Finance

BARRY CALLEBAUT, the world’s largest maker of bulk chocolate, is full of beans. Its share price has jumped by 20% since April, when it reported higher sales volumes despite a steep rise in the cost of cocoa. Peter Feld, its boss, told investors not to worry about expensive ingredients: “What goes up fast comes down […]

In 2020, when BBVA and Sabadell abandoned merger discussions, it was difficult to find investors with anything positive to say about European banks. A decade of near-zero interest rates, stiff regulation and anaemic economic growth had made them unprofitable and unattractive. The two Spanish lenders were no exception. BBVA had a market value of €26bn […]

Working on a trading desk is perhaps the closest an office job can get to a sport. Focus and reflexes matter. On the other side of every trill of the phone or ding from a computer is a client who wants to trade. If ignored, they will hang up and call a competitor. Everyone is […]

The Plaza Hotel has New York glamour in spades. Sitting at a corner of Central Park, it was the setting for “Home Alone 2”, a film that came out in 1992 in which a child finds himself lost in the metropolis. He takes up residence in one of the hotel’s suites, thanks to his father’s […]

Since Russia invaded in 2022, Ukraine’s economy has shrunk by a quarter. But the ravages of war are not the only reason for the government’s reduced tax take. Businesses are also making use of the chaos to dodge paying their fair share. This is particularly true in agriculture, which before the war was responsible for […]

When Russia’s leaders stopped most of the country’s gas deliveries to the EU in 2022, they thought themselves smart. Prices instantly shot up, enabling Russia to earn more despite lower export volumes. Meanwhile, Europe, which bought 40% of its gas from Russia in 2021, braced itself for inflation and blackouts. Yet two years later, owing […]

Hedge funds take great pains to hide their inner workings. So a recent court case in which Jane Street sued two former employees and Millennium Management, another fund to which they had jumped ship, was immensely pleasing to the firm’s rivals, since it offered a rare view into one of the industry’s giants. Among the […]

One-third of Ivy League graduates end up working in finance or consulting. So perhaps it is unsurprising that campus protesters are providing investment advice: they want university endowments to get rid of assets linked to Israel. At Columbia University, for instance, a coalition of more than 100 student organisations is demanding that administrators divest from […]

When it comes to economic growth, America comfortably beats Europe. Many factors have fed America’s outperformance, from tech innovation to vast oil reserves. But there is one explanation that seems almost too simplistic: that “Americans just work harder”, as the head of Norway’s oil fund put it in an interview with the Financial Times on […]

The West faces an unprecedented number of new arrivals