. His partner’s
raise to 3H over West’s
Unusual NT Overcall was
very weak, but Rimstedt still
bid 6H, despite holding ♦KJ
under the bid showing both
minor suits!
Dealer: East
North East
—
NB
3H
NB
Q9 5
J 10 7 6
9 7
10 9 6 5
N
10
W E
8
A8 5 4 3 2
KQ8 7 2 S
AK J 8
AK9 5
K J 10
A
7
Q
Q
J
64 3 2
4 3
6
4 3
2
West led K♣, and declarer
showed perfectly how to use
information from the auction
to guide his play. He won A♣,
cashed A♥, crossed to
CROSSWORD 17,017 SET BY MUDD
N/S Game
South West
1H
2NT
6H
dummy with Q♠ and then
led J♥. When East followed
low, he finessed successfully
and then played to K♥.
Three spade tricks
followed, on which dummy’s
7♦ was discarded on the last.
Declarer now led 10♦, which
ran to East’s Q♦. Winning
the club return, declarer
now claimed — announcing
a ruffing finesse against
West’s marked A♦. Note that
this line succeeds whether
West holds ♦AQ, just Q♦, or
only A♦. On the bidding, that
West will have a diamond
suit headed by one of those
holdings is virtually certain.
The action took place on
the RealBridge platform so,
competitors and kibitzers —
and indeed, correspondents
— can later watch every bid,
lead, defence and declarer
strategy made by players
both world-class and
somewhat more modest.
This type of analysis is not
only entertaining, but a
wonderful way to improve
one’s own game.
★
12 February/13 February 2022
O
ne night in late November
last year, I stood at the window of a hotel in Halifax,
West Yorkshire.
Before me, the year’s
first snow spread out over the city and
cloaked the hilltops just visible in the
gloom beyond, from which the wind
came howling down into the valley. I
had just arrived after driving four and a
half hours from London. I drove in the
dark without stopping, feeling a strange
compulsion to get there as quickly as
possible, because I was following the
siren call of a mystery.
As I stood at the window, I was not primarily looking, but listening. I strained
to hear anything under the wuthering
wind, the distant swish of car tyres and
my own breath in my throat. The mystery I had come to investigate was something that could not be seen. The mystery was a noise.
We know that loud noises are harmful, but sound has other powers over us
that we don’t usually consider. Most
humans can’t hear sounds below 20Hz
in frequency, but you would know if you
sat in front of a speaker playing a 19Hz
sound because you’d stop being able to
see straight. Nineteen hertz is the frequency at which the human eyeball resonates. Go lower and louder, and sound
waves can interfere with other organs,
making you breathless or nauseated by
rattling your lungs and stomach.
Experts generally agree that any sound
wave greater than 185 decibels would
kill a person, although this would be difficult to achieve in practice, as even a jet
taking off produces only 150dB.
But it need not be this dramatic. Even
relatively quiet noise can be enough to
damage your health. The World Health
Organization estimates that at least
10,000 people die every year in the EU
as a result of chronic exposure to
unwanted noise. More so than is the case
with some of our other senses, it is difficult to close our ears. And while it’s
tricky to take someone’s life with sound,
with a persistent noise from a mysterious source, it is relatively easy to ruin it.
A year and a half before me, another
woman was looking out of another window at another Halifax night. In the
early hours of the morning Yvonne Conner, a 50-year-old resident of the suburb
of Holmfield, was woken up in her Victorian stone terraced house by a
strange, low humming sound that
throbbed in her ears. This wasn’t the
first time. For about a month she had
been hearing this sound all over her
house, on and off. But tonight, she’d had
enough. She got in her car and drove
around the city, stopping every now and
then to listen. The sound was everywhere although, oddly, it was strongest
inside her own home. But she couldn’t
work out where it was coming from and
eventually she got back into bed,
defeated. And the humming continued.
In the following days she scoured her
house, turning off everything electric,
asking her neighbours to do the same.
Still, the noise persisted. She couldn’t
stand it. “I’d find myself with my ears
pressed to walls and floors,” she told me
when we spoke on the phone, before my
visit. And the strangest thing was, it
wasn’t just a sound. It had a presence. “It
came with a wave of energy first,” Conner said. “I used to sit in our front room
and at around seven o’clock every night
I’d go, ‘It’s coming.’” Neither her husband nor her son could hear it at all.
In January 2021, Conner, by now consistently sleep deprived and driven half
mad by the noise, set up a Facebook
page about hearing it. It turned out, to
her great relief, that she wasn’t losing
her mind: all over Halifax, others were
hearing it too. People I spoke to compared the sound with a diesel engine
idling, a vacuum cleaner, a washing
machine, something vibrating. “It’s like
you can hear a car coming, but it never
gets there,” according to Holmfield resident Gemma Redford. However they
characterised the noise, the debilitating
effects people told me about were the
same. Anxiety, headaches, sleeplessness, tension, despair, fears they were
going insane. “I’m literally crying at
night . . . it seems to get louder and
louder and louder,” one woman told
BBC Look North [a regional programme]. And the more they tuned into
it, the more they heard it. “Daft as it
sounds,” Sue Dollard told me, “once
you’ve heard it, you can’t unhear it.”
In fact, Conner didn’t just find other
people hearing this humming in Halifax. She found people hearing it all over
the world. Halifax is just the most recent
incidence of an as-yet unexplained phenomenon in which a group of people in
one place will start hearing what has
come to be known as “the Hum”, a low
droning sound with no discernible
source. The earliest reliable reports of
this came from Bristol in the 1970s. The
News of the World asked readers in the
city whether they had heard the sound,
and almost 800 people responded that
they had. The problem was said to be so
bad that it was causing nosebleeds.
The Hum is a global phenomenon. “I
feel as if my bed were electrically
15
FTWeekend
The mystery
of ‘the Hum’
sound so unusual to me. I noticed the
day before that the fan around the back
of the chippy made this same noise. But
then I went inside Conner’s house. And
there, standing in her kitchen in my wet
socks, as night began pressing in at the
windows, I heard it. A low, droning
noise, the same pitch as the one we
heard out in the fields and, beneath it,
just perceptible, the same throbbing
pulse I heard on the YouTube videos. I
almost thought I could feel it in my feet,
vibrating through the floor. I told Conner I could hear it, and she seemed
relieved. “I could live with that, if it was
like that all the time,” she said, “but this
is about a three out of 10.”
Not only was the Hum a real noise, but
I was one of the people who could hear
it. Sure enough, when I went back to my
hotel room that night and listened to the
recording I had made on my phone, the
Hum wasn’t there.
In the summer of 2020, a handful of
Canadian outlets reported that the Hum
in Windsor, Ontario, had finally gone
quiet. A 2014 report into the noise by
the University of Windsor suggested
that the noise might be coming from
Zug Island, an industrial enclave off
the coast of Michigan where there was
a steelworks, but the company hadn’t
co-operated with investigators. In
April 2020, the steelworks closed of its
own accord. And the noise, it seemed,
disappeared.
Could it be this simple in Halifax too?
A noisy furnace? The next day, I went to
have a coffee in nearby Hebden Bridge
I told Conner I could hear
it, and she seemed relieved:
‘I could live with that, if it
was like that all the time’
charged. The pillow, the mattress and
my whole body vibrate,” one hearer in
Germany reported in 2001. In 1992,
someone who heard the Hum in Southampton told a local newspaper that it
had driven them almost to suicide: “I
have been on tranquillisers and have
lost count of the number of nights I have
spent holding my head in my hands,
crying and crying.” Woodland, County
Durham; Taos, New Mexico; Largs,
Scotland; Kokomo, Indiana; Windsor,
Ontario: all places where hearers, most
of whom are middle aged and female,
have been pushed to the brink by the
sound. A frequent simile that hearers
use to describe their experiences is “as if
my head was going to explode”.
Before I went to Halifax, I looked for
recordings of the noise online. There are
some but fewer than you might expect.
This is partly because low-frequency
sounds, also known as infrasounds, are
difficult to pick up with flimsy recording
equipment such as mobile phones, and
more difficult than high-frequency
noise for human ears to get a directional
fix on. Some videos sound like what people in Holmfield described on the
phone. Other videos were more disquieting. I clicked on one called The Hum
(Taos Hum for 12 Hours). I couldn’t
hear much until I listened to it with a
pair of proper headphones. What I
heard then made my back prickle with
dread. It was an ominous beat, almost
more of a pressure on the eardrum than
a sound, something truly chthonic.
Another recording of the Hum in Windsor sounds like if you put your ear to
someone’s pregnant stomach to hear a
heartbeat. The sound of something
waiting to be born.
Speculation online has run wild. It’s
Mother Earth warning us of an impending catastrophe. It’s the breaking of the
seventh seal. It’s ghosts (psychics sometimes measure for low-frequency sound
when they investigate a haunted building). It’s waves hitting the ocean floor
thousands of miles away. One of very
few academic studies in this field, by US
geoscientist David Deming, who has
previously denied climate change, posited that some humans might be able to
pick up radio signals. My rabbit hole led
me to videos of a phenomenon called
“sky trumpets”: booming, brasslike
sounds that seemed to be coming from
somewhere on high, before I decided to
climb out and set off for Yorkshire.
Holmfield is a small, unostentatious
place. It sits on the side of a valley and
consists of little more than a cluster of
industrial units, rows of terraced
houses, two pubs, some schools and a
fish and chip shop. People hear the Hum
in the neighbouring areas of Ovenden
and Queensbury too. The morning after
I arrived, I went for a long walk in the
snow, asking whoever I came across
what they knew of a mystery noise. Several shopkeepers told me that they
couldn’t hear it, but their elderly customers had been complaining about it
lately. Someone who wanted to be identified only as “Mr Lynch” at a sandwich
shop called Roll With It told me with a
conspiratorial air that it was an electricity substation or else noise resonating
In Yorkshire in the north of England,
Imogen West-Knights goes on the trail of the
unexplained, worldwide phenomenon of a low
droning sound few can hear — if it exists at all
Photography by Benjamin
McMahon
Clockwise from above:
Ovenden Moor, on the
outskirts of Halifax; Scott
Patient, a member of the
local council who has tried
to identify the source of
the Hum; local resident
and Hum sufferer, Yvonne
Conner
‘I have lost count of the
number of nights I have
spent holding my head in
my hands, crying’
through the water mains. Jay, a man
who came up to me in a corner shop,
told me to check out the “5G tower”. I
asked Andy at the Ron Lee car dealership about the noise. “Have you tried
looking up there?” he said, pointing
upwards. Thinking that he meant some
kind of fan unit on the roof, I asked him
what was up there, to which he replied
“aliens” and then advised me not to ask
weird questions if I didn’t want weird
answers. At the Queensbury Tavern, a
regular also suggested UFOs, or else a
woman standing in the pub with us had
left her vibrator on. Three teenage girls
outside a Costcutter had no idea what I
was talking about and laughed in my
face. Gemma in Wow Wow Balloons
party shop said she did hear it, but she
didn’t know where it came from and her
family had managed to get used to it.
And though I tried, inasmuch as one can
try to hear anything, I did not hear the
Hum anywhere I went. By the end of my
first day in Halifax, the question that
asked itself had become more pressing.
Was the Hum even real? We have a word
for sounds that some people can hear
and others can’t: hallucinations.
The following afternoon, I met
Yvonne Conner, the woman who set up
the Facebook group, in person. Conner
is a dog walker and so we went to walk a
dog. After we’d picked up a golden
retriever called Chewy in her four-byfour, she drove us to some fields next to
a stream near her house. She considers
herself a spokesperson for the phenomenon in this area and, as we drove, Conner pointed out houses where people
lived who could hear the Hum, as well as
where people had lived before the Hum
forced them to move. She’s lived here all
her life, as evidenced by the free and
easy way she tramped off beside the
beck after we’d parked and let the dog
out, while I veered close to falling into it
as I tried to keep up with her.
Conner hasn’t always been a dog
walker. She used to be a support worker
for a homeless charity, work she loved.
But the stress and sleeplessness that the
Hum was causing her eventually meant
she couldn’t function at work and she
felt she had to quit. “How many people
would risk quitting their job in an uncertain time like the pandemic if something
wasn’t bothering them to that extent?”
she said. Conner has a no-nonsense
demeanour, but there’s a defensive note
in it too. It is the attitude of someone
who has been disbelieved.
We are familiar with unprovable suffering. One challenge of treating chronic
pain, for instance, is that it requires the
doctor to meet the patient half way by
believing their account of their experiences. Hearers of the Hum run into similar problems, but with an additional
downside that, unlike chronic pain, the
problem of hearing a weird noise that
only a tiny percentage of the population
hears seems, to some people, sort of
funny. It’s the problem sufferers of the
still unexplained Havana syndrome
have too, an air of the ridiculous. This is
not helped by news stories of recordings
that turned out to be the mating call of a
cricket.
If not outright laughed at, Hum hearers are familiar with being told, by people with expertise no less, that they’re
ignorant or insane. In 1994, Jonathan
Hazell, head of research at the Royal
National Institute for Deaf People, was
asked by The Independent [newspaper]
about the Hum. “It’s rubbish,” he said.
“‘Hummers’ are a group of people who
cannot accept that they have tinnitus.”
As we walked, Conner told me that
the noise was so bad that she was considering moving away, but all her loved
ones lived here in West Yorkshire. “I
hear it all over Halifax,” she said, and
she hears it all night and throughout
weekends. She had found herself paying
for regular caravan holidays just to get a
decent night’s sleep. “I don’t even like
caravans,” she said. “But for everybody
who hears it, eventually, it starts to just
eat away at you in your head.”
Conner doesn’t believe it’s a mystery
and doesn’t believe there is such a thing
as the worldwide Hum, either. As we
walk further down into the valley, she
points at some industrial buildings off in
the distance. “The one with the chimney
smoke coming out? That’s Gower.”
Gower Furniture was a name that
came up in my conversations with
locals. It is one of a handful of companies that have a factory in Holmfield,
and several people told me that I should
go and have a listen. Before I came to
meet Conner, I did that, standing outside the factory gates. There was indeed
a loud, droning noise there. Standing in
the field, she and I could both hear it too.
“That’s what I hear in my house,” she
told me, pointing in the air. We both
stood there humming, matching the
factory’s pitch, and Conner gave the
building a steely look.
The noise we heard in the fields didn’t
with Scott Patient, a Labour councillor
for Calderdale’s Luddendenfoot ward in
his thirties. He ordered the smallest pastel de nata I’d ever seen and told me that
strange and spooky noises weren’t really
his remit, but the ball had ended up in
his court. All this is difficult for his colleagues at Environmental Health
because, like all UK councils, Calderdale
does not have an unlimited budget to
spend on increasingly arcane recording
equipment. Because the Noise Act entitles people to live free of loud noises in
their homes, the council can record and
act on high-decibel levels, but it’s not the
volume of the Hum that’s the issue.
Patient posited that because lots of
people reported hearing it in the early
part of 2020, it might be that lockdown
meant more people noticed a noise that
had been there before. “If you track the
heavy industrial businesses back,” he
said, “nothing significantly has changed
in that time that hasn’t been checked
out and crossed out.” And it turns out
that the council did investigate Gower
and found that wasn’t it. Nor was it any
of the other industrial sites they looked
at. Gower says it has worked with residents and local officials and eliminated
itself as a potential source, and they
don’t even run equipment at the weekends or overnight, times when local residents told me the Hum was at its worst.
After I said goodbye to Patient, I sat in
my car feeling that here, at the end of
my trip, I was back where I started: with
a mystery. What was going on here? I
heard a real sound in Conner’s house,
but it’s seemingly not from the sources
that people suspect. If it’s caused by
industrial noise in Halifax, who’s making it? And if so, does that mean that
we’re not even talking about “the
Hum”? Is the worldwide Hum a separate
phenomenon from real noises?
Back in London, I put these questions
to a mild-mannered Canadian high
school teacher called Glen MacPherson,
over Zoom. He is another person who
found himself in his car, driving around
his small town in coastal British Columbia, looking for a noise he was suddenly
able to hear, in the spring of 2012.
MacPherson, who has a PhD and an
eclectic CV that includes social research
and psychology, is one of a very small
number of people undertaking serious
study into the Hum and one of an even
smaller number ready to stick their
neck out about their theories in the
media. “If I reveal any lack of passion in
my answer,” he said apologetically when
I asked him where it all began with him
and the Hum, “it’s only because of the
150 to 200 times I’ve had to give it
before.” By the end of 2012, he had set
up a database at thehum.info. Here, he
invited people from all over the world to
report their experience of hearing the
sound, so he could plot their location on
a map and, he hoped, later analyse the
data for clues.
For a few years, he was convinced by
David Deming’s hypothesis that the
Hum was caused by radio waves emitted by major military powers. Ultimately, an experiment involving a large
and sinisterly sarcophagal metal box
Continued on page 16
16
★
FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
Spectrum
N
I learnt the
hard way that
maintenance
is important
Tim Harford
Undercover economist
early two years ago, I made
a costly mistake. I’d spent
some time trying to fix up
my bike at a local bike coop, when one of the
volunteers told me the chain was worn,
and I should come back soon to replace
it. A week later, the first lockdown
began and I put the chain out of my
mind. A few weeks later, it gave way
beneath me and I found myself face
down in a pool of my own blood. When
I wrote about my mishap, I neglected
to mention the most obvious lesson:
replace your bike chain at the first sign
of trouble. But I am not alone in that
oversight. Maintenance is not sexy.
When Stewart Brand devoted half an
hour of TV to the subject — in the 1997
BBC series How Buildings Learn — he
confronted the problem squarely.
“People don’t want to do maintenance
for perfectly understandable reasons,”
he declared. “There’s nothing positive
about it, just expense and hassle and
nothing really gained.”
Brand was speaking ironically. He
knows what I learnt the hard way, that
there is everything to be gained from
timely maintenance. So why do we
neglect it? It’s a topic of discussion
every time a bridge collapses in the US;
the recent Forbes Avenue Bridge
collapse in Pittsburgh is part of a trend,
alas. A simple diagnosis is that
politicians would rather save money
now and leave their successors to deal
with the consequences. (See also:
pandemic preparedness; education
spending;
climate change.)
Yet the rot
runs deeper.
Maintenance is a
low-status affair:
you can confess
to being unable
to change a tyre
in a way that you
would never
confess to
being unable to
name a play by
Shakespeare.
“I came into this game for the
action,” says a gun-wielding, balaclavawearing Harry Tuttle in Brazil. “Go
anywhere, travel light, get in, get out,
wherever there’s trouble.” Tuttle
(Robert De Niro) is a rogue
maintenance man, a heating systems
engineer on the run from the
authorities. The very idea is absurd,
and that speaks volumes about how we
view maintenance.
We understand the expertise of
janitors, plumbers and mechanics, and
we suffer mightily in their absence, yet
somehow we take them for granted.
We take for granted, too, the most basic
maintenance of all — preparing food,
washing clothes, dirty nappies. Nobody
would boast at a dinner party about
doing any of this, yet it is essential.
Maintenance is so underrated that
we don’t really know how much of a
problem we have. In his book The Shock
of the Old, David Edgerton writes:
“Maintenance
has lived in a
twilight world,
hardly visible
in the formal
accounts societies
make of
themselves. In
the economic and
production
statistics, for
example, it is
invisible.” This is
about more than
Anna Wray
breaking bridges
and bike chains. There is a missed
opportunity here to find something
rather wonderful in maintenance.
The Maintenance Race is a short
audiobook by Stewart Brand about the
role of maintenance in the first roundthe-world yacht race in the 1960s. One
competitor, Robin Knox-Johnston, has
to interrupt his hull repairs by getting
out of the water, fetching a rifle and
shooting a circling shark. “Sometimes
maintenance means you have to shoot
a shark,” Brand says, wryly. Even on
dry land, maintenance is often a varied
job — more varied than manufacturing.
It requires diagnosis, judgment and
improvisation. We can build robots
that make dishwashers, but we can’t
build robots that repair them. As
automation closes in on a world crying
out for respected, skilled and fulfilling
blue-collar jobs, perhaps we should be
taking maintenance more seriously.
And maintenance can build
We can build
robots that make
dishwashers, but we
can’t build robots
that repair them
communities. Elinor Ostrom, the first
woman to win a Nobel memorial prize
in economics, once studied Nepalese
communities before and after modern
dams and irrigation systems were
installed by development agencies.
There had always been a bargain
between farming communities
upstream and downstream: we’ll help
keep the canals clear, if you help
maintain the dam upstream. But the
modern dams needed fewer repairs,
and so the bargain fell apart, leaving
the modern system less effective than
the traditional irrigation. The need to
maintain the old irrigation system was
also helping to maintain strong
relationships between villages.
A few months after my accident, I
ventured out to the White Horse of
Uffington, a monument in the
Oxfordshire countryside that has
endured for 3,000 years thanks only to
tireless maintenance as villagers from
miles around would assemble for
“scouring” or “chalking” the horse. It’s
a lot of work, but perhaps that is the
point: archaeologists speculate that the
horse was created and maintained as a
way of bringing a community together
with a regular ritual. Perhaps that is
over-romanticising things. Whether we
view maintenance as a vital ritual, a
kind of meditation, or a tiresome
chore, it is inescapable. Without it,
everything falls apart.
Tim Harford’s new book is “How to Make
the World Add Up”
Insta doesn’t know
what to do about
your pre-teen either
Tech World It collects and crunches reams of
personal data, so why does it struggle to keep
underage users off the app? By Hannah Murphy
The global
‘Hum’
Continued from page 15
that insulates against radio waves
proved that theory false, but MacPherson has continued his investigations.
Now, he and some scientists he’s collaborated with think they are on to something. “We have very good reason to
believe that the worldwide Hum is not a
sound,” he said.
MacPherson believes that the Hum is
not tinnitus, but is like tinnitus: an auditory phenomenon that is generated by
the human body and not an external
stimulus. And it is distinct from actual
environmental noise.
MacPherson’s frustration is palpable
as he talks about the common confusion
between these two things. “Many people
are incapable of understanding that
there are anthropogenic sounds, which
have similar characteristics to the
worldwide Hum. Part of the job is to
tease those two apart. Once you eliminate all reasonable sources of humancaused sound, you’re left with the phenomenon that I’m studying.”
I tell him about my time in Holmfield,
and he tells me that if I was able to hear
it in Conner’s kitchen, it’s almost certainly not what he means when he
talks about the Hum, and is environmental noise instead. But here’s where
it gets complicated: one could lead to
the other.
Some people naturally have more
sensitive hearing. This explains why
only some people can hear real environmental noises that drive them crazy,
while others seem unaffected. For those
who can hear the noise, a feedback loop
can be created. The audiologist David
Baguley has argued that the more people focus on anxiety caused by a mystery sound, “the more the body
responds by amplifying the sound”. It is
possible, although not proven, that this
feedback loop and intense focus on a
noise might mean that people keep
hearing a noise even after the source has
disappeared.
Despite the news reports from 2020,
some residents of Windsor are still hearing a humming sound, even though the
steelworks have closed down. There is a
Facebook group full of people reporting
sleepless nights and exasperation. It’s a
similar story in Kokomo, Indiana, where
the humming was eventually traced to a
fan and compressor on an industrial
site. But again, some people kept hearing the noise after they were turned off.
Why is there such a mystery around
the Hum, if it could be as simple as an asyet under-researched syndrome in conjunction with real noises? Partly it’s that
people, and particularly people on the
internet, like a mystery. MacPherson
had noticed that people were not generally interested in prosaic solutions. “I
actually solved the sky trumpet mystery, but nobody cares,” he told me,
laughing.
The trumpet sound is caused by two
things: large vehicles breaking at slow
speeds and by trains travelling on
curved rails. The outside wheels have to
turn faster than the inside wheels
because they’re going a greater distance,
but the wheels are locked on an axle
and so the outside wheel ends up skipping, causing the noise. “It’s more emotionally attractive for some people to
think that it’s Gabriel’s horns,” said
MacPherson.
What MacPherson admits to having
done, though, is pandering to the idea of
the mysterious Hum in the media. “I
thought that if I could get the public
hooked on some sort of mystery, then
along the way, there would be good
numbers of serious people who would
say, ‘OK, I want to find out what this is.’”
It’s partly worked for him. One of his
media appearances resulted in an academic from Helsinki getting in touch
with him and they are now collaborators in his research. It’s a risky strategy,
though. The mystery has also attracted
fantasists, which gives the Hum an air of
crackpottery that has put off serious sci-
Above and below: scenes
around Halifax. Scientific
research has failed to
establish the cause of the
Hum that affects some
residents of the area
Benjamin McMahon
entists and hindered research. But the
primary reason that we still don’t know
what causes the Hum, he told me, is that
although it may be interesting, it’s too
niche an issue for proper research
money to get spent on.
There are some scientists who have
tried in earnest. Geoff Leventhall, a consultant in acoustics, has been researching the Hum on and off for more than 50
years. It’s been maddening because all
too often he found that, even with very
sensitive equipment, he wasn’t able to
measure the Hum separately from ordinary background noise where people
reported hearing it.
It is partly the way one frames a noise
that makes it distressing. We ascribe
moral qualities to sound. If a factory is
running equipment, that sound is inherently more irritating than, say, morning
bird song, because it implies a lack of
consideration, a hierarchy of priorities
that a sparrow cannot have. This is
where Leventhall’s focus has now
shifted, away from the seemingly
intractable problem of what causes
these noises to be heard and on to how to
think about them. “I thought, blow this,
we won’t measure any more noise, we’ll
try and help people accommodate to it,”
he said.
Leventhall helped to design an online
course, not dissimilar from cognitive
behavioural therapy, to help people
think about the noise differently. It was
very successful. People who took the
course talked about regaining their sanity, improving their personal relationships and rediscovering hope for the
future. “Some even say that we’ve saved
their lives,” Leventhall said.
I can understand why this is not the
route that many Hum hearers want to
take, though. I heard the noise that people in Holmfield are hearing and, were it
my own home, I probably wouldn’t give
up until I knew who or what was producing it. Giving up is certainly not on
Conner’s agenda. She has the television,
the radio or Alexa on in every room of
her house and tries to drown the noise
out at night with rainforest sounds, but
it’s a stop-gap rather than a solution.
The question of where her noise is coming from is too enraging to ignore.
We may be approaching a time when
the only people still pursuing an answer
are the people unlucky enough to hear
it. Leventhall is 92. His time working on
the Hum is drawing to a close, and he
said that interest in doing serious work
on it had dissipated over the years
because it got nowhere. Conner went on
a cruise over Christmas to escape the
Hum. As soon as she returned, the old,
pulsating presence was there to welcome her home. “I don’t know where it
ends,” she said. “If it ever ends.”
A
t Instagram’s virtual creator conference last summer, a conversation
between the app’s chief
executive Adam Mosseri
and the all-singing, all-dancing teen
influencer JoJo Siwa took an awkward
turn. Eighteen-year-old Siwa, known
for wearing bubblegum colours and hair
bows, had begun to outline her yearslong journey to social media stardom.
“I’ve had everything since I was five! I
know you’re not supposed to have Instagram until you’re 13. I did, I had an
account. Many five-year-olds do —”
Swooping in to cut Siwa off mid-sentence, Mosseri said, “I don’t wanna hear
that.” He was chuckling, but the
exchange was painful to watch. Here
was an ambassador for the photo app
inadvertently betraying that it has long
been swarming with underage users, a
breach of its own
rules. And, in
response, the top
executive effectively covering his
ears.
Under-13s are
not allowed on
Instagram, which
is owned by Meta,
partly to comply
with US privacy
laws. Nevertheless, a survey of
more than 2,000
minors published
last year by the children’s charity Thorn
found that 65 per cent of nine- to 12year-olds have used Instagram at least
once, and 40 per cent use it at least once
a day. Those who do are likely to be
exposed to numerous harms. According
to Thorn, some 38 per cent of girls and
36 per cent of boys between the ages of
nine and 12 say they have been bullied
or made to feel uncomfortable online;
14 per cent have been asked to send a
nude video or photo by someone online.
Instagram collects and crunches
reams of personal data in order to profile users and serve up tailored advertisements. It is now so good at guessing
consumer desires that it has been forced
to stress — repeatedly — that it isn’t
hijacking mobile phones to listen to private conversations. How then can the
app with the $660bn parent company
know that I want new red Adidas trainers, but not know my age?
In a blog post last July, Facebook
maintained that age is difficult to assess
and that the technology for both Facebook and Instagram was a “work in
progress”. It was, it said, building artificial intelligence to proactively find
under-13s who have lied about their age
— by scanning for what age people mention when they post wishing you a
happy birthday for example — but
added that the technology “isn’t per-
fect”. It also said it was “developing a
menu of options for someone to prove
their age” without having to ask for ID,
though the company has yet to unveil
those features.
Instagram’s critics argue that it has
deliberately not done enough to eject
underagers. User numbers look
plumper for shareholders if they
remain. Baroness Beeban Kidron, chair
of the children’s digital rights charity
5Rights, believes the idea that this is too
great a technological challenge is misleading. “It’s all because it’s not in their
commercial interest to do so,” she says.
Indeed, there is now a growing market
of solutions in the $1bn “safety tech”
sector, typically wielding machinelearning technologies. London-based
start-up Yoti uses your camera to analyse your face for its “facial age estimation” tool and claims to have a margin of
error of around
one and a half
years for six- to
19-year-olds. BioCatch, which specialises in helping
banks catch
fraudulent activity, claims to be
able to discern
age by analysing
the way a person
uses their devices.
For example,
older users will
Pate
use one finger to
type on their phone, where younger
users will use both thumbs, and so on.
Other experts are pushing for more
centralised age verification: should
Apple confirm age through ID checks as
a way of blocking underage users from
downloading inappropriate apps altogether? This is something that Instagram has gently started to lobby for.
For critics, it is remarkable that Facebook and Instagram waited until now to
start to develop its own age verification
technology. Other social media apps,
such as TikTok, face similar criticism.
Mary Aiken, a safety tech expert and
cyberpsychology professor at Capitol
Technology University in the US says,
“Until there is a regulatory environment
that mandates consequences of not
deploying accurate age verification then
the situation will remain as it is” — in
other words, “hopeless”.
Politicians and watchdogs have begun
to circle. Instagram itself announced
plans to build “Instagram Kids” for
under-13s, arguing that preteens live on
the internet no matter what, so better to
carve out a safe space with extra parental controls. But the initiative generated
so much pushback that the company
has paused the idea temporarily while
executives consult with experts. Which
is still a very slight improvement over
the CEO looking the other way.
★
12 February/13 February 2022
17
FTWeekend
Spectrum
Making history
via text message
Simon Kuper
Parting shot
F
or hours on January 6 2021,
while Donald Trump’s
supporters stormed the US
Capitol, messages from
frantic senior Republicans
and fellow travellers poured into the
phone of White House chief of staff
Mark Meadows. “We are under siege
up here at the Capitol,” wrote one.
Another pleaded, “POTUS has to come
out firmly and tell protestors to
dissipate. Someone is going to get
killed.” When Donald Trump Jr texted:
“He’s got to condemn this s*** Asap,”
Meadows agreed.
This evidence from Congress’s
investigation is remarkable not just
because it shows Trump knowingly
allowing a violent insurrection to
continue. It’s also unprecedentedly
granular evidence for future
historians. Imagine if we’d had realtime minute-by-minute source
material for the French Revolution or
Hitler’s beer hall putsch.
The police investigation of the
Downing Street parties has similar, if
more farcical, material: more than 300
images, and many emails, WhatsApps
and text messages from partygoers. In
short, the trove of historical evidence
for the era from around 2000 to 2021 is
unmatched. It will help us understand
how high-political events happen.
Historians always had to fumble in
the dark. The Oxford don Hugh
Trevor-Roper, dispatched by the
British secret services in 1945 to
write the definitive account of Hitler’s
death, confronted thickets of
falsehoods. A Stuttgarter named
Spaeth said Hitler was killed by
Russian shellfire on May 1. Swiss
journalist Carmen Mory testified that
Hitler and Eva Braun were living
quietly on a Bavarian estate.
Because events were fresh, TrevorRoper could interview eyewitnesses
and establish that Hitler had died by
suicide in his bunker. But he reflected,
“It is a chastening thought to a
historian to consider how much of
history is written on the basis of
statements no more reliable than those
of . . . Dr Spaeth and Carmen Mory. If
such statements had been made and
recorded with reference to the disputed
death of the Czar Alexander I in 1825,
plenty of historians would have been
ready to take them seriously.” TrevorRoper’s mistaken late-career
authentication of the “Hitler diaries”
surely stemmed from his quest for the
historian’s holy grail: the inside story in
real time.
Instead, historical evidence is often
deceptive. Participants’ letters, memos
and memoirs tend to straighten things
out, retrospectively justify actions and
give history a pattern it didn’t have.
Other decisive moments go
undocumented. And so historians
often over-reach based on insufficient
information. Rosemary Sullivan’s new
book claims to use modern Big Data
methods to identify a Jewish notary as
Anne Frank’s likely betrayer. Experts
are unconvinced. Even Vince Pankoke,
the retired FBI detective who led the
investigation detailed in the book,
admitted, “Investigating the past and
our interpretation of it is not a finite
exercise.” Historians have known that
since Thucydides.
But suddenly we have gigabytes of
material to test two competing
historical theories: the conspiracy and
the cock-up. The conspiracy theory
says that people in power know what
they are doing, that the Trumpists, for
instance, planned a coup. But to quote
the film Don’t Look Up, “The truth is
way more depressing. They’re not even
smart enough to be as evil as you’re
giving them credit for.” More often,
power brokers stumble around at
cross-purposes.
On January 6, for instance, there
were three groups of Republican
actors: the uninformed foot soldiers,
who mostly just wanted to smash stuff
up; Trump’s henchmen, who thought it
was an inconsequential sore-losers
march; and Trump, who almost alone
pursued a coup, albeit one hamstrung
by the fact that the people in it didn’t
know it was one.
Of course, Trumpism and
Johnsonism both have an usually high
Keystone Kops quotient. Even so,
tracking today’s powerbrokers message
Harry Haysom
Imagine if we’d had
real-time minuteby-minute source
material for the
French Revolution
D
espite the quaint lace curtains and flaking blue paint,
the little wooden house in
Stolbova is not your average
Siberian cottage.
It is encircled by motion detectors and
360-degree security cameras. A web of
high-power cables slinks on to the
grounds from the street. Round the
back, hidden behind tall metal fences,
two low, barrack-like additions stretch
out over land that, in the past, might
have been a cabbage patch.
The local electricity company insists
this is a clandestine bitcoin mine outfitted with enough costly cryptomining
equipment to siphon as much electricity
from the grid as at least five normal
homes would during a freezing Russian
winter.
Stolbova is one of the villages surrounding the Siberian city of Irkutsk,
some 5,000km east of Moscow. The
region, which experiences extreme
swings in temperature (-21.5C in winter,
25.7C in summer), is known for its powerful rivers dotted with Soviet-era
hydroelectric dams. Recently, fuelled by
cheap power and proximity to the Chinese border, it has also come to be
known as the epicentre of a boom in
small-scale cryptomining. In 2021, Russia moved up to rank third globally in
terms of volume mined, after the US and
Kazakhstan.
“All my friends, all my relatives. Everybody is doing it,” Olga tells me. We are
standing on a dirt road on the outskirts
of the neighbouring village of
Granovschina. The 30-year-old pauses
to feed a stray dog from a plastic bag of
meat and bones. It is November 2021,
and I have come to the region to see the
boom for myself before crashing bitcoin
prices and regulatory crackdown
threaten to end it all. Thick electricity
cables hang above us. “No one bothers
to try and understand what bitcoins
actually are,” she continues. “The
money just trickles in and trickles in.”
Before walking away, hunched
against the cold, she offers some advice:
“You’d better hurry up and get involved
before this whole thing gets busted.”
Irkutsk’s household miners begin by
purchasing an Application-Specific
Integrated Circuit device or ASIC, a
small, boxlike computer dedicated to
mining bitcoin. In Irkutsk, ASICs are
mostly purchased via messaging app
Telegram from informal local traders,
who import them from China, the
world’s main producer. Prices vary
wildly, ranging anywhere from $400 for
a basic machine to $13,000 for more
advanced, energy-efficient models. An
ASIC plugs into a regular household outlet and, with minimal set-up, can start
bringing in a stream of extra income
every month.
Even if most people have tended to
quietly set up a few kilowatts-worth of
ASICs at homes, that can have a big
impact. “Ten kilowatts on your balcony,
and you don’t need to go to work any
more,” one farm-owner tells me. (Individuals tend to call themselves miners,
but many machines strung together are
referred to as a “farm”.) At crypto
exchange rates late last year, the average
household miner was bringing in about
Rbs200,000 ($2,660) per month, he
estimates, or about four times the average monthly salary in Irkutsk. “It’s helping to develop a middle class. I’ve even
seen sports cars around here,” he says.
Stepping around the block I find a
large, window-sized ventilator cooling a
drab and windowless garden shed. I
wonder why, in Siberia, someone might
need to air-condition a shed?
Jerry-rigged installations like this are
pretty common. ASICs produce a lot of
excess heat and, across Irkutsk, they are
being hooked up to all manner of pipes
and radiators by DIYers. This way they
also heat apartments, greenhouses,
by message adds credibility to the cockup theory. History probably resembles
the farcical TV series The Thick of It and
Veep more than it does paranoid
accounts such as The Manchurian
Candidate or All the President’s Men.
The current trove of evidence may
prove short-lived. Historical actors are
learning to destroy their phone
messages, just as Trump habitually
ripped up government documents.
Similarly, the British government now
instructs officials to delete their instant
messages, while the European
Commission is withholding texts that
its president Ursula von der Leyen
exchanged with Pfizer’s chief Albert
Bourla before buying 1.8bn vaccine
doses. Vera Jourova, the commission’s
ironically titled vice-president for
values and transparency, argues that
text messages are “short-lived” and
exempt from access laws.
Even if transparency campaigners
win access to such materials, officials
may switch to using messages that selfdestruct. Dominic Cummings
anticipated this when he was Boris
Johnson’s chief adviser and took
screenshots of his boss’s WhatsApps.
Meanwhile, other powerbrokers will
leave us perfectly crafted “deepfakes”.
As our era of naively transparent
messaging ends, the lights may go out
for historians again.
[email protected]; @KuperSimon
point, due to cryptomining. The problem, he said, was “further aggravated by
the ban on mining imposed by the Chinese authorities and the relocation of a
significant amount of equipment to the
Irkutsk region”.
Siberia’s
new boom:
cryptomining
A bitcoin sculpture made of scrap metal being installed outside a cryptomining ‘farm’ in Norilsk, Siberia — Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
Fuelled by cheap power and Chinese hardware,
households across the region are furiously making
clandestine cryptocurrency. By Polina Ivanova
even swimming pools. Such “cryptoboilers” deploy electricity — with
a slight detour — for household use, just
like any other heater, argues Ilya Frolov,
who is often credited as their pioneer in
Irkutsk. “It’s my business how I heat my
house,” he says. “I could heat it by keeping an iron switched on if I like.”
Elsewhere in Irkutsk, bitcoin-themed
graffiti decorates city walls. Cornershop cashiers talk about ASIC prices on
the phone. And everywhere, neighbours
moan about power cuts and the constant, low hum coming from miners’
homes. “The city is mining with a vengeance,” the owner of several, larger-scale
bitcoin operations tells me. Like many
others, he asks to remain anonymous
because “the screws are clearly tightening” on the previously unregulated mining world and “some sort of show trial
will happen, that’s for sure”.
The Angara river, which flows out of
Lake Baikal and through Irkutsk, is
home to a string of hydroelectric dams
first planned under Josef Stalin to supply power to plants enriching uranium
for the Soviet nuclear weapons programme. The region has been flooded
with inexpensive power ever since.
Lately, electricity provider Irkutskenergosbyt has accelerated its hunt for
illicit power users. “This unexpected,
dramatic increase in domestic electricity use, it overloads the network,” deputy head engineer Dmitry Suvorov tells
me, sitting in the company’s sky-rise
offices overlooking snow-swept Irkutsk.
“When the cable s are overloaded . . . they start to melt, and the
network is short-circuited. Mass outages happen. It can knock out a street,
or half a village.”
In the first nine months of 2021, electricity use in the village of Granovschina
increased 144 per cent, according to the
company. Down the road in Karlyk, it
went up 131 per cent last year. In Stolbova, it jumped by 158 per cent according to Irkutskenergosbyt. Power outages
have indeed followed these jumps and
generated complaints from customers.
“They are hunting down miners very
actively . . . squeezing them out, fining
them,” the farm-owner says of the
power company’s increased scrutiny.
“They even hang up posters telling people to snitch on their neighbours.”
The company also deploys inspectors.
Oleg Gerasimenko, Irkutskenergosbyt’s
lead engineer, explains that his crews
try to pinpoint houses where power use
goes well over the norm of about 440Kw
per month per home. Targets picked,
they head out into the field armed with
heat sensors, wattmeters and, occasionally, drones. They’ve found mining
equipment hidden in bushes and backyard trailers, concealed under firewood
and tucked behind chicken pens.
Irkutskenergosbyt has started pursuing the most egregious cases in
the courts. One person in the village of
Khomutovo had two buildings set up,
engineers allege, using between
300,000kW-hours and 400,000kWhours per month, more than a midsized
factory. “He’s still going. He’s not paying
voluntarily,” Suvorov says. “So we’re
suing him every month. Every month
we go to court and, based on the court’s
decision, we get him to pay.”
Irkutskenergosbyt argues that many
miners are paying a household tariff for
electricity that is used for commercial
gain. And in Irkutsk, it’s the household
tariff that’s key. It was set as low as
Rbs0.86 ($0.012) per kW-hour in rural
areas and Rbs1.23 in urban areas for the
second half of 2021. The commercial
tariff, though still comparatively cheap,
is four times higher. It’s this household
rate that made mining so profitable
when bitcoin prices were high.
Many miners argue that small-scale
bitcoin mining should not be considered
a commercial activity. Others contest
that Irkutskenergosbyt, which is owned
by sprawling hydropower-to-metals
company En+, tied to oligarch Oleg Deripaska, should just give residents a
break. (Electricity in Russia is partly
subsidised by higher rates for businesses.) “The big energy companies,
their owners, people like Deripaska,
they don’t like it when the household
tariff is used for mining . . . But it’s just a
small extra penny for every house,” says
Yuriy Dromashko, one of Irkutsk’s most
well-known miners. Dromashko runs a
YouTube channel called CryptoCapital
that’s all about mining in the city.
Dromashko was an early adopter of
bitcoin mining in Irkutsk, but he speaks
to me by phone from an undisclosed —
but glamorous, if you judge by his
YouTube videos — location abroad.
‘This unexpected increase
in domestic electricity use
overloads the network. It
can knock out half a village’
Cryptomining machines in the data centre at Siberian Technologies in
Angarsk, near Irkutsk — Polina Ivanova
“They could have turned a blind eye to
this. Let people live a bit better, what’s
so bad about that?”
About an hour’s drive north of
Irkutsk, a “white”, meaning legal, mining hotel has been set up on an industrial site. Hotels allow bitcoin miners to
plug in their ASICs and mine paying the
commercial rate. Brickwork crumbles
and stray dogs roam outside. But inside,
shelves are stacked with whirring computers, forcing you to shout over the
noise if you want to communicate.
This particular hotel is attached to the
local substation owned by the city’s electricity company, recently renamed
Siberian Technologies after a techinspired rebrand. It’s completely full.
There has not been any spare electricity
since late 2020, according to the firm.
Queues have formed, and customers are
offering to pay more than the normal
rate just to bag a spot.
The main room at the site uses about
3MW, lead engineer Evgeny tells me
during a tour. That’s more than your
average factory, or 50,000-person town.
All the ASICs together, just under
a thousand of them, produce about a
bitcoin a day, which is currently worth
about $40,000 on global exchanges. “It’s
a boom, it’s really a boom,” Evgeny says,
as electricians work outside to hook up a
new cable to the building’s roof. “This
year I also started mining myself.
Because you look around and everyone
is doing it.” He also wanted some extra
income since inflation is raising prices
on food and other goods.
He’s only cashed out once so far, however, converting bitcoins to roubles. “I
took the money out and bought new
doors and windows for the banya,” he
says, referring to the wooden saunas
that many people build on their land in
rural Russia.
Irkutsk’s bitcoin scene was given an
additional boost after China cracked
down on mining in 2021. The move triggered a sell-off of whole warehouses full
of unused Chinese machines. “A lot of
equipment became available for purchase. And en masse it all moved to Russia and Kazakhstan,” one Irkutsk
importer, who trades Chinese hardware
on Telegram, says. Previously, you’d put
in an order and wait for six months.
In a letter to Russia’s deputy prime
minister last autumn, the governor of
the Irkutsk region complained of a
recent “avalanche-like growth” in electricity use, straining the grid to breaking
In December, the price of bitcoin
began to tumble. It is now about
$40,000, down from nearly $60,000
when I was in Irkutsk. Then, earlier this
year, Russia’s central bank proposed to
ban most operations in the cryptocurrency market, which it described as a
financial pyramid. But with an increasing number of influential businesses
involved in mining in Russia, the topic
looks to be up for discussion for some
time. And regulation seems increasingly
more likely than a total ban. Still,
mining chat groups are speculating
on where the mass production could
move next.
Even before the most recent developments, the longevity of the bitcoin boom
here was on people such as Evgeny
Zyryanov’s mind. The 33-year-old is sitting in the front room of his Kriptomir
shop in Irkutsk, which services cryptomining machines and sells cables and
spare parts. A mining machine flickers
by his desk.
It produced about Rbs48,000 per
month worth of cryptocurrency, at the
going rate in November, Zyryanov says,
adding that he pays taxes on the income
and a commercial electricity rate, so he
is happy to talk about it publicly.
With business booming, Zyryanov
quit his job in the army in 2021 to run
the company full time. Over the course
of an hour on a freezing Saturday night,
at least a dozen customers come into
the store, looking to buy gear or
get something fixed. “Agricultural
workers . . . Manual labourers, factory
workers . . . Everybody is mining,”
Zyryanov says. “There are even employees of Irkutskenergosbyt who buy
from us,” he adds.
“There’s no panic, it’s still profitable
regardless,” Zyryanov says, when I call
him in February after the price of bitcoin had almost halved. No one was surprised by the central bank’s report, he
claims. “The central bank has never
been on the side of alternative currencies . . . But it’s not the one that decides,
it can’t make laws,” he says. “It’s not
even a ministry.”
Zyryanov tells me he took an online
poll of his Irkutsk group and found that
90 per cent of miners said they would
continue mining even if the practice was
banned. “They will ignore any ban. It’s
become unstoppable.” One sign he may
be right: the price of ASICs hasn’t
changed much and the amount of second-hand equipment is still limited.
Whatever happens, bitcoin mining
changed his life “completely”, Zyryanov
tells me. It connected him to a global
community. It spurred him to develop a
local one too, and he now hosts events
and runs a bitcoin shisha bar in town, as
well as a CryptoPolice project that tries
to crowdsource information about local
crypto scammers and warn the city’s
miners. All of which are still going now.
But his long-term outlook on the
future for Irkutsk’s mining scene is
glum. “There’s potential,” Zyryanov
says, “but we won’t become a Silicon
Valley.” Few people are engaging with
the theory and technology underpinning cryptocurrencies, he argues. The
boom is not sparking any new ideas or
projects that could bring long-term
development. Instead, people are mining bitcoins like a raw commodity,
much like Siberia’s other real-world
resources, from coal to gold and oil.
“The region is like a poor person who
found a million dollars and doesn’t
know what to do with it,” Zyryanov says.
“Irkutsk was just lucky.”
Polina Ivanova is an FT Moscow
18
★
FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
Spectrum | Food & drink
Bordeaux’s
topsy-turvy
class of 2018
Jancis Robinson
Wine
E
Nuts and oats
Recipe | Love is a homemade breakfast served in bed.
By Honey & Co’s Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich
F
orget the chocolates, roses and
champagne this Valentine’s
Day. Keep your expensive gifts
for birthdays. The Big Bang
dinner out? A big no for many
reasons, not least because a room full of
loved-up couples is guaranteed to give
you the ick — or so you can tell your
partner after you’ve left it too late and
the best places are booked up. The same
goes for “luxury” hotels in rural settings. Your love deserves a touch more
effort, a sprinkle of imagination.
Celebrate at home, in the rooms
where love is made — the bedroom, the
kitchen . . . the ultimate act of love is a
homemade breakfast served in bed.
We are not sending you off to bake
soufflés or fold omelettes. Nor are we on
the hunt for a full English. For us, making sure the eggs and bacon reach the
plate in optimal condition is a feat of
timing and skill akin to landing a plane
with a blindfold. It’s not something we
would ever attempt before breakfast.
No, this one is made well in advance. All
you have to do is pour it into a bowl, fill a
jug with milk, another with coffee, and
Patricia Niven
crawl back into bed with your loved one.
There are plenty of great things about
this granola. The combo of broken and
rolled oats gives an incredible variety of
textures. We love cold, old-fashioned
milk with it, but yoghurt and kefir also
work a treat, as do milk alternatives.
The ginger tingles the palate awake,
even as the rest of the body wants to sink
back into slumber. Cashews and macadamias add a hint of luxury; coconut an
exotic back note, a whisper of summer.
This recipe makes a large Kilner jar,
enough for about eight bowls or four
breakfasts for two. Like us, you will
probably make more when it runs out,
because celebrating love is not just for
Valentine’s Day — breakfast in bed can
become the norm. And why shouldn’t it
when it’s so easy?
[email protected]; @Honeyandco
Super nutty granola
To make a large jar for about eight
bowls
the time until the mix becomes one hot
bubbling lava mass, then carefully pour
over the oat mix. Use a wooden spoon
to mix it all through and add the ground
ginger and salt. Spread over two baking
sheets lined with baking paper.
Ingredients
600g oats, we use a mix of broken
and rolled, but either work if you
would rather not buy two types
75g macadamia nuts
75g cashew nuts
50g flaked almonds
25g sesame seeds
130g maple syrup (you can use honey)
100g coconut oil
100g demerara sugar
½ tsp ground ginger
1 tsp flaky sea salt
50g crystallised ginger, diced into
small pieces
2. Heat your oven to 170C (fan assist).
Method
1. Mix the oats with all the nuts and
sesame seeds in a large bowl.
3. Put the maple syrup (or honey),
coconut oil and demerara sugar in a
saucepan. Bring to the boil, stirring all
4. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes.
Remove the trays one at a time and mix
the granola carefully then flatten the
mix and return to the oven for another
15 minutes. This time, don’t touch it at
all. Bake until it’s a lovely, dark golden
colour, remove from the oven and leave
to cool on the trays so that little clumps
are formed; some will break and some
will stay clustered.
5. Once fully cooled, sprinkle over the
diced crystallised ginger and transfer to
an airtight container. The granola will
keep well for a month.
very year, a group of
about 20 wine writers
and Bordeaux-specialist
merchants meet in the
Wandsworth offices of
fine wine traders Farr Vintners to
taste blind about 250 bordeaux well
after they are safely in bottle,
including all the most revered
names.
Châteaux donate samples, which
are then gathered by retired
Bordeaux-based wine merchant Bill
Blatch. Farr staff marshal and open
the wines, decanting them into
neutral bottles (usually, most
disconcertingly, burgundy shaped).
None of us tasters knows which
wine is which, although we do know
which wines are in each flight.
Then there is the business of
gathering our scores and entering
them into a database while we
discuss the wines in each
flight still without knowing
their identities. Only after
we have swapped opinions,
and Blatch has made notes
on our conclusions to share
with the winemakers and
château owners, is it
revealed which wine was
which, resulting in a
combination of groans and
knowing grunts.
We all score out of 20 and
I stick to the doubtless very
annoyingly restricted scale I
use on my website whereby
a wine must be faulty to
earn fewer than 15 points
and absolutely amazing to
win more than 18. (Many
a half-point is awarded.) Yet some
of the merchants, who don’t have
to publish their notes and scores,
are notoriously stingy — or,
perhaps, use a more usefully
extensive scale — and quite
frequently award single digits.
The most recent vintage we
assessed, last month, was 2018 and
I think it would be fair to say that
the range of scores was one of the
widest ever for one of these
tastings. This is very far from a
uniformly poor vintage from
Bordeaux, but there are some low
as well as high points.
The whites, both dry and sweet,
are less successful than the reds in
general but there were exceptions.
It wasn’t surprising that the whites
of the Haut-Brion stable performed
well, nor that Domaine de Chevalier
Blanc did. More unexpectedly, the
other notable dry whites were the
two newcomers on the white
bordeaux scene, which are
modelled on Sancerre rather than
Pessac-Léognan, the classical
heartland of dry white bordeaux:
Petit Cheval from Ch Cheval Blanc
and Champs Libres from the
Guinaudeaus of Ch Lafleur.
Unlike the glorious 2019, the 2018
vintage of Sauternes was blighted
by a lack of noble rot. The warm,
dry autumn may have helped those
harvesting red wine grapes
enormously, but noble rot thrives
on humidity and it didn’t arrive
until very late in October. So late, in
fact, that some usually reliable
Sauternes properties such as Chx
Rieussec and Suduiraut delayed
their harvest to such an extent that
they ran into winter weather. Many
of the sweet white 2018 bordeaux
from less ambitious properties taste
decidedly simple.
As for the 2018 reds, it’s difficult
to generalise but there are some
truly thrilling wines here, wines
that will be worth waiting for.
Although official analyses from
Bordeaux’s academic oenologists
suggest that tannin levels were
fairly average — a little lower than
in the glorious 2016 vintage for
Cabernet Sauvignon grapes and
common fault was a lack of fruit to
stand up to some distinctly drying,
punishing tannins. This was most
noticeable in Pessac-Léognan, while
St-Estèphe estates seemed to cope
especially well with the growing
conditions of 2018 (which included
rampant mildew and hail in spring
— not a reassuring start).
Because September and early
October were warmer and drier
than usual there was no rush to
pick and clearly many producers
decided to strive for extra ripeness
(hence the lower acidity). This
meant that overall alcohol levels
from these very ripe grapes were
notably high. Assuming the
percentages given on the labels
were accurate, of the 206 red wines
we tasted, only 19 were less than 14
per cent and 17 were at least 15 per
cent, of which four — Magrez
Fombrauge, Péby Faugères,
Quintus and Valandraud, all
St-Émilions — had 15.5 per
cent on the label. The most
common alcoholic strength
was 14.5 per cent. (White
wines, whether dry or sweet,
tended to be less potent,
although Valandraud Blanc
was 15 per cent.)
It was good to see some
excellent “second” wines (less
expensive reds from
glamorous châteaux) such as
those from the St-Estèphe
superstars Ch Montrose and
Cos d’Estournel. Ch Pichon
Baron of Pauillac, usually a
strong performer in these
Leon Edler
tastings, effectively makes two
a little higher for Merlot — the
second wines: the Merlot-heavy
wines tasted pretty tannic.
Tourelles de Longueville and the
This presumably reflects the
longer-lasting Griffons de Pichon
thick grape skins resulting from a
Baron. Both were popular with the
dry summer when some vines,
group, though I preferred Griffons
especially those planted in wellin 2018.
drained soils, suffered stress before
The most contentious wines we
some late August showers, although tasted were the pair made by the
water reserves had been topped up
Mitjavile family, Tertre Roteboeuf
by a rainy winter and spring.
in St-Émilion and Roc de Cambes in
Cooler, damper soils with a high
a favoured enclave in the relatively
minor Côtes de Bourg district.
The whites, both dry and These are super-ripe and
unashamedly sensual, the liquid
sweet, are less successful equivalent of a full-blown rose on
the cusp of losing its petals.
than the reds in general
Obtrusive tannins? Forget it! Both
but there are exceptions wines really stood out from the rest
and garnered many a low score, but
I loved them. And I know from
clay content, as in St-Estèphe and
experience of past vintages that
parts of Pomerol, should have
they are well capable of ageing.
benefited.
The wines were released at
The only quirky analytical
higher prices than the Covidcharacteristic to emerge from the
discounted 2019s so there may be
analysts’ many charts is that acid
fewer bargains.
levels in the 2018s were a little
In my list of recommendations
lower than average. Perhaps that
(see online), I have asterisked the
made us notice the tannins a bit
wines that impressed me for their
more (even though they are lower
relative value.
in general than in 2019, for
instance)? Or perhaps it was
Tasting notes on Purple Pages of
because in the less successful reds
JancisRobinson.com.
— and 2018 is not the most
More columns at ft.com/jancisconsistent vintage — the most
robinson
Stories, stars and selfies down in Rio
Fantasy dinner party | Writer Musa Okwonga gets all the gossip from Paul Newman, Miriam Makeba and an all-time soccer great
M
y dream dinner party
must take place somewhere with a view of a
vast body of water and
which overlooks a city of
the rarest beauty. For that reason, it will
take place in a flat in Rio, several floors
up, maybe in the neighbourhood of Flamengo. The apartment will have a balcony so that we can go out between
courses with glasses of wine or soft
drinks, if my guests are so minded, and
enjoy the arrival of nightfall and the
growing clamour of the nightlife below.
The dress code will be decadent casual,
so I will go for a black velvet jacket with
gold trim, with matching black rollneck.
For the cuisine, I will leave everything
in the hands of Joyce Hermlin, of Kaari
Delicatessen. A few years ago, I went to
Berlin’s African Food Festival and,
among the many excellent stalls, her
cooking stood out. Berlin has some of
the best restaurants, euro for euro, that I
have found anywhere, so the fact that I
remember it so well half a decade later
says it all. I’ll ask her to cook her full repertoire — fish, chicken, soups, vegetarian skewers, kidney beans, chapati.
For the wine, I’ll consult Camille Darroux, an up-and-coming French sommelier who is an equally gifted musician. I first encountered her in the latter
guise in Berlin, where she was working
in the field of electronic music. Then I
heard her talk about wine and she blew
me away. Not only will she curate a
superb evening of libations, she can also
assemble an outstanding playlist.
After much thought, my five guests, in
no particular order, are Toni Morrison,
Paul Newman, Samuel Eto’o, Okot
p’Bitek and Miriam Makeba. All five not
only achieved exceptional things but
they never lost track of their social consciences. What’s more, they seemed to
know absolutely everyone and had, as
far as I can tell, a playful sense of
humour. Which means the gossip should
be good. It’ll be fun if one of them starts
each course with a tale about themselves
that no one else knows — a wild lastminute adventure to another country, a
chance encounter with a stranger who
would become a life-long friend.
Let’s quickly run through my remarkable guests. What gets me about Toni
Morrison is the fullness of the life that
she lived — she didn’t cast everything
aside in pursuit of her craft, she gave so
generously of herself. Even if she had
never written a single word, she would
have gone down as a legend in literature
for the work she did as an editor. It will
be incredible to hear her talk about the
first time she realised a new author was
special or the feeling of that moment
when a great idea came to her. But also
to hear about the joy she took in being a
parent and in her many friendships,
because no one could describe affairs of
the heart like her.
Paul Newman can tell us all about a
pivotal time for American society and
politics, for which he had a front-row
seat: he’ll have so much to say about
maintaining his integrity and progressive values, even within a segregated
society. And hopefully he’ll share plenty
about his love of motor racing.
Lizzie Gill | Photos: Phil Dera; Writer Pictures; Getty Images
As for Samuel Eto’o, my goodness.
What to say about one of the greatest
footballers of all time who’s now the
president of Cameroon’s football
association? He is so fearless and forthright in every interview and I want to
hear what it took for a working-class
black African man to make his way in
mainland Europe.
Meanwhile, Okot p’Bitek was a true
polymath: the Ugandan writer, most
It will be incredible to
hear Toni Morrison talk.
No one described affairs
of the heart like her
famous for his epic “Song of Lawino”, is
one of Africa’s finest poets, and was also
good enough at football to play for his
country. From what I’m told, he was the
most mischievous of all my guests, so I
expect him to be the catalyst for a night
on the town afterwards. Before that, he
can give us an insight into life growing up
in a country and continent trying
urgently to break free from colonial rule.
Last but not least, perhaps the greatest of them all, Miriam Makeba, who
was singing both for justice and joy
almost until her final breath. She is one
of the few musicians who can claim to
have provided a soundtrack to freedom.
I don’t think anyone else in the room
will be able to speak once she starts talking about any part of her life, so she’ll
have to introduce the final course.
After a spectacular meal, everyone
will get into two long chauffeur-driven
black Cadillacs to find a decent club
somewhere in the city, with a dance
floor big enough for all of us. Either side
of that, we can stop off in Leblon for
cocktails, then end up in Botafogo for
karaoke. When we’re done there, we’ll
take a drive to the edge of the lagoon,
Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, and watch the
sun rise over the water. And, of course,
there will be selfies, endless selfies,
because who wouldn’t want an eternal
reminder of such a night?
Musa Okwonga is an author and the co-host
of the Stadio football podcast. His latest
book is “One of Them”
★ †
12 February/13 February 2022
From slacker
to sellout
SNAPSHOT
‘Miss Mary
Warner’ (1910) by
Heinrich Kühn
Joshua Chaffin
Fourth estate
Widely regarded as one of the
forefathers of fine art photography,
German-born photographer
Heinrich Kühn employed
differences in light and the changing
seasons to create images of
astounding delicacy, which mirror
the soft colours and focus of the
19th-century Impressionist painters.
The work of Kühn and his
contemporaries is being shown at
a new exhibition at the Museum
Barberini, illuminating the complex
interplay between photography and
Impressionism.
Here, Miss Mary Warner is posed
in nature. Appearing frequently in
Kühn’s work, she stares imposingly
towards the camera but her eyes
remain in shadow. The soft, blurred
focus of the image gives it the
ethereal quality of a dream.
Leah Quinn
T
he other morning I was
driving my son to soccer
practice and trying to avoid
the subject of my 50th
birthday when Pearl Jam, a
favourite band from my university
years — one of the pioneers of the
Seattle grunge scene and pillars of the
’90s — came on the radio. It was, to my
chagrin, the Classic Rock station.
How did that get there, I thought to
myself? Later that day, I checked
the post and the insult was
compounded: I’d received a
membership form from the American
Association for Retired People.
It was all confirmation that the ’90s,
formative years that so long felt to me
as though they were just over my
shoulder, were, in fact, well and truly
in the past and even capable of now
being evaluated as such. Chuck
Klosterman, the prolific author and
cultural critic — who is also turning 50
this year — has done just that in a new
book, The Nineties.
In retrospect, he writes, this fin de
siècle seems like a period “when the
world was starting to go crazy, but not
so crazy that it was unmanageable
or irreparable”.
The internet-straddling ’90s are, to
me, a period of lasts. It was the last
time I would handwrite school papers.
Only one student in my university
dorm had a printer. If he was not
feeling charitable, you had to go to a
computer lab for help printing a
document. It was the last time music
would be physically contained on
cassette tapes you fast-forwarded
through and rewound with a twitchy
finger. It was the beginning and end of
a unipolar world with America at its
‘A New Art: Photography and
Impressionism’ is at the Museum
Barberini, Potsdam, to May 8
A #wokemoment won’t
make you more relevant
Jo Ellison
Trending
A
nd Just Like That . . . it
transpired that you can
lob any number of
contemporary references
at a drama — a trans rabbi,
late-onset lesbianism, pandemic
fist-bumping; hell, you can even
preface issues of divisive topicality
with a klaxon announcing that the
forthcoming discussion will be a
#wokemoment — but you cannot
make it relevant.
Michael Patrick King’s reboot of the
Sex and the City franchise finished last
week with a clutch bag of human ashes,
and the distinct impression that the
whole series might have benefited
from an earlier expiration. I watched
every episode.
Obviously. Carrie Bradshaw is my
kryptonite, and I am powerless to resist
her even though this series found her
suffering the gross indignities of
wetting the bed, becoming widowed
and having to co-anchor a gruesome
podcast called X, Y and Me with a
pansexual comedian.
The only character who aged well
during the show’s near 20-year absence
from the small screen was Samantha,
the compulsively sex-driven publicist
played by Kim Cattrall who appeared
only via occasional text messages.
Wise move, Kim.
Part of the show’s fascination was in
its relentless campaign to seem more
contemporaneous and relevant. I came
for the outfits but stayed for the cringeinducing lines crowbarred into even
the most basic dialogue. Is there
anything more ick than having the
officiant at a wedding announce: “You
may now kiss the bride, or whatever
else will get you the most likes on
Instagram”?
Fans have been critical of the
producers’ failure to recoup the magic
of the original. Although it was quite
magical thinking to assume that a
series about thirtysomething singletons
shopping and shagging in pre-9/11
Manhattan could sustain any
momentum two and a half decades
after first airing.
Shoehorning in ancillary characters
19
designed to make the show more
inclusive made the plots seem laboured
and expositional. Too often the stories
felt leaden and forced rather than
clever and contemporary.
And Just Like That . . . didn’t work,
mostly, because it was too enmeshed in
its specificity. By contrast, the most
contemporaneous and interesting show
on television at the moment is another
HBO series, Euphoria. At least for
young people.
Now in its second season, the Sam
Levinson drama airs in old-timey
weekly instalments and has generated
the sort of fevered anticipation that
rarely accompanies new dramas,
especially among millennials and Gen
Z viewers: according to Variety, this
season’s premiere drew 13.1mn
viewers, a 100 per cent increase in
By simply presenting
rather than discussing the
world, ‘Euphoria’ has
harnessed the zeitgeist
audience size compared with its series
one precursor.
Following the lives of a group of highschool students in East Highland, a
non-specific suburb in California,
Euphoria is an unflinching account of
contemporary adolescence in which
the main character is Rue, a drug
addict played by Zendaya. Like And
Just Like That . . ., Euphoria depicts a
spectrum of sexual, political and
gender identities. Unlike And Just Like
That . . ., few of the plot lines are built
on identity politics. Everyone is too
high, or stoned, or drunk, or busy
applying party glitter to bother
debating the rights and wrongs of
society.
Euphoria has no real co-ordinates: it’s
set anywhere there are teenagers,
albeit very attractive ones who live in a
miasma of lusty abandon to a
soundtrack of musical bangers. The
pandemic has never been mentioned,
even though the first series aired last
summer. The cast carry the accessories
and brands of the era, but — like kids in
the old days — they still ride pushbikes
and clamber through bedroom
windows. Time is elastic; the
soundtrack ricochets around the
decades so that the drama is distanced
from a fixed moment. It’s a genius
move. By simply presenting rather
than discussing the world, Euphoria has
harnessed the zeitgeist.
Does something become more
relevant because you throw in the right
kind of details? Or does relevance
simply bubble through something
because it is of that moment?
I flicked through Mrs Dalloway the
other day while thinking about this
question. Getting reacquainted with it
from my school days, I had
remembered the modernist novel as
having only a sprinkling of
contemporary references but was
surprised to find it packed full of
proper nouns, political talking points
and geographical locations. Virginia
Woolf certainly had no issue with
dropping in the odd “Mulberry” in her
interior monologues: but the
pertinence of the details is only
ever an adjunct of another more
memorable journey.
Euphoria is no Mrs Dalloway, but it is
conceived and directed by people who
have a decisive grip on the moment.
The references are all there, but they
aren’t used like a bludgeon, they
simply fill out a compelling,
heightened and highly addictive take
on the teenage experience. It’s possibly
not a place you are in a rush to revisit.
But it’s an education.
Most of us are terrorised by the idea
that our views, ideas or impressions are
becoming staid and old-fashioned. Or,
worse, that by trying to keep on top of
the societal trends we look irrelevant
and slightly desperate. Perhaps that
was why And Just Like That . . . proved
so compelling? It made me feel
culturally superior. Watching Euphoria
has the reverse effect: I feel a tragic
pensioner.
Email Jo at [email protected]
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centre, and a mirage of security. It was
the last era of appointment television
viewing of Seinfeld or The Simpsons.
My most ’90s experience was a
summer I spent in then-sleepy Austin,
Texas in a rented house with friends
after my sophomore year of university.
Why Austin? Because it was then the
capital of Slackerdom and — alongside
Seattle and Portland — a cultural node
of the ’90s. We got counter jobs at
restaurants and bars which, it turned
out, were absurdly difficult to come by
because everyone else wanted to be a
Slacker, too.
The authenticity I
sanctimoniously strived for
in my 20s is now reserved
for cheese and interiors
I eventually got a job at a restaurant
with live music where much of the staff
was high at any given moment. (This
may have also been the last era in
which students did not need a summer
internship.) The pay was lousy but you
could eat for free all over town through
an informal system in which restaurant
folks gave other restaurant folks free
food and drinks. (I’m not sure the
owners were party to this bargain.)
We went to clubs and listened to
grunge bands and throttled each other
in mosh pits. Without social media, we
haunted coffee shops, where we read a
bit, and looked at girls we would never
actually talk to.
Within me, a spiritual crisis was
brewing: I was torn between what I
would do after graduating and the
desperate desire not to “sell out.” As
Klosterman writes: “The worst thing
you could be was a sell out, and not
because selling out involved money.
Selling out meant you needed to be
popular, and any explicit desire for
approval was enough to prove you
were terrible.”
At least once a year I still wince at the
memory of an encounter with a
university friend’s adult neighbour.
“What are you planning to do when
you graduate?” the courteous
gentleman asked me after we were
introduced. “I don’t know — probably
sell out and go to law school,” I replied.
“Oh, I’m a lawyer,” he informed me.
Eventually, I made my way to New
York, and as the decade progressed, the
notion of “selling out” would change. A
friend-of-a-friend became legendary in
our circle for selling an internet startup for $7mn — a sum that now sounds
quaint. Selling out has long since
become “cashing in” or “monetising” —
a most glorious life event. The
authenticity I sanctimoniously strived
for in my twenties is now reserved for
cheese and interiors.
Like myself and Klosterman,
denizens of the ’90s are now turning 50
in droves. In a recent interview he said
he did not intend his book as an
exercise in nostalgia. But it seems
inevitable the ’90s are destined for
such treatment. Soon enough,
somebody will make a lot of money
selling retro cassette tapes and other
kitsch to me and my ilk. Sell outs!
Joshua Chaffin is the FT’s New York
correspondent
Janan Ganesh is away
20
★
12 February/13 February 2022
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look around. This is the “Red Room”,
the tower’s historic lobby. It is, perhaps,
the most dazzling Deco room in a city
soaked in 1930s exuberance. It feels like
being in a Chinese lacquer jewellery box
or on the set of a big musical number
that is just about to break out in showgirls. Gold filaments radiate out from
the faceted, gothic ceiling in ripples set
against a red mosaic ground. It was
designed by Hildreth Meière, America’s
greatest mosaic artist (some of her best
work is at Radio City Music Hall, some
four miles uptown) but hardly a household name. She deserves to be. The Red
Room still looks avant garde, an enveloping shell of sheer luxury.
Macklowe has got off the phone. “You
don’t mind, do you? I’m just kibitzing
here.” I shrug and he starts talking
again, occasionally greeting people who
arrive in the lobby with great affection —
he appears to be liked. So I go and peer
into a model of the building, a huge
white slab the size of a reception desk.
Beside it another scale model of the
tower, an almost caricatured, stepped
temple to finance that looks exactly the
way a New York skyscraper should:
somewhere between a ziggurat, a cliff, a
table-lighter and a Batman film set.
Finally Macklowe comes to greet me,
mask hanging nonchalantly around his
neck. He shifts straight into misty-eyed
mode. “When I started out I was in
advertising”, he says, “I deposited my
first pay cheque here, the Irving Trust.”
He beckons to a sales agent to animate
the model. The slab of plastic I was looking at begins to rise, suspended on
The transformation of One Wall Street from banking
HQ to opulent apartments signals a deeper shift in
power and status in New York. By Edwin Heathcote
I
t’s a good address. One Wall Street.
Not a bad building either, one of
Manhattan’s best Art Deco skyscrapers by its very best Art Deco
architect. A good address, at least,
for a bank. But for a home? Why would
anyone want to live on Wall Street?
In the heart of that famously potholed,
intensely dense, dead-in-the-evening
neighbourhood that stands for finance
capital and the global hegemony
of banking?
That this 50-storey tower has become
the biggest office to residential development in New York’s history tells you
something about the huge shift in
finance, power, status and locus taking
place in the city.
When it was designed for the Irving
Trust in 1928, this was the most prestigious plot in the city, the intersection of
Wall Street and Broadway by the Stock
Exchange and Trinity Church. As it was
rising from the ground, all around it the
crash came and went on Wall Street, but
this remained the finest real estate in
global finance, surviving the Depression, the New Deal, the war, a restructuring, a transition to the Bank of New
York, and 9/11. And now, in a perfect
encapsulation of the shift in power from
corporate to personal wealth, this onetime behemoth of banking and an eyrie
for Wolfeian masters of the universe, is
being bundled up into apartments. Bedrooms are rapidly displacing boardrooms, heated bathroom floors replacing trading floors.
When the site changed hands in 1905,
at $615 per sq ft, it became the most
expensive plot in America. There was
no question, a century ago, that this was
to be the commercial centre of the
world, fast outpacing the City of London. Workers poured in every morning,
but they flowed out again at the end of
the day. Now, Downtown hosts a community of about 64,000 residents, double the number at 9/11.
Wall Street is not what it was. It has
accrued a horrible acronym, FiDi, part
of a package to make it appeal, incredibly (but successfully) to young families.
Like the nearby Woolworth Building
and dozens of other buildings in the
immediate neighbourhood, one-time
banks and brokerages are emerging
from hoarding pupae as newly
metamorphosed lofts and glamorous
apartments. One Wall Street, though, is
on another level: an Art Deco-shaped
nail in the coffin of this global hub
of banking. The institutions are still
here, but they are shrinking back.
It seems like every new tower and every
tower that is being renovated is reappearing as residential.
One Wall Street’s change in destiny is
being guided by Harry Macklowe, the
developer who has set fashions in New
York real estate for decades, from persuading Steve Jobs to build the “glass
cube” Apple Store beneath his GM
Building to his stark skinnyscraper
at 432 Park.
When I arrive in from the evening
chill of a windswept Wall Street that is
humming with the noises of construction and misty with the effluvium of
pressurised steam from the stripy vents,
he is on the phone, in a pair of slipper
loafers with vivid yellow socks, his grey
hair swept back and draped just over
his sharp white shirt collar. So I take a
One Wall Street is an Art
Deco-shaped nail in the
coffin of this global hub
of banking
(Above) Art Deco landmark One Wall Street, circa 1931, the year of its completion;
(Left)from boardrooms to bedrooms — one of the new apartments — HLW International
motorised cables, revealing a pool, a terrace, a club room, bar and the other
amenities of extreme wealth. He asks
what I want to talk about. I say the
building and also his career, as developer of some of the most visible towers
in the city.
“Owners are a necessary evil,” he says.
“I’m not the interesting thing here, the
building is.” From where we stand,
wrapped in red and gold dazzle in an
exquisite architectural container, I see
his point.
Despite his protestations, Macklowe
has been one of New York’s most tenacious, successful and influential developers but even he seems diminished in
this remarkable room. What will
become of the ground floor when the
building opens? I inquire. “Oh a department store or something. A Whole
Foods, a lifestyle space, a gym.” I visibly
deflate. He looks up longingly at the
model of the tower. I try not to think of
the insanely overpriced salads and
yeast or the sour smell of sweat and
rubber treadmills, until he clarifies
that the Red Room is to accommodate
the classier end of the retail offer.
“It was completed in the same year as
the Empire State Building,” he says,
leading me to the elevator to start the
tour. “[It’s] two whole Manhattan
blocks. And you look out at the Statue of
Liberty.” The big screens on the walls
are playing that view on a loop, the
Staten Island Ferry, the little boats, the
Continued on page 2
2
★
FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
House Home
Wake up to the
wonders of
bedside tables
Luke Edward Hall
Questions of taste
Inside
I am looking for bedside
tables for my new home. Any
ideas?
My bedside table is more than
just a surface on which to place
my night-time glass of water. I
like making little tableaux: I
have piles of books I’m reading,
usually a small bunch of flowers
or a single flower from the
garden, and of course, a spot for
water. I will choose a nice,
decorative glass for bedtime,
and get this: I might even bring
up a decanter and arrange
everything on a tray — this may
sound faintly ridiculous to you,
but here is one of those things
that we do daily, so why not
make it as nice as possible?
Recently we switched over our
bedside tables in the cottage. For a
while we used a pair of travertine
plinths designed by Maitland-Smith in
the 1980s. To be honest, even though
I’m sure they will do a stunning job as
plinths in the future, they never
worked that well as bedside tables. No
storage for one — isn’t it basically the
law that all bedside tables must include
storage for boring things we don’t want
to sort through? My partner’s, for
example, is currently filled with
colourful socks that have come out of
the wash and refuse to be paired up.
(Side note: how does this happen? It
defies logic. I’m at my wit’s end.) Also,
the plinths were hexagonal in shape,
which is not entirely practical.
Eventually I replaced mine with a
Regency painted writing table bought
from Miles Griffiths Antiques. It is
much larger and therefore can hold all
my books. I don’t know about you, but
I’m definitely one of those people that
buys lots of book, reads bits of them,
then puts them down, knowing I’ll pick
them up and read more at some
unidentified point in the future.
Anyway, the table does a great job, and
it has a drawer, too.
So, what to go for? I suggest going for
pieces as big as you have room for. You
won’t regret this. Personally I want at
least two tiers — this could mean the
top of the bedside and a shelf, or a
cupboard, or drawers, or a mix. Storage
and practicality are key.
I very much like the elegant
London Plane Bedside designed
by Beata Heuman. First
conceived for a London
bedroom, it is made from
London plane (one of the most
common trees growing in the
capital), which has a beautiful
flecked pattern, resulting in
every bedside having its own
unique look. Storage-wise it has
a lot going for it: a shelf for
books, a big drawer and an
extra shelf that pulls out, the
perfect spot for your water
glass. Plus, it comes in two sizes.
For the bedside, I generally
prefer handsome and sturdy
over some fancy bombe-shaped
thing with cabriole legs — you
know, that Louis look? I’m not
much of an Art Deco man either. I am
drawn, therefore, to bedsides such as
the ones available from dealer Ron
Green. These are elegant late Regency
cupboards, made from wood with a
beautiful grain, with marble tops and
charming feet, which look a bit like
upturned acorns. (Excuse me Ron, I’m
sure they have a proper name.)
Art Deco might not float my boat but
I’ll make an exception for the pair of
1930s Czech bedsides I noticed on
Pamono recently: I love the simplicity
of these and their smooth curves, not
to mention their bright white lacquer.
They look a bit space-age: I am
enjoying the idea of topping these with
chrome or nickel lamps, a punchy wall
colour for a backdrop.
Art Deco might not
float my boat but I’ll
make an exception
for a pair of 1930s
Czech bedsides
(Left) London Plane
Bedside by Beata Heuman
(Right) Brownrigg’s
French Empire
nightstands
Trading
places
Continued from page 1
Jonathan Meades
Demolishing our past is vandalism
in the name of regeneration
Page 6
Hot property
Parisian apartments and
a house by the city’s parks
Page 8
Cheese and wine
New designs for your parties,
spontaneous or planned . . .
Page 10
Robin Lane Fox
Don’t repeat my worst mistake
when planting a new border
Page 12
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Circle Line, planes coming down to land:
the Venice of the modern era. It’s cheesy
but undeniably seductive.
The massive sales model we leave
behind articulates what is difficult to see
from ground level: the building’s steps
and setbacks, the faceted spire and
crown. You can see the walls are draped
delicately like curtains, rather than
massive blocks of flat stone. On the
street you have to crane your neck to see
the tower — and Wall Street is no broad
boulevard but a tight street leftover
from the 17th-century Dutch walled settlement. Inside the Red Room, you can
appreciate the grace of Ralph Walker’s
limestone-clad design.
Walker was described by Frank Lloyd
Wright as “the only other honest architect in America”, though he was devastated to be accused in the 1960s of stealing a commission from another archi-
Any regrets? ‘Only that my
parents were not alive to see
me build a tower in New York
taller than the Empire State’
tect. Walker came to a theatrical end, as
carefully-crafted as his buildings, when
he died by suicide in 1973 using a silver
bullet he had cast himself.
Walker was also America’s greatest
skyscraper designer. His firm, Voorhees, Gmelin and Walker, were responsible for the classic Manhattan look, the
beautiful tapering behemoths, their
Barclay-Vesey Building (1922-26) and
60 Hudson Street (1928-30) are still, in
my opinion, the best buildings in the
city, drawing on Expressionist influences from Amsterdam and Hamburg
as well as Deco and Modernism. One
Wall Street is a little lopsided, not quite
as graceful as these two because its site
was more constricted, but terrific nevertheless. Its doors alone are masterpieces of a city suddenly confident in its
own natural architectural style.
Unlike some of the other big Manhattan conversions, One Wall Street has
been completely gutted, leaving only
the Red Room intact. But its generous
punched windows have lent themselves
well to the conversion: 566 condos;
incredible views, high ceilings and much
more. “It’s like a city within city” Macklowe says “with its own places to work,
meeting rooms, a lounge bar . . . Forty
per cent of the apartments have their
own dedicated home offices.” The building was already extended in the 1960s,
50 OBJECTS
FROM AROUND
THE WORLD
#16: Cabbage Plate
Behold the mighty cabbage plate.
Beloved by party hosts from Palm
Beach to Sloane Square, it is to
tableware what leopard print is to
clothing: frivolous, kitsch and,
surprisingly, often fashionable.
This dish of overlapping leaves
topped with a snail finial was
produced in the factory of Portuguese
but Macklowe has managed to add a
little more: a new chunk which looks
a little glassy and nondescript,
but unobtrusive. Robert AM Stern,
known for his historical revival architecture (and sympathy for New York
Deco) was replaced on the project by
SLCE Architects.
The interiors (“Exquisite design.
Opulent materials. Meticulous detailing” it says in the marketing materials)
are, for my taste, a tad bland: all white
marble and shiny steel. They have a
hint of global hotel lounginess about
them. Many will, presumably, get
ripped out anyway.
potter Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro in
1890. Made from faience, a tin-glazed
earthenware that could be easily mass
produced, it would have been one of
many similar plates sold to Europe’s
new middle classes.
Bordalo Pinheiro took an unusual
route into ceramics. Born in 1846, he
initially made his name as a satirist.
His most famous caricature, a broadfaced everyman called Zé Povinho, is
still beloved as a personification of
the Portuguese nation. When he
opened his ceramics factory in Caldas
da Rainha, he made pieces featuring
the natural motifs popular at the time:
cabbages, most famously, but also
lettuces, tomatoes and radishes.
Studios here start from just over
$1mn, two-bedroom condos at around
$2mn, and four-bedroom apartments
from $6.95mn. The triplex penthouse
(13,430 sq ft and a further 2,000 sq ft of
terrace) has not been priced yet even
though the development is set to complete at the end of the year.
I detect some caginess when I ask how
many apartments had been sold. “We’re
in no hurry,” says Macklowe, who has
invested $1.5bn in the project. This may
be a good address, but the Financial District is awash with unsold condos.
Reports indicate there are more than
1,400 new units on the market, making
it the most oversupplied neighbourhood in Manhattan. At the moment,
Downtown promises the perfect walkto-work ratio but what if business keeps
migrating out? How will the neighbourhood change? But that’s in the future, for
the moment the mix works, even after
the ravages of the pandemic, FiDi feels
like a real city.
Macklowe’s other big game-changer
rises high above Midtown Manhattan, a
more traditional condo district, at 432
Park, designed by Rafael Viñoly. There
have been mutterings about creaking
walls and leaks (“Teething problems”
Macklowe says). And supertall,
superslender towers will sway in the
wind — though after walking up there
Late 19th-century tableware was
often humorous, and there was
particular delight to be found in
Bordalo Pinheiro’s theatrical designs.
His more peculiar creations
included a spittoon in the
form of a top hat and a
penis-shaped carafe.
To some, Bordalo
Pinheiro is the real
McCoy of leaf-form
tableware. On
social media, the
brand Tory Burch has
been accused of aping his
designs when it promotes its own
line of lettuceware. But the origins of
this distinctive trend are murky.
(Clockwise from
main) the Red
Room, the
tower’s historic
lobby, which has
been restored;
developer Harry
Macklowe;
traders on the
floor at the New
York Stock
Exchange, Wall
Street, 1981
Barbara Alper/Getty Images
Bordalo Pinheiro was one of many
ceramicists inspired by 16th-century
Huguenot potter Bernard Palissy,
whose “rusticware” had been become
newly fashionable in the 19th
century. Even the Museu
Bordalo Pinheiro,
where this plate is
exhibited, accepts
that the potter
was merely
improving on an
existing trend.
The Tory Burch line
has its own lineage:
it is the result of a
collaboration with the Floridian
ceramicist Dodie Thayer, who sold
A nightstand, to the uninitiated, is
generally considered to be a small and
low bedside, and it will usually have a
drawer. I particularly love French
Empire nightstands — I used several
antique ebonised versions as
inspiration when designing the bedside
tables for my Paris hotel, which could
be only 30cm wide. Good antique
versions seem hard to come across
online (try Brownrigg in the UK), but
they are worth seeking out: I love the
stark elegance of ebonised furniture.
Of course, it’s worth thinking outside
the box. I sometimes struggle to find
really excellent pairs of bedside tables
when hunting for projects, and so
often these days I don’t bother with
pairs. If you’ve got the space, a
chest of drawers makes a great
bedside, as will any old table or
desk, if the size and design
works for your space.
The only thing my bedside is
missing? A phone, I reckon. A
good, proper phone with a curly
cord — I’m thinking pink? The
idea of lying propped up in bed in
silk pyjamas and gossiping on the
phone, bedside littered with
letters and books and pictures
and flowers (à la Lady Diana
Cooper), is such an utterly
glamorous one. Quick, I better
reinstall that landline.
If you have a question for Luke about
design and stylish living, email him at
[email protected]. Follow him on
Instagram @lukeedwardhall
from Wall Street on a blustery day, I
didn’t feel a thing.
One of the first pencil towers by Central Park, this cool, abstract, gridded
building was always the best of them, at
least in looks: enigmatic, blank, an existential extrusion of pure wealth. Just as
much as the conversion of Wall Street
from banks to condos articulates changing patterns of power in the city, so 432
illustrates the economics of building a
slender tower which would never previously have been economical. Taken
together, the pencil towers are like a bar
chart of extreme wealth disparity, casting long shadows over the public park.
“Over the past 15 years a few of us
were early to recognise that we
could build tall and get better views,
more air, more beautiful buildings,”
Macklowe says.
Back on Wall Street, I ask about the
shift downtown. “The focus in the city is
always moving,” he says. “In the 1940s
and ’50s you had the art community
downtown, alongside European émigrés. They invented SoHo; they reinvented Downtown. There has been spasmodic growth but, accelerated by 9/11,
it has been all the more dramatic.”
He looks a little elegiac here, as if it
would be difficult to top this project. Is
he conscious of legacy? “No” he says.
“The developer is just a footnote. But
I’ve been lucky enough to create and I
can be proud of the buildings. I’ve
enjoyed it.”
And regrets? “Only that my parents
were not alive to see that I had built a
tower in New York taller than the
Empire State.”
Macklowe has recently become
almost as well known for his collecting
as his erecting. Particularly in light of
the Sotheby’s sale last year, which delivered $676mn as part of the divorce settlement with his ex-wife Linda. Rothko,
Giacometti, Pollock, Twombly, all went
— and that was only the first part of the
sale, part two takes place in May. “I
started getting interested in art when I
was in advertising,” he says. “It must
have been the graphics, the visual identity. I’ve always been a collector but I’m
glad that chapter is now closed. I still
collect, pieces that I’d want to live with.
Art starts with an empty canvas, maybe
we can relate that back to an empty
piece of land. Construction is a major
production, it’s like making a movie,
you’re producing, directing, acting and
when it’s finished you think, I can’t
believe I did that.”
As we wrap up our walk around the
building he fingers the figured veneers
in the lifts and runs his hands over the
nickel-plated neo-Deco details. “This is
real quality,” he says. “We designed this
and we looked back to Ralph Walker
and the classic architecture. I love being
my own client . . . You don’t mind if I
take this call, do you?”
Edwin Heathcote is the FT’s architecture
and design critic
lettuce ware to the Palm Beach set in
the 1960s.
You may look at this plate and
think, well, there’s no accounting for
taste. It is not clear why cabbageware
has gone mainstream when most
other vegetable-shaped vessels have
dropped out of circulation. Retailers
from Marks and Spencer to Alibaba
sell ranges and, for those keen to
invest in some true heritage kitsch,
Bordalo Pinheiro pottery is stocked
by Liberty and Arket. Whether
cabbageware can stay cool in the
face of its current ubiquity remains
to be seen.
Harriet Fitch Little
museubordalopinheiro.pt
12 February/13 February 2022
★
3
FTWeekend
House Home
Malaysia property The city’s
vibrant culture has attracted
foreign workers, but new visa
rules are making entry more
expensive. By Zoe Dare Hall
A
t the end of last year, Kuala
Lumpur was named the
best city in the world for
foreign workers, according
to a survey carried out by
InterNations, a network for people
living and working abroad. In securing
the top spot, the Malaysian capital
scored highly for its work/life balance
and for the friendliness of its citizens.
Markus Monnikendam, 37, who
moved from the Netherlands to Kuala
Lumpur in 2019 to work in app development, describes the city as a “huge melting pot” of different cultures. “[It] gives
the city a vibrance, warmth — and a
great food scene,” he says.
That diversity extends to people’s lifestyles and salaries, and Kuala Lumpur
has by no means escaped the impact of
the pandemic.
But the real selling point, according to
the survey, is the availability and low
cost of its housing for well-paid foreign
workers. Three quarters of those questioned said they thought housing in
Kuala Lumpur was affordable — compared with a global average of 42 per
cent — and 91 per cent said available
homes were easy to find — versus 60 per
cent globally. Monnikendam agrees.
“Every condominium [seems to have] a
swimming pool,” he says. “And in our
case, a gym and playground.”
Malaysia is one of south-east Asia’s
five strongest economies — known as
“Tiger Cubs” — and the country’s GDP
per capita is the third highest in the
region after Singapore and Brunei. However, its property prices are among the
cheapest in south-east Asia.
At the end of last year, the average
price for a prime property in Kuala
Lumpur was $280 per sq ft, according
to estate agency Savills. Demand
seems to be increasing: in the third
quarter of 2021, asking prices rose by
more than 2 per cent compared with
the previous quarter, according to
PropertyGuru Malaysia.
Rents, meanwhile, have been hit
hard during the pandemic — falling by
about 8 per cent in the six months
to June 2021, according to Savills,
what the average person in the street
will tell you, because that is how it feels.”
About 9 per cent of KL’s 1.76mn population are foreign residents and —
although precise figures aren’t available
— anecdotally, many immigrants have
left in the past year or so, disillusioned
with strict lockdowns and the inability
to see family. And new arrivals are in
short supply, with entry into the country still heavily restricted due to Covid
‘They keep building so
many new condos, there are
tonnes of places and it’s
easy to negotiate the price.’
The allure of Kuala Lumpur
which places Kuala Lumpur at the bottom of its World Cities Prime Residential Index.
For tenants like Monnikendam, and
his wife, who is a nurse, it means relatively affordable homes. They pay
RM2,500 ($598) a month for their twobedroom apartment in a condo building
on a quiet street in Mont Kiara, a popular area with foreign residents, 9km
north-west of the city centre. “Renting
in KL is generally very easy,” he says, “as
they keep on building so many new condominiums that there are tonnes of
opportunities for places to live, and it’s
easy to negotiate the price.”
For some foreign workers, it’s so easy
that they move to a different area each
year, Monnikendam adds. “They tend
not to bring many belongings with
them, so they just pack their bags and
get a service such as Lalamove to handle
everything for them.”
Not everyone is in the same position,
however. After 10 years of steady
growth, median monthly salaries fell
15.6 per cent to RM2,062 ($492) in 2020
compared with 2019, according to
official data. Nabeel Hussain, deputy
managing director at Savills Malaysia,
says: “The economy has taken a hit — it’s
been on a downward trend for 48
months, and the situation is even worse
than the official figures show. That’s
Samsul Said/Bloomberg;
Ian Teh/Bloomberg; Mohd
Rasfan/AFP via Getty Images
Eco Sky
KUALA
LUMPUR
DESA PARKCITY
MONT KIARA
Petronas Towers
DAMANSARA
HEIGHTS
BANGSAR
©Mapcreator.io/©HERE
(Clockwise from
main) a Rapid
KL train on an
elevated track; a
mobile food stall
in the Bangsar
district; cycling
in a park
KLCC
PUDU
2 km
rules (British nationals, for example,
are still banned).
“Companies also cut a lot of contracts
when Covid began,” says Taco Heidinga,
director at LeadingRE, an international
estate agency network. Hussain says:
“It’s hard to fire people here, but during
the pandemic there were a lot of lay-offs.
It was a chance to prune staff, and the
labour courts were overwhelmed.”
There’s another deterrent for anyone
thinking of moving from overseas to the
city. Recent changes to the Malaysia My
Second Home (MM2H) programme —
which has attracted some 55,000 foreigners to apply for 10-year visas since
2002 — make it too expensive for most
to consider relocating there. To limit the
number of foreign residents across the
country to 1 per cent of the number of
Malaysian citizens, the scheme now
demands a minimum monthly income
of RM40,000 ($9,500) per applicant —
quadruple the previous amount — plus
liquid assets of RM1.5mn ($360,000)
and a RM1mn ($240,000) fixed deposit.
Continued on page 4
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12 February/13 February 2022
House Home
Of serviced apartments, which have
sprung up in the city in the past decade
and are counted separately, 4,628 units
were empty.
“Expats have left and they haven’t
been replaced. Transactions have
really dried up for high-end condos
priced about RM1.5mn ($380,000) and
above, and it’s affecting all sorts of
areas, including international schools,”
says Hussain.
The overhang issue is also exacerbated by the government’s recent
ending on December 31 of the Home
Ownership Campaign, which offered
stamp duty exemptions and other
financial incentives to buyers in
new developments.
Some areas of the market remain
resilient, however, says Hussain.
“Small, mid-range, fairly central units
are still selling, in new condo developments a couple of train stops outside
KLCC such as Skyline in Pudu,” he says,
citing small two-bedroom flats of
about 600 sq ft costing roughly
RM510,000 ($122,000).
Equally attractive to expats and
Malaysian families are new communities — or “townships” — set around lakes
and leisure spaces, such as Desa ParkCity, 18km north-west of the city centre,
or EcoWorld’s Eco Sky, 10km north.
Continued from page 3
“People come here because the infrastructure is good, crime is low, and we’re
outside of the typhoon line and earthquake zone. But it’s harder to live here
long-term with the new MM2H measures,” says Heidinga.
“It used to operate at a price point that
other countries couldn’t match, but
the new threshold is so hard, it’s easier
to migrate to Australia or Canada,”
says Hussain.
Wealthy Malaysians have been leaving the country during the pandemic,
too, he adds. “Affluent Malaysians like
to live in bungalows with gardens in suburbs such as Damansara Heights, but
deals at the top end, around $2mn$3mn, have fallen off a cliff. Many
tycoons, members of the establishment,
have found their businesses struggling
in the last year or so, they’re nervous
about the new government that took
over in 2018, so they have moved their
money elsewhere.”
In the city centre (KLCC), near the
landmark Petronas Towers, luxury
condo buildings are populated largely
by foreigners who tend to work in
finance, or the oil and gas sectors,
says Hussain.
“Rents in general have fallen by about
25 per cent since their 2014 peak. The
biggest condo apartments — the 4,000
sq ft, five-bedroom units that were
dependent on expat families on large
relocation packages — have probably
seen prices come down by 50 per cent.”
The departure of highly paid foreign
workers is clear to see, says Peter, a
sales manager who preferred not to
disclose his real name. He transferred
from Scotland to Kuala Lumpur with
his job in 2014 and rents a two-bedroom
(Clockwise from main) Saloma Bridge and the Petronas Towers; the market at Petaling Street in Chinatown;
dining outdoors at a restaurant in the Bangsar district — John Green/Alamy; Amnat; Ian Teh/Bloomberg
condo in the KLCC for RM2,200 ($520)
a month.
“There are dozens and dozens of
empty flats to rent in each condo, and
there are still thousands of flats under
construction,” he says. Most of the
migrant workers he knows, he adds,
have gone on “extended vacations” to
Europe or the US.
The number of complete but unsold
units is known locally as “property overhang” — and it’s a huge issue. “It’s not
necessarily good news for those looking
to rent either, as the unit is still the property of the developer, so it’s not available
to rent,” says Hussain.
According to the National Property
Information Centre, 1,378 new flats
were launched on Kuala Lumpur’s market in Q3 2021, but 3,863 properties
were unsold — about two-thirds of
which were high-rise flats.
‘The new threshold
is so hard, it’s easier
to migrate to Australia
or Canada’
“Desa ParkCity is 20 minutes from
KLCC,” says Heidinga, “and it has everything there, so you don’t need to travel
into the city and sit in traffic.”
Traffic is a constant gripe among
locals in Kuala Lumpur. So, too, is the
“cumbersome, inflexible bureaucracy,”
says Peter, and the high prices of wine
and beer.
But, as InterNations’ survey highlighted, there are upsides to life in KL,
and not just in its abundance of housing
and low cost of living for well-paid foreign workers. Income taxes are low, on a
progressive rate up to 26 per cent.
There’s also a high number of national
holidays (23 days this year), and beautiful tropical islands lie within two hours.
“Life is easy and much cheaper than
Europe,” says Peter. “It’s a food paradise, it’s vibrant, socially, and it’s like
perpetual summer.”
PROPERTIES
FOR SALE
KUALA
LUMPUR
B Condo, Banyan Tree, KLCC, $1.15mn
A three to four-bedroom, fully furnished
apartment in the Banyan Tree residential
skyscraper in the KLCC. All of the
bedrooms are en suite, and the building
has 24-hour concierge, swimming pool
and private parking. On the market with
Knight Frank.
B House, Bangsar, $3.58mn
A newly built house in the suburb of
Bangsar, which is about 15 minutes’ drive
south-west of central Kuala Lumpur in
good traffic. The property has six
bedrooms and bathrooms, a saltwater
pool with poolside terrace and parking
for five cars. For sale with Knight Frank.
i / BUYING GUIDE
Malaysia is the only south-east Asian
country that allows foreigners to buy
freehold land — but there is a minimum
purchase amount of RM600,000
($143,000)
Homeowners who hold on to their
property for at least five years no longer
have to pay Real Property Gains Tax
In Q3 2021, asking prices across all four
key regions, including Kuala Lumpur,
showed the first positive quarterly growth
since Q2 2020 (PropertyGuru/Malaysia
Property Market Index)
12 February/13 February 2022
★
FTWeekend
5
6
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FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
House Home
Time to
end the
demolition
racket
Leonie Woods
Jonathan Meades
Perspectives
When it comes
to industrial architecture,
‘levelling up’ for this
government simply
means levelling
How ought buildings created for
industries or modes of transport or
systems of belief which have fallen into
disuse or have disappeared entirely be
treated? How much of a nation’s
history is expressed in the structures
it created?
In the former industrial heartland on
the north east coast of England, there
was little pause for this question last
September. Nadine Dorries, the thennewly installed secretary of state for
digital, culture, media, sport — soon to
be Boris Johnson’s last apologist —
decided in her ignorance to delist the
brutalist Dorman Long tower in Redcar
so that it might be demolished in the
middle of the night.
Dorman Long had been a steel
producer and builder of bridges —
among them the Sydney Harbour
Bridge, China’s Chien Tang road
and rail bridge, Cairo’s Khedive Ismail
Bridge as well as Lambeth Bridge
in London and the Tyne Bridge
in Newcastle.
In 2015, the steelworks in Redcar,
which had been nationalised in the
1960s, later bought by Tata and finally
owned by Thai company SSI, ceased
production. But the tower, which used
to store coal, still stood. Threatened
with demolition in 2021 to make space
for regeneration of the area and a
freeport — pet projects of the current
Conservative government — the tower
was granted emergency Grade II-listed
status by Historic England on
September 13, only for Dorries to
rescind it four days later, and within
hours of her appointment. Her
reasoning: it was “essentially a
functional structure”.
Spot on, Nadine. But then, tithe
barns were functional structures, so
were cathedrals, so are, still, railway
stations, public toilets, pig sties, MPs’
“second” homes. If she is to apply the
essentially functional gauge to every
scheme that comes before her for
delisting then Dorries and her
wrecking balls are going to have a high
old time vandalising and pulverising in
the name of “regeneration” — among
the great rackets of the age.
It is one of the ironies of this
Conservative government that all it
struggles to conserve is its own skin.
“Heritage professionals” are
practised in giving great forelock. The
Dorman Long was
granted Grade IIlisted status, only
for Nadine Dorries
to rescind it four
days later
toothless Historic England, formerly
the toothless English Heritage,
responded to this particular demolition
by loyally drooling: “We recognise the
importance of the public benefits that
will come from the remediation and
planned regeneration of the whole
Teesworks site. We are keen to
continue supporting local partners as
works progress.”
Well of course they are. Her
department “sponsors” the quango —
to the tune of £87mn in 2019/20.
Historic England has getting on for a
thousand employees. Quite how they’ll
occupy themselves during Dorries’
regime is moot.
What survives is seldom due to the
efforts of politicians. Harold Macmillan
sanctioned the destruction of the
Euston Arch. St Pancras is one of the
glories of London. The only people who
failed to see it were politicians. Its
demolition was proposed several times
in the 1960s and 70s. Notable
exceptions to the philistine rule were
Geoffrey Rippon and Lord Heseltine.
What survives, survives because of the
efforts of pressure groups: the
Victorian Society, the Twentieth
Century Society and bloody-minded
individuals such as John Betjeman and
Gavin Stamp.
What was decried then is celebrated
today. Two generations of voters have
grown up with an appreciation of late
modernism that’s as strong as their
parents’ and grandparents’ fondness
for hot-blooded high Victorianism; as
strong is their contempt for the agents
of its destruction.
Architecture is as subject to fashion
as systems of government, car colours,
music, food. It crosses boundaries. It
does not respect language. It is more
potent than its inhabitants. And more
potent than its host culture: art
nouveau, flamboyant gothic, cubistic
modernism and, of course, classicism
were adopted by contrasting and
opposed regimes. What doesn’t survive
is recalled in monochrome books, sad
substitutes that foment anger and
despisal of the destroyers.
The Conservative government calls
its policy to pretend to be doing
something in the north of England,
including Teesside, “levelling up”. It
unveiled its probably mendacious
white paper on the subject last week,
mostly to a chorus of “is that it?” In the
case of Dorman Long, it is literally
levelling, razing to the ground.
That doesn’t help. Adapting
structures to current needs, making
structures that are flexible does help.
Architects, who are anyway
responsible for only a minority of
buildings made, special-plead for their
multiple “competencies” as though
they are some species of WD40, super
versatile. Yet they always yearn to start
from zero: their name, their signature,
their vision, their vanity.
Creating new buildings from scratch
is seldom the wisest route. The late
Cedric Price was on the money when
he insisted that there is always a case
for doing nothing save from reusing
what’s already there. Architects should
aspire to clever improvisation rather
than grand gestures and the chimera
of “perfection”.
After all, it must be recalled that the
great cathedrals — with the exceptions
of Amiens and Salisbury — are works of
accretion. What future business in the
planned freeport would not have
appreciated some tie to legacy — to
something longer than the fashion of
this government?
12 February/13 February 2022
★
FTWeekend
7
8
★
FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
House Home
Hot property
Paris by the parks
By Madeleine Pollard
K Duplex apartment, Champ de
Mars, €40mn
Where In the 7th arrondissement
on the Champ de Mars, the public
garden leading to the Eiffel Tower.
What A four-bedroom apartment
with 669 sq m of living space
across two floors. Highlights on the
first floor include a library and a La
Cornue kitchen. The second floor
contains a massage room, a home
cinema, a hammam spa, a sauna
and a gym. The apartment has
marble bathrooms, parquet floors
and crystal chandeliers.
Why Ideal for entertaining, this
property features a double height
entrance hall with a grand staircase
and a custom-made Bösendorfer
grand piano which is included in
the sale price. The dining room and
living room lead on to a balcony
with views of the Eiffel Tower.
Who Christie’s International
Real Estate
I Apartment, Parc Monceau,
€7.5mn
Where Opposite Parc Monceau, in
the 8th arrondissement. It’s about
20 minutes’ walk to the Arc de
Triomphe and the Champs-Élysées.
Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport is
half an hour away by car.
What A five-bedroom, 367 sq m
apartment in a mid 19th-century
building. The entrance hall opens
on to adjoining reception rooms,
which are decorated with gilded
woodwork and have ceilings over
16ft high. A parking space is
available for rent.
Why Thanks to a south-west facing
aspect, the lounges benefit from
abundant natural light, while the
balcony overlooks the Parc
Monceau below.
Who Sotheby’s International Realty
B Pied-à-terre, Trocadéro,
€5.49mn
Where In the Trocadéro area of the
16th arrondissement, across the
river Seine from the Eiffel Tower
and near the Palais de Chaillot and
the Trocadéro Gardens. It’s 25
minutes by car to the Eurostar at
Gare du Nord; 35 minutes to Paris
Charles de Gaulle Airport.
K House, Avenue Foch, €7.9mn
Where In the Avenue Foch district,
in the 16th arrondissement. Paris
Charles de Gaulle Airport is about
40 minutes by car.
What Renovated in 2017, this fourbedroom, four-bathroom house has
420 sq m of internal living space
over seven floors. The basement
contains a gym, sauna and pool.
Why In addition to being a 15minute walk from the Bois de
Boulogne, the largest park in Paris,
this property comes with 355 sq m
of outdoor space. The fifth floor
has a 50 sq m terrace with views.
Who Propriétés Parisiennes /
Sotheby’s International Realty
What A two-bedroom pied-à-terre
on the fourth floor of a turn-of-thecentury building. Recently
renovated, the flat is furnished and
comes with a parking space and a
cellar. Each bedroom has its own
bathroom and dressing room.
Why The apartment has striking
views of the Eiffel Tower.
Who Christie’s International
Real Estate
K Top-floor apartment, Val-deGrâce, €2.8mn
Where In the quiet Val-de-Grâce
district, in the 5th arrondissement.
Orly Airport is half an hour by car.
What A top-floor apartment,
covering 176 sq m. There are
four bedrooms: a master suite and
three bedrooms with walk-in
closets. Parking spaces are
available in the building.
Why The building opens on to the
17th-century Val-de-Grâce church,
and has views of its gardens and
dome. In addition, the Jardin
du Luxembourg is about 10
minutes away by foot.
Who Savills
12 February/13 February 2022
★
FTWeekend
9
10
★
FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
House Home
Down to
a wine art
Interiors | From corkscrews to coolers,
I Murano glass
wine decanter
by Dolce &
Gabbana £695
Handmade in
Italy and
available in a
range of colours.
farfetch.com
I ES corkscrew
by Ettore
Sottsass for
Alessi £75
This corkscrew
brings even more
joy to opening
the wine.
scp.co.uk
B Versi rotating tray by Patricia Urquiola for
Editions Milano £1,041
This rotating design adds extra functionality
when entertaining guests. editionsmilano.com
Roddy Clarke on the designs to keep
your cheese and wine parties chilled
M Cheese baker set by Artisan
Street £24.95
Includes an oven-proof dish
perfect for baking camembert.
hartsofstur.com
K Wine cooler
by SWISSCAVE
£1,079
Available in
three colours,
this stores wine
at optimum
temperature
with space for 35
bottles.
elitefridges.co.uk
B Vine cheese knife set by
Michael Aram £124
Inspired by twisted vines,
this set is made from
stainless steel and brass.
luxdeco.com
I Garrett cocktail picks
and holder by Ralph
Lauren Home £93
These brass picks make a
useful addition to the
cheese board. amara.com
I Ceramic
cheese board
by OWO
Ceramics $72
Handcrafted in
Argentina, this
cheese board
provides a
dramatic
backdrop to
serve from.
1stdibs.com
B Prestige wine glasses by Luisa
Beccaria $255 per set of two
Handcrafted in Italy in a variety of
colours. artemest.com
The Interiors Edit
For more inspiration for
your House & Home visit
ft.com/the-interiors-edit
B Linen napkins by Summerill &
Bishop £150 per set of 6
Designed in collaboration with
Evie Henderson and The Yellow
World. summerillandbishop.com
★
12 February/13 February 2022
11
FTWeekend
Property Gallery
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12
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FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
House Home
blocking it. I am also fond of a wild
hollyhock, Althaea cannabina,
transparent to heights of up to seven
feet and covered from August onwards
with small pink flowers. It needs no
staking and as it seeds itself freely, one
plant is all you need to buy.
What about colour planning?
Commandments on this subject
proliferate, but the changing pattern of
the weather makes many of them
obsolete. Who knows now what will
flower with what else and when? Subtle
pairings may never coincide. It is at a
macro-level, for once, that colourplanning still pays off. Limit your
border’s colour range slightly,
preferring clean and clear colours
rather than streaky rose-mauve.
One-colour borders usually become
boring after a year or two, with the
From preparing the soil to
giving plants the room to
thrive — here’s the essentials
for starting new flowerbeds
Y
ellow winter aconites are
flowering in their full glory
at ground level. Snowdrops
have been out for more than
three weeks. On calm days
gardening has become a joy again. If you
are planning or replanning a new border
or a new series of flowerbeds what, from
experience, would I urge you to do?
The first commandment is not to
repeat my worst mistake. Taking on a
newly bought garden, I was so keen,
aged 41, to make a pretty picture that I
never stopped to address its underlying
canvas, the soil. I struggled until I saw
sense after envying the better results in
borders whose owners had begun by
working on the soil. I now make
amends by using Melcourt SylvaGrow
shredded manure in 50 litre bags,
recommended by the RHS
(countrysupplies.uk.com is a keenly
priced source, also supplying big orders
in bulk). I fork it well into beds being
prepared for new planting. At this time
of year I then scatter bonemeal over
the surface, ideally 3 ounces per sq
yard, and fork that lightly in too. When
planting I use a slow release fertiliser,
Osmocote or Vitax Q4 being two
favourites, picking the mixes graded on
their packets as suitable for perennial
plants. Scatter some granules in each
hole that you dig for planting and in
any soil you use to re-fill it. In her
famous French garden at Le Vasterival
near Dieppe, the late Princess Greta
Sturdza insisted that gardeners should
spend three times the cost of a plant on
improving the soil before planting it.
Border plant prices have soared since
her lifetime, but her garden is a living
witness to the value of this principle.
The second commandment is not to
plant too closely. We all do it and this
bad habit is getting worse, backed,
understandably, by many designers
who need to make a good show quickly
for customers. The density at which
young trees are planted in the name of
carbon capture, reforesting and saving
Princess Greta Sturdza
insisted we should spend
three times the cost of a
plant on improving the soil
Borders of the first order
the planet appals me. A high
proportion of these overcrowded trees
die or have to be thinned. At the level
of border plants, five plants to a square
yard is usually a very generous density,
three to a square yard being fine for
most of the taller ones: they can be
divided if they flourish. I much prefer
to pay for a bigger well-rooted plant
which I can split rather than buying
“one litre” plants online, unseen. One
litre plants, mass-produced, have a way
of being sent out in one litre pots before
they have fully rooted down into them.
I would rather visit a nursery, pay more
for an older plant, divide it on its
arrival and then grow the divisions on
in my garden’s soil, their future home.
Sedums, asters, irises, phloxes, hardy
geraniums and heleniums are favourite
choices for borders, each of which will
split easily if cut through by a sharp
spade, preferably on a fine day between
now and mid-April. If you want to fill a
long border on a budget, buy bigger
plants in ones and twos only, split them
A gravel path with borders,
including Salvia x sylvestris ‘Dear
Anja’, Veronicastrum and
Verbascum chaixii ‘Album’
Declan Buckley
Robin Lane Fox
On gardens
into many more and then grow the bits
on for a year in a special bed. Meanwhile,
improve the border-to-be’s soil and fill
in the gaps with temporary annuals
and smaller varieties of gladioli,
planted from April until mid-May.
Here is a principle for big borders
and another for smaller flowerbeds
which run round a garden’s perimeter.
In a big border, try to repeat groups of
your favourite plants at longish
intervals down the entire length.
Repetition draws the eye down the
border, helping it to jump intervening
dullness and to fix on each repeated
group when in season. Long borders
are best laid out to be viewed down
their length, not head on, faults and all.
In a smaller garden I like to dot one
good plant around in ones and repeat
it. This repetition draws the eye round
the garden instead of drawing it to the
one and only clump of the plant, due to
be dull when its season is over. Dotting,
not grouping, is a liberation.
Height is crucial too. Ignore the old
rule that the height of a border’s tallest
plant should never exceed half of the
border’s width. Few of us would grow
hollyhocks if we obeyed that dull
principle. The problem is not so much
the height as the solidity and shape of
the plants which attain it. Those with
long spikes of flower, verbascums being
good examples, are not a tall presence
for very long. Being colourful, like
candlesticks, their flower stems give
bright height and are then cut down:
they lift an entire border when planted
in a middle to back row. Plants with
upright vertical stems are invaluable
too, from biennial Salvia turkestanica
to the excellent spiky veronicastrums
for spires of flower in August.
I value see-through plants whose
height is delicate and not obstructive. I
use some of the taller thalictrums at
intervals down the backbone of my
unbacked main border and I love the
way that Elin or Black Stockings soars
up above surrounding perennials,
framing the view beyond but not
exception of an all-white scheme.
I still recall a City type who cornered
me after a lecture, before the mid1980s Big Bang, and told me he wanted
a garden that was “white and smelly”:
could I give him the plants to write
down? How pushy, I thought, but I have
often remembered him and his strongly
scented aftershave. In an enclosed
town garden, most often enjoyed in the
evening, nothing but white flowers
with a good scent are bewitching,
especially if punctuated by evergreen
shrubs with light-reflecting leaves.
Lastly, should you put shrubs, roses
and perennials together or just
perennials for a purist’s perennial
border? If you have room, I much
prefer a mixed planting, one which
uses shrubs like abelia or cistus or the
lovely June-flowering Viburnum
hillieri Winton, up to six feet high and
wide but willing to grow in light shade
as well as sun. The shapes and scale of
such shrubs, including shrub roses,
hold a long border together if they are
spaced as individuals at wide intervals
down its middle rank. As for the
perennials, make your own choices, but
remember they are constantly being
selected and improved. One of the aims
in this column is to keep you up with
the best of a changing range. Start
planting, and go on reading.
A RT
ON THE
W E ST C OAS T | F RI E ZE LA | G ALLERIE S | A RTISTS | C OLLECTORS
Video pioneer The radical work of Ulysses Jenkins — PAGE 4
Follow us on Twitter @FTWeekend
Los Angeles | With satellite
fairs and local galleries all
taking part, it’s a rare
moment of art-world focus
for a sprawling metropolis.
By Catherine Wagley
‘Empire of Glass II’ (2022) by María Berrío; ‘Sadie Jane’ (2021) by Brian Calvin; untitled (2021) by Aaron Garber-Maikovska; ‘Portrait of Aissatou Dialo Gueye’ (2020) by Kehinde Wiley
Bruce M White; David Lah; courtesy the artists and Victoria Miro/Almine Rech/Blum & Poe/Roberts Projects
T
hree years ago, when the
Frieze art fair first
expanded to Los Angeles, it
was met with some scepticism. Columnist Tim Schneider called LA an “art-fair graveyard”,
citing recent flops such as FIAC Los
Angeles and Paris Photo LA. Now, as
Frieze stages its third LA iteration under
Frieze Week LA unites a city
new director Christine Messineo, the
question has shifted from whether the
fair will survive to what exactly Frieze
Week can be in LA’s notoriously decentralised art scene.
“When we were thinking about LA,”
says Victoria Siddall, board director at
Frieze and former director of its fairs, “it
was really as the city that had all of the
ingredients: the best galleries and museums and artists and art schools and this
rich history of extraordinary art production. The one thing it didn’t have was
this moment in the calendar when the
entire art world was focused on that.”
More than just bringing the art world
together in LA, though, Frieze wanted to
bring “the whole [LA] art scene
together”, says Siddall, who will step
down after 18 years with the company at
the end of February.
This centralising ambition is common
to other fairs which are taking place at
the same time as Frieze. Andrew Gori
and Ambre Kelly had been running the
Spring Break fair in New York since
2012 and had begun considering an
expansion to LA, especially after Frieze
announced it would debut in the city in
2019. They even found a site — former
produce refrigerators in downtown Los
Angeles — but they had lingering concerns. “What LA lacks, especially in
relationship to New York and London, is
Continued on page 2
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FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
Collecting
LA united
by Frieze
Continued from page 1
a tried-and-true infrastructure,”
says Gori. “I even think the
mentality out here is a little bit
anti-infrastructure.”
But at the start of February
2019, Gori and Ambre decided to
take the plunge. Two weeks later,
they had filled 32 stalls in the coldstorage facility with art, almost
exclusively featuring local artists
and curators. They have now come
to feel that their fair can underscore the city’s multiplicity by
transcending its sprawl. “There
are so many different pockets
throughout LA,” says Kelly. “We
were really interested in bringing
all of those pockets together, into
one house.”
Artists’ openness to navigating
strange parameters — the fact that
no holes could be put in the refrigerator walls, among other things —
gave the first show a fresh, electric
energy. “That actually has been
what we feel is the most exciting,
culturally, about inhabiting Los
Angeles — there is a little bit less of
that sense of stringent homogeneity,” says Gori.
‘In New York, you can
go to so many different
events in a day. But in
LA you have to choose’
“The artists have always been
here,” says collector and former
TV executive Dean Valentine, who
co-founded the Felix art fair in
2019, along with dealers Al and
Mills Morán. “It’s just the infrastructure that hadn’t caught up.”
Felix, hosted in the 1920s Hollywood Roosevelt hotel, was meant
to be a different kind of fair, more
intimate, casual and imbued with
LA energy. For one thing, the
“booths” — hotel rooms — have
windows looking out at the cityscape. Plus, Valentine adds, there
is the famous pool (decorated by
David Hockney), surrounded by
cabanas. “That pool gives it an
instant LA vibe.”
While other fairs took a year off
from LA in 2021 because of the
pandemic, Felix hosted a summer
edition at the hotel at the end of
July. It used only the cabana rooms
around the pool, making it easy for
visitors to be outside, and invited
galleries from the city.
The show coincided with the
inaugural gallery weekend organ-
‘Triplical Communications’
(1969) by Suzanne Jackson
Timothy Doyon
ised by Gallery Platform, a coalition formed during the pandemic,
and the Hammer Museum’s Made
in LA biennial. “I think, if anything, it created an esprit de corps
for LA galleries,” says Valentine, “a
sense that there’s something special happening.” Felix plans to continue its summer editions, focusing on local galleries, while the
February editions will be larger.
This year, Frieze will move from
Paramount Studios to a new location, a tent adjacent to the Beverly
Hills Hilton. Gori and Kelly will
relocate Spring Break as well, from
downtown to a former factory in
Culver City, and they are happy
that they will be a 15-minute drive
from the new Frieze tent.
“In New York, I feel like you can
go to so many different events in a
day or over a few days,” says Kelly.
“But in LA you really have to
choose based on where things are
happening.” They see their relationship with the other fairs as collaborative. “Holistically, we share
an audience,” says Gori, “and also
we’re all sharing a kind of cultural
moment that feeds each fair.”
It’s fitting that Frieze Week’s
appeal in LA comes in part from
briefly centralising an art scene
that has long resisted centralisation. Still, some of the more exciting projects this year will try to
channel that off-the-grid energy.
At Frieze, the New York Gallery
Ortuzar Projects will show the
work of Suzanne Jackson, who ran
the experimental Gallery 32
between 1968 and 1970. Ales Ortuzar, the gallery’s proprietor, has
revelled in learning about her LA
community and the approach it
took to experimentation. “There
was certainly a freedom,” says
Ortuzar. “The work was very varied and really not conforming to
the norms.” Which could be said to
sum up Frieze Week in LA nicely.
frieze.com
The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, location of the Felix art fair
Christine Messineo wants to ‘integrate the landscape of the city into the fair’ — Ramsey Alderson
Loving the local
Fairs | Christine Messineo has taken over Frieze Los Angeles now it is well established. Her challenge is to
make it a fair rooted in the city — and to balance her time with its New York sibling. By Harriet Fitch Little
C
hristine Messineo, the new
director of Frieze Los Angeles and Frieze New York, is
overseeing her first fair.
Conveniently, she is also
overlooking it: Messineo has a room at
the Beverly Hilton, and Frieze LA will
open on Thursday in its shadow at 9900
Wilshire Boulevard. “You can see in the
background behind me, the tent is
already being erected,” she says, speaking over video call a few weeks before
kick-off. She moves to pull back the curtain, then decides against a reveal. “I feel
like the view isn’t the most beautiful
right now,” she says diplomatically.
When the third edition of Frieze LA
opens on February 17, Messineo will
have been in the job for only 81 days.
The resurgence of Covid has made it a
gruelling winter for the industry: the
day we speak, Art Basel Hong Kong has
joined the list of fairs postponing over
Omicron-related restrictions. But the
Frieze juggernaut rolls on. Messineo
reels off the LA fair’s healthy vitals. “Our
tickets are selling out, our VIP slots are
filled,” she says. There are 100-odd galleries exhibiting, and so far none has
pulled out. The only hiccup is that the
first edition of Frieze Sculpture Beverly
Hills, a free event akin to the one Frieze
London hosts in Regent’s Park, has been
postponed because of shipment issues.
The first thing to clear up is a numbers
puzzle. Before Messineo’s arrival, Frieze
LA and Frieze New York had separate
directors: Loring Randolf on the East
Coast and Bettina Korek on the West.
Does one job plus one job not equal two?
Messineo laughs. What’s happened, she
explains, is that the operational side of
both roles has been cleaved off, leaving
her free to focus on “artistic programming” rather than logistics.
Messineo’s background is in the gallery world: she was a director at Hannah
Hoffman in LA and a partner at Bortolami in New York before Frieze. It’s
noticeable that Messineo talks about
Frieze as if it’s an extension of the gallery world, rather than a sales floor of an
entirely different magnitude. “They are
a fair that’s interested in discovery,” she
says when I ask why she wanted the job.
In 2020, she also orchestrated the Plan
Your Vote campaign, for which she convinced more than 60 high-profile artists
to donate to a public library of artworks
encouraging people to vote. It was probably this final achievement that secured
her the Frieze role, as it showed she
could corral artists and disparate institutions towards a common goal.
“No one else can embark on a project
like that, where it’s a combination of artists relations and then institutional relationships,” she says. “I had over 150
museums and institutions that were
pushing out this messaging.”
Messineo’s appointment signals that
Frieze wants to continue to be taken
seriously as a creative platform, not just
a marketplace. The pandemic has
forced art fairs to justify themselves: if
art can be viewed and bought online,
why should buyers (or, indeed, galleries) spend time and money on showing
up in person? The solution is to make
sure that the fair is a destination: commission installations, organise special
projects, co-ordinate with galleries and
museums to make “Frieze Week” buzzy
and distinctive.
Whereas it was once acceptable, perhaps even aspirational, for big-ticket art
fairs to look identical the world over,
localism is now in vogue. Forty per cent
‘New York has a different
history of patronage, it’s
just ingrained in that city.
But LA is learning’
of exhibitors at Frieze LA are from the
city, and a Focus LA section will bring
young galleries into the fair. In the two
months since she joined, Messineo has
initiated a project called the BIPOC
Exchange in collaboration with local
artist Tanya Aguiñiga. This section of
the fair will feature the work of LA-
based creative organisations led by
BIPOC creatives (Black, Indigenous and
People of Colour).
“I’m particularly [interested in] these
moments where we’re able to integrate
the landscape of the city into the fair,”
says Messineo. This is especially important in LA, which Messineo describes as
a city where people “support their own”.
Back when she was an exhibitor, she
would always try to bring works to LA
that had a connection to the city.
Messineo has worked in both New
York and LA, and has spent several
years moving back and forth between
the two cities. I am curious to know how
the two art markets compare. Is there
any truth to the idea that art is made in
LA but sold in New York?
“I don’t think that’s true,” says Messineo, who has the distinctly West Coast
habit of smiling broadly when she disagrees with you. “New York has a different history of patronage, it’s just
ingrained in that city. But LA is learning.” Among the other differences she
notes: LA has more mentors, New York
more patrons; in LA artists hang out at
each others’ studios, in New York they
“go to every opening”; LA artists work
on big sculptures, New York artists often
work at table-scale. “We have room to
think grandly in Los Angeles,” she says.
Frieze LA runs February 17-20, frieze.com
Highlights From painting to pottery, picks from Frieze LA
K ‘Blursed
Introjection’
(2021) by
Gabriel Madan
at Gattopardo in
Frieze Focus
I ‘Woman
Crying (Comic)
#37’ (2021) by
Anne Collier at
Anton Kern
Gallery at Frieze
LA
B Dance artist Jannet Galdamez of Contra Tiempo, part of
Frieze’s BIPOC Exchange Picture: Steve Wylie
K ‘night fall it don’t
K ‘CMB | RBG’
(2021) by
Sarah Rosalena
Brady at
Garden in
Frieze Focus
break. comparative
mythologies; “as if
the internal night, in
which one imagines
the depths of the
Earth to be plunged,
were anything but a
long deaf sleep.”
from E Coccia.’
(2021) by Timo
Fahler at Stanley’s in
Frieze Focus
I‘Granite’s Light’
(2022) by Dirk
Knibbe at
Gattopardo in
Frieze Focus
Picture: Chris
Hank
B Pieces from
People’s Pottery
Project, part of
BIPOC Exchange
★
12 February/13 February 2022
3
FTWeekend
Collecting
From Albers to algorithms
Billie Milam Weisman | Her art-loving husband
taught her to trust her taste and now she’s buying
technology-tinged works. By Georgina Adam
B
illie Milam Weisman could be
seen as the keeper of the
flame. She is director of the
Frederick R Weisman Art
Foundation in Los Angeles,
set up by her late husband, which
houses a remarkable and extensive collection of 20th-century art. More than
400 works, from Josef Albers to Ed
Ruscha and Niki de Saint Phalle, jostle
for space on the walls — even on the ceilings — of the 1920s villa in Holmby Hills
which he bought in 1982.
But at the same time Milam Weisman
is not content with just looking after the
collection, which is free to visit by
appointment. She curates travelling
exhibitions loaned from the collection
and buys contemporary art, often by
young Californian artists.
“Fred taught me to trust my
instincts,” she says over Zoom from
LA. “He and his first wife,
Marcia [sister of the
great collector Norton
Simon], collected wonderful postwar art, they both had
incredible eyes.
“But looking back, over 80 per
cent of the present collection
was purchased during the 10
years we were together, until
his death in 1994. I had some
influence, and generally we
chose the same thing. But I
didn’t have the courage to collect at
that point.”
Hanging behind Milam Weisman
in her office at the foundation is a
bold painting in broad stripes of
blue, orange, yellow and red — is it
a colour field work? I ask. “No,”
she laughs, “I made this myself. It
just has sentimental value for me.”
She talks a lot about Fred during our
conversation, and when I point out that
this profile is about her, she admits that
talking about herself makes her a little
uncomfortable. “I always liked to
remain in the background,” she says. Yet
the foundation has been operating
under her direction for 28 years,
although she initially had to battle (now
long-settled) lawsuits over his estate.
She arrived in California as a fiveyear-old from Minnesota and came
from an artistic family; even when very
young she made art. “I loved making
sculptures — I always had a lump of clay
in my hands. In school, we were given a
limited amount of paper to paint on, so
when I had used it all up I painted on my
dress. Then I had to wash it off, and my
mother would get a call — ‘Mrs Milam,
she did it again, she is soaking wet’ —
and my mother would have to come
over with a dry dress!”
This love of art was
carried into her studies, and she did a masters in art history at UCLA before
landing a position in the art conservation department in the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art
(Lacma). And it was there
that she was spotted by the
visiting head of Harvard,
who suggested she intern at
the college. Afterwards, she
returned to Lacma as an objects
conservator.
While at Lacma she met Frederick, who was a trustee and a multimillionaire who had made his
fortune in Toyota dealerships.
He was a generous donor to
social and cultural organisations,
a flamboyant collector and
friends with many of the artists he
bought, including Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha and Joe Goode —
the latter two went on to decorate the
corporate jet.
Frederick also collected far more
widely: European modernists (Cézanne,
Picasso, Kandinsky), surrealists (Miró),
abstract expressionists (de Kooning,
Clifford Still), colour field works (Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler) and
contemporary artists (Frank Stella).
The display is quirky and dense, with a
seated figure in the library, for instance,
turning out to be a sculpture by Duane
Hansen. During Frederick’s lifetime, he
constantly moved works around — and
Milam Weisman says that the walls
behind some were like “Swiss cheese”.
Andy Warhol, Robert Motherwell,
Francis Bacon, Jasper Johns . . . these
are just some of the 400 works on public
A lifetime in the camps
Frieze Focus Ben Sakoguchi
makes art influenced by his
Japanese-American family’s
wartime internment,
writes Jonathan Griffin
P
op & me in front of our brand
new grocery store,” reads the
inscription on a small acrylic
painting , part of Ben
Sakoguchi’s multi-panel
“Postcards from Camp” (1999-2001). In
the picture, a man in a long white apron
holds a toddler in front of a neat shopfront underneath the date of the scene,
1940, and the ominous words “Before
camp . . . ”
The photograph on which this painting is based was taken in San Bernardino, a city about 60 miles inland
from Los Angeles. Sakoguchi’s family
had settled there, in a predominantly
Hispanic neighbourhood, after his parents got married. Because he was born
in Japan, however, Sakoguchi’s father
was not allowed to own property in California; the store was in the name of his
Japanese-American mother, Mary.
Two years later, following the declaration of war between the US and Japan,
Sakoguchi’s parents and older siblings
were forcibly relocated to Poston, Arizona, where they were incarcerated
along with more than 17,000 other people with Japanese ancestry in a hastily
constructed concentration camp. The
three-year-old Ben and his baby sister
both had measles at the time, so were
held back, terrified and alone, in the
county hospital until they recovered.
This period in American history is the
subject of “Towers” (2014), a 17-panel
assemblage of acrylic paintings by
Sakoguchi presented by Bel Ami gallery
in the Focus section of Frieze Los Angeles. Curated by Amanda Hunt of the
Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Focus
is dedicated to younger LA galleries and
the city’s “emerging art scene”.
Pasadena-based Sakoguchi is now 83
years old and has been painting all his
life. After his first LA gallery Ceeje
closed in 1970, he retreated from the
commercial art world, focusing instead
on his career teaching painting at
Pasadena City College. His work became
known to many Angelenos only
recently, following his exhibition in
2018 at the artist-run space Potts and his
widely reviewed debut show with Bel
Ami, Chinatown, in 2021.
Viewers familiar with Sakoguchi’s
painfully dark sense of humour might
peer into the detailed panels of
From top: detail
from ‘Towers’
(2014) by Ben
Sakoguchi;
the artist;
‘Beetlemania
Brand’ (2011) —
Courtesy the artist/Bel Ami
“Towers” and look for the kinds of visual and verbal jokes that punctuate
many of his other paintings.
Each of his long-running Orange Crate
Label series, for example, is based on the
amalgamation of a fictional brand’s
logo, a California place name and a
pseudo-promotional image, often surreal, ironic, political or all three. Beetlemania brand oranges are advertised
with the photo of performance artist
Chris Burden crucified on the bonnet of
a Volkswagen Beetle and come from
Carson (get it?). Hoax brand oranges —
illustrated with the spiky orange SARSCOV-2 virus — come from Corona.
Napalm oranges come from Firebaugh.
In “Towers”, which documents the 10
“relocation centres” in which JapaneseAmericans were forcibly detained during the second world war, there are no
jokes, save for Sakoguchi’s winceinducing, ironic appropriation of the
slur “Jap”. “No Japs Allowed,” reads a
thick black inscription on a map of the
US, following a wide orange strip of the
West Coast from Mexico to Canada.
Elsewhere: “Military necessity: Remove
120,000 Japs from the West Coast and
put them in inland concentration
camps. Military logic: Keep 160,000 Japs
in place on the Hawaiian Islands over
2,000 miles out in the Pacific Ocean as a
military necessity.”
Sakoguchi no longer gives interviews,
but in a video recorded in 2016 he
reflected on the cruelty and injustice of
the Japanese internment programme.
The water towers that gave his piece its
title, Sakoguchi explained, were ubiquitous because these camps were established in places with no existing water
supply, “where nobody wanted to live!”
Traditional family bonds were
strained to breaking point, with meals
taken en masse in mess halls and ablutions made in communal toilet blocks.
“We were wild kids,” Sakoguchi remembered. He attributed to the three years
he spent in Poston his lifelong sense
of independence, but also his sense of
not belonging.
At the centre of “Towers” is a large
painting copied from a photograph
taken in 1945 of the residents of Poston’s
Block 13. The young artist kneels in the
front row; behind the group we can
glimpse the flimsy tarpaper barracks.
Never again in his life would Sakoguchi
be surrounded by so many Japanese
Americans. It was a grotesque parody of
community, but also one that would
indelibly shape his identity.
“People forget how it was,” Sakoguchi
said in another video interview, from
2011. He recalled the bonds that were
formed in the camp, but also the racism
that greeted Japanese Americans when
they tried to re-enter their former lives
after the war ended. “Those of us who
lived it remember how mean people can
be,” he said. “Also how beautiful people
can be.” In artworks such as “Towers”
and “Postcards from Camp”, Sakoguchi
takes his stand against forgetting.
belami.info
Clockwise from
main: ‘7-Manifold’
(2017) by Channing
Hansen; ‘Frederick
R Weisman and
Billie Milam
Weisman (Blue)’
(1993) by Beau
Bradford; Milam
Weisman at the
foundation;
‘Faultless!’ (2012) by
Vanessa German —
Stephen Friedman Gallery; Robert
Wedemeyer; Paul Rusconi; Kasmin
Gallery
‘The Rothko hangs in our
living room — it’s very hard
to think of giving it up, but
it’s our duty to the artist’
view in Holmby Hills and rarely lent.
The rest of the 1,500-strong collection is
sent out for exhibitions at smaller institutions or university galleries. Some
even have their own museums set up
with funds from Frederick — for
instance the Pepperdine University
gallery in Malibu, California.
“We also lend to major retrospectives
— in Paris, London and New York,” says
Milam Weisman, noting that the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris has
requested Rothko’s No 14/No 10 (Yellow
Greens) (1953) for exhibition in 2023.
“The Rothko hangs in our living room —
it’s very hard to think of giving it up, but
it’s our duty to the artist to loan in these
circumstances,” she says.
Meanwhile, Milam Weisman has been
buying emerging artists extensively. She
is proud of having found Joel Morrison before he was picked up by major
galleries such as Gagosian and Almine
Rech; she has several works by Channing Hansen (“he creates art from algorithms and then makes them out of
yarn”). Another artist she likes is Kelly
Berg: “I was never a big fan of landscape,
but Kelly is so passionate that I ended up
purchasing four pieces,” she says.
She found Vanessa German at an art
fair in Miami and has three of her totemlike sculptures. And she held an entire
show of work by Leslie Dill — who uses
language to create sculpture and performances — alongside the permanent
collection.
I ask about the future of the foundation. “We have made projections for the
next 30 years,” she says. “It is important
that we can continue to offer free admission. Fred and I strongly believed that
art should be accessible to all. Our
future is secure.”
The Frederick R Weisman Art Foundation
is open by appointment Monday-Friday,
weismanfoundation.org
4
★
FTWeekend
12 February/13 February 2022
Collecting
‘You get the
video jones.
You get
addicted!’
Ulysses Jenkins | The pioneering LA-based video
artist has used film to critique race and create
community since the 1970s. By Jonathan Griffin
I
n the early 1970s, a young muralist
named Ulysses Jenkins was encouraged by a friend to come down to
the boardwalk in Venice, Los Angeles, to check out a videomaking
workshop. The Sony Portapak — the
first portable consumer video camera —
had come on to the market in the late
1960s and was still very expensive. New
owners often ran workshops, renting
out their equipment to try to recoup
some of their costs.
Jenkins was sceptical. He had recently
completed an acerbic political mural on
the boardwalk — a panorama of Los
Angeles, with the city pictured as bait in
a giant rat trap. “I don’t know if I want to
get involved with that,” he said. “I’ve got
my wall to keep me warm.”
“But of course, out of curiosity, I go
down,” Jenkins, 75, says, speaking by
Zoom from his LA studio. The workshop
changed his life. “You spend a day or a
few days with the equipment — you get
the video jones,” he chuckles. “You get
addicted!”
On February 6, a retrospective survey
of Jenkins’s work in video and other
media opened at the Hammer Museum
in LA, after it debuted late last year at
the Institute of Contemporary Art in
Philadelphia. Ulysses Jenkins: Without
Your Interpretation is his first solo
museum exhibition.
Jenkins, who is black, grew up in multicultural LA, where his parents had settled after leaving the South with many
other African Americans during the
Great Migration. He recalls his childhood as being relatively racially integrated. When, however, he moved to
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to study fine
art at Southern University, he was
shocked at the racism he experienced.
The Hammer show features one of his
earliest forays into video, “Remnants of
the Watts Festival”, a compilation of
footage of the 1972 edition of the community arts and music festival, which
was inaugurated after the 1965 Watts
uprising. It appeared to Jenkins that the
mainstream media was discouraging
white people from attending the festival, because it was seen as dangerous. “I
said, these guys are lying to the public!”
he recalls.
With several friends, Jenkins organised Video Venice News, a group whose
mission was to record local events in a
way that offered an alternative narrative about black communities in LA.
They broadcast their videos on public
access cable television. “Remnants of
the Watts Festival” is something of an
outlier in Jenkins’ oeuvre, more documentary than art video, but it cemented
his lifelong commitment to presenting
autonomous, positive images of black
cultural identity.
As a fledgling practitioner in a fledgling field, Jenkins says he realised that
“how people perceive of video art starts
with television”. In subsequent artworks — most notably, his video performance “Mass of Images” (1978) — he
confronted the insidious and demoralising effect that television had on
black Americans.
In “Mass of Images”, Jenkins emerges
in a wheelchair from behind a perilously
high stack of television sets and intones
a mantra: “You’re just a mass of images
you’ve gotten to know/From years and
years of TV shows/The hurting thing,
the hidden pain/Was written and bitten
into your veins.”
In the 1970s, Jenkins’s concerns were
not unique. The civil rights movement
and the Black Power movement were,
he says, “about finding ourselves
From above:
photo from a
rehearsal for
‘Without Your
Interpretation’
(1984); ‘Just
Another
Rendering of the
Same Old
Problem’ (1979);
‘Two Zone
Transfer’
(1979) — Courtesy the
artist; Nancy Buchanan;
Electronic Arts Intermix
amongst this culture that had been
defining us in such a negative manner”.
He was inspired by Blaxploitation movies, where “the main character was
fighting not only for justice but for a new
character positioning in society”.
While African-American artists in
1970s LA were largely left out of whitedominated institutions, Jenkins found
deep kinship among those working in
his community.
Through the artist collective Studio Z,
he came to know David Hammons,
Senga Nengudi and Maren Hassinger,
friends who became collaborators.
Studying in the late 1970s at the Otis Art
Institute under luminaries such as
Betye Saar and Charles White, Jenkins
befriended the painter Kerry James
Marshall, who performed in Jenkins’s
1979 video “Two Zone Transfer” wearing a mask of Richard Nixon.
Jenkins describes the performance
works made by most African-American
artists around this time as “rituals”. In
1981, he enlisted Nengudi and Hassinger
to participate in an event in front of a
small audience of friends. It was not
recorded on video, and now only exists
as a few photographs and a flyer. Influenced by traditional African rituals,
Jenkins orchestrated a happening in
which audience members were invited
to scrabble in a pile of earth for a buried
glass prism.
“The concept was that if you could
find this little transparent pyramid,”
Jenkins says, “you would find yourself.”
That performance was titled “Adams
Be Doggereal”, referring both to the
busy West Adams Boulevard on which
Jenkins’s studio was located and to his
neologism “doggereal”, a term he often
uses in his work to denote the reality of
African-American experience. Doggerel, Jenkins explains, is defined as “an
irregular variation on a theme, sometimes a comedic verse”.
Life in America for black people, he
says, “is an irregular variation on this
Lisson joins the LA
art-world influx
Art market Galleries are setting up their stalls on the West
Coast — and in some unlikely places, says Melanie Gerlis
T
he lure of Los Angeles
is proving irresistible to
second-generation art dealers seeking to make their
mark. Latest to succumb is
Alex Logsdail, chief executive of Lisson
Gallery and son of founder Nicholas,
who will open a space in LA later this
year. Thomas Kelly, partner at Sean
Kelly and also son of the founder, will
open a major gallery in Hollywood in
the spring. And Marc Glimcher, chief
executive of Pace gallery and son of
founder Arne, recently announced the
acquisition of LA gallery Kayne Griffin,
which boasts 15,000 sq ft on South La
Brea Avenue.
All are diving into the city’s lively art
market, stimulated by the arrival of
Frieze Los Angeles in 2019. Alex Logsdail, 36, says, “A huge number of artists
that I find fascinating live in Los Angeles
and more and more are moving there,
everything’s accelerated. LA’s museums
and institutions are very active and
involved. And ultimately, I was
attracted to LA for the same reasons as
to New York [where he opened the gallery in 2016]: a large number of our artists don’t have representation there, or
haven’t had a show there, or at least for a
very long time.”
The Hollywood space where he will
open in the autumn with a solo show of
Carmen Herrera, the Cuban-American
artist who turns 107 this year, has a racy
history. The 8,090 sq ft building and
outdoor space on North Sycamore
Avenue was previously The Zone, an
adult entertainment venue described
on Yelp as “the most popular sex club
for men in southern California”.
Alas, the Covid-19 pandemic took its
toll on The Zone and Logsdail — who
says he wasn’t aware of the venue
beforehand — found an opportunity for
his West Coast ambitions. “A lot of great
things happen by accident,” he says. “It’s
in the middle zone of LA, close enough
to Beverly Hills, Brentwood and Westside, where a lot of collectors live, and 10
minutes from any hotel that art buyers
from overseas would stay in.”
Other galleries nearby, in the sprawling city, include Regen Projects and Jeffrey Deitch. Logsdail says: “Because of
its former use, the building has an abundance of parking. That is important in
LA and gives us opportunities for sculptures and murals.”
The space will be run by Kaeli Deane,
a gallery director and Lisson’s point person in LA for more than three years;
Logsdail has brought in the New York
architecture firm Ashe Leandro.
His New York gallery launch served as
a healthy break from the legacy of his
family, who founded the gallery in London in 1967. “I had to carve out my own
space, it was critical to making it work.
You have to do something ambitious
and New York loves ambition,” says
Logsdail, who now lives in Tribeca. He
underlines that he and his father — who
is still involved with the gallery and its
artists — “see eye to eye a lot”. When
Above: Alex
Logsdail, son of
Lisson Gallery’s
founder and
now chief
executive. Right:
a rendering of
Lisson’s new LA
space — Daniel Dorsa
‘LA is vast. That’s a reason
why things go more slowly.
People don’t rush artist
studio visits, for example’
pushed, he adds, “Obviously we don’t
agree on everything, but we share a
basic understanding of the way to do
things. And I have to give him enormous
credit for giving me a very wide berth.”
Logsdail Jr took over the reins of Lisson in 2019, just as Covid-19 began to
grip. He concurs that the move to LA is,
theme — which we’re now fighting over
— called the constitution”.
Jenkins gravitated in his work
towards the role of the griot. In west
Africa, he says, griots are singers and
poets who tell the stories of their culture. “They show up at weddings, they
show up at funerals,” he says. “They perpetuate and motivate the people that
they’re communicating with.”
A talented musician, Jenkins often
incorporates music — both others’ and
his own — into his videos. In “Without
Your Interpretation”, the 1983 video
after which his retrospective is titled, he
intercuts footage of an outdoor musical
performance he did with a loose band of
collaborators beside the Los Angeles
River with snippets of television news
footage and choreographed dance. The
artist Patssi Valdez, of the Chicanx art
collective ASCO, is credited for the outlandish make-up.
He landed on the title after “misunderstandings” following a previous
video performance in which he’d
appeared nude. The black male body, he
was reminded, is prone to offend.
For decades, Jenkins worked largely
out of sight in Los Angeles. Recently,
however, he has been cited as an influence by successful younger artists of colour including Aria Dean, Sondra Perry
and Cauleen Smith. When I ask Jenkins
how he feels about the recent tide of
exposure and appreciation that has
come with these exhibitions, he answers
modestly: “Let’s just say, it’s been a little
overwhelming.”
‘Ulysses Jenkins: Without Your Interpretation’, to May 15, hammer.ucla.edu
in some ways, a symptom of the pandemic and its associated rejection of
previous norms and hierarchies. “I realised during Covid that one of the art
world’s greatest assets as a community
is its slowness . . . It requires conversation, context, getting to know artists and
collections. Very little happens in a 20minute conversation, but a lot can happen in two hours.”
LA’s geography helps, he adds. “It is
vast. That’s a reason why things go more
slowly. People take time to do things,
they don’t rush [artist] studio visits,
for example.”
Like many next-gen gallerists, Logsdail gives a lot more weight than his
predecessors to collaborative behaviour. “Galleries, art fairs, auction houses
— these are all interdependent relationships that are critical to business. If everyone isn’t on the same page with their
longer-term goals, then it’s a problem.”
He does more than just talk the talk —
Logsdail was the driving force behind
letters lobbying the Art Basel fair to
offer protection to exhibitors ahead of
its return in September 2021, when
Covid was still a threat to business.
He is, he says, “extremely encouraged
by how resilient galleries have been
without the fairs” during the pandemic.
But some fairs are still “an important
part” of the gallery business — good
news as he prepares to show in this
week’s third edition of Frieze Los Angeles. The gallery’s mixed-artist booth
includes a work by Herrera — a wall
sculpture from her “Estructuras” series
— pieces by Hugh Hayden, Anish
Kapoor and Ryan Gander and several
works by LA minimalist Channa Horwitz (1932-2013).
For now, much of Logsdail’s abundant
energy is reserved for the new LA space.
“Ultimately, I am driven by bringing our
artists to a new audience, just as the gallery has done for decades. And Los
Angeles is a city of such possibility.”
lissongallery.com