US edition

USA $3.00 Canada C$3.50 SATURDAY 17 JULY / SUNDAY 18 JULY 2021

My wild crypto ride

Andrew Lloyd Webber
Cinderella and theatre’s return
LIFE & ARTS

Lessons from a flutter on the

new financial frontier
LIFE & ARTS

Cuba

Germany fears
climate change
caused floods
3 More than 100 die as rivers overflow
GUY CHAZAN — BERLIN
German politicians have blamed cli-
mate change for the devastating floods
in the west of the country that killed at
least 103 people and left a trail of devas-
tation in their wake.
Rivers across the region burst their
banks after days of heavy rain. Houses
were swept away, bridges and roads
were destroyed and several town cen-
tres were left in ruins.
In the western state of Rhineland-
Palatinate, 100 people were unac-
counted for. Other countries were
affected, with 14 dead in Belgium.
Armin Laschet, governor of North
Rhine-Westphalia, one of the worst-
affected German regions, said the coun-
try was experiencing a “flooding catas-
trophe of historic proportions”.
Laschet, the conservatives’ candidate
to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor
after September’s election, said the gov-
ernment should accelerate efforts to
combat climate change. “Germany
must go down the path towards carbon
neutrality more quickly now,” he said.
Scientists have warned that extreme
weather events such as floods, droughts
and heatwaves will increase as the
planet continues to warm. Ursula von
der Leyen, European Commission presi-
dent, echoed those concerns when
The coming revolution?
Golden rule Athletes warned against BIG READ
podium protests at Tokyo Olympics
Survivors’ stories
asked about the floods. “Science tells us
Norway 10 years on
that with climate change we see more LIFE & ARTS
and more extreme weather phenomena
that last longer,” she said.
Speaking in Washington before talks
with US president Joe Biden, Merkel
pledged she would deploy “all the pow-
ers of the state” to help those affected.
Horst Seehofer, Germany’s interior min-
ister, told Der Spiegel that the govern-
ment would provide financial aid to the
affected regions as quickly as possible.
Seehofer, 72, a political veteran, said
that “in my entire career in Germany I
have never seen such a flood with such
terrible consequences, with so many
deaths and so many people missing”.
He added: “Any sensible person must The boating dream
get the fact that freak weather of this
intensity and frequency is not a normal
New lives at sea
phenomenon in this part of the world LIFE & ARTS
but the consequences of man-made glo-
bal warming.”
This month’s floods across Europe are
expected to lead to another billion-
dollar loss for insurers, according to bro-
ker Aon. It follows a torrent of hail and
Film Section Xix Olympic Games/Kobal/Shutterstock
heavy rain in June that Aon forecast
would lead to $4.5bn in payouts, making US sprinters Tommie Smith But Thomas Bach, president Times that “the podium and
it Europe’s costliest two-week stretch. and John Carlos raise their fists of the International Olympic the medal ceremonies are not
Additional reporting by Erika Solomon in support of civil rights at the Committee, has warned ath- made . . . for a political or other
and Ian Smith 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, letes against such gestures at demonstration”.
EU climate policy page 3 one of the highest-profile pro- the forthcoming Tokyo Olym- Tokyo activism page 4
FT View page 8 tests made by athletes. pics. He told the Financial FT View page 8

Binance under fire on wider front after

Russia hopes for trade off
with Siberian rail upgrade
Russia is spending $17bn to propel
its Soviet-era rail network into the 21st
century and grab a bigger slice of the
transport revenues in the billions of
dollars of freight traded between Asia
and Europe. The Baikal-Amur Mainline
runs across 4,300km of eastern Siberia
through some of the planet’s toughest
terrain to the Pacific. Competition from
China’s superfast trains could be a
bigger obstacle. The average speed on
Russia’s network is 43km per hour.
Slow train i PAGE 2
Lithuania and Hong Kong join the fray
ADAM SAMSON — LONDON
Regulators in Lithuania and Hong
Kong have become the latest to crack
down on Binance, further complicating
one of the largest cryptocurrency
exchange’s efforts to do business in key
jurisdictions.
Lithuania’s central bank said yesterday
a Vilnius-based Binance payments affil-
iate was providing “unlicensed invest-
ment services”. Meanwhile, Hong
Kong’s regulator issued a warning over
the exchange’s stock tokens trading pro-
gramme, which this year faced scrutiny
in the UK and Germany. Binance said it
would shut the tokens scheme for “com-
mercial” reasons.
The censures, which follow similar
moves from Italy and the UK, may fur-
ther limit Binance’s ability to link up
with the traditional system.
Watchdogs have expressed concern
over issues including securities rules
and consumer protection. Binance
struggled to keep its compliance func-
tion on a par with its growth, people
familiar with its operations have said.
The warning from the UK’s Financial
Conduct Authority in June, while lim-
ited in scope, proved the first in a string
of responses to one of the biggest crypto
market participants. It prompted high
street banks Barclays and Santander to
restrict customers from sending funds
to the Caymans-incorporated company.
Clear Junction, a UK payments group
that had connected Binance to euro and
sterling money transfer networks, also
cut off the exchange this week.
“We take a collaborative approach in
working with regulators, and we take
our compliance obligations very seri-
ously,” the exchange said yesterday.
Most of the group’s trading is in crypto
assets and their derivatives, but Binance
relies on traditional and generally regu-
lated companies to allow customers to
put hard currency on the exchange.
Lithuania’s intervention could damage
this link to payments entities in Europe.
The affiliate Binance UAB, owned by
chief executive Changpeng Zhao, acts as
a payment “agent” for the group, the
exchange’s website states. The exchange
said Binance UAB “does not provide
investment services and it does not
operate or control Binance.com”.
But the articles of association for the
entity, filed last year, say its main activi-
ties include “investing in virtual assets”
and “establishment of funds to invest in
virtual assets”. The bourse’s terms of
service had described the company as a
Binance “operator” until at least July 5.
On Wall Street page 14

World Markets
Subscribe In print and online
STOCK MARKETS CURRENCIES INTEREST RATES
www.ft.com/subsusa
Tel: 1 800 628 8088 Jul 16 prev %chg Jul 16 prev Jul 16 prev price yield chg
For the latest news go to S&P 500 4349.31 4360.03 -0.25 $ per € 1.181 1.182 £ per $ 0.725 0.721 US Gov 10 yr 149.19 1.31 -0.02
www.ft.com Nasdaq Composite 14502.88 14543.13 -0.28 $ per £ 1.379 1.387 € per £ 1.168 1.173 UK Gov 10 yr 0.63 -0.04
Dow Jones Ind 34904.52 34987.02 -0.24 £ per € 0.856 0.852 ¥ per € 130.023 130.045 Ger Gov 10 yr -0.35 -0.02
© THE FINANCIAL TIMES LTD 2021 FTSEurofirst 300 1754.64 1761.30 -0.38 ¥ per $ 110.105 110.035 £ index 82.205 82.211 Jpn Gov 10 yr 117.55 0.02 0.01
No: 40,762 ★ Euro Stoxx 50 4032.74 4056.39 -0.58 ¥ per £ 151.852 152.564 SFr per £ 1.268 1.273 US Gov 30 yr 115.13 1.94 -0.01
FTSE 100 7008.09 7012.02 -0.06 SFr per € 1.086 1.085 Ger Gov 2 yr 105.73 -0.68 0.00
Printed in London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, FTSE All-Share 4002.80 4005.80 -0.07 € per $ 0.847 0.846
Frankfurt, Milan, Madrid, New York, Chicago, San
CAC 40 6460.08 6493.36 -0.51
Francisco, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul,
Dubai Xetra Dax 15540.31 15629.66 -0.57 COMMODITIES price prev chg
Nikkei 28003.08 28279.09 -0.98 Fed Funds Eff 0.08 0.06 0.02
Hang Seng 28004.68 27996.27 0.03 Jul 16 prev %chg US 3m Bills 0.05 0.06 -0.01
MSCI World $ 3043.52 3058.59 -0.49 Oil WTI $ 71.78 71.65 0.18 Euro Libor 3m -0.55 -0.55 0.00
MSCI EM $ 1348.48 1338.13 0.77 Oil Brent $ 73.67 73.47 0.27 UK 3m 0.08 0.08 0.00
MSCI ACWI $ 723.66 726.09 -0.33 Gold $ 1823.75 1823.20 0.03 Prices are latest for edition Data provided by Morningstar
2 ★
WORLD|
WEEK IN REVIEW|
FT wins press awards for Weekend
supplement and Wirecard reporting
FT Weekend’s Life & Arts section has won supple-
ment of the year at the UK’s Press Awards this week.
The FT also won investigation of the year and busi-
ness team of the year for Wirecard, while Dan
McCrum was named business journalist for his work
on revealing the fraud at the German fintech group.
Lauren Indvik was joint winner of fashion journal-
ist of the year and John Burn-Murdoch was joint win-
ner of data journalist. Several journalists were highly
commended for their work: George Parker for poli-
tics, Clive Cookson for science, Dave Lee for tech,
Tim Harford for speciality journalism, Leslie Hook
for environment reporting and Tom Robbins for
travel. FT.com was highly commended for website of
the year and the coronavirus tracker was named dig-
ital initiative of the year.
Separately, the FT data team won the Royal Statis-
tical Society award for statistical excellence in jour-
nalism in the “explaining the facts” category, while
Burn-Murdoch was highly commended for his indi-
vidual portfolio of work during the pandemic.
Third dose of Pfizer vaccine offered
to vulnerable patients in Israel
Israel began offering third doses of the BioNTech/
Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine to adults with serious pre-
existing medical conditions, the first country to offi-
cially offer a so-called booster of the company’s jab.
The move came as US and European health
authorities debated the need for booster jabs. The
UK has given provisional backing for a campaign
from September. Other countries reliant on Chinese
vaccines have offered boosters.
Despite one of the world’s fastest vaccination
drives, infection rates are rising sharply in Israel
owing to the highly transmissible Delta variant.
Draghi joins celebrations after
Italy’s Euro 2020 triumph
Mario Draghi, Italian prime minister, left, celebrates the
country’s win in the Euro 2021 football tournament
with Roberto Mancini, coach, centre, and Giorgio
Chiellini, defender, at a ceremony in Rome on Monday.
Italy beat England on penalties at London’s Wembley
Stadium the previous night.
Rift deepens between Poland and
Brussels over judicial independence
The rift between Brussels and Warsaw over judicial
independence deepened after the European Court of
Justice ruled that a contentious Polish system for dis-
ciplining judges breached European law. The Euro-
pean Commission also launched separate legal chal-
lenges against Poland and Hungary over LGBT+
rights.
The ruling capped a near six-year battle over judi-
cial reforms launched by Poland’s Law and Justice
party (PiS), which has escalated into a challenge to
the EU’s legal order. It came the day after a Polish
court ruled the country did not have to apply a previ-
ous ECJ order to suspend proceedings in the cham-
ber. PiS argues the EU has no right to intervene.
MAKE A SMART INVESTMENT
Subscribe to the FT today at FT.com/subscription
FRIDAY 31 MARCH 2017
Trump vs the Valley
Tech titans need to minimise
political risk — GILLIAN TETT, PAGE 13
HMRC warns
customs risks
being swamped
by Brexit surge
3 Confidence in IT plans ‘has collapsed’
3 Fivefold rise in declarations expected
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.
FINANCIAL TIMES
330 Hudson Street,
New York, NY 10013
Subscriptions and Customer Service
Tel: +1 800 628 8088
uscirculation@ft.com, www.ft.com/subsusa
Advertising
Tel: +1 917 551 5040
usads@ft.com
Letters to the editor
letters.editor@ft.com
Executive appointments
www.exec-appointments.com
Published by
F.T. Publications Inc.
330 Hudson St, New York,
NY 10013, USA;
Tel: +1 917-551-5000;
Editor: Roula Khalaf
Printed by
Blue Island Newspaper Printing, Harvey, IL
Evergreen Printing Company, Bellmawr, NJ
Bay Area Production Services, Fremont, CA
Published daily except Sundays, New Year’s Day,
FTWeekend 17 July/18 July 2021
INTERNATIONAL
Misconduct allegations
French justice minister faces probe
Claims Dupond-Moretti ment in July last year with a brief to defend him and argue that the court’s ‘Whether A key allegation revolves around the
reform the justice system, is being decision was political. fact that shortly before being appointed
abused his position will probed over claims he abused his posi- “If [Macron] fires Dupond-Moretti, he resigns by Macron, Dupond-Moretti filed a law-
be formally investigated tion to settle scores from his legal career. he will be admitting he made a big hiring or not is a suit alleging his privacy had been
The status of formal investigation, or error just a year ago,” said Bruno Cau- invaded by France’s national prosecutor
DAVID KEOHANE AND ANNA GROSS mis en examen, does not mean he will très, a political scientist and professor at matter of for financial crimes (PNF). He accused
PARIS definitely face trial and is a step before Sciences Po in Paris. “There will be big political it of abusing its power by accessing his
being formally charged. pressure for him to resign. I don’t see phone records, and those of other law-
France’s justice minister is being for- Dupond-Moretti’s lawyers told how he’ll be able to resist.” Prime Minis- convention yers, during a probe into alleged graft by
mally investigated over alleged conflicts reporters they would contest the deci- ter Jean Castex said in a statement rather than former president Nicolas Sarkozy.
of interest in a politically charged case sion and said the minister, who main- reported by Reuters that “he renews his Dupond-Moretti, who learned of the
that could threaten his position. tains his innocence, had no reason to confidence” in Dupond-Moretti. legal investigators’ actions from a report in Le
Eric Dupond-Moretti was placed resign while further investigations were Unions representing French magis- obligation’ Point magazine, accused the PNF of
under formal investigation yesterday carried out. “Whether he resigns or not trates have accused Dupond-Moretti of using the “methods of ham-fisted spies”.
after being questioned by France’s Cour is a matter of political convention rather bias against some judges he came across He withdrew his complaint after
de Justice de la République, a special tri- than legal obligation,” said Duncan Fair- during his time as a lawyer and was being named justice minister but in
bunal that deals with ministerial mis- grieve, professor of comparative law at therefore unfit to oversee reform of the mid-September ordered a disciplinary
conduct. He is the first sitting justice Paris-Dauphine University. justice system. Alongside an anti-cor- inquiry into two judges from the PNF
minister to face such an inquiry, accord- A resignation would be a blow to Pres- ruption group, they filed a conflict of and their boss, Éliane Houlette, who was
ing to legal experts. ident Emmanuel Macron, who is seek- interest complaint to the Cour de Justice then head of the body.
Dupond-Moretti, a celebrity defence ing re-election next year. Analysts say de la République, which launched an All three were named in a press
lawyer who joined the Macron govern- the government will probably rally to investigation in January. release from the justice ministry.
Railway revamp. Baikal-Amur Mainline
Siberia slow train shunted into 21st century
railway it’s twice as fast,” said Oleg
Russian upgrade of 4,300km Belozerov, RZD general director, said.
of Soviet-era track viewed as Rail has also become cheaper than
sea. The cost of taking freight from Asia
vital for freight to Europe to Europe by train, based on the Eura-
sian Rail Alliance Index, is half the price
of doing so by sea, as measured by the
NASTASSIA ASTRASHEUSKAYA
SEVEROBAIKALSK World Container Index.
Yet Russia faces stiff competition
On the shore of Lake Baikal, deep in from China, which is planning a Silk
eastern Siberia, one of the most ambi- Road of upgraded transport infrastruc-
tious feats of modern Russian rail engi- ture to western Europe, as part of its
neering is nearing completion. One Belt, One Road initiative.
The Baikalsky tunnel, carved through Belozerov said Russia’s upgraded rail
7km of mountain rock, has taken seven lines could take at least 10 per cent of
years to build, with construction teams the total container volumes that transit
toiling in temperatures as low as -60C. from its far east ports to its western bor-
Designed to withstand the weekly der, which would be a 10-fold rise. While
earthquakes that strike this remote cor- the Siberian rail lines operated at maxi-
ner of Russia, it is the flagship project of mum capacity to transport 144m
the redevelopment of one of the coun- tonnes of freight last year, the upgrade
try’s most iconic rail lines that aims to will boost this to 180m tonnes by 2025.
propel the Soviet-era train network into The rail project will also help the rede-
the 21st century. velopment of east Siberia, which is rich
The Baikal-Amur Mainline, cousin to in natural resources. The region “has a
the Trans-Siberian railway, runs for huge development potential and can
4,300km from Tayshet through some of become the locomotive for the develop-
the world’s toughest terrain to the ment of the national economy”, he said.
Pacific Ocean. State-run Russian Rail- He is unconcerned by the global shift
ways (RZD) is investing $17bn over a from fossil fuels, or the fact that coal
decade as part of an ambitious plan that accounts for nearly a third of Russia’s
aims to grab a bigger slice of the billions rail shipments, mainly to China.
of dollars worth of goods and raw mate- Related line: with a population of 23,000, it looks out speak to a rare visitor. “It’s beautiful, Although Beijing has pledged to become
rials that are transported annually from a freight makes on to the deep water, surrounded by clean, safe, but it’s expensive. The rail- carbon-neutral by 2060, demand from
Asia to Europe. its way along the peaks capped with snow in summer. way is the single big employer. Every India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand
“Russia has advanced,” Vladimir Trans-Siberian The town’s main attraction is its train family has somebody working for [it].” would remain strong, he insisted.
Goncharov, the engineer in charge of the railway, a cousin station, built by workers from St Peters- The BAM was conceived in the 1930s Yet the task of reviving Russia’s crum-
Baikalsky tunnel, said from Severo- of the Baikal- burg in the shape of a sail. Lyudmila, an as an alternative to the Trans-Siberian bling rail infrastructure will still require
baikalsk, a sleepy town on the northern Amur Mainline assistant at a food store, moved to but building was delayed until the massive investment and decades to
tip of Lake Baikal. Nastassia Astrasheuskaya
Severobaikalsk a few years ago to join 1970s. While the line opened in 1989, the complete. Finding workers willing to do
“When I started building tunnels in relatives working on the railways. last of its 10 tunnels was completed only the job is another issue. One official has
2007, there were big problems with “I love it here,” she enthused, eager to in 2003. Victor, 74, recalled his decade even proposed sending prisoners to fin-
financing. Now there are none. Every in charge of the workers in Severo- ish the work, according to a report in the
year, the problem of staff and financial 300 km baikalsk from 1977-87. “The feeling of Kommersant paper, an idea reminis-
resources gets resolved quickly. Today Baikalsky tunnel
RUSSIA pride and belonging to the great con- cent of the Soviet regime. Activists have
Russia has everything we need for Tayshet Baikal–Amur struction project was true for all the also criticised the impact of rail redevel-
developing railway infrastructure.” Mainline people living along the route,” he said. opment on the Siberian ecosystem.
His optimism understates the Her- Severobaikalsk Russia hopes the route will become a Even when the upgrades are done,
culean task to modernise Russia’s creak- Lake viable Asia-Europe transit corridor, car- Russia will trail China, which is rolling
ing rail network; the funding of the mas- Irkutsk Baikal rying goods to western markets and tap- out fleets of high-speed trains. The aver-
Ypran
sive upgrade has been the subject of Trans-Siberian Railway
ping shifting demand for mineral res- age speed on Russia’s rail network is just
national discussion for years. ources such as coal. It is marketing rail 43km an hour, according to RZD.
The four-day journey along the BAM as a faster, safer, more ecologically A few years ago Elon Musk’s Hyper-
takes passengers through mountain MONGOLIA Sovetskaya friendly alternative to shipping, with loop envisaged a superfast magnetic
Gavan
ranges, over rivers and across thick CHINA
the recent blockage of the Suez Canal train line between Moscow and St
taiga forest, interspersed with railway giving leverage to Moscow’s argument. Petersburg, but this could be a step too
towns built for construction workers in Vladivostok “Some 98 per cent of the transit cargo far for Siberia. “Maybe Musk has not
the Soviet days. Severobaikalsk is one of volume between Europe and Asia uses tested his magnetic monorail at -50C,”
©Mapcreator | OSM.org
them. The largest town on Lake Baikal, the Suez Canal. It takes 40-45 days. By quipped Goncharov.
Riding high Prodigy Pogacar takes Slovenia to summit of cycling
SAMUEL AGINI — LONDON by crashes, notably the shocking first- in schools, and cyclists rode on the same part in Slovenia’s success. “A few years
MARTON DUNAI — BUDAPEST
WORLD BUSINESS NEWSPAPER UK £2.70 Channel Islands £3.00; Republic of Ireland €3.00
day pile-up caused when a rider clipped teams from junior level to under-23 ago no one expected Slovenes could
A Five Star plan?
Italy’s populists are trying to woo
the poor — BIG READ, PAGE 11
Dear Don...
May’s first stab at the break-up
letter — ROBERT SHRIMSLEY, PAGE 12
Slovenians hope to be celebrating their a sign held by a spectator, resulting in until elite level, instilling tight bonds reach such incredible results as winning
Lloyd’s of Brussels Insurance market
to tap new talent pool with EU base
UK £3.80; Channel Islands £3.80; Republic of Ireland €3.80
Briefing
SATURDAY 1 APRIL / SUNDAY 2 APRIL 2017
country’s second Tour de France victory several injuries and withdrawals. and team spirit. the Vuelta and Tour de France, being
THE END
i US bargain-hunters fuel Europe M&A
in two years when the race finishes on This year’s Tour de France was also Slovenians also love sporty holidays, number one and two in the world,” he
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
HOW DRIVERLESS
OF THE TECHNOLOGY IS
Atlantic.— PAGE 15; CHINA CURBS HIT DEALS, PAGE 17
i Report outlines longer NHS waiting times
A report on how the health service can survive CHANGING AN
ROAD
more austerity has said patients will wait longer for
AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE
the Champs-Élysées in Paris tomorrow, notable for the triumphant return of he explained, loading bikes and canoes said, but “success brings more success”.
non-urgent operations and for A&E treatment while
some surgical procedures will be scrapped.— PAGE 4 Censors and sensitivity
i Emerging nations in record debt sales Warning: this article may be
FT WEEKEND MAGAZINE
FEBRUARY 4 2017
Developing countries have sold record levels of
government debt in the first quarter of this year,
upsetting — LIFE & ARTS
taking advantage of a surge in optimism toward
emerging markets as trade booms.— PAGE 15
Credit Suisse
Art of persuasion Mystery deepens
as the small Balkans country continues Mark Cavendish, the British sprinter on their cars when they went on vaca- Igor Evgen Bergant, a Slovenian tele-
i London tower plans break records
A survey has revealed that a
record 455 tall buildings are
planned or under construction over disputed painting of Jane Austen How To Spend It
engulfed in
adjust its negotiation position with the in London. Work began on
EU, a Whitehall official said. “If running almost one tower a week
our own customs system is proving during 2016.— PAGE 4
much harder than we anticipated, that
ought to have an impact on how we i Tillerson fails to ease Turkey tensions
fresh tax probe
its unlikely dominance of professional who equalled the record 34 stage wins tion. Last year, the country introduced a vision host and cycling enthusiast, high-
press for certain options in Brussels.” The US secretary of state has failed to reconcile
In a letter to Andrew Tyrie, chairman
of the Commons treasury select com-
tensions after talks in Ankara with President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan on issues including Syria and the Chic new lodgings
cycling. held by the legendary Eddy Merckx. national holiday for sport. lighted the country’s strong cycling tra-
Good Friday, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, the Tadej Pogacar, the 22-year-old prod- Pogacar, a product of Slovenia’s “There’s a lot of luck but we’ve also ditions and a preference for individual
day after Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and the day
after Christmas Day. igy who rides for UAE Team Emirates, cycling system, was earmarked for suc- worked systematically for years and sports, notably gymnastics. In Slovenia,
tightened his grip on the leader’s yellow cess from a young age whereas Roglic, years,” Stangelj said. “Having these rid- he said, “sport was accessible for every-
US subscription rates, 1 year $406. Periodicals jersey with stunning back-to-back stage 31, was a latecomer to the sport after ers in such a small country is a miracle.” one and very egalitarian”.
postage paid at New York, NY and at additional
mailing offices; Post-Master. Send address changes
victories this week in the Pyrenees, and starting as a professional ski jumper. Pavel Mardonovic, head of the Slove- Proximity to Italy, a nation steeped in
to F.T. Publications Inc., PO Box 469, Newburgh, NY is on track to retain the title he won in Roglic became the first Slovenian to nian Cycling Federation, said cycling cycling history, and EU membership
12551; USPS number, 190640; ISSN# 0884-6782. 2020. Compatriot Primoz Roglic was win one of cycling’s three grand tours clubs and supportive parents played a since 2004 also benefit Slovenian riders,
forced to quit the race through injury, when he took the Vuelta a España in many of whom speak Italian and train
© Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2021.
All rights reserved. but remains world number one. 2019, defending it the following year. He there.
Reproduction of the contents of this newspaper in How Slovenia, which has a population was favourite for the 2020 tour when Tine Mahkovec, co-owner of the Bike-
any manner is not permitted without the publisher’s of just over 2m and last month cele- Pogacar pulled off a shock win. hanic repair shop in Ljubljana, the Slov-
prior consent. ‘Financial Times’ and ‘FT’ are
registered trade marks of The Financial Times
brated 30 years of independence from The pair are part of a deeper pool of enian capital, said the success of his
Limited. The Financial Times and its journalism are what was Yugoslavia, came to dominate Slovenian cycling talent that includes countrymen was not only a source of
subject to a self-regulation regime under the FT professional cycling can be put down to Urska Zigart, Pogacar’s girlfriend, who pride, but also great for business, adding
Editorial Code of Practice: a decades’ long passion for the sport, races for Team Bike Exchange. to already strong sales during the coro-
www.ft.com/editorialcode
investment in time and money, and its Gorazd Stangelj, a Slovenian former navirus lockdown.
Reprints are available of any FT article with your mountainous terrain — plus talent, hard rider and sports director at Team Bah- “Pre-orders for 2023 and 2024 are not
company logo or contact details inserted if required work and an element of luck. rain Victorious, accepted it was “not uncommon,” he said. “We used to say, ‘if
(minimum order 100 copies). One-off copyright
licences for reproduction of FT articles are also Victory for Pogacar in the world’s easy” to explain the sudden dominance you don’t ski you’re not Slovenian’, but
available. most prestigious and gruelling cycle of Pogacar and Roglic, but that it was a that’s changing. Now it’s, ‘if you don’t
For both services phone +44 20 7873 4816, or race would return the focus to sporting reward for hard graft and talent. Victory: Tadej Pogacar crosses the have a bike you’re not Slovenian’. Every-
alternatively, email syndication@ft.com
achievement after a tour overshadowed He said the hunt for sports stars began line for his second Pyrenean win body is cycling.”
17 July/18 July 2021 ★ FTWeekend 3

INTERNATIONAL

Europe wields stick to increase jab

Consumer sentiment

take-up as Delta variant spreads
Protests over mandatory vaccination flare in France and Greece but more are willing to be inoculated
ANNA GROSS — PARIS
OLIVER BARNES — LONDON
DAVIDE GHIGLIONE — ROME
According to the thousands of protest-
ers who took to the streets of Paris,
Montpellier and other French cities this
week, their country has become “a dic-
tatorship” and its president is instating
“apartheid”.
The reason for their ire: Emmanuel
Macron’s decision to make Covid-19
vaccinations compulsory for all health-
care workers, before possibly imposing
it on the rest of the population.
French people now have to show they
are either vaccinated or have recently
tested negative to the virus to enter
cafés, restaurants, cinemas, high-speed
trains or shopping malls. In the autumn,
Covid tests will no longer be free.
A little less than a year before presi-
dential elections, the marches have
revived the spectre of the gilets jaunes
who shook France in 2018 and 2019,
when the grassroots protest triggered by
motorists’ anger over a fuel tax devel-
oped into a months-long anti-govern-
ment movement.
Macron’s move comes as countries
across Europe struggle to contain the
fast-spreading Delta variant that origi-
nated in India and is now dominant in
most EU countries. With less than half
of their populations fully vaccinated,
governments are seeking to compel
their citizens to get the jab to limit a new
surge in infections and avoid new
restrictions.
Macron is following in the footsteps of
Mario Draghi, Italy’s prime minister,
who in April was first in Europe to
impose vaccinations on health workers
after outbreaks in hospitals and care
homes. Greece and Latvia followed suit
this week, threatening workers with job
losses if they did not toe the line.
About 4,000 people protested in Ath-
ens on Wednesday and, in the UK, a
petition against compulsory vaccina-
tion for health and social care staff has
received more than 93,000 signatures.
Mandatory vaccination in Europe is
not novel: 40 per cent of countries have
some form of enforced vaccination,
including against hepatitis B, measles
and meningitis for children, said Anna
Odone, a professor in public health at
Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele in
Milan. Compulsory vaccines “need to be
used in case of emergency and we are
living in emergency times”, she said.
There is a direct link between hospi-
talisations — rising again in Europe —
and whether people have been immu-
nised. Across France’s 30 biggest
hospitals, every intensive care patient
had not been vaccinated, the govern-
ment said this week. In Greece, the fig-
ure is 99 per cent.
Despite a loud protesting minority,
data from France and Italy suggest their
governments’ coercive approach is
yielding results.
Since Italy issued its decree in April,
Covid-19 cases, hospitalisations and
deaths among care home residents have
3 Turkmenistan on July 7 ruled that all
Round-up adults must get vaccinated unless they
have a medical reason not to.
3 Indonesia made vaccination
mandatory for all adults in February,
Countries with Jakarta threatening fines of up to
put pressure 5m rupiah ($357) for refusal.
3 Australia made vaccinations
on citizens mandatory for high-risk care workers
to take shot and employees in quarantine hotels in
late June.
3 Italy introduced new rules on April 1
under which healthcare workers will be
transferred, demoted or suspended
without pay if they refuse the vaccine.
3 Latvia announced this week it would
make a Covid-19 certificate mandatory
for those working in the health sector,
social care and education.
3 Greece made vaccination compulsory
for staff at homes for the elderly from
this week, and for healthcare workers by
September 1.
3 The UK passed a law on Tuesday
mandating vaccinations for all staff in
registered care homes. A consultation is
planned on expanding it to all NHS and
primary care staff.
3 The Spanish region of Valencia is
looking to follow France’s example by
requiring people to show they are
vaccinated before they can go to
restaurants, bars, hotels or nightclubs.
3 Germany is looking into making
people pay for coronavirus tests,
which are currently free.
decreased — so much so that cases have
all but disappeared. This bolstered a
trend that began when the country
imposed a targeted vaccination cam-
paign among residents in February.
In France, more than 3m vaccine
appointments have been booked since
Macron’s speech on Monday, with daily
bookings far exceeding previous
records, according to appointment web-
site Doctolib.
About 60 per cent of these were peo-
ple under the age of 35, who had previ-
ously been slow to seek vaccination.
Vaccine hesitancy has been declining
in Europe. In France, more than eight
out of 10 adults say they have or will get
the vaccine — double the proportion in
France’s soaring jab appointments
Vaccine appointments (m)
Total
7-day rolling
average
Apr 2021
Source: Doctolib
Anger on December, according to pollster Odoxa.
the streets: Three out of four support compulsory
police face vaccination for carers and 61 per cent
demonstrators approve the extended use of “health
in central Paris passports”, according to a poll published
on Wednesday in Le Figaro. Only 20 per cent of Italians
during a protest are against mandatory vaccination,
against Covid-19 another poll suggested.
rules — Geoffroy Van der The soaring bookings “show that
Hasselt/AFP
there was, in those who were not vacci-
nated, a very small minority of anti-
vaxxers”, said Clément Beaune, French
European affairs minister.
The fear of a looming fourth wave of
infections means people are willing to
do what it takes to keep the virus at bay,
said Mircea Sofonea, an infectious dis-
ease modeller at Montpellier university.
“The fourth wave in hospitalisations
can be delayed, it can be mitigated, if we
get 60 or 70 per cent of the population
vaccinated by the end of the summer,”
he said.
1.4
However, many still have misgivings
1.2 about the ethics of these mandates. To
Prof Adam Finn, who sits on the UK gov-
1.0
ernment’s Joint Committee for Vaccina-
0.8 tion and Immunisation, the most suc-
cessful vaccine programmes “don’t have
0.6
to provide sticks or carrots” and instead
0.4 rely on clear communication.
“It has taken decades to build up this
0.2
level of trust,” he said. “My instincts are
0 when it’s working well, be careful about
Jul meddling with it.”
Additional reporting by Daniel Dombey
and Eleni Varvitsioti
Rising prices
in US add to
worries about
inflation and
recovery
MATTHEW ROCCO — NEW YORK
US consumers were feeling less optim-
istic about the economy and more wor-
ried about rising prices, dimming the
outlook for the recovery.
The University of Michigan’s consumer
sentiment index, which fell to 80.8 from
85.5 the previous month, took the shine
off data yesterday showing a rebound in
retail sales during June, propelled by
strong demand at electronics stores,
clothes outlets and restaurants.
“Rather than job creation, halting and
reversing an accelerating inflation rate
has now become a top concern,” said
Richard Curtin, chief economist for the
university’s surveys of consumers.
Shoppers are facing “sticker shock”
on goods from chicken to used cars. The
consumer price index jumped 5.4 per
cent in June on a year ago, a 13-year high,
following a 5 per cent rise the previous
month. Wholesale prices have also
climbed, auguring an increase in costs
for consumers. The producer price
index was up 7.3 per cent last month, the
biggest yearly gain since at least 2010.
Federal Reserve officials have stood
by forecasts that surging inflation will
be shortlived, but some lawmakers have
argued the central bank and Biden
administration are underestimating the
risks inflation poses to the recovery.
In Congress this week, Fed chair Jay
Powell rebuffed suggestions that the
central bank has been complacent, say-
ing it would be ready to respond if infla-
tion outruns expectations.
“I know people are very worried
about inflation,” Powell said. “We hear
that loud and clear from every-
body . . . it is really going through the
economy and through every business.”
The consumer sentiment survey
found a record level of complaints over
rising prices on homes, vehicles and
durable goods, fuelling the index’s drop
to its lowest level since late February.
Respondents estimated a 4.8 per cent
rate of inflation in the year ahead, the
highest outlook since August 2008,
compared with 4.2 per cent in June.
“Inflation has put added pressure on
living standards, especially on lower-
and middle-income households, and
caused postponement of large discre-
tionary purchases, especially among
upper income households,” Curtin said.
Economists are watching sales trends
to determine if consumers are rushing
to buy goods now to get ahead of price
increases or instead using their cash to
build up savings or pay down debt.
Data from the US Census Bureau yes-
terday showed a 0.6 per cent rise in
retail sales on the month earlier, buck-
ing expectations for a 0.4 per cent fall, a
Reuters poll found. Retail spending had
slowed in recent months after a burst of
shopping earlier. In May, sales fell 1.7
per cent as the federal stimulus cheques
fillip waned. Paul Ashworth at Capital
Economics warned that inflation may
have “masked” weaker sales activity.
See Opinion

Environment. Pollution levy Emissions reduction

EU climate policy runs into torrent of criticism
France, Italy and Spain raise
concerns carbon measure will
cause hardship to households
MEHREEN KHAN — BRUSSELS
Brussels’ attempt to tackle climate
change faces a wall of opposition from
governments in the bloc claiming that
its plans would hit their households
with higher energy costs.
EU legislators said that the European
Commission’s attempts to expand car-
bon pricing to the biggest polluting sec-
tors of the economy such as cars and
buildings are at risk, as members object
that it will force its poorest to pay.
Frans Timmermans, the commis-
sion’s executive vice-president in charge
of the European Green Deal, said the
measures were needed to “put a price on
carbon, and a premium on decarbonisa-
tion”.
“Our current tools do not do enough.
If we don’t fight the climate crisis, we
will be fighting wars over water and
food,” he said.
Brussels on Wednesday presented 13
legislative measures to help cut average
greenhouse gas emissions by 55 per cent
by 2030 and to reach net zero by 2050,
when compared with 1990 levels.
At the heart of the strategy is a push to
expand the EU’s carbon pricing mecha-
nism, known as the Emissions Trading
System, where companies have to pay
for the cost of polluting.
Governments of some of the largest
states lined up to question the merits of
the expansion of the system to cover
emissions from road transport and the
heating of buildings, arguing it will have
a “regressive” effect on those people
who cannot afford greener alternatives.
Since its creation in 2005, the system
of allowances has been limited to the big
power generators and polluting indus-
tries that buy the credits to cover the
cost of their emissions. The EU carbon
price has hovered for the past month at
about €55 a tonne, or more than double
its pre-pandemic level, as traders bet
that the availability of carbon allow-
ances will need to tighten if the EU is to
meet its emission targets.
But France, Spain, Italy, Hungary,
Latvia, Ireland and Bulgaria raised con-
cerns about the impact on citizens at a
meeting of EU envoys on Wednesday
when they were briefed following the
release of the plans, diplomats said.
Ursula von der Leyen, the commis-
sion president, also faced down a revolt
among at least seven of her 26 commis-
sioners before presenting the plans. The
reforms will need the support of a quali-
fied majority of EU governments and
the European parliament to be realised.
A senior EU diplomat said the ETS
expansion could be abandoned, despite
being positioned alongside a proposed
€72bn fund to help alleviate energy pov-
erty. Tortuous talks are promised over
the package, starting in coming months
and expected to continue to 2023. The
contentious policies include a ban on
new diesel and petrol car sales from
2035, the introduction of a kerosene tax
for aviation, and a border levy on
imports based on their carbon content.
The so-called social climate fund was
also resisted by “frugal” northern coun-
tries such as the Netherlands, where
there is opposition to the greater redis-
‘We know there are pitfalls;
we need to be careful the
system sparks reductions
rather than the opposite’
tribution of funds in the bloc. “If the
fund is scrapped, the logic behind the
new ETS disappears,” said the diplomat.
The opposition has forced Brussels to
delay plans on how to use money gener-
ated from the carbon market and a bor-
der levy to pay back EU debt that was
scheduled for next week, said officials.
Germany and Denmark are among
those supporting the ETS expansion,
which Brussels says is needed to acceler-
ate the decarbonisation of transport and
buildings where emissions have been
steadily rising over the past 20 years.
Germany has been trialling a national
carbon market for cars and buildings
since the start of the year.
Dan Jorgensen, Denmark’s climate
minister, said the ETS had been success-
ful in reducing emissions from industry
and should be expanded. “We know
there are pitfalls, and we need to be
careful that the system sparks reduc-
tions rather than the opposite,” he said.
Pascal Canfin, a French MEP and head
of the parliament’s environment com-
mittee, said the measure risked ham-
pering the message behind Europe’s cli-
mate push in the eyes of citizens. “I am
supportive of the package but on [the
ETS] the narrative has become about
imposing new taxes. It is a real pity.”
France is due to play a central role in
leading talks on the green package as
Paris will take up the EU’s rotating presi-
dency next year, coinciding with presi-
dential elections. Emmanuel Macron’s
government, which has supported the
EU’s climate goals, has warned against
making consumers face the kind of
energy price rises that triggered the
gilets jaunes protests against him.
Canfin said the election run-up would
mean the French council presidency
“cannot give the green light to a measure
that is profoundly against what we want
to see”. An official said on heating “peo-
ple have no immediate alternative; they
can’t change their boilers overnight.
What seems important to us, because of
the gilets jaunes, is to have a way of help-
ing people through the change.”
Additional reporting by Sam Fleming in
Brussels and Victor Mallet in Paris
BoJ to offer zero-interest loans
for financing of green projects
ROBIN HARDING — TOKYO
The Bank of Japan will offer zero-inter-
est loans to lenders that finance cli-
mate-change projects as it becomes the
latest central bank to act on emissions.
Under the new scheme, expected to
launch before the end of the year, banks
will also be able to reduce the amount of
deposits with the BoJ that are subject to
a negative interest rate.
The arrangement in effect creates a
subsidy for commercial banks that
invest in emissions reduction over other
projects and could spur demand for
green bonds.
Separately, the BoJ made no changes
to monetary policy, keeping overnight
interest rates at minus 0.1 per cent, and
promised to buy bonds as needed to
keep 10-year government bond yields
around 0 per cent.
Under Yoshihide Suga, the prime
minister, Japan has promised to reach
net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and
the whole government is preparing new
policies to achieve that goal.
“The bank is not charting a totally
independent course on this. Rather it
will co-operate with the government on
its green strategy,” said Naoya
Oshikubo, senior economist at Sumi-
tomo Trust, before the meeting.
“Overall, this is a strong step forward
for Japan and embeds support for cli-
mate-change initiatives in the financial
system,” he added. The BoJ announced
broad outlines of the plan last month.
The details are similar to a BoJ scheme
brought in last year that offered cheap
loans to banks financing small and
medium-sized companies through the
Covid-19 downturn.
The loans will have a one-year tenor
but can be rolled over an unlimited
number of times, with the central bank
pledging to run the scheme until at least
2031. “Effectively, counterparties can
receive long-term financing for their eli-
gible investment or loans,” said the BoJ.
In addition to paying no interest, the
BoJ said commercial banks could add
twice the amount of any borrowing
under the scheme to their “macro
add-on balance” with the central bank.
The macro add-on balance pays an
interest rate of zero instead of negative
0.1 per cent. Japan’s commercial banks
hold large excessive reserves at the cen-
tral bank, created as the balancing item
to BoJ bond purchases. For an individual
bank, the rule in effect means they will
save 0.2 per cent — twice 0.1 per cent —
when they make an environmental loan
under the new scheme.
The total scale of the subsidy from the
BoJ is not clear because it will depend on
take-up and whether the central bank
moves to reduce macro add-on balances
granted for other reasons.
4 ★ FTWeekend 17 July/18 July 2021

INTERNATIONAL

South Africa

Unrest and looting co-ordinated, says Ramaphosa

Army moves in to restore
order after riots prompted
by Zuma’s imprisonment
JOSEPH COTTERILL — JOHANNESBURG
South African President Cyril Ram-
aphosa has said the country’s worst
unrest since the end of apartheid was
“co-ordinated” as the army moved in to
restore order after days of looting that
has destabilised two provinces.
Africa’s most industrialised economy
is reeling from scenes of anarchy in Gau-
teng, the economic hub, and KwaZulu-
Natal this week that left more than 200
people dead, wrecked businesses and
imperilled the country’s Covid-19 vac-
cine rollout. The unrest has lessened in
recent days as security forces have
deployed in larger numbers.
The unrest was initially prompted by
the imprisonment of Jacob Zuma, the
former president, for contempt of court
after he failed to attend an inquiry into
corruption during his nine-year tenure.
Zuma still has strong support in his
home province of KwaZulu-Natal,
which has a history of political violence,
and within parts of the deeply divided
ruling African National Congress party.
While his jailing provided the spark,
protests quickly spiralled into mass riot-
ing by people frustrated with high levels
of joblessness in one of the world’s most
unequal societies and months of hard-
ship under lockdown.
“These incidents of unrest and looting
were instigated,” Ramaphosa said yes-
terday as he arrived in Durban in Kwa-
Zulu-Natal, the worst-hit region.
“There were people who planned it.
They co-ordinated it. Our intelligence
services and our police have now got a
line of sight of what actually was hap-
pening here with the instigation and the
co-ordination,” said Ramaphosa, who
took over from Zuma in 2018. “We’ve
identified a good number of them and
we will not allow anarchy and mayhem
to just unfold in our country.”
Government ministers have previ-
ously pointed to signs of what they have
called “economic sabotage” by “sinister
elements”.
On Wednesday, the presidency said
one of 12 suspected key instigators had
been taken into custody. The domestic
spy agency is investigating whether its
own former agents had orchestrated
violence in KwaZulu-Natal out of loy-
alty to Zuma. A leading business family
related to Zuma denied this week that
it had played any part in the unrest.
Ramaphosa’s government is under
fire over what analysts have said were
failures to act on warnings of unrest
after Zuma was jailed last week. Police
often stood by while looters attacked
businesses this week.
Local media have reported that mem-
bers of the ANC sought to make the
country ungovernable in revenge for
Zuma’s jailing, including through the
co-ordination of attacks via social
media and by leveraging their ties to
former security agents loyal to the ex-
president.
“It will not surprise me if there are
also elements of people in the ANC
[seeking] to undermine and weaken
President Ramaphosa’s position,” said
Jasmine Opperman, a security analyst.
The economic damage in Durban,
Africa’s biggest port, is estimated at
more than R20bn ($1.4bn), with tens of
thousands of jobs in danger, according
to the city’s chamber of commerce.
Arson has wrecked significant infra-
structure in the city, including distribu-
tion warehouses, chemical works and a
drug manufacturer.
This week the government increased
military deployment to 25,000 person-
nel, 10 times the original number.

Diplomacy. The ‘change coalition’ China crackdown

Lapid presents a different Israel to the world
Foreign minister attempts to
reset international relations
after Netanyahu’s divisive rule
NERI ZILBER — TEL AVIV
In just four weeks in office, Yair Lapid,
the architect of Israel’s new coalition
government, has spent much of his time
overseas in a sign of a determination to
set a new tone in foreign relations after
the divisive 12-year reign of Benjamin
Netanyahu.
Since the eight-party coalition was
voted in last month, Lapid, the foreign
minister, has opened Israel’s first
embassy in the UAE, jetted to Rome for
consultations with Antony Blinken, the
US secretary of state, travelled to
Amman for talks with his Jordanian
counterpart and addressed EU foreign
ministers in Brussels.
“It’s been too long — there is a new
government, a new energy, let’s head to
a new beginning,” Lapid said in Brussels
on Monday, the first Israeli official to
address Europe’s Foreign Affairs Coun-
cil formally in more than a decade.
“Israel shares interests with the EU,
but more than that, it shares values with
the EU,” he added, citing human and
LGBT+ rights, the climate crisis, terror-
ism and democratic touchstones such as
a free press, strong civil society and free-
dom of religion.
Lapid, a centrist former TV journalist,
was the key figure in pulling together a
coalition united solely by the desire to
oust Netanyahu. That the EU extended
the invitation to Lapid, and that he
responded positively and made the trip,
was not lost on European officials, long
frustrated with Netanyahu’s policies on
West Bank settlements, Iran and inter-
nal European politics.
May’s conflict in Gaza also sparked
condemnation of Israel’s treatment of
Palestinians. It is unclear what will
change substantially. But Josep Borrell,
the EU foreign policy chief, said: “We
have a chance for a fresh start and for
strengthening our bilateral relations.”
A European diplomat added: “Netan-
yahu not being there is an immense
opportunity and, after many years,
the Israeli foreign ministry under Lapid
is back to being a centre of power.”
The Israeli government, billed as a
Political activism
Back in the loop: “change coalition”, has also sought to
Yair Lapid, left, mend ties with the US Democratic party
with Gordan in Washington, playing down public dif-
Grlic Radman, ferences on the Iran nuclear issue and
centre, Croatia’s highlighting its willingness for progress
foreign minister, on the Palestinian conflict.
and Josep Officials have met representatives
Borrell, EU from all of Israel’s Middle Eastern allies,
foreign policy a sign to the public that there is life after
chief, at a Netanyahu, who inked peace deals with
meeting of the several of them and in election cam-
bloc’s foreign paigns touted himself as a “league
ministers in apart” on the world stage.
Brussels on Netanyahu was infamous for monop-
Monday. Below, olising all foreign policy decision-mak-
Lapid meets ing and using populist governments in
Antony Blinken, eastern and central Europe to divide the
his US EU and forestall any criticism of Israel.
counterpart The new government is clear that it
Stephanie Lecocq/EPA-EFE/
Shutterstock/Pool/AFP/Getty
does not want to sever ties with nation-
alist governments. Rather, according to
one senior Israeli official, the approach
is to “broaden our alliances and work
with a wider set of countries”.
Israel under Naftali Bennett, the
prime minister, remains
opposed to a US return to the
2015 Iran nuclear deal, but
he has pledged that differ-
ences with Washington will
be managed discreetly
behind closed doors.
International officials
are clear that the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict will continue to be an impedi-
ment to better ties with some countries.
“A credible engagement, a stronger
relationship with Israel needs to revive a
path towards peace and justice for Israe-
lis and Palestinians . . . alike,” Borrell
said, while nodding to the “special com-
position” of the new Israeli government.
The Israeli coalition includes pro-set-
tler figures such as Bennett, an ultrana-
tionalist who has in the past advocated
the annexation of the West Bank, cen-
trists such as Lapid, leftwing groups and
an Arab party. Lapid, who will take over
from Bennett as prime minister as part
of the coalition deal, in Brussels touted
his support for a two-state solution,
although he admitted that a break-
through was unlikely in the near
term.
“No one [in this govern-
ment] is taking any big
steps on the Palestinian
issue, like [West Bank]
annexation, new settlements,
or for that matter final status
‘It’s been peace talks,” the senior Israeli official
said. “But there is room for progress and
too long — a more positive environment.”
there is a Western officials have been encour-
aged by the government’s willingness to
new energy, engage on practical steps to improve
let’s head economic conditions and stability in the
West Bank and Gaza.
to a new In recent weeks Israel has offered 1m
beginning’ Covid-19 vaccine jabs to the Palestinian
Authority (which the Palestinians later
Yair Lapid rejected), agreed to bolster trade ties
between Jordan and the West Bank,
inked an expanded water deal with Jor-
dan and resurrected joint ministerial
economic projects with the PA — all
steps that Netanyahu refused to take.
Whether such efforts are enough to
forestall another military escalation in
Gaza or unrest in the West Bank is
unclear. A test for the government will
be its policies on Palestinian home evic-
tions in East Jerusalem and settlement
construction in the West Bank.
“There is optimism [regarding
the Israeli government] but within a
very realistic set of parameters,” the
European diplomat said. “It’s a
diverse coalition with extreme differ-
ences. The question is what such a
coalition can load bear.”
Additional reporting by Valentina
Pop in Brussels
Biden warns
US business
on risks of
operating in
Hong Kong
DEMETRI SEVASTOPULO — WASHINGTON
PRIMROSE RIORDAN — HONG KONG
The Biden administration yesterday
warned US companies that they face
serious and escalating risks operating
in Hong Kong, as the Chinese govern-
ment increasingly cracks down on
freedoms in the financial hub.
The US issued a “business advisory”
about threats ranging from China’s abil-
ity to gain access to corporate data
stored on servers in Hong Kong to a new
Chinese law that imposes sanctions on
people or institutions that help foreign
nations enforce sanctions against Chi-
nese companies and officials.
US President Joe Biden was expected
to impose sanctions on several Chinese
officials in Hong Kong. The moves,
which were first reported by the Finan-
cial Times, are the latest effort to push
back against China over its increasingly
draconian steps against the pro-democ-
racy movement in the former British
colony.
It will also mark the first time that a
US administration has issued a business
‘US business in Hong
Kong wants engagement
and dialogue and
less mud-slinging’
advisory in relation to Hong Kong.
Sino-US relations have continued to spi-
ral downwards following the first top-
level meeting between the countries in
Alaska, which erupted into an acrimo-
nious public spat.
Beijing has since snubbed the US by
refusing to grant Wendy Sherman, US
deputy secretary of state, a meeting
with her counterpart during a proposed
encounter in Tianjin at the end of July.
China instead offered a meeting with the
fifth-ranking foreign ministry official,
which was rejected by the Biden admin-
istration. US officials stress that a meet-
ing may still happen if China reverses
course and offers up her appropriate
counterpart.
But the combination of the business
advisory and sanctions will probably
complicate talks. China reacted angrily

Olympics chief cautions athletes against ‘divisive’ protests at Tokyo games
MURAD AHMED — LONDON
SARA GERMANO — NEW YORK
The president of the International
Olympic Committee has warned ath-
letes against political protests at the
Tokyo games, calling on them to avoid
“divisive” statements that could over-
shadow the sporting event.
Thomas Bach said the games, which
begin next Friday, would be “by far the
most complex and most difficult ever”,
having been delayed a year due to the
pandemic and taking place only with
strict Covid-related restrictions.
Bach, a former Olympic fencing
champion for Germany, said he would
not support athlete activism during the
games’ most high-profile occasions.
“The podium and the medal ceremo-
nies are not made . . . for a political or
other demonstration,” Bach said. “They
are made to honour the athletes and the
medal winners for sporting achieve-
ment and not for their private [views].”
During the past year, amid a global
reckoning over racial and social injus-
tice, athletes have been at the forefront
of protest movements. European foot-
ballers and US basketball players have
“taken the knee” before matches in a
gesture against racism. Naomi Osaka,
the Japanese tennis star the Tokyo
organisers hope to present as the global
face of the games, has also been a vocal
critic of police brutality.
In recent weeks, the IOC has amended
its rules to allow for some dissent, such
as at press conferences and on social
media. But protests remain forbidden
on the field of play, in particular on
medal podiums, where Tommie Smith
and John Carlos, the US sprinters, raised
their fists in support of civil rights at the
1968 games in Mexico City in one of the
most high-profile protests by athletes.
“The mission is to have the entire
world together at one place and compet-
ing peacefully with each other,” Bach
said. “This you would never manage if
the games [became] divisive.”
Officials say privately that curtailing
dissent will be impossible to enforce.
Such acts have already occurred in the
run-up to Tokyo, such as during an US
Olympic trials last month when Gwen
Berry, the hammer thrower, turned her
back on the US flag and wore a T-shirt on
her head that read “Activist Athlete”.
This week, the British women’s foot-
ball team said they would take the knee
before Olympics matches. Political pro-
tests are just one of the difficult issues
facing organisers. The event is unpopu-
lar with Tokyo’s citizens, according to
recent surveys. There has been outrage
at apparent instances of Olympic offi-
cials breaking mask-wearing rules in a
city under a state of emergency.
About 11,000 Olympic and 4,400 Par-
alympians will travel to Tokyo, along-
side 41,000 coaches, judges and offi-
cials, staying in a “bubble” from the
public. Overseas visitors are banned
and there will be no spectators at events.
Bach defended staging the games with
such restrictions, saying it would be a
“tremendous showcase for Japan” to the
billions watching on television, and a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for
many of those competing.
He rejected the notion that the games
were going ahead to protect broadcast-
ing and sponsorship income, which was
worth $5.7bn in the four years running
up the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro.
Bach said it would have been financially
prudent to cancel the games and rely on
its pandemic insurance policies, but “we
would not abandon the athletes”.
Other big sporting events, such as the
European football championships, the
Wimbledon tennis tournament and
baseball matches in Japan have been
Gwen Berry, left, turns her back on
the US flag at 2020 trials in Oregon
played in front of large crowds. Bach
admitted he was “not happy” that Japa-
nese authorities had banned spectators
but added: “We supported this deci-
sion . . . because we think it’s a respon-
sible decision to ensure a safe Olympic
Games”. The event consists of 28 sports
taking place in 17 days across Japan.
To help reduce the chances of a coro-
navirus outbreak, the IOC struck deals
with Pfizer, the pharmaceutical com-
pany, and the Chinese government to
ensure about 85 per cent of athletes,
coaches and team officials will be vacci-
nated ahead of their arrival. Organisers
also plan to conduct hundreds of thou-
sands of daily Covid-19 tests on athletes.
Bach said there was a plan in place
that could mean multiple medals being
handed out in an event disrupted by
positive tests. If an athlete was unable to
compete in a final after testing positive
or who was forced into self-isolation,
they would receive the lowest rank
achievable in that final.
In combat sports such as boxing and
karate, that could mean two athletes
receiving a silver medal — one for the
person who qualified for the final but
could not compete, and the other to the
athlete who actually lost the gold medal
bout. This would “do justice to [both]
athletes, as one must be isolated”, he
added.
See FT View
in March when the US imposed sanc-
tions on Chinese officials just ahead of
the talks in Alaska, the first and only
high-level meeting between the coun-
tries since Biden took office.
Biden has taken a much tougher line
on China than most experts had
expected. He has rebuked China for its
aggressive military activity near Tai-
wan, the erosion of freedoms in Hong
Kong, its coercive economic behaviour
around the world and alleged genocide
of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
The deterioration in relations has
sparked concern in the business com-
munity, which had hoped Biden would
strike a less hawkish hone towards Bei-
jing than Donald Trump, his predeces-
sor. The prospect of the business advi-
sory has not been well received by the
US business community in Hong Kong,
with concerns that it could provoke a
backlash against American companies
operating in the city.
“US business in Hong Kong wants
engagement and dialogue and less mud-
slinging,” said one person involved with
US multinationals.
Multinationals in Hong Kong with
offices in mainland China, where data
privacy and national security laws are
tough and vague, say they understand
the risks even as Hong Kong becomes
more integrated with the mainland.
“This is to serve a political purpose in
Washington. They [companies] will
wait for this to work its way through the
system and then we can all try and for-
get about it,” said the person.
17 July/18 July 2021 ★ FTWeekend 5
6 ★ FTWeekend 17 July/18 July 2021

FT BIG READ. CUBA

The pandemic devastated Cuba’s all-important tourism industry and cut the state’s ability to finance food imports,
leading to shortages and higher prices. That hardship has triggered the first widespread protests in decades.
By Michael Stott and Marc Frank

‘There is no food, money or work’

C
uba’s communist revolution
is one of the world’s great
survivors. The Soviet Union
may have crumbled, the
Berlin Wall fallen and China
and Vietnam turned to a form of capital-
ism, but Havana still stands as a lonely
outpost of Marxist central planning.
Only North Korea can rival it for longev-
ity and unreformed socialism.
So when thousands of Cubans took to
the streets in apparently spontaneous,
uncoordinated protests last Sunday
calling for freedom and action to
address dire shortages of food and
medicine, a shockwave rippled across
the Caribbean island. Public dissent is
forbidden yet these were the largest
protests in decades, probably the
biggest since Fidel Castro and his revo-
lutionaries seized power in 1959.
Protesters in different cities over-
turned a police car, broke the windows
of a hard currency store to loot scarce
goods inside, gathered outside the
National Capitol building in Havana to
shout anti-government slogans and
fought with plainclothes police, accord-
ing to videos shot at the time.
Across the Florida straits, Miami’s
excitable Cuban-American community
rejoiced: this looked like the moment
they had long awaited, when ever
tighter US sanctions would finally
strangle Cuba’s economy, prompting the
population to rise up and overthrow
communism. “We have NEVER seen
a day like today in #Cuba,” tweeted
Cuban-American Florida senator Marco
Rubio, “62 years of misery, repression
and lies boiling over into organic, grass-
roots protests in over 32 cities.”
The communist government is facing
a major challenge to its authority for the
first time without a Castro in charge.
Fidel personally confronted demonstra-
tors on the capital’s Malecón seafront
boulevard in the last major protest in
1994, but he died in 2016 after a long ill-
ness. His brother Raúl retired as de facto
ruler in April and in June turned 90.
It fell to Miguel Díaz-Canel, a party
bureaucrat lacking any revolutionary
pedigree, to respond. Looking rattled,
the president initially made a blood-
curdling call to arms. “The streets
belong to the revolutionaries. I am
ordering you to combat,” he declared on
Sunday in an emergency broadcast.
But a public appearance in San Anto-
nio de los Baños — the town 25km out-
side the capital where the protests
began — failed to resonate in the same
way as Fidel Castro’s landmark stand.
“The deference and the fear of the
Castros has ended,” says Carlos Mala-
mud, senior Latin America researcher
at the Royal Elcano Institute in Madrid.
“There is no clear direction this will go.
The opposition is divided, fragmented
and very penetrated by the security
services . . . we will see in the next few
weeks what [its] ability to mobilise is.”
Cuba’s government may not be able
to guarantee food supplies but it has
mastered the art of control. Special
forces and police flooded the streets and
within hours the protesters had dis-
persed. Internet connections were cut
across the island, preventing dissidents
from organising. For the rest of the
week, the streets stayed mostly quiet.
Juan Pappier, lead Cuba
researcher at Human Rights
Watch, says more than 200
Above: last people have been detained since Sun-
Sunday’s day, though he says this is a conserva-
protests outside tive estimate. The government, he says,
Havana’s exercises “the maximum repression
National Capitol possible with the least visibility and
building were they go to great lengths to prevent
replicated bloodshed”. The authorities said that
across the one person died in the protests.
country. Below: But if Cuba’s government has been
reforms at the able to tamp down the protests, it
start of 2021 by
President
remains unclear how long it can main-
tain control with an economy in ruins.
Miguel Díaz-
‘Our president is no use’
Canel, including
a devaluation of José, 50, says he will always be a sup-
the peso, have porter of Fidel Castro but he is hungry.
made Cuba’s He earns 2,600 pesos a month — about
economic $100 at the official exchange rate — as a
situation more security guard at a state-owned com-
perilous pany in Havana. “I don’t understand
why we have a president who wasn’t in
Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Image
the revolution,” he adds, speaking on
condition his real name is not used.
“Fidel really had balls. In 1994 when
there was a much smaller uprising
. . . Fidel arrived to speak to the people.
That’s what I call a real president, he
loved us. This one we have now is no use,
he’s had a plane crash [which killed 112
people in 2018], a hurricane, Trump
and currency changes which nobody
understands.”
Shortages lie at the heart of the
protests. Cuba’s inefficient
state-controlled farming
sector has never produced
enough to feed the 11m population, forc-
ing the authorities to use ever-scarcer
hard currency to import staples. Díaz-
Canel admitted recently that food
imports are now a quarter of 2019 levels.
In state-run shops, the shelves some-
times have only one product in stock
and ration books must be used to buy
food. Prices in hard currency stores are
out of reach for most Cubans, so the
black market is thriving.
Cubans are taking scarce flights to
Florida and Latin America to bring back
as much as they can for lucrative resale.
In a tacit recognition of the importance
of these “mules” in relieving shortages,
Cuba this week lifted limits on the duty-
free personal import of food, medicines
and hygiene products.
Tourism, a big export earner and
source of dollars, has been devastated
by the pandemic. Cuba received 88,000
visitors between January and May this
year, according to the government, just
9 per cent of the same period last year.
The public health system, long a
source of pride, lacks medicines and
equipment. The authorities controlled
the pandemic well last year but, desper-
ate for hard currency, reopened tourism
from Russia this year. Infections rock-
eted and Cuba now has more new Covid
cases per capita than any other major
Latin American nation.
Remittances have been restricted
since the Trump administration
imposed sanctions on the Cuban mili-
tary-run agency handling payments. In
2020, Cuba’s inflows of foreign exchange
fell around a quarter, according to Díaz-
Canel, and they declined again this year.
According to official figures, gross
domestic product shrank by 10.9 per
cent last year and another 2 per cent in
the first half of 2021.
Making matters worse, Díaz-Canel
implemented economic reforms at the
start of 2021, devaluing the peso from
parity with the dollar to 24; it has since
sunk to 60 on the black market. Infla-
tion has soared — economists estimate
prices are rising 500 per cent a year.
“During two long periods the regime
found crutches which allowed them to
maintain the system without needing to
change anything,” says Malamud, refer-
ring to subsidies from the Soviet Union
and Venezuela. “The elimination of the
dual currency system had been planned
for a long time but they kept delaying it
. . . and they ended up doing it at the
worst possible time.”
In the days after the protests, Díaz-
Canel softened his tone. On Wednesday,
he acknowledged that the demonstra-
tors had some legitimate concerns,
though he pinned most of the blame on
the US. In another televised appearance,
he and his cabinet explained in great
detail efforts to keep the lights on and to
pay for cargoes of food. But the presi-
dent has little to offer until more people
are vaccinated and tourism resumes.
Cuba is not a member of the IMF or
World Bank, leaving allies Russia, China
and Venezuela as potential sources of
support. Venezuela’s socialist regime
is near bankrupt, while Moscow and
Beijing are reluctant to bail out a serial
bad debtor yet again.
“Before the winter season no major
pick-up of tourism can be expected,”
says Bert Hoffman, a Latin America
expert at the German Institute of Global
and Area Studies in Hamburg. “So if for
the next months the state has no better
ability to import food and other goods
and no rapid increase in domestic pro-
duction, it is likely that severe shortages
will persist.”
Economists argue that Díaz-Canel
should do more to support private busi-
nesses, which still lack legal status.
The view from Washington
If the Cuban government has few
good options, experts say the same is
true of the US administration, which is
battling multiple international crises,
including the July 7 assassination of the
president of Haiti, Cuba’s Caribbean
neighbour.
President Joe Biden has surprised
some Cuba-watchers by retaining
tighter Trump-era restrictions on the
island which he described this week as a
“failed state”. Political analysts say his
approach reflects concern about Dem-
ocrat electoral losses in Florida last year
and the need to have key administration
nominations confirmed by senate com-
mittees, that contain influential Cuban-
American hawks.
“Cuba policy has been held hostage to
the need to get [Senator Robert]
Menendez and Rubio on board for con-
firmations,” says Christopher Sabatini,
senior fellow for Latin America at
Chatham House. “It’s a tragedy and 11m
people are suffering.”
A senior US official said on Thursday
‘The that the Biden administration had been
reviewing Cuba policy but that the
opposition crackdown imposed by Havana since
is divided, January had affected its thinking.
Vulnerable to Republican attacks
fragmented over a surge in migration, the last thing
and very the Biden administration wants is a
repeat of the 1990s, when Fidel Castro
penetrated allowed more than 35,000 “rafters” to
by the leave on makeshift boats for the US. In
security a hint that such a policy could be
repeated, Cuba’s foreign minister Bruno
services. We Rodriguez said Washington risked
will see in “incitement of irregular and disorderly
migratory flows”.
the next few With both Havana and Washington
weeks what limited in their ability to respond to the
protests, the survival of Fidel Castro’s
its ability to system will depend on whether the
mobilise demonstrations die down or return with
greater force as shortages persist.
is like’ Carmen, not her real name, lives with
her 15-year-old daughter in a dark, tum-
bledown house in Guanabacoa, half an
hour from Havana. Last Sunday her
neighbours took part in the protests and
threw stones at the police but she did
not join in for fear of losing her house.
“There is no food, there is no money,
there is no work, there is nothing. [And]
we are tired of seeing the government lie
on television,” says the 48-year-old. “We
are not stupid, we know what happened
last Sunday. This president is no
good, he has no idea. He wants to be like
Fidel but nobody can reach his level.”

Obituary When Sir Nicholas Goodison became

chair of the London Stock Exchange at
by the endemic weakness of sterling.
The London Stock Exchange was still
and suggested that bringing foreigners
into the club might help raise the capital
fish, Goodison won majority support for
a deregulatory deal that transformed

Aesthete who
the unusually early age of 41, many a private club, many of whose members necessary to handle burgeoning inter- the City. Jobbers and brokers were
members thought this tall, gangling fig- denied that there was any public inter- national business. absorbed by big international banks
ure was far too intellectual for the job. est in its capital market functions, while The difficulty he faced was that the and floor trading shifted to screen-

steered the By then, in 1976, he had already written

one scholarly book on antique barome-
its foreign business was withering away.
At the same time, foreign banks and
Office of Fair Trading had brought a case
in the Restrictive Practices Court
based dealing.
Despite being under intense pressure

stock exchange
ters and another on the decorative art- brokers were coming into the City to do against the exchange’s rule book. It was in his unpaid role, Goodison maintained
work of the 18th-century engineer business in the vibrant, freewheeling impossible to discuss the threats and important positions in the art world.
Matthew Boulton. new Euromarkets. In the second half of opportunities presented by the aboli- These included the chairmanship of the

through the Yet a confident intellectual was pre-

cisely what the exchange needed to cope
the 1970s, there were more than 50 for-
eign brokers in London, mostly Ameri-
tion of exchange controls without
potentially weakening the exchange’s
management board of the Courtauld
Institute and the National Art Collec-

Big Bang
with a maelstrom that was transforming
the structure of global markets, just as
this emblematic City institution was
being threatened by the UK competition
authorities.
Sir Nicholas Goodison Goodison, who died on July 6 aged 87,
City grandee and connoisseur deftly steered negotiations that culmi-
1934-2021 nated, in 1986, in the deregulatory
measures known as the Big Bang. His
greatest achievement was to drag 4,500
exchange members into the modern
financial world.
This ascetic-looking aesthete, edu-
cated at Marlborough and King’s College
Cambridge, joined the family stockbro-
king firm HE Goodison in the late 1950s.
At the time, the City was hedged about
with tight exchange controls and
hampered in its international business
can and none of whom were exchange
members.
When the incoming Thatcher govern-
ment unexpectedly scrapped exchange
controls in October 1979, the exchange
was thrown into disarray. With its fixed
commissions and single capacity rule,
which prevented brokers from trading
on their own account, the exchange
appeared out of step and uncompetitive
in global markets.
Goodison had been remarkably pre-
scient on the challenges this would pose
for the City. Before becoming chair he
had argued forcefully that opposition to
dual capacity was out of date. Then,
before the Stock Exchange Council in
1977, he questioned whether there was
much risk in unfixing commission rates
position before the court.
In navigating these obstacles, Goodi-
son was greatly helped by David Walker,
the Bank of England’s director. Walker
saw the job-creating potential of a more
competitive City and lobbied fiercely in
Whitehall for the court case to be
dropped, while seeking to persuade
stock exchange member firms that
there was no escape from deregulation.
After the 1983 general election, the
incoming trade secretary Cecil Parkin-
son proved more sympathetic to these
arguments than predecessors such as
the former merchant banker John Nott.
A deregulatory deal between Parkinson
and the exchange was done. Despite
being regarded by some hostile
exchange members as a cerebral cold
Goodison dragged 4,500 exchange
members into modern finance
Despite being under
intense pressure in his
unpaid role, he
maintained important
positions in the art world
tions Fund (now the Art Fund), as well
as being vice-chair of English National
Opera. Asked how he managed this pro-
tean schedule he remarked: “I don’t
watch television, I don’t read the Sun-
day newspapers and don’t play golf.” He
was a prolific donor of works of art to
museums.
After securing the future of the stock
exchange, Goodison moved on to
become chair of TSB Group, the sixth
largest high street bank, and became
vice-chair of Lloyds Bank after its
merger with TSB. He was also a vice-
chair of British Steel and a director of
General Accident. He leaves a wife,
Judith (née Abel Smith), a son and two
daughters.
John Plender
17 July/18 July 2021 ★ FTWeekend 7
8 ★
SATURDAY 17 JULY 2021
Tokyo’s Olympics
need not be a flop
Suga is right to ban spectators to what will be a stripped-back Games
Travel to the ancient Olympics was
possible in almost any conditions — the
Games continued throughout the Pelo-
ponnesian War — although spectators
may not have relished conditions when
they arrived. There was no permanent
accommodation in remote Olympia, so
visitors camped in tents, plagued by
summer heat and flies.
The Games of the XXXII Olympiad,
better known as Tokyo 2020, will start
next Friday in a city with tens of thou-
sands of luxury hotel rooms. They will,
nevertheless, become the first Olympic
Games in history, ancient or modern,
to take place without spectators. After
a one-year postponement because of
Covid-19, prime minister Yoshihide
Suga has decided he cannot risk an
Olympic celebration when only a third
of the Japanese population have
received even a single dose of vaccine.
This is sad. But it is the correct deci-
sion. The doctors running Japan’s Cov-
id-19 response advised clearly and pub-
licly that the Games should be held
behind closed doors. Suga initially
defied them and said the stadiums
would be half full. He then reversed
course. The experience of the past 18
months suggests that decisions taken
for reasons of political expediency,
against medical advice, seldom look
wise in retrospect. Suga did at least
change his mind quickly.
Any sporting event lacking specta-
tors is diminished. Mutual energy
between athlete and crowd is part of
what makes the spectacle. The ques-
tion, then, is what can be salvaged from
the Tokyo Games.
Most of the meanings that Japan once
attached to Tokyo 2020 no longer
make sense. Former prime minister
Shinzo Abe meant them as the cap-
stone to his national revival; Covid-19
has put paid to that. Japan wanted to
show the world how the Fukushima
prefecture has recovered from the
The case for taxing
European flights
Making holidays more expensive will inevitably be politically difficult
If you fancied flying from London to
Tuscany this weekend, a one-way
ticket to Pisa cost just £4.99 on Rya-
nair, before any “optional” extras, and
a still reasonable £70.99 on easyJet.
This might not last. Of all the measures
set out in this week’s sweeping EU
climate action blueprint, the ones
ordinary Europeans may notice first
are those aimed at the bloc’s airlines.
Aviation has only accounted for
about 4 per cent of EU carbon emis-
sions in recent years and obviously fell
during the pandemic, but past trends
suggest curbs will be needed to make
sure flying does not endanger the bloc’s
goal of cutting emissions to net zero by
2050. Brussels aims to tax conven-
tional kerosene jet fuel for intra-Euro-
pean flights and require greener fuel to
be gradually blended in with kerosene.
Airlines would also have to eventually
pay for their planes’ pollution, as free
allowances under the EU’s emissions
trading system are phased out.
The aviation industry’s response to
these plans has been strident. Trade
bodies say the measures would eventu-
ally raise ticket prices and could be
counterproductive if aircraft fly longer
routes to skirt new levies. The Interna-
tional Air Transport Association says
taxes “siphon money from the indus-
try” that could support investments in
greener aircraft and technologies.
The association has a point. Govern-
ments should have done more earlier to
promote sustainable aviation fuels, the
main solution to the industry’s emis-
sions in the absence of planes powered
by electricity or other green alterna-
tives. Likewise, more could have been
done to help cleaner train journeys
compete against dirtier short-haul
flights. Yet the airlines’ arguments
would have more force if the industry
had shown a greater willingness to
effectively tackle its emissions in the
past. Instead, some of its members
2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear
disaster, but such visitors as can travel
to Japan will be quarantined in Tokyo
hotel rooms.
All that is left of these Games are the
athletes. It is to them that Japan must
look for meaning. Over the years, the
Olympics have become an increasingly
bloated spectacle of nationalism and
marketing. These Games will be the
closest to ancient Olympia in decades.
If sporting excellence gets its due,
Tokyo 2020 can still be a success.
The duty of the International Olym-
pic Committee and the organisers is to
ensure that Covid-19 does not interfere
with the sport. Athletes must follow
strict rules on mask wearing, social dis-
tancing and celebration, even though
the vast majority will be vaccinated.
Somebody is bound to break those
rules. Unless the violation is malicious,
the organisers should exercise the
greatest possible leniency. If any ath-
lete is expelled for violating coronavi-
rus rules it will be a failure.
Similarly, the organisers plan to
carry out daily Covid-19 tests on ath-
letes. With so many tests there are
bound to be false positives. Again, rules
should be followed with the greatest
possible generosity towards competi-
tors. Better an asymptomatic carrier of
coronavirus rows a boat or rides a horse
than an uninfected athlete is barred
after five years of training.
The pity is that these Olympic Games
have come a couple of months too
early. As the vaccines are rolled out
around the world, there is hope that
Covid-19’s deadliest effects are on the
way out. In the autumn, the stadiums
could have been filled, as they recently
were in Europe, where vaccination
rates are high, for the Euro 2020
football tournament. The world is hun-
gry for sporting spectacle. Let all
eyes be on the athletes, and let the
Games commence.
repeatedly resisted earlier EU efforts
to rein in pollution. Since then, public
demands for action have grown, along
with a new campaign of “flight sham-
ing” frequent flyers.
Even so, policymakers must ensure
that the burden of climate measures
does not fall too heavily on those least
able to carry it and, perhaps, most in
need of a holiday. The EU’s climate
plans include a €72bn “social climate
fund” to ease the impact on poorer
countries. Others have come up with
innovative ideas to specifically spur
fair green aviation policies.
Existing air passenger duties would
be scrapped and replaced by a frequent
flyer levy on the 15 per cent of people
who take 70 per cent of flights under
one proposal this month from a UK
think-tank. The plan would raise £5bn
a year, says the New Economics Foun-
dation, while limiting emissions and
offering poorer people a better chance
of travelling after the pandemic.
There will be much haggling to come
over the final shape of the policies in
the European Commission’s “Fit for 55”
climate blueprint, which is named for
the bloc’s aim to slash its greenhouse
gas emissions by 55 per cent from 1990
levels by 2030.
This is a profoundly ambitious tar-
get. It took nearly 30 years for the
emissions of the EU’s 27 current mem-
bers to fall 24 per cent from what
they were in 1990. Brussels now aims
to more than double the size of that
reduction in just nine years.
The scale of the climate crisis
demands such action. This week’s
deadly floods in western Europe, and
the searing heatwaves in North Amer-
ica before that, underline the need for
policies that should have been enacted
decades ago. All industries must play
their part in the far-reaching changes
needed to bring emissions down to
safer levels. That includes airlines too.
FTWeekend
Letters
Post-pandemic inflation in the US is much more like good news than bad, argues Kenneth Rogoff — Eleanor Bannister
Scourge of New York developers has made the city unlivable
In “Street life” (Spectrum, FT
Weekend, July 10) Rana Foroohar
mines Jane Jacobs’ writings on mid-
century American cities for insights
into how such places can now chart
their post-pandemic future.
Though Jacobs certainly has many
lessons for today’s urbanists, Foroohar
fails to grapple adequately with the
ways in which today’s urban ills are not
merely different from those that Jacobs
confronted, but are in fact the product
of people sticking to Jacobs’ ideas long
US Afghan exit recalls the
words of Vietnam general
I agree with Fawzia Koofi that the US
withdrawal from Afghanistan is
endangering the world (Opinion, FT
Weekend, July 10).
Long before his victory in 1975,
Hanoi’s defence minister General Vo
Nguyen Giap made this sinister
prediction, with which every well-
prepared Vietnam war correspondent,
including myself, became familiar,
even before arriving in that country:
“The enemy [meaning, the west] . . .
does not possess the psychological and
political means to fight a long, drawn-
out war.”
In his elegiac commentary on the fall
of Saigon, Adelbert Weinstein, the
brilliant military specialist of
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
summed up the reason for the triumph
of communism in one short sentence:
“America could not wait.”
I am sure the Taliban knew that
impatience was the Achilles heel of
democracies.
Washington and its allies, including
my own Germany, seem to have
ignored the hundreds of thousands of
South Vietnamese who were
slaughtered by the victorious
communists and the hundreds of
I adore Venice
without the
crowds. But can
it stay that way?
Notebook
by Gillian Tett
past the point of diminishing returns.
When Jacobs published The Death
and Life of Great American Cities in 1961
she was trying to save her home city,
New York, from powerful and
unaccountable bureaucrats (Robert
Moses being the most famous) who
imposed their visions on a
disempowered population. We should
be grateful that Jacobs helped end the
era of bisecting highways and tower-in-
the-sky public housing. But half a
century on, Jacobs’ alternative to the
thousands of boat people who drowned
fleeing their country. I am also certain
that other tyrannical powers are taking
note.
Today, I would feel even more
uncomfortable if I lived in Seoul, only
23 kilometres south of the North
Korean border, or indeed in Taiwan.
Uwe Siemon-Netto
Laguna Woods, CA, US
Some fatherly advice ‘not
to be shared with mother’
In last Saturday’s Letters, Katie Stokes
considered cancelling her direct debit
to her therapist after learning from
Lucy Kellaway that “the average age
women start to ape their mothers is in
their mid-30s” (“Counselling can be
the mother of reinvention”, Letters, FT
Weekend, July 10).
I feel I am uniquely qualified to
advise Katie to go ahead and cancel
immediately: at the age of 22 she has
already turned into her mother — and,
come to that, her grandmother. If the
therapist’s fee is £65 a week as she
reports, that’s a saving of an incredible
£43,900 by her mid-30s — surely
something to celebrate!
I would also point out to Katie that
while the prospect of becoming one’s
mother may appear alarming, or even
A few days ago, I took a break during a
work trip to Venice and went jogging
through the city’s narrow alleyways.
When I got to the Rialto Bridge I could
barely believe my luck at the clear
route ahead. On my previous work
trip to Venice a decade ago, I’d found it
hard to run here as the streets were
crammed with people.
No wonder: this tiny city received
an estimated 25m visitors in 2019. But
in spring 2020 the tourists
disappeared. And while they are
slowly returning, those Byzantine
alleys are still mainly empty.
For now, the city looks like an
enchanted movie set — even the
Piazza San Marco feels peaceful. But
this quieter version of Venice raises a
question that will resonate over the
months ahead: what does a return to
“normal” mean? Should a post-
pandemic world go back to its pre-
Covid state, or retain some aspects of
how life has been transformed?
I initially recoiled with horror at the
strictures of lockdown. But as months
passed, I realised I was not just
adjusting to this new “normal” but
relishing aspects of it (albeit guiltily,
since many others were having a very
tough time). Having experienced life
without constant jet lag and excess
social commitments, I am not sure I
want that old “normal” back in full.
The same issue is playing out in
Venice but with far more contentious
consequences. Before 2020, Venetians
had no idea what it would be like to
live without crowds. But the lockdown
— which was particularly draconian
If you are not satisfied with the FT’s response to your complaint, you can appeal
to the FT Editorial Complaints Commissioner: complaints.commissioner@ft.com
reign of Moses — hyper-decentralised
control of land-use decisions — has
turned into a sickness of its own.
Foroohar blames New York’s
eye-popping real estate prices on the
usual cast of villains: Russian oligarchs,
jet-setting hedge fund managers and, to
a lesser extent, well-paid professionals.
But the reason New York has become
unlivable for people with more modest
means is because the same plucky
neighbourhood groups Jacobs
championed as a counterweight to
off-putting, it is important not to
confuse the person with the role. And
the latter, of course, she is still in a
position to avoid. (Just don’t tell her
mother I said so.)
Andrew Stokes (father)
Sai Kung, Hong Kong
Space jaunts for the rich
come with a climate cost
Stunning. Richard Branson does not
own Disney World, so instead he has
developed his own very expensive
amusement park ride (“Branson gains
a head start in space race with Bezos”,
Report, FT Weekend, July 10).
What is the point of these jaunts into
space but for the entertainment of
some very rich passengers?
People concerned about global
warming point out how aeroplanes
damage the atmosphere. At least
airlines provide a travel service for
business or holidays.
There is no value to the passengers
on Virgin Galactic flights but the
pleasure of three of four minutes of
zero gravity, perhaps longer than a
similar experience available to riders
on a rollercoaster but at far greater
financial and environmental cost.
Ronald Kaiserman
Wynnewood, PA, US
here last spring, limiting residents to a
radius 200m from their homes — has
given them a taste of something new.
In their book, Venice Deserted, which
presents a visual record of this time,
French photographers Danielle and
Luc Carton, who have lived in the city
since 2005, observe: “The experience
was shocking in a psychological
sense . . . Stepping outside our house
engendered a curious mix of feelings:
uncontrollable anxiety . . . and
exceptional moments of serenity.”
The city’s birds had complete
freedom and the canals lay empty and
mirror-smooth. The lagoon became so
pollution-free that octopi and dolphins
were spotted in the Grand Canal.
The experience appears to have left
some Venetians, especially elderly
ones, reluctant to let crowds return.
“During the restrictions, every major
city saw something that hopefully
we’ll only ever see once in a lifetime —
the deserted city,” says Philippe
Donnet, CEO of Generali insurance
group, which has its headquarters in
Venice. “We shouldn’t forget the very
important lessons it told us about
respecting the environment and living
a balanced life.”
The city’s leaders are putting more
emphasis on ideas Donnet and others
started tossing around in 2019, about
making Venice a “world sustainability
capital”. Plans include diversifying its
economic base with measures to
attract artists and tech entrepreneurs,
rather than just relying on tourism.
The hope is that this could entice
back young families forced out by the
17 July/18 July 2021
Email: letters.editor@ft.com
Include daytime telephone number and full address
Corrections: corrections@ft.com
Moses have become powerful
incumbents hell-bent on preventing
new construction.
New Yorkers would do well to
consult the wisdom of another great
urbanist, Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan, who remarked: “When a
great city ceases to build, it commences
to die.” Though it exacted a terrible
toll, Covid didn’t kill New York. But
sticking to outdated ideas just might.
Michael Dresdale
New York, NY, US
Untangling the tale of the
capture of Major André
Simon Schama’s otherwise excellent
article, “America’s history wars”
(Spectrum, FT Weekend, July 10)
completely reverses one point of local
history. Major John André was not
captured before reaching Benedict
Arnold. He met Arnold and was
returning to British lines carrying the
plans to West Point which Arnold had
given him. Three local militiamen
captured André and found the plans in
his boot. A monument to the trio at the
place of capture is located in Patriots
Park in Tarrytown. André was hanged
as a spy.
Leonard S Hyman
Sleepy Hollow, NY, US
A retiree finds comfort
in an old English word
In retirement, I struggle to describe my
semi-artistic, craft activities. But now
it’s obvious. I am a “fangler”. I make
and create things. Thank you Gavin
Turner (“‘Newfangled’ was old hat
even to Shakespeare”, Letters, July 10)
for telling us the meaning of this old
English word.
Frances Clegg
London HA1, UK
lack of accommodation (with so much
of it lost to tourism). Some residents
want to limit crowds by charging
entry fees, ensuring only a small
group of high-spending visitors come.
The Italian government announced
that vessels weighing more than
25,000 tonnes will be barred from the
lagoon from August 1. In many ways,
this is sensible. Cruise ships appear to
have caused environmental damage,
and the city is under so much pressure
from climate change that Unesco was
threatening to classify it as an
endangered site unless it took action.
However, many local workers and
businesses depend on those tourists
and want them to return in as large
numbers as possible. Indeed, the
mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, is so
keen to rebuild the economy that in
April he was openly supporting the
return of cruise ships, telling the Il
Fatto Quotidiano newspaper that he
thought it was “a good solution for a
few years, until the government
decides to build a port outside the
lagoon — which I think is absurd”.
So, the fight will almost certainly
intensify. What this story shows is that
when a community experiences
something previously unimaginable, it
is not that simple to recreate the
previous “normality”, least of all when
the interests of elites and non-elites
are not aligned. Personally, I adore the
peace of Venice and wish it could be
permanent. But not if that peace
comes at others’ expense.
gillian.tett@ft.com
17 July/18 July 2021
Kenneth
Rogoff
I
s a modest burst of post-pandemic
inflation necessarily a bad thing?
With the US experiencing brisk
inflation (5.4 per cent in the 12
months ending in June) there is
growing talk of an inflation Armaged-
don if the Federal Reserve falls too far
behind the curve. There are real risks.
But maybe after a decade of below-tar-
get inflation, a few years of it being
mildly above target, say 3 per cent,
might be positively a good thing.
US inflation today is much more like
good news than bad. Prices are rising
mainly because the US economy is
doing vastly better than seemed possi-
ble a year ago — thanks to aggressive
vaccine procurement, continuing huge
macroeconomic support and a surpris-
ingly successful shift to remote work.
Known for creating elegant,
empowering clothes, the
industry darling is back
with her own label,
writes Lauren Indvik
I
n September 2018, on the evening
of Hedi Slimane’s debut show for
the LVMH-owned fashion label
Celine, a group of women gathered
outside Paris’s La Bar Du Caveau to
honour his predecessor, Phoebe Philo.
The “Philophiles” — among them
fashion stylist Yasmin Sewell, jewellery
designer Gaia Repossi and model Dan-
iela Kocianova — were clad in roomy
shirts, baroque pearl earrings and wide,
pleated trousers, their cashmere jump-
ers tied cross-body in imitation of Philo
herself. They were there to toast a
designer who, for a decade, had been the
de facto outfitter of fashion’s in-crowd,
as revered for the exact cut of her trou-
sers and trenchcoats as for her ability to
chart the course for the industry season
after season.
Three years after stepping away from
the white-hot centre of fashion — during
which she focused on raising her three
children in London — Philo is back. This
week, the 48-year-old British designer
announced she would launch a name-
sake label with minority backing from
her old employer, LVMH. She promised
clothing and accessories of “exceptional
quality and design” (read: prices at the
higher end of the luxury goods spec-
trum) and said that further information
would be forthcoming in January.
The announcement sent ripples
across an industry that had long specu-
lated that Philo would succeed Karl
Lagerfeld at Chanel, or take the top post
at a multibillion-revenue house such as
Burberry. But Philo has long harboured
ambitions to run her own label, telling
The Guardian in 2009 that after step-
ping down from Richemont-owned
Chloe, where she was creative director
from 2001 to 2006, she had explored
launching her own line, but “the time
wasn’t right and then Celine came along
and it just fitted”.
Securing backers for her venture was
presumably easier this time around.
Philo, alongside then chief executive
Marco Gobbetti, quintupled Celine’s
sales to just over €900m between 2008
and 2018, according to Citi luxury goods
analyst Thomas Chauvet.
“Phoebe has an incredible talent for
anticipating and creating the new
objects of desire for her audience,” says
Gobbetti, the outgoing Burberry chief
executive who hired her in 2008. “At
Celine, she had a transformative impact
on fashion and luxury, coming out of the
recession and creating incredible desire
and excitement for timeless yet modern
investment pieces.”
“We were all designing for Phoebe at
the end of the day,” says designer Rok
Hwang of Rokh, who worked under
Philo from 2008 to 2012. “She was really
the muse.”
Born in Paris and raised in London,
Philo was given a sewing machine for
her 14th birthday. She went to Central
Saint Martins with Stella McCartney,
whose right hand she went on to be at
Chloe before succeeding her there in
2001. At Chloe, Philo was credited with
ushering in the trend for baby doll
dresses and heavy leather accessories,
such as the Paddington bag.
Known for designs that made women
Don’t panic: a little inflation is no bad thing
The fact there are all kinds of tempo-
rary bottlenecks is hardly shocking.
Last year, Hertz, the car rental com-
pany, declared bankruptcy; this year,
with people wanting to travel again,
rental car rates have soared. With quar-
antine over, everyone suddenly wants
tradespeople to come inside their
homes to do repairs and to make
improvements. There are extremely
long wait times for refrigerators and
washing machines, even as their prices
have risen considerably. The job market
is tight, wage growth is strong and it is
probably getting stronger.
Would we feel better if the economy
were much weaker and inflation were
lower? Sustained inflation may be a risk
as the economy is dug out of its deepest
hole since the Great Depression. But an
unexpected setback in the fight against
the pandemic is a bigger risk.
In much of the US, there is a palpable
feeling that the pandemic is over. But
that is a very parochial view. True, in the
US, pretty much everyone who wanted
to be fully vaccinated has been able to do
Person in the News | Phoebe Philo
The cult fashion
designer returns
feel both empowered and elegant, her
tenure at Celine was marked by a suc-
cession of “it” bags — among them the
Trapeze and Luggage totes, and the slim
Trio cross-body — and timeless, prag-
matic clothes that sometimes command
above-retail prices on second-hand
websites.
Her designs often challenged conven-
tional good taste before coming to
define it: fur-lined slippers, trainers
with dresses, the single earring. “She
was the first to mix neons with subtle
colours,” says former Barneys fashion
director Marina Larroude of the trends
she introduced. “Now it sounds dumb,
because everyone does it. But whatever
she put on the runway, you knew that it
was going to be what the masses were
going to see in the next decade.”
Described as “precise,” “private”,
“enigmatic” and in possession of a “clear
vision”, friends and former colleagues
say what sets her apart from other
designers is a commitment to high
standards — “I find mediocrity hard,”
★ FTWeekend
Opinion
so; the vast majority of the unvaccinated
simply chose not to be. (Don’t ask me
why.) Yet the pandemic is far from over.
The two-thirds of the world’s population
that don’t live in an advanced economy
or China are in terrible straits. They can
only wish their biggest worry was infla-
tion — although in countries such as
Argentina, inflation is also out of control.
In 2008, as the financial crisis
unfolded, I argued emphatically that
central banks should relax their 2 per
cent inflation targets and aim temporar-
ily for 4 to 6 per cent inflation for a few
years. Had they moved quickly and
adopted effective negative interest rate
policies, I believe that would have been
possible. Higher inflation for a few years
would have helped stimulate demand
and taken the edge off many countries’
unsustainable debt burdens. (An alter-
native, first-best policy would have been
to write down subprime mortgage debts
in the US, and make unconditional
transfers from northern Europe to pay
for public debt writedowns in periphery
countries such as Greece and Portugal.
she told British Vogue in 2014 — and a
total focus on the customer.
“Phoebe’s way of thinking is really dif-
ferent from anyone I’ve worked with
before and after,” a former design col-
league says. “Especially in a male-domi-
nated industry, which fashion unfortu-
nately is, it’s very rare to have someone
‘Whatever she put on the
runway was going to be
what the masses were going
to see in the next decade’
who really thinks about the final cus-
tomer, and thinking about whether this
is practical, can you drop off your kids at
school doing this, is the earring too
heavy.”
Former colleagues say she resisted
trends proposed by Celine’s marketing
teams. One recalls a long search by Philo
for a suitable chain to use during a trend
Today, the situation is different.
Because the US Treasury and the Fed
stepped in so quickly and proactively,
there were actually fewer corporate
bankruptcies in 2020 than in 2019.
Given that bankruptcies normally rise
sharply in recessions, this admittedly
sounds a bit like too much good news.
But even with debt problems con-
Prices are rising mainly
because the US economy
is doing vastly better than
seemed possible a year ago
tained, there are still benefits from tem-
porarily higher inflation. The most
important is that the Fed needs to allow
above-target inflation occasionally — if
it is serious when it says it targets 2 per
cent as an average. Many had begun to
wonder if that was even possible. After
the inflation drought of the past decade,
a mild downpour is welcome. Making
for bags with chain straps, which she
believed dug into women’s shoulders. “I
don’t like clothes imposing themselves
on women,” Philo said of the tension
between fashion and function in 2014.
“They are to be used in real life.”
Though Celine’s revenues grew
quickly, and Barneys sold “multimil-
lions” of Philo-designed jumpers annu-
ally, “she was not a commercial
designer”, says Larroude. “She didn’t
want to do the beauty and the men’s, she
didn’t want the machine. I think she
wanted to keep it at a certain standard.”
Those who know and have watched
Philo closely believe she will take the
same approach to her own venture.
“We just all naturally assumed that
other brands would fill the gap [left by
Philo after she left Celine] and they
didn’t,” the former colleague observed.
“If there’s so much excitement that she’s
back, it’s because no one was able to fill
that void.”
lauren.indvik@ft.com
the Fed’s target inflation more credible
should help shift up the term structure
of interest rates and give the Fed more
room to cut them in future.
In fact, economic theory gives very lit-
tle robust guidance on whether, say, 3
per cent inflation is better than 2 per
cent in normal times, so long as it
remains reasonably stable and predicta-
ble. When Olivier Blanchard was
IMF chief economist in 2010, he argued
that inflation targets should be raised to
4 per cent.
Sustained inflation of, say, 3 per cent
would also offer an opportunity to
reconsider the Fed’s current 2 per cent
target. This is hardly a radical idea: a few
central banks such as Australia and
Hungary already have a higher inflation
target and others such as the Bank of
Canada have considered the idea. True,
as I have long argued, a far more elegant
way to give central banks greater room
to cut in a deep recession is to lay the
groundwork properly for uncon-
strained negative rate policy, but I leave
that to another day.
Apple and Klarna are
cutting up credit cards
W
hen Apple and Gold-
man Sachs explore a
new line of business,
there is probably
money in it. So the news
that Apple, backed by Goldman, plans
to add a “buy now, pay later” feature to
Apple Pay shows that financial opportu-
nity knocks.
Using a credit card is no longer the
easiest way to delay making a retail pay-
ment in full, thanks to financial technol-
ogy companies such as Affirm and
Klarna. They let shoppers pay for any-
thing from fashion to Peloton exercise
cycles in interest-free instalments. With
Klarna being valued at $45.6bn last
month, Apple is on its trail.
If used wisely, buy now, pay later
(BNPL) can be a clever innovation. It
allows people to smooth out their bills
over a few weeks or months without
paying high interest charges on credit
and store cards. Retailers cover the cost
of credit to entice shoppers to spend
more online or in their stores.
Given the profits that banks and other
card issuers make, it is time they faced
such a challenge. People who clear their
balances monthly do not pay interest,
but those who roll them over are
charged heavily: US households carry-
ing credit card debt will pay average
interest of $1,155 this year, estimates
NerdWallet.
The basic idea of credit cards has not
changed a great deal since 1958, when
Bank of America launched the first card
featuring revolving credit (followed by
Barclaycard in the UK in 1966). All
kinds of extras have been attached
since, from loyalty points to insurance
and rewards, but rolling monthly credit
remains the essence.
Credit cards used to be the most con-
venient way to make many payments,
since writing a cheque or paying cash
were the main alternatives. In the frac-
tured US banking system, they also ena-
bled travellers to settle restaurant and
hotel bills easily in other states.
Technology has now altered the land-
scape: debit cards have overtaken cash
as a payment method in the UK, with
contactless transactions, including
those on Apple Pay and Google Pay,
growing rapidly in the pandemic. The
drawback is that the smoothing func-
tion of credit cards is lost: payment is
usually immediate.
This is where Klarna and rivals such
as Afterpay come in, along with PayPal’s
Pay in 4 (making a payment in four
parts over six weeks). The concept of
being able to make payments simply in
interest-free instalments is so compel-
ling that competition is growing rapidly.
Afterpay’s shares fell sharply this week
when PayPal announced it would offer
Pay in 4 in Australia.
Top reads at FT.com/opinion
3 UK benefit cuts focus debate on the
shape of the post-Covid safety net
A choice of more welfare or better jobs is
not a real trade-off, writes Sarah O’Connor
9
I have emphasised the positive
aspects of moderately higher inflation
for a few years. But there are risks. The
biggest is if the open-ended expansion
of government spending and transfers is
not substantially (it need not be fully)
offset by higher taxes. If the global cost
of borrowing should rise unexpectedly,
the higher cost of servicing the bigger
debt load could lead to government
pressure on the central bank to keep
nominal rates down — risking inflation
that eventually becomes severe.
For the moment, markets seem
thoroughly unconcerned — almost too
much so given the pervasive uncer-
tainty around the global economy as it
emerges from the pandemic. Still, at
least for now, mildly elevated inflation
more likely signals that things are going
well than that we are doomed. There
is no reason for the Fed to squash it
too quickly.
The writer is a professor of economics and
public policy at Harvard university and
former chief economist at the IMF
The idea works best for expensive
goods — the kind of household items
that were traditionally paid for on
instalment plans, or in the US on laya-
way (making small payments to a shop
but only collecting the furniture or
washing machine when the whole bill
was settled). Peloton’s partnership with
Affirm to spread payments on its $1,900
bikes is a modern incarnation.
The proviso is, of course, if used
wisely. Adam Smith, the 18th-century
economist, observed in The Wealth of
Nations that “the principle which
prompts to expense is the passion for
present enjoyment”. Buying on impulse
is a powerful human instinct, encour-
aged by advertising and Instagram
influencers used by brands including
Klarna.
Many BNPL services have been used
not to spread the cost of high value
items, but to buy more cheap ones. The
average outstanding balance on a UK
credit card was £1,560 in March, while
Klarna says that its average user balance
is £48 — it is being used more like debit
than credit.
Three quarters of the UK users of
BNPL are aged between 18 and 36, and
90 per cent of transactions have been
for fashion and footwear, according to a
review this year for the Financial Con-
duct Authority that advocated regulat-
ing it. Paying in instalments makes
cheap clothes seem very cheap indeed.
This lack of friction is exacerbated by
retailers presenting deferred payment
as the default option, a practice that was
If used wisely, buy now, pay
later can be a clever
innovation and it is time
banks faced a challenge
barred in Sweden last year. It can be easy
to skip from shop to shop, running up a
rolling balance on Klarna or its rivals
without keeping in mind the bill that
will eventually land.
Paying in instalments can also shade
into paying for credit if the schedule
stretches out — Klarna offers credit at an
APR of up to 18.9 per cent for deferring
payments from six to 36 months, while
Affirm can charge between 10 and 30
per cent. They promise greater trans-
parency than traditional cards, but the
cost is still high.
Fintech excites investors, with the
London-based start-up Revolut now
valued at $33bn, but BNPL providers
need to ensure that unwary shoppers
can really afford their credit. A report
for Klarna estimates that a fifth of UK
adults used such services in the year to
March: as with many inventions, the
trick is to examine them closely.
The age-old flaws of credit cards
mean there is plenty of space for shop-
pers to gain from an alternative. But if
and when Apple Pay Later appears on
iPhones, the usual warning applies:
think before you tap.
john.gapper@ft.com
3 The G20 has failed to meet its challenges
on the pandemic and climate change
Lack of a truly global response augurs
badly, writes Martin Wolf
10
Waiting for Gensler Crypto and a very
American regulatory failure — ON WALL STREET
Chinese regulators swoop on
Didi offices in security probe
3 Spy ministry staff installed 3 Six agencies involved 3 ‘Warning shot’ for tech
The scale of Beijing’s investigation into the ride-hailing group is likely to spook China investors and dent appetite for offshore IPOs — Feature China/Barcroft Media via Getty
YUAN YANG — BEIJING
China’s powerful state spy agency and
six other government departments have
taken the unusual step of stationing
investigators in the offices of Didi Chux-
ing to conduct a security probe of the
ride-hailing group.
The review, which sent Didi’s share
price plunging when first announced
after the company’s $4.4bn US initial
public offering this month, marks the
first time the Ministry of State Security
has publicly announced it will tempo-
rarily base staff inside a company.
The Cyberspace Administration of
China, the regulator in charge of co-
ordinating the cyber security review on
Didi, said yesterday that the probe
would also involve the police, tax
authorities, the market competition
regulator, and industry regulators for
natural resources and transport.
“The announcement of which agen-
cies are involved is a warning shot to
other companies that you don’t mess
Fraud claims
Uzan brothers launch $68bn lawsuit
ANNA GROSS AND VICTOR MALLET
PARIS
AYLA JEAN YACKLEY — ISTANBUL
Members of Turkey’s Uzan family of
business tycoons are suing groups
including Vodafone, Motorola and
BlackRock for $68bn over assets and
potential earnings they claim were
“fraudulently” taken from companies
formerly owned or affiliated with the
family.
The civil case, which has been brought
in Paris by two Uzan brothers who live
in France, centres on allegations of a
“colossal abuse of power” by the Savings
Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF). The
Turkish state body takes over banks, as
well as other assets held by their owners,
when lenders fail.
The sprawling saga dates back two
decades and involves more than 50
defendants, including the TMSF and
dozens of Turks, who the Uzan family
claim either colluded or collaborated in
the seizure of companies and assets by
the state.
Cem Cengiz Uzan, who has been
granted political asylum in France
according to his lawyer, and his brother
Murat Hakan Uzan, allege that more
than 130 companies — of which family
members were either shareholders or
with national security but it’s also an
attempt by Beijing to make the review
process more transparent,” said Feng
Chucheng, partner at consultancy
Plenum.ai.
The scale of the investigation into
Didi, which the CAC announced two
weeks ago, is likely further to frighten
investors in Chinese tech stocks and
damp appetite for offshore IPOs.
The CAC followed up the security
review into Didi with a series of punitive
measures that sent its share price down
20 per cent over the week following its
IPO. The agency also proposed new
rules banning companies with more
than 1m users from listing abroad until
they had received official permission
after undergoing a security review.
The CAC did not detail its concerns,
referring only to data and national secu-
rity risks. Before the IPO, the CAC had
asked Didi to rectify its mapping labels,
fearing they could reveal sensitive loca-
tions, such as military bases, people
familiar with the matter said. But there
beneficial owners — had their assets
“fraudulently captured”.
They claim that there was no proof
that these companies or their owners
had any connection to illegal activity
allegedly committed by the now-de-
funct Imar Bank, also once owned by
the Uzan family, who were accused of
siphoning nearly $6bn of funds from it.
Though not the subject of the current
lawsuit, the Uzan family deny any
alleged fraud connected to the bank,
which they say was never proved.
Vodafone and Motorola
reject accusations that
they colluded in seizure of
assets by the Turkish state
In 2004 the TMSF seized the sprawl-
ing media-to-energy business empire of
the Uzan family to “recoup public
money” lost in the collapse of Imar. It
then sold the assets to groups including
BlackRock to pay down some of the bil-
lions of dollars in bad debts.
Motorola’s involvement in the affair
dates back to 1998 when the US group
lent $2bn to Telsim, a telecoms com-
pany owned by the Uzans, which was
subsequently defaulted on. In the early
★ FTWeekend
is no evidence yet that sensitive data
have been leaked.
Li Min, Didi’s vice-president, has
responded to speculation on social
media, saying it is “absolutely not possi-
ble” it could have given data to the US.
Didi’s investigation is also the first
public instance of Beijing using its new
cyber security review mechanism. Just
‘Firstly, this inspection
will be comprehensive,
and secondly, it will
not be too short’
over a year old, the procedure was
designed to assess supply-chain security
rather than data security.
The unprecedented nature of the Didi
case and the lack of detail over what a
review involved had put the company in
uncharted territory, legal experts said.
“It’s extremely unusual. There will be
all-round compliance risks,” said Xu Ke,
2000s, a US district court found that the
Uzans had committed a “massive fraud”
in obtaining loans from Motorola. Tel-
sim was then sold to Vodafone for
$4.5bn. A TMSF spokesman said the
regulator has received no official notifi-
cation of the lawsuit.
Motorola said it was aware of the case,
which it described as “part of the Uzan
family’s continued efforts to evade a
multi-billion-dollar judgment entered
in favour of Motorola Credit Corpora-
tion”. It added: “Motorola Solutions
intends to continue its legal efforts to
obtain a full collection of the sums it is
owed by the Uzans.”
Vodafone said it had not been notified
about the case and that any allegations
that it had contributed to defrauding
the Uzan family “are strongly denied,
contradicted by the facts and will be
strongly defended if they are pursued in
any legal proceedings”.
BlackRock declined to comment. The
$68bn the Uzans now claim relates both
to the value of the assets at the time of
their sale and the dividends they say
they would have received since then.
Cem Uzan fled Turkey more than a
decade ago, avoiding a jail sentence after
his conviction for membership of a
criminal organisation that engaged in
forgery, bribery and fraud.
Eurobulls Investors learn to stop worrying
and love the region’s equities — THE LONG VIEW
head of the internet law institute at the
University of International Business
and Economics in Beijing.
The number of agencies involved also
raised the risk of disagreements and a
prolonged review process, during which
Didi was banned from signing up new
users. Under cyber security review reg-
ulations, a preliminary review must be
concluded within 60 working days, or
three months. If the different agencies
disagree on their conclusions, a special
review should be launched, which can
last another 45 business days or more.
“All the main regulators are there,
which means that firstly, this inspection
will be comprehensive, and secondly, it
will not be too short,” said James Gong,
lawyer at Herbert Smith Freehills.
Kendra Schaefer, tech analyst at
Beijing-based consultancy Trivium,
said: “It’s been made quite clear in the
regulatory documents that there are
questions of co-ordination and a lot of
cooks in the kitchen.”
Additional reporting by Nian Liu in Beijing
Sport
Manchester City owner raises $650m
SAMUEL AGINI, MURAD AHMED,
ROBERT SMITH AND STEPHEN MORRIS
Manchester City’s parent company has
raised $650m in one of football’s big-
gest ever debt deals as it seeks to step
up investment in its international net-
work of football clubs.
City Football Group, the Abu Dhabi-
controlled holding company that owns
the English Premier League champions
alongside clubs in the US, Australia and
India, recently raised the loan, which
will come due in July 2028, according to
several people familiar with the deal.
The debt deal beats the €525m debt
refinancing arrangement between
Goldman Sachs and Spain’s FC Barce-
lona agreed in June, and is roughly the
level of England’s Tottenham Hotspur,
which borrowed £637m in 2019 from
banks to build its new stadium.
CFG intends to use the money to fund
infrastructure projects such as a new
stadium for its Major League Soccer
franchise New York City FC, which has
been mooted for years but still requires
approval from local authorities.
But the group has shown an appetite
for rapid growth, having either taken
full ownership or bought minority
shares in 10 clubs around the world over
the past decade.
GSK plans biotech park
creating up to 5,000 jobs
SARAH PROVAN AND HANNAH KUCHLER
GlaxoSmithKline plans to build one of
Europe’s largest biotechnology cam-
puses, creating up to 5,000 UK jobs and
attracting £400m of private invest-
ment.
The pharmaceuticals group will sell 33
acres of land on its site in the Hertford-
shire town of Stevenage to raise funds
from private investors and transform it
into a life sciences park.
The venture would aim to create up to
5,000 jobs over the next five to 10 years,
the drugmaker said.
GSK intends to select a development
partner this year to start work in 2022
and transform the land within the com-
pany’s 92-acre research and develop-
ment site.
“Our goal is for Stevenage to emerge
as a top destination for medical and sci-
entific research by the end of the dec-
ade,” said Tony Wood, senior vice-
president of medicinal science and tech-
nology at GSK. “The past 18 months has
shown the UK life sciences sector at its
best,” he added, noting that the country
had developed a 10-year vision for its
life sciences sector.
The investment comes as GSK pre-
pares to spin off its consumer health
division, leaving a slimmed-down busi-
ness focused on pharmaceuticals and
Automobiles
Start-up Lordstown Motors
faces federal investigation
CLAIRE BUSHEY — CHICAGO
US federal prosecutors are investigat-
ing electric vehicle start-up Lordstown
Motors, examining its pre-orders and
merger last year with special purpose
acquisition company DiamondPeak
Holdings.
The company disclosed the investiga-
tion by the US attorney’s office for the
southern district of New York in a regu-
latory filing on Thursday.
In March, short seller Hindenburg
Research accused the Ohio manufac-
turer of inflating pre-orders and exag-
gerating the viability of the technology
used in its flagship pick-up truck, the
Endurance.
The US Securities and Exchange Com-
mission has been examining the com-
pany for months and has sent it two sub-
poenas. Thursday’s filing is the first con-
firmation from the company that there
is also a criminal investigation.
“We have co-operated, and will con-
tinue to co-operate, with these and any
other regulatory or governmental inves-
tigations and inquiries,” Lordstown said.
Lordstown attracted national atten-
The seven-year loan was underwrit-
ten by Barclays, with HSBC and KKR
Capital Markets helping arrange and
distribute the debt, according to people
familiar with the deal.
Separately, CFG has organised a revol-
ving credit facility worth £100m with
the same finance providers, though a
person close to the group said there was
no immediate plans to draw down on it.
CFG declined to comment. People
close to the deal said its executives had
opted for raising debt, believing it to be a
cheaper route to cash than selling more
equity. CFG sold a 10 per cent stake to
US-based private equity firm Silver
Lake Partners for $500m two years ago,
which valued the group at $4.8bn —
Manchester City, now one of English
football’s most successful clubs
17 July/18 July 2021
vaccines. The “new GSK” is trying to
revamp its drug pipeline by investing
heavily in research and development.
But the spin-off also raised questions
about whether the group could be an
acquisition target for foreign buyers,
potentially worrying some politicians
who are pushing the UK as a hub for life
sciences investment after Brexit.
The UK government revealed its 10-
year strategy for life sciences invest-
ment this month, hoping to accelerate
the development of treatments for dis-
The UK drugmaker
is seeking to
unlock £400m of
private investment
for the site in the
town of Stevenage
eases such as dementia, and new
immune therapies such as cancer vac-
cines.
As commercial property has strug-
gled because of lockdowns and concerns
that many workers will not return to the
office full-time, some landlords have
been keen to invest in life science cam-
puses.
A record £2.4bn was invested in life
sciences property in the “golden trian-
gle” of London, Oxford and Cambridge
in 2020, says Bidwells, a consultancy.
tion in 2019, when it said it would buy
the auto plant that General Motors
planned to close in north-east Ohio, a
region that has struggled economically.
The Detroit automaker loaned the
start-up, which was seen as one player in
the push to revitalise the area, $40m for
the purchase.
But three months after Hindenburg
Research published its report about the
company, Lordstown acknowledged
that some of its pre-orders were
unlikely to result in purchases.
“One entity that provided a large
number of pre-orders does not appear
to have the resources to complete large
purchases of trucks,” the company said,
while others “provided commitments
that appear too vague or infirm to be
appropriately included in the total
number of pre-orders disclosed”.
But the manufacturer defended its
technology and production timeline.
In June, the company said it did not
have enough cash to start production of
the Endurance and that its business
could fail. Less than a week later, the
chief executive and chief financial
officer resigned.
then a record sports group valuation. A
further 12 per cent is owned by China
Media Capital, a venture capital group.
The majority owner is Sheikh Man-
sour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a member of
the Abu Dhabi ruling family who bought
Manchester City in 2008. He has spent
an estimated £1bn on transforming the
club from an also-ran into one of the
most successful in English football.
Critics suggest such spending skews
competition in England and Europe,
while human rights activists say it is
part of a “sportswashing” project to
clean up the global image of the United
Arab Emirates. Sheikh Mansour’s
brother is Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-
Nahyan, the Gulf nation’s de facto ruler.
The new debt deal ties the group
closely to western financial institutions.
A year after Silver Lake’s investment in
CFG, it secured $2bn from Mubadala,
Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund,
which is run by Khaldoon al-Mubarak,
who is also Manchester City chair.
CFG’s revenue dropped to £544m in
the financial year ended June 2020,
down almost 14 per cent year on year.
The group’s annual net loss widened to
£205m from £84m a season earlier.
Manchester City swung to a net loss of
£126m in the 2019-2020 season from a
net profit of £10m the year before.
17 July/18 July 2021
Activist delivers a
refreshing remedy
for ESG hot air
The Top Line
Tom
Braithwaite
Kitesurfing founder of Revolut rides
fintech wave to $33bn valuation
Fundraising sees ‘unflappable’
chief executive take British
digital bank into big league
NICHOLAS MEGAW
The first time Revolut became Britain’s
most valuable fintech, Nikolay Storon-
sky was disappointed.
A fundraising round last year lifted
his company’s valuation well ahead of
any British peers to $5.5bn, but the chief
executive “really wanted to get $10bn or
more”, according to one person who
worked with him on the deal. “In some
ways his view was it was too cheap
before . . . he’s got a pretty bullish men-
tality.”
This week, the digital bank Storonsky
co-founded six years ago went several
steps further. An $800m fundraising
gave Revolut a $33bn valuation, making
it the biggest private technology com-
pany in British history, and one of the
largest in the world.
Revolut was hailed by senior figures
including Rishi Sunak, the UK’s chan-
cellor of the exchequer, as a “great Brit-
ish fintech success story”, though Sto-
ronsky himself did not stick around to
celebrate.
While the company’s chief financial
officer, Mikko Salavaara, announced
the fundraising to reporters early on
Thursday morning, his chief executive
was already en route to a rare holiday,
kitesurfing in Rhodes.
“Even when it’s super intense, that’s
his way of keeping straight under pres-
sure,” said Martin Mignot, an early Rev-
olut investor with Index Ventures. “He
is totally unflappable . . . I don’t think
he ever doubted his success.”
The trip speaks to the priorities of the
36-year-old former investment banker,
who has developed a reputation among
colleagues and peers as a ferociously
‘In order to be really large,
you need to strive for huge
goals, which seem like
they’re low probability’
hard worker who is obsessed with data
and takes a hands-on approach to build-
ing Revolut’s products, but has less
interest in the showmanship and sales
skills of some high-profile tech entre-
preneurs.
“I never agreed with the role of CEO as
salesperson, or just a person with
vision,” Storonsky told the Financial
Times. “You need to have a vision we all
want to achieve . . . [but] every man-
ager needs to know the details. If they
don’t, they can’t change the direction of
the company, they can’t distinguish
what is good and what is bad.”
A former equity derivatives trader
who studied physics and was a competi-
tive swimmer at university, Storonsky
founded Revolut with chief technology
officer, Vlad Yatsenko, in 2015. It
launched in London as a prepaid debit
card offering cheap foreign exchange for
frequent travellers, but has since
expanded into more than 30 countries,
and services from commodity trading to
business banking.
His long-term ambition is to create a
“superapp” that would provide all the
financial services a customer might
need in a single place. That concept
showed Storonsky’s “contrarian” think-
ing, said Mignot, at a time when other
fintechs were focused on narrow niches.
“People in Britain are very conserva-
tive,” Storonsky said. “People don’t
make big, ambitious goals. It’s preferred
to set moderate goals with a high proba-
★ FTWeekend
COMPANIES. WEEK IN REVIEW
PwC made a splashy announcement
last month. The accountancy firm said
it would invest $12bn and hire 100,000
staff to help companies “create a
virtuous circle between earning trust
and delivering sustained outcomes”.
That hiring spree is bigger than the
total workforce at Caterpillar, Shell or
Procter & Gamble. It is part of a
strategy called The New Equation. And
that equation is: $12bn + ESG blather =
$$$$$.
Fittingly for environmental, social
and governance initiatives, which are
riven with empty rhetoric and fuzzy
targets, PwC is vague on where the
money and personnel will be deployed.
Although the whole project is infused
with ESG language, some of the hires
will be doing traditional jobs such as
auditing rather than advising
companies on their ESG strategies. But
that is no reason to be sceptical of the
business opportunity.
Such is the corporate desperation to
be seen to be making progress on ESG
that the new equation is certain to be a
successful formula. The whole ESG
complex is cranking up into high gear
Corporate Person in the News. Nikolay Storonsky
Revolut becomes one of the largest private companies
Estimated value ($bn)
UK
0 10 20 30
Revolut
Checkout.com
Global Switch
Hopin
Blockchain.com
Howden Group
Snyk
Oxford Nanopore
Source: CB Insights
Nikolay bility of success. But in order to be really
Storonsky has large, you really need to strive for huge
developed a goals, which seem like they’re low prob-
reputation as a ability.”
ferociously hard His drive has been key to attracting
worker who is investors — he said the latest fundrais-
obsessed with ing round was completed in less than
data and takes a three weeks — and securing Revolut’s
hands-on $33bn valuation.
approach to One former staff member said: “Does
building what Revolut do at the moment justify
Revolut’s the number? Hell no. But they produce
products — Luke so much new product so rapidly . . . it’s
MacGregor/Bloomberg/
Charlie Bibby/FT
a bet that Storonsky is a beast who has
created this product machine that’s
going to take over Europe or the world.”
Storonsky said the company pulled
ahead of rivals because it “outworked
everyone else”. Still, what supporters
see as high standards and drive have
ahead of November’s COP26 climate
summit.
The last holdouts are crumbling. One
of the few companies to resist was
ExxonMobil. Other oil majors would
talk about clean energy transitions and
reducing carbon emissions. Exxon had
a different vision. The world’s
population and wealth were growing,
the company said. Those people
needed and could afford more energy.
Therefore, Exxon would deliver more
oil and gas.
Should it not move, like BP, to clean
electricity? Why would we? said Exxon.
We have no expertise there.
Should it commit to going net zero?
How can we? said Exxon. We can make
our business cleaner but not that clean.
You can worry about the future of
the planet while still admiring the
honesty of that stance, which contrasts
favourably with the empty eco-
marketing patter from other dirty
companies.
But now it has been derailed. That is
thanks to one of the most
extraordinary activist campaigns ever
waged. In December, Engine No 1, a
Global
40 0 50
ByteDance
Stripe
SpaceX
Klarna
Instacart
Revolut
Nubank
Epic Games
been viewed by some critics as an
aggressive approach that encouraged an
exhausting workplace culture, particu-
larly in Revolut’s early days.
John Doran, partner at TCV, who was
the lead investor in Revolut’s 2020 fun-
draising, said: “Nik is a visionary with a
high bar and extraordinary ambition.
His management style perhaps isn’t
everyone’s preferred method, but he is
data driven, methodical and always
fair”.
He added that “Nik has grown mas-
sively as a leader over the years we’ve
known each other”.
Storonsky has formed an unlikely duo
with Martin Gilbert, founder of Aber-
deen Asset Management and Revolut’s
chair, whose reputation is the polar
opposite of Storonsky — Gilbert is a City
grandee known for throwing whisky-
filled parties at the World Economic
Forum in Davos.
Storonsky has said he appreciated
advice from someone with decades of
experience founding and running a
large financial company, in contrast to
many “expert” investors in the tech
industry who have little real experience
of building companies. Gilbert, for his
part, this week said “people misunder-
stand [Storonsky] quite dramatically.
“ H e’s g o t a g re a t s e n s e o f
humour . . . he’s a good listener, which a
lot of people don’t see. He doesn’t make
the mistake of saying too much — he has
the ability to just answer a question, and
new activist fund set up by investors
Chris James and Charlie Penner,
attacked Exxon’s strategy and
proposed adding four new directors to
change course.
It was an unlikely crusade. It is rare
for a $200bn company with Exxon’s
prestige and battery of defences to
have directors foisted on the board. But
that is what happened.
Engine’s slick campaign won over
long-suffering institutions fed up with
the company’s underperformance. Last
month three of its four nominees were
elected by shareholders.
By forcing Exxon to re-examine its
strategy of expensive investment in
new oil and gas development, the
activists are likely to have more real
impact on the company’s
environmental footprint than any
army of ESG marketeers.
Any remaining faith in Exxon’s
honesty disintegrated. It wrongly said
of the highly qualified nominees that
“none of the Engine director
candidates meet the standards or
needs” of the board. Appealing to
shareholders’ wallets, it
100 150
won’t then fill an awkward silence. Peo-
ple mistake that for other traits.”
Storonsky’s reputation for coldness
has also, in the views of some investors
and staff, been exacerbated by xeno-
phobia — he is a British citizen, but was
born in Russia and his father worked for
a division of state-owned gas company
Gazprom.
His Russian links have caused partic-
ular controversy in Lithuania, where
Revolut provoked anger among some
politicians after it received its first
banking licence in 2018.
The company has also faced scrutiny
over whether its rapid growth would be
too much for compliance staff to keep
up with, prompting substantial invest-
ment in strengthening systems and
recruiting staff to reassure regulators
and help it secure new licences.
This week’s fundraising pushed Revo-
lut’s valuation a nose ahead of NatWest,
one of the UK’s largest high street banks
with £453bn in customer deposits to
Revolut’s £4.6bn.
The comparison led several bankers
to describe the investment as “mad-
ness”, but Storonsky said he was happy
for traditional banks to keep doubting
the company.
“It makes our path much easier if peo-
ple and banks don’t take us seriously, we
can be hidden and steal in and move
faster. Hopefully one day they wake up
and don’t have a business.”
Additional reporting by Tim Bradshaw
11
The risk
of this
misrepresented the Engine manifesto
as a plan that would “endanger the
cash flows needed to support the
stunning
outcome
dividend and invest for the future”.
In fact, since the activists showed up,
Exxon’s share price has soared on the
at Exxon
is that
belief that management might be
forced to stop wasteful spending and
the company’s weak finances would be
businesses improved. The new directors all have
high levels of industry experience and
spend even can challenge entrenched thinking.
more on That does not mean Exxon needs to
copy BP and reinvent itself as a clean
consultants energy company. But it should at least
at PwC mean cutting back expansion where
the financial returns are highly
uncertain, mitigating the
environmental damage along the way.
The risk of this stunning outcome is
that companies spend even more
money on ESG consultants at PwC. The
hope is that Engine and like-minded
activists can see through the guff and
take action at other targets where
capitalism and a cleaner world go hand
in hand.
tom.braithwaite@ft.com
BEST OF
BUSINESS
Solid results at banks
3 Morgan Stanley said higher fees from investment
banking had helped to pick up some of the slack from
a slowdown in trading as it posted an increase in rev-
enues and profits for the second quarter.
The results underscored how Wall Street banks
have pivoted away from trading stocks and bonds
towards advising on mergers and acquisitions amid a
deluge of pandemic-driven deals.
JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs reported
strong performances at their investment banking
divisions as compa-
nies took advantage
of cheap credit to sign
a flurry of deals
intended to prepare
for the economic reo-
pening.
3 Houston needs to
embrace the shift to
cleaner energy to
secure its economic
future, one of the city’s top oil bankers says.
“If Houston wants to continue to be the world’s
leading energy capital, then it’s going to need to be a
leader in the newer forms of energy,” Bobby Tudor,
chair of the investment bank Tudor, Pickering, Holt
& Co, said.
Houston has been propelled by the oil and gas
industry for more than a century, and saw its econ-
omy supercharged over the past decade as the shale
industry took off.
Yet environmentalists and some city officials have
Cameron was paid a salary of
more than $1m by Greensill,
whose collapse exposed the
ex-premier’s extensive lobbying
long warned that it needs to start planning for its
post-oil future.
3 David Cameron was paid a salary of more than $1m
by Greensill Capital, the finance company whose col-
lapse exposed the former prime minister’s extensive
lobbying efforts.
Two people familiar with the matter said that
Cameron received the salary for his part-time advi-
sory role, which included an increasingly desperate
attempt to secure government funds for the ailing
company.
A spokesman for Cameron declined to comment.
Cameron was contracted to work 25 days a year as
an adviser to the board, meaning he earned the
equivalent of more than $40,000 a day.
His efforts to secure access to state-backed emer-
gency virus loans, first revealed by the FT, have
landed the former Conservative leader in the biggest
Westminster lobbying scandal for a generation.
$40,000 1
David Cameron’s Number of days
equivalent daily a month Tui staff
earnings for will have to come
advising Greensill into the office
3 Tui, the UK’s largest travel company, has told its
workers they will only need to be in the office for one
day a month. The company said it would offer “total
flexibility” as it shifts to a permanent, flexible work-
ing approach.
Next week, the UK government will drop rules ask-
ing for workers to stay at home where possible, and
replace them with a recommendation for a gradual
return to the workplace.
But many companies found during the pandemic
that homeworking or a hybrid arrangement between
the home and the office suits both staff and opera-
tions better.
KPMG is offering a “four-day fortnight” hybrid
working plan for its staff.
Lloyds is devising a strategy around home, hub or
hybrid working as new “categories of work style”
that can be picked by employees.
12
Big Tobacco struggles with kicking the habit
Cigarette makers look to diversify away from their core business but health campaigners and investors remain sceptical
PATRICIA NILSSON AND
ANDREW EDGECLIFFE-JOHNSON
When one of the world’s biggest tobacco
groups claims it wants to “unsmoke the
world” it is bound to meet scepticism, so
it was no surprise that Philip Morris
International’s £1bn swoop on a British
company that makes asthma inhalers
caused something of a stir.
The New York-listed group, which has
a market capitalisation of $155bn, char-
acterised its offer for pharma business
Vectura earlier this month as part of its
“natural evolution into a broader
healthcare and wellness company”.
Nonetheless, the UK government has
promised to keep an eye on the deal on
public interest grounds.
It is one of a string of acquisitions big
tobacco companies have made to diver-
sify beyond their traditional business —
in products from vapes to e-cigarettes
and oral nicotine pouches — but Philip
Morris can rightly claim to have taken
the lead in broadening its horizons.
Since 2008, it has invested $8bn to sup-
port its strategy of moving into smoke-
free products.
“That’s a very bold move coming from
the owner of Marlboro,” Emmanuel
Babeau, the group’s chief financial
officer, told the Financial Times.
“We believe in, and we are going to
contribute to, cigarettes being phased
out.”
But campaigners question how much
an industry that has for decades been
accused of dark money lobbying and
sponsoring questionable academic
studies should be trusted when it says it
is interested in health.
“This is not the first time that Philip
Morris claims that it cares deeply about
the health of its consumers,” said Matt
Myers, president of US charity the Cam-
paign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
He acknowledged that the group had
gone further than most rivals in pro-
moting the use of lower-risk alterna-
tives, but argued that the company was
still marketing cigarettes heavily in
many medium and low-income coun-
tries, where about 80 per cent of the
world’s smokers now live. “Many of
‘We believe in, and
we are going to
contribute to, cigarettes
being phased out’
these actions are inconsistent with the
rhetoric,” he said.
Philip Morris accused organisations
such as the Campaign for Tobacco-Free
Kids of delaying the transition away
from cigarettes, by lobbying to prevent
the sale of vapes and other alternatives.
The tobacco industry has faced con-
stant scepticism since evidence
emerged decades ago that it had lied to
the public about the dangers of smok-
ing.
The global tobacco industry, which
according to British American Tobacco
is worth roughly $818bn, sells to nearly
one in five people on the planet.
Smoking, including second-hand,
kills roughly 8m people a year, accord-
ing to the World Health Organisation.
This compares with recorded Covid-19
deaths of about 4.1m to date.
The market is split on the industry’s
attractiveness. Many investors stripped
tobacco from their portfolios years ago,
but others are drawn by the outsized
cash flows that an addictive product can
generate. Cigarette manufacturers have
★ FTWeekend
Smoking loses its pull
Declining rates of US adult smokers (%)
25
20
15
10
1997 2000 05 10 15
Sources: Campaign for Tobacco-FreeKids; Philip Morris; Refinitiv
19
Smoke without long been known for their prodigious
fire: production dividend yields — 5 per cent for Philip
in Bologna, Italy, Morris, more than 7 per cent for Altria
where a IQOS, a and BAT.
cigarette-like More recently, Philip Morris has
device that sought to widen its appeal by playing
heats tobacco into the investor trend for sustainabil-
rather than ity, with Jacek Olczak, the chief execu-
burns it, is made tive, hosting a webcast on the theme last
month.
He told participants that his company
had tied executive pay to its new mis-
sion to “unsmoke the world” by phasing
out cigarettes.
The company has also argued that
health-conscious investors would do
more good by engaging with tobacco
companies than divesting from them.
“I don’t believe philosophically that
exclusion has ever resolved any prob-
lem,” André Calantzopoulos, Olczak’s
predecessor, told the FT last year:
“Engagement is the only way to change
human behaviour.”
Yet investors continue to move in the
opposite direction. ABN AMRO decided
to stop investing in tobacco stocks in
COMPANIES & MARKETS
Combustible sales fall in Japan with launch of PMI’s
heated tobacco (annual % change)
Combustibles
Heated tobacco
2013 15 20
2018. Ruben Zandvliet, the Dutch
bank’s business and human rights
adviser, told the FT that exclusion was
not its default option when engaging
with controversial businesses but “for
tobacco we decided it was the only
option because the negative impact is so
extreme”.
He added: “There is no way to suc-
cessfully engage, as it would mean forc-
ing them to stop selling tobacco and a
complete overhaul of their business
model.”
He described the Philip Morris bid for
Vectura as “the most cynical form of
vertical integration I could imagine”.
Gail Hurley, adviser on sustainable
finance at lobby group Tobacco Free
Portfolios, said it was “important to
remember that new products like e-cig-
arettes are not harm-free” even if they
were not as harmful as cigarettes.
Zandvliet said the bank had never
evaluated the financial impact of its
decision, because clients had not asked
it do so. Others have stayed true to deci-
sions to stay away despite the financial
Philip Morris outperforms (share prices rebased
in local currency)
PMI BAT
30
Altria Imperial Brands
20
10
0
-10
-20
Jan 2020
forfeit. Calpers, the largest public pen-
sion fund in the US, which divested from
tobacco in 2000, has stuck with its deci-
sion despite a 2018 study showing it has
lost out on some $3bn in returns.
In its pitch for its “beyond nicotine”
strategy, Philip Morris has been careful
to emphasise to investors that the prod-
ucts it sees replacing cigarettes could be
just as profitable, if not more so.
The group made nearly a quarter of its
$28.7bn in net revenues last year from
its reduced risk portfolio, which
includes IQOS, a cigarette-like device
that heats, rather than burns, tobacco.
That makes it an industry leader: the
proportion of sales from less harmful
products stands at just over 5 per cent at
BAT and below 3 per cent at Imperial
Brands.
Philip Morris “commands a much
higher price per earnings ratio than any-
thing else in the sector”, observed Rae
Maile, analyst at Panmure. “In that
respect investors are voting with their
feet.”
“The investment case around IQOS
17 July/18 July 2021
has captured the imagination of inves-
tors,” he said, adding that IQOS took
time to deliver profits after its launch in
2014 “but this year Philip Morris has
upgraded profit guidance . . . and
announced a share buyback pro-
gramme — now we don’t just have a
story but also delivery.”
But few other tobacco companies are
as positive about the likelihood of a
world without cigarettes as Philip Mor-
ris, which has said it supports the UK
government’s goal of eliminating almost
all cigarette smoking by 2030.
Even if today’s market leaders stop
selling cigarettes, the sceptics argue,
someone else will.
“Hopefully there is a day when we are
no longer regarded as the tobacco indus-
try and a tobacco business,” Kingsley
Wheaton, chief marketing officer of
BAT, told the FT.
“Now, the day that BAT sells its last
cigarette, will that be the last cigarette
sold in the world? I suspect not.”
Japan Tobacco International, which
makes Old Holborn tobacco and Camel
cigarettes, does not specify the propor-
tion of sales made from non-cigarette
products, but said “we see [cigarettes],
heated tobacco products and other
reduced-risk products coexisting for the
foreseeable future”.
Imperial Brands, the London-listed
group behind Winston and Davidoff cig-
‘[It is] important to
remember that new
products like e-cigarettes
are not harm-free’
arettes, has taken a different approach
altogether.
In January, its new chief executive Ste-
fan Bomhard announced that the group
was switching its focus back to ciga-
120
rettes, arguing that it had become
110 “overly focused” on alternatives.
Last week, it announced a restructur-
100 ing at its vaping research facility in Liv-
erpool, putting half the jobs there at
90
risk.
The industry’s critics have another
80
worry: its need for new consumers if
70 existing smokers move to cigarette
alternatives.
60
Moira Gilchrist, vice-president of
2021 Jul strategic and scientific communications
at Philip Morris, asks the same question:
“What happens when you run out of all
8m the adult smokers to convert to reduced
risk products?”
Estimated annual
death toll from Her answer lies in the company’s
smoking, including research into CBD, a non-psychoactive
second-hand extract from cannabis plants, and its
recent acquisition of nicotine pouch and
$3bn lozenge company Fertin Pharma.
One avenue would be for Philip Mor-
Potential lost
returns for Calpers ris to sell products promoting “sleep,
after divesting from energy and calm,” she said.
tobacco in 2000 “I think we are showing the world
what our path is after smoke products,”
she added. “We take very great care to
ensure we’re getting to the right audi-
ence.”
Deborah Arnott, chief executive of
the UK based lobby group Action on
Smoking and Health, remains uncon-
vinced that the tobacco industry can
successfully move away from nicotine
products.
“Philip Morris has put forward this
idea that it is all about converting smok-
ers, not addicting new generations,” she
said.
“But long term it can only work if you
addict new generations.”
17 July/18 July 2021 ★ FTWeekend 13

COMPANIES & MARKETS

Fixed income. Monetary policy Fixed income

Credit rating
US bond reaction to inflation upgrades hit
data leaves investors puzzled record pace
as economy
rebounds
SHUBHAM SAHARAN — NEW YORK

Credit rating agencies are upgrading

hundreds of billions of dollars of US
corporate debt, in a partial reversal of
the downgrades at the outset of the
pandemic that reflects the strong
rebound in profitability across much of
corporate America.
Roughly $361bn of higher rated,
investment grade bonds have been
upgraded in the past two months,
including a record $184bn in June,
according to data from Bank of
America.
The brisk pace shows credit rating
agencies such as S&P Global, Moody’s
and Fitch believe the economic
recovery spurred by vaccine rollouts
has made corporate debt piles more
manageable.
It also reflects the abundant liquidity
and low borrowing costs available to
many companies, in part thanks to
monetary stimulus from the US Federal
Reserve.
“I don’t think you could have
anticipated the vaccine, the economic
growth and the strong availability of
really low-rated debt,” said Christina
Padgett, senior vice-president of
Moody’s Corporate Finance Group.
Rating agencies, which had been

Treasuries have broken with
tradition and pushed higher in
spite of consumer prices surge
TOMMY STUBBINGTON — LONDON
COLBY SMITH — NEW YORK
A relentless rally in US Treasuries
has accompanied the biggest burst of
inflation in more than a decade,
snapping typically reliable patterns and
leaving investors scrambling for an
explanation for what is going on in the
world’s largest bond market.
Inflation is typically bad news for
bond prices, eroding the value of the
fixed payments that the debt offers and
making it more likely that central banks
will respond with interest rate rises.
But recent months have turned that
relationship on its head, at least for
longer dated debt. US Treasuries prices
have run up big gains — with other
bonds around the world following in
their wake — pulling the 10-year yield to
its lowest in more than three months
this week just under 1.3 per cent, down
from 1.75 per cent at the end of March.
“There’s a lot of head scratching going
on,” said Mike Riddell, a portfolio
manager at Allianz Global Investors.
“On the face of it, this move looks pretty
counterintuitive.”
Investors have homed in on recent
signalling from the US Federal Reserve
about its evolving sensitivity to elevated
inflation as one explanation for the
seemingly unstoppable rally in
government bonds.
Wall Street was put on high alert in
June following the release of the Fed’s
“dot plot” of policymakers’ interest rate
projections.
That suggested the possibility of a
Treasury yields have tumbled
10-year US government bond yield (%)
Jan 2021
Source: Refinitiv
much swifter tightening of monetary
policy than initially indicated when
the Fed last year embraced an average
2 per cent inflation target that would
include periods of overshooting.
Jay Powell, Fed chair, has discouraged
market participants from reading too
much into these individual forecasts
and urged patience about the eventual
removal of policy support.
But he has also acknowledged the risk
that the central bank may need to
respond to higher than anticipated price
pressures.
“We are experiencing a big uptick in
inflation — bigger than many expected
and bigger certainly than I expected —
and we are trying to understand
whether it is something that will pass
through fairly quickly or whether if
in fact we need to act,” he said at a
congressional hearing on Thursday.
“One way or the other, we are not
going to be going into a period of high
inflation for a long period of time,
because of course we have tools to
address that. But we don’t want to use
them in a way that is unnecessary or
1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
1.0
0.8
Jul
that interrupts the rebound of the
economy.”
Taken together with the recent
admission that Fed officials are
beginning discussions on the reducing
$120bn monthly purchases of
Treasuries and agency mortgage-
backed securities, this shift in stance has
convinced many investors that the Fed
will be less tolerant of runaway inflation
expectations than previously thought.
“The Fed has effectively removed
some of the more extreme scenarios the
market was worrying about,” said James
Athey, a bond fund manager at Abrdn.
“The more that rate hike expectations
are baked in, the less inflation is
expected to run out of control.”
Rising coronavirus cases linked to the
more transmissible Delta variant have
also renewed fears that the economic
boom tied to the reopening of large
swaths of the global economy will fall
short of the extremely optimistic
forecasts put forward by economists
earlier in the year.
But with equity markets buoyant
around record highs, investors are
Firm grounds: reluctant to conclude that the bond
Markets have market — a magnet in times of stress —
homed in on is signalling a newly grim outlook for the
global economy.
recent signalling
from the US Instead, many continue to point to
Federal Reserve investor positioning — a familiar culprit
over sensitivity for the Treasury market’s gyrations
to inflation since June’s Fed meeting.
Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg
In the first quarter of the year, as
investors prepared for the reopening of
the US economy and the return of
inflation, they bet heavily on higher
long-term yields while also wagering
that the Fed would keep short-term
yields pinned down.
Many of the subsequent moves can be
explained by investors ditching those
so-called steepener trades — often
reluctantly — as markets moved against
them and losses mounted.
“None of the grand narratives to
explain this rally works for the whole of
the last few months,” said Riddell.
“That’s why I think it makes sense to
talk about positioning.”
Despite a series of setbacks, some are
sticking with the steepener trade, argu-
ing that the apparent contradiction
between soaring inflation and plunging
bond yields is unlikely to last.
At some point, the Fed will be forced
to back away from its view that the cur-
rent bout of inflation will prove mostly
‘The Fed transitory, jolting the bond market as
investors prepare for a more rapid
has wind-down of stimulus, according to
effectively Mark Dowding, chief investment officer
of BlueBay Asset Management.
removed “Bonds should be naturally allergic in
some of their reaction to inflation,” Dowding
said. “We suspect that we may look back
the more at the current period in markets some
extreme time later in the year and view some of
the trends we are witnessing as
scenarios’ relatively strange.”
‘I don’t think you could
have anticipated the
strong availability of
really low-rated debt’
chastised after the 2008 financial crisis
for giving pristine grades to bonds that
ultimately defaulted, moved swiftly
during the pandemic to downgrade
their assessments on swaths of debt.
Ratings on nearly $1tn of US
investment grade corporate debt were
cut in March and April of 2020, the
BofA data showed.
The US economy, which shrank 3.5
per cent last year, is forecast to grow
about 6.6 per cent in 2021, according to a
Bloomberg survey of economists.
Profits for S&P 500 companies are
projected to rise more than 60 per cent
in the second quarter from the same
period last year, when economic activity
stalled, according to Refinitiv data
collating analysts’ forecasts.
As prospects are improving for
investment grade bonds, so too are
those for riskier junk-rated companies.
Analysts at Citigroup predicted that
$200bn of corporate debt will rise to
investment grade by the end of 2022.
Already, $18bn worth of junk debt has
been lifted up the ratings ladder to
investment grade so far this year, the
bank’s data showed.
“It’s like something that I have not
seen in my time [in the industry],” said
Our global Michael Anderson, a credit strategist at
team gives you Citigroup. “After the financial crisis, we
market-moving didn’t get major companies moving
news and views, back to investment grade so quickly.”
24 hours a day In recent months, junk-rated
ft.com/markets companies have enjoyed all-time low
borrowing rates.

Commodities Commodities

Tin prices jump to all-time high amid
buoyant demand for electronic goods
DAVID SHEPPARD
Tin prices have hit the highest level on
record, rising towards $34,000 a tonne
as a boom in consumer electronics and
fears of supply disruptions have fuelled
a 65 per cent rally since the start of the
year.
Tin traded on the London Metal
Exchange reached a high of $33,800 a
tonne yesterday, up more than 1.5 per
cent on the day, and surpassing the pre-
vious high of $33,600 a tonne hit in 2011.
Traders and analysts pointed to fears
of supply disruptions in Asia where
rising cases of the Delta Covid-19 variant
are exacerbating various logistical
and supply issues that have already
tightened the market.
John Meyer at SP Angel said the longer
term rally was underpinned by strong
demand for electronic goods, which
have risen during the pandemic.
The metal, which is used in solder in
circuit boards, has risen by 133 per cent
since its low in March 2020 as sales of
smartphones, laptops and iPads have
surged due to people working and
studying from home.
“Demand has continued to climb
while freight disruption and output
issues linked to the pandemic have
restricted supply,” Meyer said.
Alastair Munro at brokerage Marex
said the metal had been “unshaken” by
economic headwinds — such as a strong
dollar — that have weighed on other
commodities, with the latest supply
threat coming from Myanmar, the
third-largest tin producer.
“Tin’s ascent continues its path driven
by shipping logistical issues and supply
Tin, used in solder on circuit boards,
has been affected by supply issues
pressures from Myanmar,” said Munro.
Myanmar, which has seen a deadly
crackdown since a military coup in
February, reported record levels of new
coronavirus cases and deaths earlier
this week.
Meyer said that power rationing in the
Chinese province of Yunnan, which has
been hit by a heatwave, was also
potentially affecting supplies with
smelters “set to reduce activities again
after a new spate of power shortages”.
A drought in the south-west Chinese
province earlier this year led to a
shortage of hydroelectric power, forcing
some tin smelters to close for 10 to 20
days and impacting between 1,000 and
2,000 tonnes of production, according
to the International Tin Association.
Other metals prices were mixed
yesterday with nickel rising 1.1 per cent
to near $19,000 a tonne, the highest
level since February, while copper
slipped 0.5 per cent to $9,429 a tonne.
Oil prices were also lower with Brent
crude down 0.9 per cent to $72.82 a
barrel with prices coming under
pressure this week from signs Opec and
its allies are closer to resolving a dispute
over raising production.
China launches world’s biggest carbon
trading scheme but analysts cautious
CHRISTIAN SHEPHERD — BEIJING
China has launched the world’s largest
carbon market in what analysts say is a
cautious and limited attempt by the
planet’s biggest polluter to cut carbon
dioxide emissions.
Buying and selling of greenhouse gas
allowances as part of China’s national
emissions trading scheme began
yesterday at the Shanghai Environment
and Energy Exchange.
Within the first half-hour, the price
per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent
rose from Rmb48 at market open to
nearly Rmb53, nearing the daily 10 per
cent upper limit, after 160 kilotonnes
were traded at a total value of Rmb7.9m
($1.2m), Chinese state media reported.
But analysts warned that oversupply,
a limited scope and no cap on total
emissions meant the scheme was
unlikely to assume immediately its
intended “central role” in achieving
China’s goal of reaching peak carbon
emissions by 2030 and net zero
emissions by 2060.
Only China’s energy sector is included
in trading this year. Other polluting
sectors, such as steel and cement, are
expected to be added in future cycles.
Even so, due to China’s reliance on
coal-fired power, the 2,225 sites covered
this year account for about 40 per cent
of the country’s total CO2 emissions.
The total volume of greenhouse gas
output covered in the scheme is about 15
per cent of global emissions or about
three times the amount covered by the
‘The Chinese are doing
what the Europeans did
for the first phase of the
ETS, treat it as a trial phase’
EU’s scheme, which had previously
been the world’s largest.
China’s trading scheme will at first
hand out allowances to companies for
free, rather than a portion being sold by
auction, as is common practice in most
mature carbon markets.
“If there is no move away from free
allocations, it seems inevitable that the
market will have marginal if any impact
towards decarbonising,” said Matt Gray,
co-chief executive of TransitionZero, a
London-based financial research group.
Analysis by TransitionZero released
in April found that China’s emissions
trading scheme was oversupplied by
1.56bn tonnes of CO2 from 2019 to 2020,
equivalent to a year’s worth of EU ETS
emissions, making it unlikely that trad-
ing would result in a high carbon price.
The market will also at first use a
measure of carbon intensity rather than
following the EU, Californian or Cana-
dian markets to adopt a “cap and trade”
system, where emissions allowances are
based on a single industry-wide quota.
In China, permitted emissions levels
will be calculated relative to output and
vary by the type of power plant.
The EU’s ETS faced similar oversup-
ply until about 2016 when it introduced
market reforms to remove surplus
inventory. In recent months, EU carbon
prices have reached new highs, nearing
€60 a tonne as the EU hopes to cut
emissions by 55 per cent by 2030.
“The Chinese are just doing what the
Europeans did for the first phase of the
ETS, which is to treat it as a trial phase
where the rules are relaxed to get buy-in
from companies,” Gray said.
Additional reporting by Emma Zhou in
Beijing
14 ★ FTWeekend 17 July/18 July 2021

COMPANIES & MARKETS

The day in the markets

On Wall Street
US regulation is failing What you need to know

the cryptocurrency test 3 Stocks subdued as investors weigh

Covid spread against earnings optimism
3 Analysts poised for blockbuster
Worst week in a month for London’s blue-chip benchmark
FTSE 100 index, weekly % change
second-quarter company results 3
3 Biggest drop in four weeks for
London’s FTSE 100 index
2
Stocks on both sides of the Atlantic were
Chase chief executive, put it in his annual been put together in the first place. The heading for the worst weekly
AMERICA letter to shareholders: “There is no one resulting impasse is exacerbating performance in at least a month as
real authority that can co-ordinate all the anxieties that regulators are falling earnings season optimism was tempered 1
Gary moving parts and bridge differences.” further behind the curve. The crypto by fears over the rapid spread of the
Silverman In the long run, this isn’t entirely a bad
thing. Checks and balances are as
craze reminds Wall Street veterans of the
unregulated rise of credit default swaps
Delta variant of Covid-19.
Wall Street’s S&P 500 lost 0.2 per cent 0
American as apple pie or junk bonds; in years leading to the financial crisis. by lunchtime in New York yesterday,
having so many regulators serves as Like crypto, CDS were hard to putting the blue-chip index on course to

T
protection against any one of them characterise, being a form of insurance end the week down 0.4 per cent, its worst
he US is a funny country. We messing up. that was not regulated as such and were performance since mid-June. -1
have so many financial But this system has its weaknesses. seen by their advocates as being too cool The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite
regulators that we New products that are neither fish nor to be overseen by mere bureaucrats. slid 0.1 per cent, heading for a 1.2 per cent
sometimes wind up without fowl in a regulatory sense can fall “It took a crisis to focus our attention drop since Monday. -2
proper financial regulation. through the cracks. Crypto is hard to on products like CDS,” said Sarah “Concerns about the Delta variant are
Cryptocurrencies represent the latest regulate because it is hard to define. Hammer, managing director of the weighing and, while we’re coming into an Apr 2021 Jul
example. While true believers call cryptos Stevens Center for Innovation in Finance earnings season that is going to be good, Source: Refinitiv
The trade in bitcoin and its brethren currencies, US regulators view them at the University of Pennsylvania’s there’s a tussle between those two
has grown too big to be ignored — and yet differently. Bitcoin, for instance, has Wharton School. “In some ways, crypto factors,” said Caroline Simmons, UK chief
that is what has happened. No official is more challenging than derivatives investment officer for UBS’s wealth traditionally a time when there is less risk erodes bonds’ fixed income returns over
public data exists on prices, volume or because it falls into many different
volatility. No single authority regulates
Waiting for Gensler on regulatory laps.”
management unit.
Analysts expect companies listed on
taking, less [trading] volume, less
activity,” he added, “and we are not going
time, would subside.
Across the Atlantic, stocks also ended
crypto exchanges. No one can be certain crypto has turned into The irony for participants in the the S&P 500 to report average year-on- to get much clarity on the intentions of the week lower with the continent-wide
investors are being properly protected. crypto markets is that they might be
Even folks in the libertarian crypto
the Wall Street equivalent better off if a cop like Gensler was already
year earnings-per-share growth of 66 per
cent in the second quarter, forecasts
the US central bank in the coming few
weeks.”
Stoxx Europe 600 down 0.3 per cent for a
weekly fall of 0.6 per cent.
world are wondering when the federal of Waiting for Godot on the beat. The various parties could get collated by Credit Suisse show. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury London’s FTSE 100 slid 0.1 per cent,
government will step in. Mike to know each other and reach some sort Companies listed on MSCI’s European edged up 1 basis point to 1.31 per cent taking its fall since Monday to 1.6 per
Novogratz, a fund manager who has of an accommodation. It could even be a equity index are expected to achieve 109 yesterday, in a slight reversal of a strong cent, its biggest drop in four weeks.
helped lead the charge into the asset been deemed a commodity. Other relief, as Novogratz said. per cent earnings growth overall, said rally for the benchmark bond this week. Brent crude, the global oil benchmark,
class, told CNBC there would be “relief” cryptos are seen as securities. This Now, the best way for regulators to get WisdomTree, the asset manager. After starting the week at close to 1.42 fell 0.9 per cent to $72.82 a barrel as
in the market once rules of the road were confusion helps explain why neither the a handle on the crypto markets may be to “We should be prepared for a bumpy per cent, the yield was driven lower by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
set and suggested Congress give the job SEC or the Commodity Futures Trading come out swinging, using their general summer on markets,” said Gregory haven-buying and reassurances by Emirates neared a deal that would unlock
to Gary Gensler, head of the Securities Commission is directly regulating crypto enforcement powers to set things Perdon, co-chief investment officer at Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell that the an agreement by Opec and its allies to
and Exchange Commission. exchanges like Coinbase. straight. The SEC has already brought private bank Arbuthnot Latham. “It’s current high rate of US inflation, which raise production. Naomi Rovnick
“When Gary finally addresses it, it will No one has given them the job — a scores of crypto cases. Dan Berkovitz,
be good,” Novogratz said of his fellow source of frustration for the regulators. CFTC commissioner, recently raised
Goldman Sachs alumnus. “He would Congress, in its fashion, is on the case. doubts about the legality of any Markets update
love to regulate all the crypto. He doesn’t Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic derivatives deals taking place on
have the mandate.” senator, wrote to Gensler this month to decentralised finance, or “defi”,
It all amounts to a particularly ask whether the SEC “has the proper programs that use blockchain
American regulatory failure. Waiting for authority to close existing gaps in technology to cut out intermediaries. US Eurozone Japan UK China Brazil
Gensler to get his hands on all the crypto regulation that leave investors and It could get very interesting. I find Stocks S&P 500 Eurofirst 300 Nikkei 225 FTSE100 Shanghai Comp Bovespa
has turned into the Wall Street consumers vulnerable to dangers in this myself reminded of that moment in the Level 4349.31 1754.64 28003.08 7008.09 3539.30 127164.21
equivalent of waiting for Godot. highly opaque and volatile market”. film All about Eve when Bette Davis turns % change on day -0.25 -0.38 -0.98 -0.06 -0.71 -0.24
The underlying difficulty is that US Gensler’s response, due by July 28, will to her guests and presents her forecast Currency $ index (DXY) $ per € Yen per $ $ per £ Rmb per $ Real per $
financial regulation is fragmented. undoubtedly be persuasive. But whether for the evening to come. “Fasten your Level 92.675 1.181 110.105 1.379 6.468 5.080
There are multiple federal banking and it will prod legislators to act quickly is seat belts,” she tells them, “it’s going to be % change on day 0.055 -0.085 0.064 -0.577 0.098 -0.511
market authorities, with overlapping another matter. If history is any guide, a bumpy night.” Govt. bonds 10-year Treasury 10-year Bund 10-year JGB 10-year Gilt 10-year bond 10-year bond
jurisdictions, plus state regulatory Congress will wait for things to fall apart Yield 1.311 -0.353 0.016 0.627 2.945 9.013
systems. As Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan before deciding how they should have gary.silverman@ft.com Basis point change on day -1.790 -1.900 0.690 -3.700 -0.800 -7.100
World index, Commods FTSE All-World Oil - Brent Oil - WTI Gold Silver Metals (LMEX)
Level 475.69 73.67 71.78 1823.75 26.21 4195.30

Court ruling on Morocco-Spain dispute % change on day -0.26 0.60 0.39 0.03
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.
0.13 1.16

triggers fears over European gas prices Main equity markets

S&P 500 index Eurofirst 300 index FTSE 100 index
4480 1800 7200
of the “Abraham Accords.” The Biden New problem: as of mid-June: a
team, has, with some reluctance, technical failure at Algeria’s Skikda 7120
affirmed the Trump position on LNG export facility has led to the 4320 1760
Western Sahara. facility’s shutdown, probably for a 7040
The effect of the Trump shift on protracted period.
4160 1720 6960
Western Sahara has been to embolden But Spain is part of Europe, surely
Morocco to double down on its there would be sufficient pipeline
| | | | | | | |
assertions of sovereignty. connections with France to make up | | | | | | | | | | 6880 | | | | | | | | | | | |

A
4000 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
1680 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

So if, as I expect, in September the for any shortfalls in Algerian supplies, May 2021 Jul May 2021 Jul May 2021 Jul
s American agents in CJEU announces that it recognises the right? Well, no. There were plans for Biggest movers
Central Asia used to say, Polisario as the legitimate additional gas connections with
% US Eurozone UK
“happiness is multiple representatives of the Western Saharan Northern Europe but they ran into
Cintas 3.48 Adp 3.17 Dcc 2.38
pipelines”. The Americans people, you can expect the Moroccan regulatory and green opposition.
Teleflex 2.78 Ses 2.51 Avast 2.32
were trying to finance government to blow a gasket. In any case, gas storage in Europe is
Ups

and build routes around Russia’s As it happens, they have a painful running pretty low right now, State Street 2.21 Klepierre 2.16 Rentokil Initial 2.29
geopolitical lock on fossil fuel transport. way to let the EU, and Spain in especially with the Russians having Rollins 2.08 Coloplast 2.00 Reckitt Benckiser 2.19
This fall, the EU may find out just particular, just how unhappy they are. been slow to send gas exports through Fortinet 2.06 Lufthansa 1.70 Rolls-royce Holdings 2.11
how unhappy — and expensive — daily Spain imports a substantial amount the Ukrainian pipeline network. %
life can be if you do not have multiple of its natural gas requirements from So natural gas prices at European Pvh -3.79 Swatch -4.63 Burberry -5.02
pipelines, in this case to Spain. Algeria. The gas comes through two import points are already quite high. Lyondellbasell Industries Nv -3.50 B. Sabadell -4.04 Glencore -3.45
Downs

Fanciers of obscure, complex and pipelines, one of which was laid LNG shipments have been bid away by Charles Schwab (the) -2.88 Arcelormittal -3.52 Rio Tinto -3.44
violent international disputes (such as gas-hungry Asian importers. Under Armour -2.79 Tenaris -2.83 Anglo American -2.83
myself) have been waiting for the All of this means Spain may have to Under Armour -2.56 Infineon Tech -2.80 Fresnillo -2.74
Court of Justice of the European Union
Gas storage in Europe is import LNG procured on the spot Prices taken at 17:00 GMT Based on the constituents of the FTSE Eurofirst 300 Eurozone

running low, especially

All data provided by Morningstar unless otherwise noted.
to rule on a dispute over the extension market this fall to keep the lights on
of the EU’s Association Agreement with and the stoves lit through the winter.
Morocco to the territory of Western
with the Russians having The price surge that creates may be
Sahara, or Southern Morocco, as the been slow to send exports high enough to bring European coal-
Moroccans prefer to call it.
The big economic issue came down underwater directly to Spain. The
fired power plants back on line, even
with the burden of carbon costs.
Wall Street Europe London
to Morocco’s granting fishing rights in other Maghreb-Europe Pipeline goes This is not a good look at a time
Western Saharan waters to EU member through Moroccan territory before when Europe is in the middle of FuboTV, the live sports streaming Integrated photonics group Jenoptik DCC rallied after the support services
states, which are particularly crossing the Strait of Gibraltar to launching its ambitious Net Zero plans platform, rallied after its subsidiary struck jumped on announcing record order group said “operating profit growth was
important for Spain. connect with the Spanish and for breaking its addiction to fossil fuel. a market access deal in Pennsylvania for intake, revenue, and earnings before well ahead of the prior year and modestly
It now appears that, in September, Portuguese gas networks. It could get even more dicey if its forthcoming sportsbook, which will interest, taxes, depreciation and ahead of expectations”, driven by its
the CJEU will hand down an initial Small problem: the agreement for Morocco decides, unilaterally, to allow enable consumers to wager while amortisation in the second quarter. healthcare and technology divisions.
decision in a two-year old case brought the pipeline’s right of way through more migrants to pass through its watching sports. Order intake almost doubled year on RBC Europe, which assigns the group
by the Polisario Front, a political group Morocco expires in October of this borders on their way to Europe. “Entering Pennsylvania, one of the year while revenue grew almost 30 per an “outperform” rating, said DCC was
that demands independence for year, a month or so after the CJEU Morocco could also decide to cancel largest sports betting and iGaming cent, said the German company. trading at a significant discount to peers
Western Sahara. Morocco’s 1975 (prospectively) sticks a finger in EU fishing vessels’ permits to operate [markets] in the US, is a significant For its fiscal year 2021, Jenoptik said and presented “a good buying
occupation of the former Spanish Morocco’s eye. in Moroccan waters. Morocco’s accomplishment . . . which, in this market, ebitda margin would be between 19 per opportunity ahead of . . . potentially more
Sahara has not been recognised as fully So the Moroccans could retaliate by definition of those waters, that is. can also include mobile casino games,” cent and 19.5 per cent, up from the 16-17 positive news over time on [mergers and
legitimate by the EU or the UN, or, declining to extend the contract. As if I think the European Council, along said Scott Butera, Fubo Gaming president. per cent range stated previously. acquisitions]”.
until the Trump presidency, by the US. in preparation for that, the pipeline with a couple of member states, will Better than expected results lifted The revision came off the back of “very GCP Student Living, the real estate
In December 2020, though, the contract’s renewal process has been appeal against the CJEU ruling. State Street, with the financial services good” developments in its light and investment trust focused on large-scale
outgoing Trump administration drawn out by the Moroccan side. But not before some coal is burnt and group reporting second-quarter earnings optics division, alongside a recovery in undergraduate accommodation, rose on
recognised Morocco’s occupation as Fortunately for Spain, it has made expensive gas imported — and likely per share of $1.97, better than the mean the auto industry. news that Scape Living and iQSA would
legitimate, as part of a deal under substantial investments in LNG port only buying a year’s delay. estimate of $1.79 from analysts polled by Swedish cloud computing group Sinch buy the group for £2.13 a share in cash, an
which Morocco would establish formal facilities, so it can just import the same Refinitiv. surged after reporting a 42 per cent rise 11 per cent premium on Thursday’s
diplomatic relations with Israel as part Algerian gas, if at a higher cost. john.dizard@ft.com Biopharma group Moderna received a in adjusted ebitda of SKr284m ($32.7m) closing price that valued the company at
boost on news that the vaccine maker between April and June. £969m.

Businesses For Sale

would be replacing Alexion The Stockholm group said that, during Ninety One climbed following the
Pharmaceuticals in the S&P 500 index, the second quarter, Covid “had a negative release of a sparse trading update in
effective this coming Wednesday. impact on the . . . voice and video which the investment group reported
AstraZeneca is acquiring Alexion in a segment but the pandemic has also led to assets under management rose to £139bn
deal expected to be completed soon. increased volumes in messaging”. as of June 30.
Electric vehicle maker Lordstown Forecast-beating results lifted Partners Numis said it was tricky to know
Motors slid after disclosing within Group with the Swiss investment whether Ninety One’s total was “good/
Business for Sale, Business Opportunities, Business Services,
regulatory filings that it had received two manager reporting an additional $12.1bn bad/indifferent vs our figures” without
Business Wanted, Franchises subpoenas from the Securities and from clients in the first half of 2021, further details, which were not disclosed.
Runs Daily Exchange Commission relating to the bringing the firm’s total assets under Nonetheless, on a headline basis, £139bn
..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... pre-orders of vehicles and its merger with management to $118.9bn, which was was above the most recent estimate from
Classified Business Advertising
DiamondPeak, a special purpose ahead of Citi’s consensus estimate of Numis of £138.5bn pencilled in for
UK: +44 20 7873 4000 | Email: acs.emea@ft.com
acquisition company. Ray Douglas $114.3bn. Ray Douglas September 2021, it noted. Ray Douglas
17 July/18 July 2021 ★ FTWeekend 15

MARKET DATA

WORLD MARKETS AT A GLANCE FT.COM/MARKETSDATA

Change during previous day’s trading (%)
S&P 500 Nasdaq Composite Dow Jones Ind FTSE 100 FTSE Eurofirst 300 Nikkei Hang Seng FTSE All World $ $ per € $ pe r £ ¥ per $ £ pe r € Oil Brent $ Sep Gold $

-0.25% -0.28% -0.24% -0.06% -0.38% -0.98% -0.26% -0.085% -0.577%

0.03% 0.064% 0.469% 0.69% 0.03%
Stock Market movements over last 30 days, with the FTSE All-World in the same currency as a comparison
AMERICAS EUROPE ASIA
Jun 17 - - Index All World Jun 17 - Jul 16 Index All World Jun 17 - Jul 16 Index All World Jun 17 - Jul 16 Index All World Jun 17 - Jul 16 Index All World Jun 17 - Jul 16 Index All World

S&P 500 New York S&P/TSX COMP Toronto FTSE 100 London Xetra Dax Frankfurt Nikkei 225 Tokyo Kospi Seoul
4,349.31 7,184.95 29,291.01
20,230.96 15,710.57 3,278.68 3,276.91
4,246.59 20,094.27 15,540.31
7,008.09 28,003.08
Day -0.25% Month 2.97% Year 35.26% Day -0.44% Month -0.67% Year 25.40% Day -0.06% Month -2.51% Year 12.06% Day -0.57% Month 0.78% Year NaN% Day -0.98% Month -4.81% Year 22.14% Day -0.28% Month 0.56% Year 48.82%

Nasdaq Composite New York IPC Mexico City FTSE Eurofirst 300 Europe Ibex 35 Madrid Hang Seng Hong Kong FTSE Straits Times Singapore
50,579.10 9,202.20 3,152.30
14,502.88 49,983.87 1,774.33 28,436.84 3,138.31
28,004.68
14,072.86 1,754.64 8,506.20
Day -0.28% Month 3.33% Year 38.50% Day -0.58% Month -1.17% Year 37.08% Day -0.38% Month -1.22% Year 20.83% Day -0.24% Month -7.85% Year 13.60% Day 0.03% Month -1.92% Year 10.23% Day 0.39% Month -0.79% Year 18.91%

Dow Jones Industrial New York Bovespa São Paulo CAC 40 Paris FTSE MIB Milan Shanghai Composite Shanghai BSE Sensex Mumbai
34,904.52 53,140.06
129,259.49 6,652.65 25,767.54
34,299.33 127,164.21 3,539.30 52,501.98
6,460.08 3,518.33
24,792.78
Day -0.24% Month 2.54% Year 30.53% Day -0.24% Month -1.61% Year 26.48% Day -0.51% Month -2.70% Year 26.45% Day -0.33% Month -3.71% Year 22.19% Day -0.71% Month -0.49% Year 5.30% Day -0.04% Month 0.69% Year 47.39%

Country Index Latest Previous Country Index Latest Previous Country Index Latest Previous Country Index Latest Previous Country Index Latest Previous Country Index Latest Previous
Argentina Merval 63224.39 63484.55 Cyprus
CSE M&P Gen 68.46 68.68 Italy FTSE Italia All-Share 27194.34 27296.25 Philippines Manila Comp 6693.83 6727.93 Taiwan Weighted Pr 17895.25 18034.19 Cross-Border DJ Global Titans ($) 505.98 508.72
Australia All Ordinaries 7630.70 7616.60 Czech Republic
PX 1197.47 1197.16 FTSE Italia Mid Cap 46931.50 47035.35 Poland Wig 67356.87 67292.59 Thailand Bangkok SET 1574.37 1572.01 Euro Stoxx 50 (Eur) 4032.74 4056.39
S&P/ASX 200 7348.10 7335.90 Denmark
OMXC Copenahgen 20 1696.92 1694.31 FTSE MIB 24792.78 24875.50 Portugal PSI 20 5030.02 5110.83 Turkey BIST 100 1363.28 1367.25 Euronext 100 ID 1258.67 1263.83
S&P/ASX 200 Res 5783.20 5786.70 Egypt
EGX 30 10561.28 10602.41 Japan 2nd Section 7783.39 7754.98 PSI General 3794.98 3824.61 UAE Abu Dhabi General Index 7068.98 7079.50 FTSE 4Good Global ($) 10763.25 10789.62
Austria ATX 3394.53 3412.70 Estonia
OMX Tallinn 1700.52 1700.26 Nikkei 225 28003.08 28279.09 Romania BET Index 12026.80 12025.00 UK FT 30 2786.40 2786.30 FTSE All World ($) 475.69 476.91
Belgium BEL 20 4155.08 4149.53 Finland
OMX Helsinki General 12801.94 12813.14 S&P Topix 150 1639.60 1647.93 Russia Micex Index 3766.54 3799.97 FTSE 100 7008.09 7012.02 FTSE E300 1754.64 1761.30
BEL Mid 9893.79 9896.90 France
CAC 40 6460.08 6493.36 Topix 1932.19 1939.61 RTX 1600.81 1612.08 FTSE 4Good UK 6582.47 6586.40 FTSE Eurotop 100 3289.92 3304.20
Brazil IBovespa 127164.21 127467.88 SBF 120 5059.20 5080.10 Jordan Amman SE 2117.07 2097.12 Saudi-Arabia TADAWUL All Share Index 10794.51 10778.07 FTSE All Share 4002.80 4005.80 FTSE Global 100 ($) 2841.68 2851.35
Canada S&P/TSX 60 1208.46 1213.20
Germany M-DAX 34450.21 34533.42 Kenya NSE 20 1953.37 1953.37 Singapore FTSE Straits Times 3152.30 3139.98 FTSE techMARK 100 6727.03 6737.21 FTSE Gold Min ($) 2210.18 2193.03
S&P/TSX Comp 20094.27 20183.72 TecDAX 3612.29 3617.35 Kuwait KSX Market Index 6633.44 6603.51 Slovakia SAX 365.65 365.25 USA DJ Composite 11484.10 11504.76 FTSE Latibex Top (Eur) 4440.00 4432.20
S&P/TSX Div Met & Min 839.12 839.71 XETRA Dax 15540.31 15629.66 Latvia OMX Riga 1229.36 1226.48 Slovenia SBI TOP - - DJ Industrial 34904.52 34987.02 FTSE Multinationals ($) 3081.42 3103.06
Chile S&P/CLX IGPA Gen 20831.74 20875.81
Greece Athens Gen 866.81 863.78 Lithuania OMX Vilnius 968.38 967.50 South Africa FTSE/JSE All Share 66529.53 67538.61 DJ Transport 14615.42 14696.17 FTSE World ($) 851.60 853.61
China FTSE A200 13728.70 13901.56 FTSE/ASE 20 2081.33 2076.13 Luxembourg LuxX 1592.85 1601.87 FTSE/JSE Res 20 64822.16 67124.94 DJ Utilities 914.09 906.73 FTSEurofirst 100 (Eur) 4475.53 4499.57
FTSE B35 9000.71 8988.96
Hong Kong Hang Seng 28004.68 27996.27 Malaysia FTSE Bursa KLCI 1522.48 1520.82 FTSE/JSE Top 40 60437.58 61439.11 Nasdaq 100 14735.36 14794.69 FTSEurofirst 80 (Eur) 5574.86 5603.02
Shanghai A 3709.49 3736.05 HS China Enterprise 10152.95 10174.27 Mexico IPC 49983.87 50274.85 South Korea Kospi 3276.91 3286.22 Nasdaq Cmp 14502.88 14543.13 MSCI ACWI Fr ($) 723.66 726.09
Shanghai B 265.48 265.16 HSCC Red Chip 3816.37 3828.27 Morocco MASI 12169.45 12210.65 Kospi 200 434.82 436.76 NYSE Comp 16474.07 16499.06 MSCI All World ($) 3043.52 3058.59
Shanghai Comp 3539.30 3564.59
Hungary Bux 48003.25 47677.82 Netherlands AEX 736.52 739.42 Spain IBEX 35 8506.20 8527.00 S&P 500 4349.31 4360.03 MSCI Europe (Eur) 1827.33 1844.01
Shenzhen A 2567.79 2593.65
India BSE Sensex 53140.06 53158.85 AEX All Share 1047.96 1051.82 Sri Lanka CSE All Share 7966.95 7986.45 Wilshire 5000 45194.96 45247.49 MSCI Pacific ($) 3191.90 3219.93
Shenzhen B 1227.42 1220.93 Nifty 500 13742.35 13720.35 New Zealand NZX 50 12673.15 12671.16 Sweden OMX Stockholm 30 2338.80 2344.49 Venezuela IBC 5513.32 5002.32 S&P Euro (Eur) 1877.11 1885.54
Colombia COLCAP 1261.61 1260.21
Indonesia Jakarta Comp 6072.51 6046.75 Nigeria SE All Share 37872.55 37857.24 OMX Stockholm AS 958.67 958.46 Vietnam VNI 1299.31 1293.92 S&P Europe 350 (Eur) 1808.49 1814.92
Croatia CROBEX 2013.05 2011.29
Ireland ISEQ Overall 8050.55 8078.63 Norway Oslo All Share 1017.37 1006.88 Switzerland SMI Index 12026.50 11976.79 S&P Global 1200 ($) 3348.16 3358.60
Israel Tel Aviv 125 1750.58 1755.18 Pakistan KSE 100 47834.33 47628.26 Stoxx 50 (Eur) 3523.91 3535.27
(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.

STOCK MARKET: BIGGEST MOVERS UK MARKET WINNERS AND LOSERS

AMERICA LONDON EURO MARKETS TOKYO Jul 16 %Chg %Chg Jul 16 %Chg %Chg Jul 16 %Chg %Chg Jul 16 %Chg %Chg
ACTIVE STOCKS stock close Day's ACTIVE STOCKS stock close Day's ACTIVE STOCKS stock close Day's ACTIVE STOCKS stock close Day's FTSE 100 price(p) week ytd FTSE 250 price(p) week ytd FTSE SmallCap price(p) week ytd Industry Sectors price(p) week ytd
traded m's price change traded m's price change traded m's price change traded m's price change Winners Winners Winners Winners
Nvidia 68.8 742.28 -16.37 Astrazeneca 304.0 8340.00 -6.00 Asml Holding 447.1 589.30 -10.20 Fast Retailing Co., 982.2 77520.00 -2080.00 Avast 609.40 23.0 15.0 Gcp Student Living 216.00 11.3 50.4 Nb Private Equity Partners 1490.00 9.2 28.2 Industrial Transportation 4397.78 25.2 131.4
Amazon.com 67.0 3576.66 -54.54 Rio Tinto 131.5 5931.00 -211.00 Ericsson, Telefonab. L M Ser. B 310.5 10.13 -1.06 Eisai Co., 693.1 9157.00 -1363.00 Admiral 3287.00 5.3 10.6 Trustpilot 365.00 9.1 - Galliford Try Holdings 157.00 7.9 26.7 Health Care Equip.& Services 7360.53 19.4 16.8
Apple 64.3 147.34 -1.15 Unilever 122.4 4358.00 71.50 Lvmh 298.2 654.30 -8.90 Tokyo Electron 479.2 45500.00 -750.00 Experian 3086.00 5.0 9.4 Liontrust Asset Management 1980.00 4.8 51.7 Capital 82.00 7.9 32.3 Pharmaceuticals & Biotech. 17585.20 17.3 4.3
Microsoft 32.9 280.37 -0.66 British American Tobacco 105.0 2847.00 54.00 Sap Se O.n. 241.3 125.46 0.06 Softbank . 451.7 7481.00 -53.00 Rightmove 669.20 3.2 2.2 Jtc 640.00 4.7 12.3 Provident Fin 260.40 7.6 - Beverages 27389.00 15.8 38.3
Facebook 17.5 341.91 -2.55 Glaxosmithkline 104.1 1424.60 17.60 Volkswagen Ag Vzo O.n. 224.2 207.65 -2.70 Sony 381.4 11155.00 -250.00 Auto Trader 660.80 3.2 9.9 Dechra Pharmaceuticals 4784.00 4.6 35.0 Lindsell Train Investment Trust 1700.00 6.9 17.3 Real Estate & Investment Servic 2824.99 15.4 17.1
Advanced Micro Devices 15.4 86.37 -0.56 Glencore 102.8 309.00 -11.05 Royal Dutch Shella 204.3 16.50 -0.16 Toyota Motor 361.4 9866.00 34.00 British American Tobacco 2847.00 2.7 3.1 Vivo Energy 103.40 3.4 18.6 Photo-me Int 75.60 5.6 49.7 Chemicals 16387.78 14.6 34.4
Boeing 13.0 221.51 -1.25 Bp 97.4 292.25 -3.80 Allianz Se Na O.n. 198.0 208.95 -2.05 Hitachi, 317.5 6539.00 153.00 Croda Int 7832.00 2.5 19.1 Pennon 1242.00 3.2 - Reach 309.00 5.5 - Gas Water & Multiutilities index 5357.26 13.5 15.1
Alphabet 11.2 2523.95 -16.15 Diageo 89.5 3500.50 23.00 Infineon Tech.ag Na O.n. 195.7 31.75 -0.92 Mitsubishi Ufj Fin,. 237.8 589.60 0.00 Severn Trent 2714.00 2.5 16.7 Kainos 1575.00 3.2 26.4 Porvair 613.00 5.3 14.4 Electronic & Electrical Equip. 11156.41 13.2 28.3
Salesforce.com 9.8 238.98 1.40 Bhp 85.2 2218.00 -34.50 Siemens Ag Na O.n. 194.1 129.40 -0.84 Sumco 209.8 2758.00 -27.00 Relx 2056.00 2.4 13.3 Pagegroup 613.00 3.1 34.3 Tbc Bank 1192.00 4.9 -4.8 Industrial Engineering 17519.61 12.4 40.4
Alexion Pharmaceuticals 8.3 181.28 0.77 Anglo American 82.3 2889.00 -84.00 Unilever 190.6 59.32 0.54 Advantest 165.4 9290.00 -210.00 Coca-cola Hbc Ag 2632.00 2.3 9.6 Spire Healthcare 235.00 2.8 50.1 Harworth 147.00 4.6 36.1 Support Services 11415.77 12.3 31.0
Rentokil Initial 518.60 2.2 0.2 Dr. Martens 455.00 2.7 - S&U 2660.00 4.3 19.3 Real Estate Investment Trusts 3121.77 12.0 24.5
BIGGEST MOVERS Close Day's Day's BIGGEST MOVERS Close Day's Day's BIGGEST MOVERS Close Day's Day's BIGGEST MOVERS Close Day's Day's
Diageo 3500.50 1.9 17.0 Volution 445.00 2.5 60.1 Value And Indexed Property ome Trust 230.50 4.1 2.0 Software & Computer Services 2137.06 10.3 6.3
price change chng% price change chng% price change chng% price change chng%
Ups Ups Ups Ups Losers Losers Losers Losers
Cintas 381.99 12.84 3.48 Gcp Student Living 216.00 24.00 12.50 Getinge Ab Ser. B 34.56 1.82 5.58 Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha 5340.00 180.00 3.49 Int Consolidated Airlines S.a. 167.78 -9.2 0.3 Cineworld 62.94 -19.3 -1.3 Lamprell 37.90 -20.5 -24.5 Travel & Leisure 7916.48 -16.1 18.1
Teleflex 386.65 10.45 2.78 Cineworld 62.94 5.62 9.80 Adp 107.45 3.30 3.17 Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha, 3565.00 105.00 3.03 Just Eat Takeaway.com N.v. 5844.00 -9.1 - Tullow Oil 47.02 -13.5 57.9 Stagecoach 69.15 -15.1 -9.6 Oil & Gas Producers 4959.27 -10.8 23.7
State Street 83.78 1.81 2.21 Homeserve 965.50 29.50 3.15 Swedbank Ab Ser A 16.50 0.46 2.90 Ebara 5550.00 150.00 2.78 Rolls-royce Holdings 93.06 -7.9 - Easyjet 824.20 -11.7 -2.4 Ted Baker 128.50 -12.3 10.6 Life Insurance 7501.96 -8.6 25.8
Rollins 36.27 0.74 2.08 Tui Ag 320.90 9.00 2.89 Ses 6.79 0.17 2.51 Jfe Holdings,. 1316.00 32.00 2.49 Jd Sports Fashion 886.60 -7.4 3.6 Ssp 239.00 -11.3 - Go-ahead 976.50 -12.0 -2.4 Food Producers 6913.54 -8.4 3.5
Fortinet 261.58 5.28 2.06 Network Int Holdings 364.80 9.80 2.76 Klepierre 21.30 0.45 2.16 Mitsui O.s.k.lines, 4955.00 120.00 2.48 Whitbread 2924.00 -6.8 -5.7 Energean 646.50 -10.3 -10.8 Foxtons 51.00 -11.5 -1.9 Mining 22610.42 -8.0 24.8
Melrose Industries 149.05 -6.6 - Tui Ag 320.90 -10.1 - Pendragon 17.05 -11.2 35.1 General Retailers 2547.19 -4.0 14.6
Downs Downs Downs Downs
Associated British Foods 2049.00 -6.2 - Xp Power 4965.00 -9.2 7.5 Saga 334.20 -11.0 30.1 Banks 2775.43 -3.0 40.7
Pvh 97.03 -3.82 -3.79 Clarkson 3080.00 -170.00 -5.23 Ericsson, Telefonab. L M Ser. B 10.13 -1.06 -9.44 Eisai Co., 9157.00 -1363.00 -12.96
Bp 292.25 -6.0 12.6 Carnival 1414.20 -9.1 1.8 Harbour Energy 339.10 -10.9 - Automobiles & Parts 4641.15 -2.3 75.0
Lyondellbasell Industries Nv 97.47 -3.53 -3.50 Burberry 1966.00 -104.00 -5.02 Sandvik Ab 21.16 -1.10 -4.95 Hitachi Zosen 788.00 -40.00 -4.83
Flutter Entertainment 12185.00 -5.6 - Playtech 375.20 -8.9 - Pharos Energy 23.50 -10.6 30.6 Household Goods 17290.64 -2.3 3.4
Charles Schwab (the) 68.52 -2.03 -2.88 Ferrexpo 433.40 -16.40 -3.65 Swatch N 54.07 -2.63 -4.63 Z Holdings 574.40 -16.40 -2.78
Taylor Wimpey 155.45 -5.6 -6.2 Firstgroup 77.60 -8.8 4.9 Dignity 771.00 -10.1 21.0 Mobile Telecommunications 2990.50 -1.2 24.3
Under Armour 19.52 -0.56 -2.79 Glencore 309.00 -11.05 -3.45 B. Sabadell 0.53 -0.02 -4.04 Fast Retailing Co., 77520.00 -2080.00 -2.61
Royal Mail 547.00 -5.5 60.9 National Express 239.80 -8.8 -1.7 Batm Advanced Communications Ld 86.70 -9.3 -6.6 Aerospace & Defense 3630.21 -1.0 12.6
Under Armour 17.33 -0.46 -2.56 Rio Tinto 5931.00 -211.00 -3.44 Arcelormittal Sa 25.48 -0.93 -3.52 Toho Co.,ltd 4950.00 -130.00 -2.56
Ocado 1805.00 -5.4 - Capita 33.97 -8.5 - Sig 46.28 -9.3 43.5 Personal Goods 34574.33 1.0 -5.6
Based on the constituents of the S&P500 Based on the constituents of the FTSE 350 index Based on the constituents of the FTSEurofirst 300 Eurozone index Based on the constituents of the Nikkei 225 index
Based on last week's performance. †Price at suspension.

CURRENCIES
DOLLAR EURO POUND DOLLAR EURO POUND DOLLAR EURO POUND DOLLAR EURO POUND
Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's
Jul 16 Currency Mid Change Mid Change Mid Change Jul 16 Currency Mid Change Mid Change Mid Change Jul 16 Currency Mid Change Mid Change Mid Change Jul 16 Currency Mid Change Mid Change Mid Change
Argentina Argentine Peso 96.2143 0.0317 113.6197 -0.0538 132.6947 -0.6625 Indonesia Indonesian Rupiah 14497.5000 15.0000 17120.1509 3.9852 19994.3616 -85.6774 Poland Polish Zloty 3.8783 0.0032 4.5799 0.0000 5.3488 -0.0241 ..Three Month 0.7251 0.0038 0.8561 0.0039 - -
Australia Australian Dollar 1.3500 0.0054 1.5942 0.0051 1.8618 -0.0024 Israel Israeli Shekel 3.2887 0.0122 3.8836 0.0113 4.5356 -0.0072 Romania Romanian Leu 4.1733 0.0025 4.9283 -0.0010 5.7556 -0.0272 ..One Year 0.7251 0.0039 0.8556 0.0039 - -
Bahrain Bahrainin Dinar 0.3770 - 0.4452 -0.0004 0.5199 -0.0028 Japan Japanese Yen 110.1050 0.0700 130.0233 -0.0218 151.8522 -0.7114 Russia Russian Ruble 74.1225 -0.0775 87.5314 -0.1619 102.2267 -0.6517 United States United States Dollar - - 1.1809 -0.0009 1.3792 -0.0073
Bolivia Bolivian Boliviano 6.9100 - 8.1600 -0.0066 9.5300 -0.0507 ..One Month 110.1050 0.0699 130.0233 -0.0217 151.8522 -0.7115 Saudi Arabia Saudi Riyal 3.7510 0.0003 4.4295 -0.0033 5.1732 -0.0272 ..One Month - - 1.1808 -0.2056 1.3792 -0.0073
Brazil Brazilian Real 5.0801 -0.0261 5.9992 -0.0357 7.0063 -0.0735 ..Three Month 110.1049 0.0698 130.0234 -0.0215 151.8521 -0.7116 Singapore Singapore Dollar 1.3563 0.0023 1.6017 0.0014 1.8706 -0.0068 ..Three Month - - 1.1807 -0.2056 1.3792 -0.0073
Canada Canadian Dollar 1.2600 0.0051 1.4879 0.0048 1.7377 -0.0022 ..One Year 110.1046 0.0691 130.0237 -0.0208 151.8522 -0.7120 South Africa South African Rand 14.4163 -0.1313 17.0242 -0.1688 19.8823 -0.2878 ..One Year - - 1.1800 -0.2056 1.3792 -0.0073
Chile Chilean Peso 756.9750 4.3400 893.9136 4.4108 1043.9883 0.4591 Kenya Kenyan Shilling 108.2000 - 127.7736 -0.1027 149.2249 -0.7945 South Korea South Korean Won 1139.4500 -2.0000 1345.5794 -3.4451 1571.4820 -11.1398 Vietnam Vietnamese Dong 23012.5000 1.5000 27175.5377 -20.1023 31737.9713 -166.8757
China Chinese Yuan 6.4676 0.0064 7.6376 0.0014 8.9198 -0.0387 Kuwait Kuwaiti Dinar 0.3008 0.0001 0.3552 -0.0002 0.4149 -0.0021 Sweden Swedish Krona 8.6775 0.0173 10.2473 0.0122 11.9676 -0.0397 European Union Euro 0.8468 0.0007 - - 1.1679 -0.0053
Colombia Colombian Peso 3803.3850 -4.2150 4491.4268 -8.5919 5245.4696 -33.7733 Malaysia Malaysian Ringgit 4.2095 0.0070 4.9710 0.0043 5.8056 -0.0212 Switzerland Swiss Franc 0.9193 0.0014 1.0856 0.0008 1.2679 -0.0048 ..One Month 0.8467 0.0007 - - 1.1678 -0.0053
Costa Rica Costa Rican Colon 618.2950 0.4600 730.1461 -0.0431 852.7266 -3.9023 Mexico Mexican Peso 19.8350 -0.1053 23.4232 -0.1432 27.3556 -0.2916 Taiwan New Taiwan Dollar 27.9795 0.0995 33.0411 0.0910 38.5882 -0.0675 ..Three Month 0.8466 0.0007 - - 1.1677 -0.0053
Czech Republic Czech Koruna 21.5997 -0.0185 25.5071 -0.0424 29.7893 -0.1843 New Zealand New Zealand Dollar 1.4262 -0.0039 1.6842 -0.0059 1.9670 -0.0158 Thailand Thai Baht 32.7475 0.0775 38.6716 0.0605 45.1640 -0.1330 ..One Year 0.8459 0.0007 - - 1.1672 -0.0053
Denmark Danish Krone 6.2980 0.0054 7.4374 0.0005 8.6860 -0.0387 Nigeria Nigerian Naira 411.7500 0.2500 486.2366 -0.0953 567.8684 -2.6768 Tunisia Tunisian Dinar 2.7928 0.0133 3.2980 0.0131 3.8516 -0.0021
Egypt Egyptian Pound 15.7094 0.0347 18.5513 0.0261 21.6657 -0.0672 Norway Norwegian Krone 8.8354 0.0320 10.4338 0.0294 12.1855 -0.0205 Turkey Turkish Lira 8.5213 -0.0462 10.0628 -0.0627 11.7522 -0.1267
Hong Kong Hong Kong Dollar 7.7676 -0.0003 9.1727 -0.0078 10.7127 -0.0575 Pakistan Pakistani Rupee 159.6500 0.7500 188.5311 0.7349 220.1826 -0.1324 United Arab Emirates UAE Dirham 3.6732 - 4.3376 -0.0035 5.0659 -0.0270
Hungary Hungarian Forint 304.0605 0.6125 359.0657 0.4352 419.3475 -1.3835 Peru Peruvian Nuevo Sol 3.9411 -0.0211 4.6541 -0.0287 5.4354 -0.0583 United Kingdom Pound Sterling 0.7251 0.0038 0.8562 0.0039 - -
India Indian Rupee 74.5675 0.0213 88.0569 -0.0457 102.8404 -0.5181 Philippines Philippine Peso 50.2400 0.0300 59.3285 -0.0122 69.2889 -0.3273 ..One Month 0.7251 0.0038 0.8562 0.0039 - -
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 FT 30 INDEX FTSE SECTORS: LEADERS & LAGGARDS FTSE 100 SUMMARY
Produced in conjunction with the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries Jul 02 Jul 01 Jun 30 Jun 29 Jun 28 Yr Ago High Low Year to date percentage changes Closing Day's Closing Day's
£ Strlg Day's Euro £ Strlg £ Strlg Year Div P/E X/D Total FT 30 2786.40 2786.30 2737.20 2750.40 2754.20 0.00 3314.70 1337.80 Fixed Line Telecomms 36.21 Electronic & Elec Eq 11.52 Consumer Goods 5.62 FTSE 100 Price Change FTSE 100 Price Change
Jul 16 chge% Index Jul 15 Jul 14 ago yield% Cover ratio adj Return FT 30 Div Yield - - - - - 0.00 3.93 2.74 Industrial Metals & 31.30 Pharmace & Biotech 11.48 Tobacco 4.97 3I Group PLC 1159.5 -6.00 Just Eat Takeaway.Com N.V. 5844 7.00
FTSE 100 (101) 7008.09 -0.06 6375.88 7012.02 7091.19 6250.69 3.05 1.68 19.56 129.02 6825.73 P/E Ratio net - - - - - 0.00 19.44 14.26 Industrial Transport 24.60 Health Care 11.31 General Retailers 4.91 Abrdn PLC 278.30 -0.10 Kingfisher PLC 367.00 1.00
FTSE 250 (250) 22467.00 -0.15 20440.23 22501.25 22750.04 17321.29 1.91 1.58 33.15 236.46 18026.46 FT 30 since compilation: 4198.4 high: 19/07/1999; low49.4 18/02/1900Base Date: 1/7/35 Chemicals 20.68 Banks 11.03 Life Insurance 4.10 Admiral Group PLC 3287 40.00 Land Securities Group PLC 672.00 3.80
FTSE 250 ex Inv Co (185) 23336.28 -0.10 21231.10 23360.27 23641.88 81.04 1.85 -0.13 -426.10 193.09 19092.21 FT 30 hourly changes Beverages 20.42 Real Est Invest & Se 10.84 Food & Drug Retailer 3.98 Anglo American PLC 2889 -84.00 Legal & General Group PLC 261.50 -1.30
FTSE 350 (351) 4019.10 -0.07 3656.53 4022.04 4067.29 3494.51 2.84 1.67 21.10 68.19 7789.63 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 High Low Support Services 19.04 Oil & Gas Producers 10.06 Leisure Goods 3.83 Antofagasta PLC 1365.5 -23.00 Lloyds Banking Group PLC 45.72 -0.84
FTSE 350 ex Investment Trusts (284) 3917.45 -0.06 3564.05 3919.97 3964.42 84.67 2.90 1.34 25.75 38.54 3919.83 2786.3 2794.6 2785.9 2856.1 2760.2 2399.1 2395.8 2414 2426.7 2439.2 2366.1 Software & Comp Serv 17.00 NON FINANCIALS Index 9.96 Financial Services 2.14 Ashtead Group PLC 5584 -20.00 London Stock Exchange Group PLC 7600 32.00
FTSE 350 Higher Yield (116) 3204.75 0.04 2915.64 3203.35 3244.86 2730.60 4.39 1.33 17.06 74.99 6874.05 FT30 constituents and recent additions/deletions can be found at www.ft.com/ft30 FTSE SmallCap Index 16.91 Health Care Eq & Srv 9.82 Household Goods & Ho 1.73 Associated British Foods PLC 2049 25.00 M&G PLC 222.50 -1.30
FTSE 350 Lower Yield (235) 4577.44 -0.20 4164.51 4586.60 4629.70 4060.69 1.16 3.03 28.42 48.60 5476.52 Construct & Material 16.61 FTSE 250 Index 9.66 Electricity 1.72 Astrazeneca PLC 8340 -6.00 Melrose Industries PLC 149.05 0.10
FTSE SmallCap (255) 7266.47 -0.12 6610.95 7275.30 7304.94 5033.42 2.26 2.56 17.31 84.97 11698.06
FTSE SmallCap ex Inv Co (134) 6113.86 -0.41 5562.32 6139.00 6174.12 85.58 1.65 -0.62 -98.44 41.00 10261.45 FX: EFFECTIVE INDICES Industrial Eng
Technology
16.45
15.93
Utilities
Oil & Gas
9.61
9.35
Travel & Leisure
Aerospace & Defense
1.58
1.28
Auto Trader Group PLC 660.80 6.40 Mondi PLC 1966.5 16.00
Avast PLC 609.40 13.80 National Grid PLC 943.00 15.20
FTSE All-Share (606) 4002.80 -0.07 3641.70 4005.80 4049.86 3454.00 2.82 1.69 20.94 67.18 7835.71
Jul 15 Jul 14 Mnth Ago Jul 16 Jul 15 Mnth Ago Basic Materials 15.30 FTSE All{HY-}Share Index 8.96 Nonlife Insurance 1.20 Aveva Group PLC 3882 31.00 Natwest Group PLC 199.80 -4.80
FTSE All-Share ex Inv Co (418) 3861.45 -0.07 3513.11 3864.19 3907.60 84.69 2.88 1.32 26.38 37.77 3923.63 Media 14.39 FTSE 100 Index 8.48 Automobiles & Parts 0.66 Aviva PLC 391.40 -1.70 Next PLC 7514 112.00
FTSE All-Share ex Multinationals (537) 1293.70 -0.10 977.00 1295.01 1310.97 1032.56 2.35 2.10 20.21 17.85 2629.04 UK 82.21 82.21 82.16 Mining 14.08 Telecommunications 7.31 Personal Goods 0.37 B&M European Value Retail S.A. 555.00 3.00 Ocado Group PLC 1805 -25.00
FTSE Fledgling (87) 12942.21 0.01 11774.69 12941.47 12968.79 8222.80 2.01 4.53 10.99 133.82 26942.76 Source: Bank of England. New Sterling ERI base Jan 2005 = 100. Other indices base average 1990 = 100. Industrials 13.79 Financials 6.90 Food Producers -0.46 Bae Systems PLC 539.80 6.60 Pearson PLC 812.00 1.20
FTSE Fledgling ex Inv Co (38) 17510.78 -0.14 15931.12 17535.57 17667.13 85.35 1.34 -3.91 -19.15 131.46 35559.66 Index rebased 1/2/95. for further information about ERIs see www.bankofengland.co.uk Real Est Invest & Tr 13.77 Tech Hardware & Eq 6.77 Mobile Telecomms -3.08 Barclays PLC 165.42 -3.70 Pershing Square Holdings LTD 2610 -25.00
FTSE All-Small (342) 5055.16 -0.11 4599.13 5060.96 5081.04 3484.92 2.25 2.65 16.78 58.72 10440.11 Gas Water & Multi 12.46 Consumer Services 5.96 Oil Equipment & Serv -29.44 Barratt Developments PLC 687.40 -2.20 Persimmon PLC 2952 16.00
FTSE All-Small ex Inv Co (172) 4590.91 -0.40 4176.76 4609.34 4636.01 85.62 1.64 -0.71 -85.46 31.01 9760.55 Equity Invest Instr 5.74 Oil & Gas Producers -40.36 Berkeley Group Holdings (The) PLC 4648 15.00 Phoenix Group Holdings PLC 679.40 -3.20
FTSE AIM All-Share (731) 1221.45 0.05 1111.26 1220.80 1242.23 875.40 0.79 0.62 205.10 5.87 1409.47
Bhp Group PLC 2218 -34.50 Polymetal International PLC 1590 -26.00
FTSE All-Share Technology (21) 2298.40 0.39 2182.20 2289.58 2335.91 95.22 1.06 0.66 142.83 12.45 3251.00
FTSE All-Share Telecommunications (7) 1930.30 0.89 1832.71 1913.31 1940.25 62.54 4.33 0.71 32.37 40.42 2721.58 FTSE GLOBAL EQUITY INDEX SERIES BP PLC
British American Tobacco PLC
292.25
2847
-3.80
54.00
Prudential PLC
Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC
1361.5
6485
-4.50
139.00
FTSE All-Share Health Care (15) 12563.59 0.40 11928.40 12513.58 12862.74 138.22 3.32 0.79 37.99 73.52 11178.57 Jul 16 No of US $ Day Mth YTD Total
YTD Gr Div Jul 16 No of US $ Day Mth YTD Total YTD Gr Div British Land Company PLC 498.50 1.60 Relx PLC 2056 20.00
FTSE All-Share Financials (252) 4696.61 -0.59 4459.16 4724.30 4756.86 72.55 2.44 4.16 9.84 45.31 4984.13 Regions & countries stocks indices % % % retn
% Yield Sectors stocks indices % % % retn % Yield Bt Group PLC 186.75 1.40 Rentokil Initial PLC 518.60 11.60
FTSE All-Share Real Estate (57) 1121.65 0.64 1114.05 1114.49 1120.41 897.61 2.43 -1.25 -33.01 10.28 1131.71
FTSE Global All Cap 9152 814.39 -0.4 0.0 11.9
13.1 1268.73
1.7 Oil Equipment & Services 27 230.95 -0.9 -0.9 22.0 402.23 25.2 4.8 Bunzl PLC 2596 11.00 Rightmove PLC 669.20 6.40
FTSE All-Share Consumer Discretionary (90) 5280.88 0.19 5013.89 5271.01 5364.95 73.80 1.19 -1.08 -78.00 35.03 5437.80
FTSE Global All Cap 9152 814.39 -0.4 0.0 11.9
13.1 1268.73
1.7 Basic Materials 363 691.41 0.2 0.2 13.3 1197.36 15.5 2.8 Burberry Group PLC 1966 -104.00 Rio Tinto PLC 5931 -211.00
FTSE All-Share Consumer Staples (27)19607.65 1.31 18616.32 19354.27 19462.12 84.81 3.80 1.36 19.32 271.23 17020.92
FTSE Global Large Cap 1743 728.59 -0.3 0.9 11.9
13.1 1169.51
1.7 Chemicals 170 948.15 -0.2 -0.2 8.9 1617.24 10.5 2.1 Coca-Cola Hbc AG 2632 15.00 Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC 93.06 1.92
FTSE All-Share Industrials (88) 6807.59 0.07 6463.42 6803.15 6859.00 95.77 1.76 0.97 58.54 52.99 7655.36
FTSE Global Mid Cap 2295 1031.24 -0.4 -1.8 12.5
13.6 1511.29
1.7 Forestry & Paper 21 330.77 -1.6 -1.6 4.6 640.97 6.5 2.4 Compass Group PLC 1452 9.00 Royal Dutch Shell PLC 1368.4 -8.60
FTSE All-Share Basic Materials (25) 8268.97 -2.46 7850.91 8477.61 8457.35 112.23 3.84 2.34 11.12 49.35 10199.18
FTSE Global Small Cap 5114 1117.11 -0.4 -2.5 11.0
11.9 1570.11
1.4 Industrial Metals & Mining 94 599.61 0.8 0.8 28.0 1055.84 31.2 3.6 Crh PLC 3564 9.00 Royal Dutch Shell PLC 1399.4 -8.00
FTSE All-Share Energy (14) 5141.93 -0.83 4881.96 5185.14 5321.52 51.75 3.92 0.86 29.61 50.22 5894.97
FTSE All-World 4038 476.91 -0.3 0.4 12.0
13.2 786.55
1.7 Mining 78 1001.82 0.5 0.5 13.8 1781.36 16.6 3.5 Croda International PLC 7832 90.00 Royal Mail PLC 547.00 -6.80
FTSE All-Share Utilities (10) 7813.04 1.29 7418.03 7713.53 7777.55 95.09 4.65 1.83 11.75 162.68 11198.84
FTSE World 2622 853.61 -0.4 0.6 12.8
14.1 1889.25
1.7 Industrials 757 592.97 -0.3 -0.3 13.2 922.05 14.2 1.4 Dcc PLC 6030 140.00 Sage Group PLC 698.20 4.80
FTSE All-Share Software and Computer Services (19) 2472.29 0.47 2347.30 2460.77 2511.46 94.17 1.05 0.65 145.60 12.91 3699.72
FTSE Global All Cap ex UNITED KINGDOM In 8863 861.74 -0.3 0.2 11.9
13.1 1317.91
1.6 Construction & Materials 147 702.30 -0.1 -0.1 14.0 1150.37 15.4 1.8 Diageo PLC 3500.5 23.00 Sainsbury (J) PLC 284.50 -0.20
FTSE All-Share Technology Hardware and Equipment (2) 6121.16 -2.65 5811.69 6287.57 6330.72 119.56 1.42 0.85 83.27 72.63 7747.64
FTSE Global All Cap ex USA 7385 608.57 -0.4 -2.5 7.9
9.6 1039.36
2.2 Aerospace & Defense 38 810.80 -0.4 -0.4 10.6 1239.77 11.4 1.4 Entain PLC 1821 -8.50 Schroders PLC 3560 -35.00
FTSE All-Share Telecommunications Equipment (2) 619.49 -0.08 588.17 620.00 627.22 273.01 1.44 2.75 25.32 2.36 862.68
FTSE Global All Cap ex JAPAN 7761 846.85 -0.3 0.2 12.7
13.9 1331.58
1.6 General Industrials 72 281.95 -0.2 -0.2 11.4 482.58 12.8 2.0 Evraz PLC 593.40 -15.20 Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust PLC 1304.5 4.50
FTSE All-Share Telecommunications Service Providers (5) 2985.98 0.92 2835.01 2958.66 3000.58 60.66 4.44 0.69 32.70 64.75 3828.54
FTSE Global All Cap ex Eurozone 8498 858.42 -0.3 0.4 12.0
13.2 1308.92
1.6 Electronic & Electrical Equipment 142 755.10 -0.4 -0.4 12.9 1062.21 13.6 1.1 Experian PLC 3086 36.00 Segro PLC 1173.5 5.50
FTSE All-Share Health Care Providers (4) 7709.27 0.02 7319.51 7708.09 7734.32 36.15 0.74 6.09 22.14 3.06 7114.00
FTSE Developed 2177 781.32 -0.5 0.7 12.9
14.1 1227.24
1.6 Industrial Engineering 150 1151.55 -0.4 -0.4 12.3 1784.72 13.5 1.5 Ferguson PLC 10235 15.00 Severn Trent PLC 2714 48.00
FTSE All-Share Medical Equipment and Services (2) 7211.75 -0.12 6847.13 7220.66 7339.13 116.29 1.79 1.41 39.64 79.79 6737.64
FTSE Developed All Cap 5706 817.83 -0.5 0.3 12.6
13.8 1266.08
1.6 Industrial Transportation 123 1062.97 0.1 0.1 15.9 1664.66 17.1 1.5 Flutter Entertainment PLC 12185 125.00 Smith & Nephew PLC 1505 -7.00
FTSE All-Share Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology (9)17522.97 0.46 16637.05 17443.51 17958.29 145.70 3.52 0.74 38.50 95.98 14026.95
FTSE Developed Large Cap 864 732.44 -0.5 1.3 13.0
14.2 1170.98
1.6 Support Services 85 732.21 -0.4 -0.4 13.9 1070.66 14.6 1.0 Fresnillo PLC 794.80 -22.40 Smith (Ds) PLC 413.90 -1.20
FTSE All-Share Banks (11) 2740.37 -1.64 2601.83 2786.03 2804.66 50.11 1.83 3.75 14.53 9.94 2298.61
FTSE Developed Europe Large Cap 232 434.25 -1.0 -3.1 10.5
12.8 828.04
2.4 Consumer Goods 534 651.22 -0.3 -0.3 6.6 1064.11 7.8 1.9 Glaxosmithkline PLC 1424.6 17.60 Smiths Group PLC 1555 -22.50
FTSE All-Share Finance and Credit Services (8)10547.04 0.34 10013.80 10511.55 10632.45 47.72 1.12 1.37 65.43 87.58 13855.99
FTSE Developed Europe Mid Cap 343 771.38 -1.0 -3.1 10.5
12.3 1282.75
2.1 Automobiles & Parts 126 657.29 -0.7 -0.7 7.3 1040.80 8.0 1.1 Glencore PLC 309.00 -11.05 Smurfit Kappa Group PLC 3888 -21.00
FTSE All-Share Investment Banking and Brokerage Services (32)10496.55 -0.09 9965.86 10505.59 10641.48 101.04 3.77 2.08 12.76 151.82 13874.00
FTSE Dev Europe Small Cap 713 1086.47 -1.1 -3.1 12.7
14.3 1736.00
1.8 Beverages 67 782.57 0.1 0.1 5.9 1290.38 7.1 2.1 Halma PLC 2771 -7.00 Spirax-Sarco Engineering PLC 14170 -270.00
FTSE All-Share Closed End Investments (188)13644.34 -0.13 12954.51 13661.94 13769.13 108.52 2.06 8.80 5.52 94.57 8261.44
FTSE North America Large Cap 240 962.13 -0.3 3.4 15.9
16.8 1415.87
1.3 Food Producers 133 746.10 -0.1 -0.1 3.9 1250.04 5.7 2.2 Hargreaves Lansdown PLC 1620 22.00 Sse PLC 1516 6.50
FTSE All-Share Life Insurance (6) 7626.29 -0.37 7240.72 7654.63 7629.20 72.86 3.48 2.20 13.07 176.53 8852.84
FTSE North America Mid Cap 422 1214.63 -0.3 -1.3 14.6
15.4 1648.46
1.5 Household Goods & Home Construction 60 600.51 0.1 0.1 4.2 975.97 5.6 2.3 Hikma Pharmaceuticals PLC 2630 28.00 St. James's Place PLC 1542 7.50
FTSE All-Share Nonlife Insurance (7) 3769.98 0.70 3579.38 3743.69 3772.76 81.50 4.21 1.25 19.04 64.25 7609.39
FTSE North America Small Cap 1284 1267.54 -0.5 -3.4 10.8
11.4 1656.03
1.2 Leisure Goods 45 328.95 -0.8 -0.8 -0.3 456.85 0.3 1.2 HSBC Holdings PLC 403.25 -5.50 Standard Chartered PLC 434.70 -5.80
FTSE All-Share Real Estate Investment and Services (16) 2768.69 0.31 2628.71 2760.22 2768.40 78.49 1.42 1.92 36.56 23.48 8058.92
FTSE North America 662 625.85 -0.3 2.4 15.6
16.5 1.4 Personal Goods
941.11 88 1175.11 -0.4 -0.4 11.5 1767.67 12.4 1.3 Imperial Brands PLC 1601 20.00 Taylor Wimpey PLC 155.45 -1.20
FTSE All-Share Real Estate Investment Trusts (41) 2795.34 0.72 2654.02 2775.26 2791.58 77.71 2.67 -1.65 -22.65 24.90 4050.87
FTSE Developed ex North America 1515 315.24 -0.8 -2.7 7.6
9.3 580.45
2.2 Tobacco 15 1002.10 -0.2 -0.2 10.3 2627.93 13.8 6.0 Informa PLC 490.00 1.80 Tesco PLC 234.90 1.95
FTSE All-Share Automobiles and Parts (2) 4664.93 -0.82 4429.08 4703.54 4726.38 28.85 0.80 -9.91 -12.58 0.32 4807.79
FTSE Japan Large Cap 174 458.09 -1.1 -1.9 1.0
2.1 2.0 Health Care
650.38 325 749.98 -0.5 -0.5 9.3 1169.23 10.6 1.6 Intercontinental Hotels Group PLC 4703 77.00 Unilever PLC 4358 71.50
FTSE All-Share Consumer Services (3) 2424.33 0.52 2301.76 2411.84 2446.06 77.27 0.01 -114.7 -95.49 0.01 3034.21
FTSE Japan Mid Cap 333 659.16 -1.2 -2.4 2.3
3.5 887.88
2.1 Health Care Equipment & Services 123 1540.49 -0.2 -0.2 10.7 1867.14 11.3 0.8 Intermediate Capital Group PLC 2082 -9.00 United Utilities Group PLC 1044.5 17.00
2
FTSE Global wi JAPAN Small Cap 884 725.82 -1.1 0.5 1.7
3.0 1013.48
2.1 Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology 202 481.39 -0.7 -0.7 8.3 801.09 10.0 2.2 International Consolidated Airlines Group S.A. 167.78 2.42 Vodafone Group PLC 116.60 1.30
FTSE All-Share Household Goods and Home Construction (12)14549.56 -0.35 13813.96 14601.01 14998.16 82.70 3.21 1.69 18.42 116.68 11876.26
FTSE Japan 507 189.37 -1.1 -2.0 1.2
2.3 300.99
2.0 Consumer Services 448 732.28 -0.4 -0.4 6.1 1030.84 6.6 0.8 Intertek Group PLC 5558 20.00 Weir Group PLC 1817 -40.50
FTSE All-Share Leisure Goods (2) 29195.58 0.18 27719.50 29141.85 29434.31 95.48 1.71 1.65 35.57 230.87 30952.70
FTSE Asia Pacific Large Cap ex Japan 918 909.03 0.7 -2.4 3.9
5.1 1.9 Food & Drug Retailers
1592.51 72 320.92 -0.4 -0.4 7.4 493.89 8.9 2.4 Itv PLC 121.30 -0.85 Whitbread PLC 2924 50.00
FTSE All-Share Personal Goods (5) 30161.63 -3.42 28636.72 31228.23 31331.56 73.70 1.39 1.34 53.47 419.78 23112.78
FTSE Asia Pacific Mid Cap ex Japan 933 1147.97 0.6 -1.2 11.8
13.2 1934.29
2.3 General Retailers 152 1348.43 -0.3 -0.3 6.5 1821.91 6.8 0.6 Jd Sports Fashion PLC 886.60 -4.40 Wpp PLC 948.20 -2.40
FTSE All-Share Media (11) 9107.81 0.40 8647.33 9071.48 9168.01 79.40 1.80 1.30 42.56 117.67 6220.51
FTSE Asia Pacific Small Cap ex Japan 1941 738.33 0.8 1.5 13.6
14.7 1.9 Media
1211.94 83 498.64 -0.3 -0.3 6.3 706.84 6.8 0.8 Johnson Matthey PLC 3121 -6.00
FTSE All-Share Retailers (22) 2601.07 0.32 2469.56 2592.73 2649.21 75.42 0.91 4.14 26.61 20.16 3279.97
FTSE Asia Pacific Ex Japan 1851 715.24 0.7 -2.2 4.7
5.9 2.0 Travel & Leisure
1331.34 141 521.41 -0.9 -0.9 4.7 750.29 5.1 0.9
FTSE All-Share Travel and Leisure (33) 7835.19 0.67 7439.06 7783.11 7950.16 61.75 0.16 -73.38 -8.55 8.31 8048.71
FTSE Emerging All Cap 3446 943.76 0.7 -2.1 6.1
7.5 2.1 Telecommunication
1574.07 89 158.97 -0.2 -0.2 3.2 355.69 6.0 4.0
FTSE All-Share Beverages (6) 27443.53 0.62 26056.04 27274.16 27359.61 101.47 2.02 0.74 66.48 40.35 21300.24
FTSE All-Share Food Producers (10) 7091.86 0.95 6733.31 7025.42 7176.99 77.63 1.60 3.06 20.40 73.99 6661.23
FTSE Emerging Large Cap 879 892.96 0.7 -2.5 4.1
5.5 2.0 Fixed Line Telecommuniations
1498.71 36 118.44 -0.1 -0.1 1.9 300.70 5.7 5.5 UK STOCK MARKET TRADING DATA
FTSE Emerging Mid Cap 982 1175.06 0.3 -1.6 12.2
14.1 2.5 Mobile Telecommunications
1964.55 53 192.75 -0.3 -0.3 4.7 374.12 6.5 3.2
FTSE All-Share Tobacco (2) 30211.72 1.81 28684.28 29675.53 29798.03 53.43 7.69 1.54 8.43 1003.64 25816.00 Jul 16 Jul 15 Jul 14 Jul 13 Jul 12 Yr Ago
FTSE Emerging Small Cap 1585 994.24 0.8 1.5 16.6
18.0 2.1 Utilities
1586.35 197 323.74 0.4 0.4 0.9 725.17 3.0 3.4
FTSE All-Share Construction and Materials (15) 8436.87 -0.05 8010.32 8441.27 8528.41 95.31 2.01 0.09 536.38 21.52 9914.50 Order Book Turnover (m) 816.77 45.05 35.14 57.30 28.28 28.28
FTSE Emerging Europe 85 408.97 -0.9 -4.9 10.4
14.6 4.5 Electricity
804.83 137 361.05 0.3 0.3 0.0 796.51 1.9 3.4
FTSE All-Share Aerospace and Defense (9) 3865.18 0.91 3669.76 3830.32 3869.43 67.90 2.54 0.15 260.19 55.09 4577.46 Order Book Bargains 906839.00 740343.00 735659.00 732541.00 794923.00 794923.00
FTSE Latin America All Cap 250 880.45 -0.6 -2.4 7.1
9.5 3.3 Gas Water & Multiutilities
1542.70 60 330.87 0.6 0.6 3.2 766.75 5.6 3.4
FTSE All-Share Electronic and Electrical Equipment (10)13198.26 -0.59 12530.98 13277.01 13366.64 105.32 1.48 1.72 39.35 102.91 12790.07 Order Book Shares Traded (m) 1146.00 1042.00 1141.00 1000.00 1104.00 1104.00
FTSE Middle East and Africa All Cap 328 745.16 -0.2 -3.4 14.1
16.1 2.2 Financials
1310.34 862 290.61 0.1 0.1 15.2 536.74 17.1 2.4
FTSE All-Share General Industrials (9) 5588.37 -0.08 5305.84 5593.07 5666.90 88.33 2.97 0.74 45.82 74.82 7096.37 Total Equity Turnover (£m) 5318.09 4309.80 3922.74 4518.75 3894.49 3894.49
FTSE Global wi UNITED KINGDOM All Cap In 289 350.79 -1.1 -3.7 10.7
12.7 2.9 Banks
682.36 266 216.97 0.1 0.1 17.6 441.16 20.0 2.8
FTSE All-Share Industrial Engineering (5)19052.36 -1.86 18089.11 19413.57 19398.46 109.12 0.74 2.67 50.60 106.96 25061.67 Total Mkt Bargains 1127918.00 967449.00 964297.00 997022.00 1055134.00 1055134.00
FTSE Global wi USA All Cap 1767 1079.82 -0.3 2.0 14.9
15.8 1.3 Nonlife Insurance
1532.68 71 323.28 0.0 0.0 8.0 520.47 10.7 3.2
FTSE All-Share Industrial Support Services (32)10980.43 0.59 10425.28 10915.95 10987.14 111.67 1.43 1.29 54.36 85.44 12326.83 Total Shares Traded (m) 4444.00 4998.00 4656.00 4621.00 4964.00 4964.00
FTSE Europe All Cap 1445 521.49 -1.0 -3.2 10.7
12.8 2.3 Life Insurance
955.44 53 246.95 0.7 0.7 6.2 452.25 8.4 3.3
FTSE All-Share Industrial Transportation (8) 6612.76 -0.66 6278.43 6656.44 6708.94 87.53 0.75 3.93 34.01 4.28 6724.35 † Excluding intra-market and overseas turnover. *UK only total at 6pm. ‡ UK plus intra-market turnover. (u) Unavaliable.
FTSE Eurozone All Cap 654 511.43 -1.0 -4.0 10.3
12.4 2.0 Financial Services
932.23 212 490.05 0.1 0.1 16.7 727.90 17.7 1.3
FTSE All-Share Industrial Materials (1)23004.29 0.00 829.75 23004.29 22679.23 16460.55 1.37 2.35 31.06 213.54 28322.85 (c) Market closed.
FTSE EDHEC-Risk Efficient All-World 4038 529.92 -0.3 -1.2 12.3
13.6 1.9 Technology
808.18 331 611.88 -0.7 -0.7 17.6 788.56 18.1 0.8
FTSE All-Share Industrial Metals and Mining (12) 6846.42 -2.79 6500.28 7043.06 7025.58 118.76 4.05 2.41 10.24 30.23 9414.80
FTSE EDHEC-Risk Efficient Developed Europe 575 411.61 -0.9 -2.9 10.2
12.1 2.1 Software & Computer Services
698.31 176 1011.22 -0.6 -0.6 20.3 1214.30 20.7 0.4
FTSE All-Share Precious Metals and Mining (5)21647.38 -1.81 20552.93 22046.77 21830.09 130.27 4.85 1.78 11.56 659.31 14471.39
Oil & Gas 132 302.87 -1.5 -8.3 17.4
20.1 3.9 Technology Hardware & Equipment
579.37 155 487.66 -0.8 -0.8 14.4 672.17 15.1 1.2
FTSE All-Share Chemicals (7) 18187.71 0.15 17268.18 18159.58 18189.65 87.72 1.67 1.56 38.40 182.25 17704.26 All data provided by Morningstar unless otherwise noted. All elements listed are indicative and believed
Oil & Gas Producers 90 288.07 -1.5 -8.9 19.2
22.0 4.0 Alternative Energy
563.18 15 208.07 -4.1 -4.1 -22.5 297.11 -22.2 0.5
FTSE All-Share Oil. Gas and Coal (14) 4990.19 -0.83 4737.89 5032.12 5164.48 51.75 3.92 0.86 29.61 48.75 5933.14 accurate at the time of publication. No offer is made by Morningstar or the FT. The FT does not warrant nor
Real Estate Investment & Services 161 371.54 0.5 0.5 3.6 697.42 5.4 2.6
FTSE Sector Indices Real Estate Investment Trusts 99 548.27 -0.1 -0.1 20.6 1228.62 22.5 2.9 guarantee that the information is reliable or complete. The FT does not accept responsibility and will not be
Non Financials (354) 4818.63 0.07 4383.93 4815.05 4873.79 86.84 2.93 1.09 31.14 45.91 8294.00 FTSE Global Large Cap 1743 728.59 -0.3 -0.3 11.9 1169.51 13.1 1.7 liable for any loss arising from the reliance on or use of the listed information.
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/ For all queries e-mail ft.reader.enquiries@morningstar.com
Hourly movements 8.00 9.00 10.00 11.00 12.00 13.00 14.00 15.00 16.00 High/day Low/day 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®
FTSE 100 7034.25 7049.97 7045.55 7030.77 7025.40 7018.71 7019.78 7007.09 7001.05 7056.63 6978.33 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. Data provided by Morningstar | www.morningstar.co.uk
FTSE 250 22564.63 22599.17 22601.82 22578.12 22540.46 22520.44 22506.67 22507.07 22491.21 22617.77 22460.82 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
FTSE SmallCap 7285.51 7293.78 7299.27 7292.60 7289.84 7284.67 7286.94 7280.14 7273.02 7300.14 7266.47 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,
FTSE All-Share 4018.01 4026.35 4024.53 4016.99 4013.35 4009.60 4009.71 4003.84 4000.48 4029.69 3989.35 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.
Time of FTSE 100 Day's high:09:15:45 Day's Low14:29:15 FTSE 100 2010/11 High: 7184.95(16/06/2021) Low: 6407.46(29/01/2021)
Time of FTSE All-Share Day's high:09:16:00 Day's Low14:29:00 FTSE 100 2010/11 High: 4093.99(05/07/2021) Low: 3641.93(29/01/2021)
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 UK COMPANY RESULTS UK RECENT EQUITY ISSUES

Amount Latest Company Turnover Pre-tax EPS(p) Div(p) Pay day Total Issue Issue Stock Close Mkt
Issue paid renun. closing Orcadian Energy A 0.000 0.000 0.154L 0.114L 0.000 0.000 0.00000 0.00000 - date price(p) Sector code Stock price(p) +/- High Low Cap (£m)
price up date High Low Stock Price p +or- Renold Pre 165.300 189.400 5.900 4.900 1.700 0.800 0.00000 0.00000 - 0.000 0.000 07/15 40.00 AIM ORCA Orcadian Energy PLC 41.50 1.23 43.75 39.50 2640.7
There are currently no rights offers by any companies listed on the LSE. 07/14 186.00 AIM LINV LendInvest PLC 197.50 0.50 208.50 191.00 27139.8
07/13 200.00 BUMP Seraphine Group PLC 279.40 -1.60 309.90 279.40 0.0
07/08 132.00 AIM CMO CMO Group PLC 163.00 3.00 165.00 142.00 11731.1
07/07 120.00 AIM SED Saietta Group PLC 113.50 -3.00 136.00 112.00 9652.7
06/30 165.00 BCG Baltic Classifieds Group PLC 199.00 5.00 222.00 165.00 99500.0
06/28 154.00 AIM ITIM Itim Group PLC 141.50 -14.50 158.00 137.00 4416.3
06/28 2.57 AIM SBDS Silver Bullet Data Services Group PLC 295.00 0.00 342.40 270.00 3958.6
06/22 262.00 AIM VIC Victorian Plumbing Group PLC 282.00 12.80 341.80 260.00 91488.5
06/16 200.00 MADE Made.com Group PLC 199.00 1.00 214.44 182.14 77230.9

Figures in £m. Earnings shown basic. Figures in light text are for corresponding period year earlier. §Placing price. *Intoduction. ‡When issued. Annual report/prospectus available at www.ft.com/ir
For more information on dividend payments visit www.ft.com/marketsdata For a full explanation of all the other symbols please refer to London Share Service notes.
16 ★ FTWeekend 17 July/18 July 2021

MARKET DATA

FT500: THE WORLD'S LARGEST COMPANIES

52 Week 52 Week 52 Week 52 Week 52 Week 52 Week
Stock Price Day Chg High Low Yld P/E MCap m Stock Price Day Chg High Low Yld P/E MCap m Stock Price Day Chg High Low Yld P/E MCap m Stock Price Day Chg High Low Yld P/E MCap m Stock Price Day Chg High Low Yld P/E MCap m Stock Price Day Chg High Low Yld P/E MCap m
Australia (A$) Finland (€) CntJpRwy 16200 -185.00 18455 0.00 0.93 -29.06 30309.25 Nordea Bk 97.74 0.43 98.53 64.57 0.73 15.22 45617.08 BlackRock 880.39 0.39 920.31 531.39 1.71 25.55 134282.72 MondelezInt 64.13 0.01 64.45 52.51 1.92 24.30 90084.13
ANZ 27.43 -0.06 29.64 16.40 2.25 16.13 57845.08 Nokia 4.93 0.05 5.10 2.70 - -13.04 33038.34 Denso 7330 -5.00 7970 0.00 2.06-211.63 52455.72 SEB 117.45 0.65 118.70 75.56 3.47 13.25 29371.21 Boeing 221.51 -1.25 278.57 141.58 - -10.71 129541.34 Monsanto 9.70 0.03 10.00 9.51 - - 242.50
BHPBilltn 51.87 0.34 51.91 33.73 3.15 27.70 113187.83 SampoA 40.02 - 41.40 29.94 3.73 63.85 26189.06 EastJpRwy 7762 -84.00 8626 0.00 1.84 -7.83 26642.85 SvnskaHn 99.10 -1.45 101.60 71.70 4.12 12.31 22210.02 Booking Holdings 2162.11 -7.28 2516 1589 - 126.41 88760.7 MorganStly 92.98 0.35 94.27 45.86 1.51 12.17 172997.56
CmwBkAu 98.19 -0.12 106.57 62.64 3.19 25.42 129037.86 France (€) Fanuc 26785 -55.00 29700 0.00 0.77 66.15 49118.05 Swedbank 169.12 4.76 170.88 136.26 4.27 9.74 22062.2 BrisMySq 67.37 -0.06 67.99 56.75 2.79 -24.42 150433.61 Netflix 533.81 -9.14 593.29 458.60 - 64.65 236692.81
CSL 277.72 2.57 320.42 242.00 1.11 33.16 93629.75 Airbus Grpe 110.64 0.24 116.04 57.87 - -292.66 102697.59 FastRetail 77520-2080.00 110500 0.00 0.63 81.22 74681.71 Telia Co 39.82 0.59 39.97 33.31 2.25 -7.13 18764.46 CapOne 159.79 -0.56 168.00 60.30 0.63 30.52 72143.48 NextEraE 77.85 1.03 87.69 64.69 1.84 36.91 152698.5
NatAusBk 25.96 -0.06 27.84 16.56 2.38 16.56 63445.17 AirLiquide 148.96 -0.70 151.12 123.60 1.89 27.72 83363.98 Fuji Hvy Ind 2123.5 -36.00 2339.5 1898.5 2.84 13.15 14834.43 Volvo 209.05 -3.15 240.80 150.40 2.86 18.19 38267.75 CardinalHlth 57.18 0.41 62.96 44.65 3.42 12.19 16589.21 Nike 160.13 -1.56 162.73 95.11 0.64 76.21 204158.68
Telstra 3.77 -0.01 3.80 2.66 2.79 24.07 33213.58 AXA 21.62 -0.15 24.16 13.34 3.53 16.55 61762.66 Hitachi 6539 153.00 6853 0.00 1.65 17.21 57502.28 Switzerland (SFr) Carnival 21.62 -0.34 31.52 12.11 - -1.58 21049.22 NorfolkS 262.86 -0.54 295.14 180.30 1.45 29.12 65778.35
Wesfarmers 59.12 0.51 59.63 43.50 2.70 33.78 49654.54 BNP Parib 49.88 -0.84 57.92 28.79 - 8.99 73617.4 HondaMtr 3516 2.00 3663 0.00 2.57 13.55 57844.62 ABB 32.47 -0.22 33.02 21.85 2.40 141.34 72517.92 Caterpillar 210.36 -1.05 246.69 130.21 1.96 33.67 115232.51 Northrop 364.69 0.57 379.03 282.88 1.59 13.36 58700.94
Westpc 24.91 -0.08 27.12 16.00 3.32 37.88 67693.33 ChristianDior 666.50 -10.50 717.00 335.00 0.72 59.59 142072.32 JapanTob 2161.5 6.00 2227.5 0.00 7.10 11.41 39262.52 CredSuisse 9.01 -0.05 13.50 8.50 3.01 20.96 24988.6 CharlesSch 68.52 -2.03 76.37 32.66 1.05 30.20 123819.25 NXP 193.75 -0.66 216.43 114.38 0.87 128.36 53426.62
Woolworths 38.24 -0.09 38.75 30.48 2.58 32.46 35907.97 Cred Agr 11.45 -0.11 13.49 6.51 - 12.45 41808.22 KDDI 3480 -42.00 3767 2604 3.71 11.30 72826.34 Nestle 115.74 0.92 116.76 95.00 2.45 25.71 362718.3 Charter Comms 714.60 9.67 749.31 547.78 - 40.50 134820.84 Occid Pet 26.75 -0.48 33.50 8.52 3.09 -1.69 24968.95
Belgium (€) Danone 59.17 0.33 61.56 46.03 3.71 18.93 48048.16 Keyence 57530 -50.00 59310 41780 0.37 70.99 127076.32 Novartis 84.47 0.65 86.92 70.42 3.60 26.41 226686.21 Chevron Corp 100.04 -1.26 113.11 65.16 5.20 -33.50 192883.04 Oracle 87.70 1.46 88.85 53.66 1.08 21.32 244858.4
AnBshInBv 58.32 0.12 65.86 43.87 0.82-206.85 116613.98 EDF 10.92 0.05 13.58 8.06 - 104.41 40703.03 MitsbCp 3077 5.00 3298 0.00 4.72 12.91 41520.1 Richemont 111.15 -1.00 116.90 56.08 0.90 44.82 63113.56 Chubb 167.10 0.94 179.01 111.93 1.87 13.58 75143.3 Pepsico 155.42 0.17 156.84 128.32 2.63 28.79 214808.44
KBC Grp 64.02 -1.30 69.06 40.88 - 13.72 31502.68 Engie SA 11.62 0.17 13.87 10.10 - -15.66 33422.95 MitsubEst 1770 -4.50 2047.5 0.00 1.82 14.71 22368.8 Roche 359.10 3.85 359.10 290.55 2.63 20.72 274437.36 Cigna 234.00 -0.91 272.81 158.84 0.43 10.13 80296.06 Perrigo 46.22 -0.09 58.83 38.20 1.98 -29.08 6172.64
EssilorLuxottica 152.24 -1.80 158.10 103.05 0.79 766.48 79420.04 MitsubishiEle 1494.5 4.50 1817 0.00 2.59 17.54 29144.85 Swiss Re 83.50 -0.48 94.96 62.22 6.73 -29.61 28838.27 Cisco 53.83 0.18 55.35 35.28 2.69 22.43 226850.64 Pfizer 40.13 0.04 43.08 32.78 3.81 24.18 224607.47
Brazil (R$)
Hermes Intl 1250 -19.00 1285 679.00 0.38 90.52 155833.97 MitsuiFud 2703 8.50 2816.5 1645.5 1.75 13.50 23696.98 Swisscom 544.80 7.20 544.80 456.30 7.89 16.30 30699.12 Citigroup 67.32 -1.13 80.29 40.49 3.03 9.24 139153.64 Phillips66 76.41 -0.76 94.34 43.27 4.71 -15.63 33457.42
Ambev 17.55 -0.07 19.86 12.04 2.51 23.97 54374.09
LOreal 374.60 1.00 395.95 269.30 1.07 56.52 248022.15 MitUFJFin 589.60 - 660.30 392.80 4.72 14.63 72730.09 UBS 13.75 -0.09 15.24 9.65 4.86 8.18 55377.25 CME Grp 211.29 0.87 221.82 146.89 1.62 35.68 75871.18 PhilMorris 99.23 -0.08 100.95 68.93 4.81 17.92 154653.63
Bradesco 21.35 -0.09 24.57 16.11 2.44 13.92 20469.24
LVMH 654.30 -8.90 698.90 364.50 0.73 67.16 390008.06 Mizuho Fin 1593 13.50 1732.5 1256 2.58 6.98 36737.89 Zurich Fin 364.30 0.40 411.30 297.80 5.30 15.37 59624.32 Coca-Cola 56.49 0.05 56.68 45.85 2.92 33.84 243545.28 PNCFin 185.91 -3.59 203.88 101.34 2.47 20.97 78985.42
Cielo 3.59 0.05 5.76 3.15 1.54 19.21 1919.89
Orange 9.59 0.06 11.15 8.63 6.54 5.37 30134.19 Murata Mfg 9025 -88.00 10835 0.00 1.25 34.96 55392.68 Cognizant 68.87 0.04 82.73 60.50 1.29 26.56 36322.86 PPG Inds 170.47 -1.01 182.97 105.94 1.25 34.11 40416.93
ItauHldFin 26.31 -0.02 30.15 21.10 2.27 15.15 25678.89 Taiwan (NT$)
PernodRic 184.20 1.05 190.60 131.65 1.51 167.42 56963.97 Nippon T&T 2875 -9.00 3018 2127 3.65 11.08 101855.22 ColgtPlm 84.09 0.46 86.41 72.61 2.09 27.05 71137.51 ProctGmbl 139.92 0.76 146.92 121.54 2.26 25.73 342556.73
Petrobras 27.54 -0.16 32.34 17.74 0.86 6.46 40346.29 Chunghwa Telecom 115.00 1.00 115.00 106.50 3.60 26.91 31884.27
Renault 30.97 -0.37 41.42 19.67 - -1.00 10813.57 NipponTT 2875 -9.00 3018 2127 3.65 11.08 101855.22 Comcast♦ 58.05 0.10 59.11 40.97 1.62 22.95 266136.49 Prudntl 99.85 -0.45 109.17 60.16 4.45 -98.97 39340.9
Vale 113.91 -1.57 120.45 57.06 5.34 11.33 118491.51 Formosa PetChem 102.00 -3.50 117.50 78.00 2.86 130.15 34727.17
Safran 113.54 0.58 127.74 80.64 - 135.76 57284.01 Nissan Mt 576.20 9.40 664.50 359.70 - -1.94 22087.8 ConocPhil 56.48 -0.60 63.57 27.53 3.02 -22.30 76215.15 PublStor 315.69 2.21 315.89 183.22 2.53 47.14 55238.85
Canada (C$) HonHaiPrc 119.50 1.00 134.50 74.10 3.45 13.32 59208.56
Sanofi 87.87 0.72 95.82 74.92 3.75 8.60 130826.57 Nomura 554.70 4.00 721.00 463.30 4.85 5.80 16290.43 Corning 40.29 -0.28 46.82 28.26 2.23 29.42 34301.17 Qualcomm 140.39 -1.07 167.94 87.51 1.85 20.15 158359.92
Bausch Hlth 35.16 -0.66 43.97 19.88 - -9.76 10001.34 MediaTek 957.00 9.00 1185 551.00 1.08 25.52 54395.23
Sant Gbn 57.42 -0.90 58.69 30.96 - 64.62 36111.4 Nppn Stl 1843 25.50 2354.5 0.00 - -7.97 15907.02 Costco 410.24 -1.58 414.35 307.00 0.67 42.52 181354.42 Raytheon 84.87 -0.11 89.98 51.92 2.24 -37.08 128585.68
BCE 62.51 0.23 62.70 52.52 5.41 25.15 44936.24 TaiwanSem 589.00 -2.00 679.00 360.00 1.66 29.20 545863.81
Schneider 134.20 -1.84 140.62 98.06 1.99 33.67 90178.78 Panasonic 1324.5 9.00 1520 856.60 2.03 16.17 29518.61 CrownCstl 203.41 1.24 203.62 146.15 2.49 90.44 87911.7 Regen Pharm 583.04 -6.28 664.64 441.00 - 16.58 61041.28
BkMontrl 125.71 -0.63 130.40 72.44 3.34 15.46 64600.64 Seven & I 5042 -26.00 5340 2937.5 1.99 24.36 40592.53 Thailand (THB) CSX 31.66 -0.16 34.96 22.69 3.35 8.97 23975.5 S&P Global 413.34 1.82 419.96 303.50 0.67 40.70 99567.99
SocGen 24.15 -0.61 27.03 10.77 - -22.64 24332.09
BkNvaS 78.96 -0.26 82.35 53.54 4.65 12.48 76126.9 ShnEtsuCh 17885 20.00 20060 12230 1.32 24.65 67680.98 PTT Explor 37.50 0.25 45.00 30.50 2.79 14.21 32708.34 CVS 82.38 0.31 90.61 55.36 2.45 14.93 108456.75 Salesforce 238.98 1.40 284.50 181.93 - 54.33 221295.39
Total 39.69 0.87 42.19 24.51 6.62 -28.09 127408.73
Brookfield 63.25 -0.30 65.00 38.77 0.98 59.08 79203.83 Softbank 7481 -53.00 10695 5432 0.63 17.21 117064.78 United Arab Emirates (Dhs) Danaher♦ 284.50 3.55 284.59 186.87 0.26 44.68 202927.84 Schlmbrg 28.15 -0.58 36.87 13.70 1.78 -13.80 39363.06
UnibailR 72.71 2.33 85.65 29.08 7.76 -1.34 11900.19
CanadPcR♦ 91.33 -0.02 100.00 71.25 0.81 23.38 48324.47 Sony 11155 -250.00 12545 0.00 0.48 12.01 127760.87 Emirtestele 22.48 -0.02 22.58 16.44 3.58 21.10 53224.92 Deere 345.09 -1.01 400.34 170.90 0.92 23.88 107648.1 Sempra Energy 134.08 1.52 144.93 112.33 3.15 20.20 40594.16
Vinci 89.19 0.61 96.95 64.86 1.47 38.78 62946.54
CanImp 143.33 -0.37 148.11 91.31 4.16 11.85 51107.79 SumitomoF 3764 16.00 4354 2800 5.57 188.28 46972.32 Delta 41.47 0.12 52.28 24.38 - -2.02 26534.07 Shrwin-Will 283.49 4.37 293.05 197.77 0.67 36.74 75394.53
Vivendi 28.00 -0.17 32.35 21.77 2.24 21.26 37997.97 United Kingdom (p)
CanNatRs 41.58 -0.95 46.36 19.77 4.08-112.63 39086.67 Takeda Ph 3736 -21.00 4365 3239 5.18 30.25 53556.35 Devon Energy 26.47 -0.18 31.99 7.73 1.60 -3.87 17914.7 SimonProp 126.41 -0.13 136.70 59.03 4.79 34.90 41529.65
Germany (€) AscBrFd 2049 25.00 2528 1618 - 40.49 22371.88
CanNatRy 131.75 -0.49 149.44 125.00 1.78 26.56 74134.77 TokioMarine 5196 -21.00 5746 4436 4.04 23.10 32915.95 DiscFinServ 122.36 -1.15 127.65 47.42 1.45 33.69 37306.04 SouthCpr 62.69 -1.27 83.29 41.92 2.71 22.89 48463.96
Allianz 208.95 -2.05 223.50 148.60 4.57 10.95 101733.15 AstraZen 8340 -6.00 10120 6499.8 2.47 37.98 145669.21
Enbridge 49.61 0.20 50.41 35.80 6.60 15.82 79760.97 Toyota 9866 34.00 10330 0.00 2.40 14.16 292382.13 Disney 181.59 -2.56 203.02 113.37 - -72.96 329936.69 Starbucks 119.54 0.57 120.83 73.21 1.44 140.69 140730.67
BASF 67.01 -0.39 72.88 45.92 4.90-102.05 72681.3 Aviva 391.40 -1.70 426.60 247.40 3.32 8.19 21663.59
GtWesLif 37.03 - 38.00 23.55 4.72 11.70 27294.88 DominRes 76.99 0.85 86.95 67.85 4.08 21.51 62090.28 StateSt 83.78 1.81 89.28 56.63 2.48 13.81 29136.03
Bayer 50.67 0.14 63.82 39.91 5.78 -3.06 58784.65 Mexico (Mex$) Barclays 165.42 -3.70 217.63 88.90 0.60 8.38 38929.27
ImpOil 34.80 -0.29 42.36 14.86 2.52 -13.79 19891.23 DukeEner 104.73 0.79 108.00 78.95 3.68 60.70 80560.3 Stryker♦ 257.91 0.86 268.04 184.58 0.93 69.92 97167.04
BMW 85.50 -1.78 96.39 54.23 3.06 14.27 60781.75 AmerMvl 15.89 -0.02 16.30 12.71 2.32 13.96 36141.85 BP 292.25 -3.80 361.71 188.52 6.48 -7.21 80332.3
Manulife 24.02 -0.14 27.68 17.58 4.65 8.22 37025.14 DuPont 78.03 -1.52 87.27 52.12 1.54 -33.79 41523.07 Sychrony Fin 47.58 -0.15 50.96 21.67 1.85 13.41 27669.57
Continental 115.30 -1.72 132.68 79.04 2.72 -22.93 27232.42 FEMSA UBD 169.83 0.06 174.38 112.72 1.62-125.17 18504.31 BrAmTob 2847 54.00 2961.5 207.50 7.39 10.21 73206.95
Nutrien 75.65 -1.46 79.67 43.15 3.02 73.47 34245.87 Eaton 153.89 0.02 155.67 91.72 1.92 43.24 61325.17 T-MobileUS 148.74 0.40 150.20 103.43 - 74.03 185457.63
Daimler 71.72 -1.46 80.41 37.16 3.12 9.86 90609.16 WalMrtMex 65.50 -0.28 70.40 49.81 1.29 35.11 57661.74 BT 186.75 1.40 206.70 94.68 - 12.79 25554.65
RylBkC 128.07 -1.24 129.40 90.75 3.44 12.76 144831.72 eBay 68.52 0.38 70.77 45.36 0.96 18.09 46680.05 Target 251.56 -1.37 254.53 119.04 1.07 20.62 124452.73
Deut Bank 10.20 -0.21 12.56 6.75 - 16.27 24884.94 Netherlands (€) Compass 1452 9.00 1721.63 1024.5 - -62.86 32933.54
Suncor En 26.67 -0.61 31.38 14.28 3.161331.15 31719.64 Ecolab 215.55 0.96 230.00 181.25 0.88 70.93 61633.81 TE Connect 135.92 -0.96 139.58 83.80 1.41 43.30 44884.13
Deut Tlkm 18.34 0.12 18.43 12.59 6.51 20.72 103144.95 ASML Hld 589.30 -10.20 611.80 289.20 0.43 55.10 291930.74 Diageo 3500.5 23.00 3574.5 2253 2.00 72.18 121535.79
ThmReut 129.17 1.86 129.27 91.18 1.51 8.51 50817.96 Emerson 98.24 -0.28 99.09 60.78 2.06 28.22 58914.53 Tesla Mtrs 646.19 -4.41 900.40 273.00 - 640.04 622494.5
DeutsPost 58.09 -0.15 59.60 33.90 2.07 23.55 84997.77 Heineken 101.95 0.35 103.80 74.26 1.75 59.65 69346.68 GlaxoSmh 1424.6 17.60 1669.8 1190.8 5.62 13.67 96623.52
TntoDom 84.48 -0.17 89.12 57.44 3.71 12.94 122058.87 EOG Res♦■ 75.34 -0.85 87.99 31.22 1.89 -71.80 43968.81 TexasInstr 187.90 -0.36 197.58 125.43 2.04 28.48 173530.07
E.ON 10.41 0.12 10.81 8.27 4.62 24.30 32482.73 ING 10.46 -0.24 11.68 5.65 - 17.25 48205.07 Glencore 309.00 -11.05 339.40 150.59 - -30.17 61472.48
TrnCan 62.23 0.43 66.14 50.61 5.31 25.77 48363.47 EquityResTP 83.86 0.64 84.03 45.43 2.87 49.91 31364.09 TheTrvelers 156.60 1.02 162.71 105.67 2.17 14.16 39379.46
Fresenius Med 69.80 0.36 79.96 55.18 1.80 16.86 24140.93 Unilever 50.79 0.46 53.66 43.00 0.73 26.77 182770.28 HSBC 403.25 -5.50 462.55 281.50 2.67 19.19 111508.01
China (HK$) Imperial Brands 1601 20.00 1686 1142 11.60 10.13 21058.82 Exelon 46.17 0.44 47.36 33.97 3.34 22.77 45120.68 ThrmoFshr 519.29 4.81 532.57 387.93 0.18 26.14 204095.45
Fresenius SE 44.74 -0.05 46.53 31.03 1.96 13.98 23891.42 Norway (Kr)
AgricBkCh 2.67 -0.01 3.30 2.38 8.08 3.82 10566.16 LlydsBkg 45.72 -0.84 59.94 23.59 - 18.29 45443.87 ExxonMb 58.03 -0.92 64.93 31.11 6.05 -10.96 245672.26 TJX Cos 67.91 -0.16 74.65 50.06 0.38 54.54 81932.54
HenkelKgaA 77.90 0.40 86.50 72.35 2.46 23.07 23899.22 DNB 180.85 -3.80 198.45 125.30 4.81 13.17 31733.93
Bk China 2.76 -0.01 3.17 2.33 8.22 3.76 29712.67 Natl Grid 943.00 15.20 967.60 805.40 5.15 22.24 43653.71 Facebook 341.91 -2.55 358.79 226.90 - 29.28 819232.47 Truist Financial Corp 55.19 -0.67 62.69 34.86 3.26 16.58 74222.01
Linde 246.65 -1.05 250.65 183.15 1.36 53.08 151468.84 Equinor 173.42 -1.30 193.40 116.30 2.89 -21.58 63723.11
BkofComm♦ 4.66 0.02 5.26 3.66 8.02 3.78 21004.67 Natwest Group 199.80 -4.80 214.20 90.54 1.50 -57.09 32973 Fedex 295.34 -0.74 319.90 160.47 0.87 26.54 78366.58 UnionPac 218.77 -1.17 231.26 167.57 1.77 28.31 145329.46
MuenchRkv 228.10 -1.00 269.30 194.10 4.27 20.29 37737.59 Telenor 150.50 0.50 161.45 138.25 6.02 13.26 23837.88
BOE Tech 1.06 -0.01 1.10 0.51 - -10.81 27.15 Prudential 1361.5 -4.50 1598.5 861.00 1.68 22.81 48582.05 FordMtr 13.90 -0.11 16.46 6.41 - 14.05 54499.01 UPS B 210.47 -2.39 219.59 117.06 1.92 35.69 152233.46
SAP 125.46 0.06 143.32 89.93 1.25 27.72 182010.3
Ch Coms Cons♦ 3.71 0.02 4.80 3.21 7.44 3.07 2110.4 Qatar (QR) ReckittB 6485 139.00 8020 5782 2.69 40.71 62982.97 Franklin 29.65 -0.54 35.94 17.97 3.71 18.84 14953.17 USBancorp 58.22 -0.60 62.47 34.17 2.88 15.37 86729.05
Siemens 129.40 -0.84 145.96 97.56 3.15 23.94 129887.46
Ch Evrbrght 2.86 0.02 3.54 2.40 8.84 3.96 4668.31 QatarNtBk 17.80 -0.28 19.00 16.35 2.54 15.27 45146.65 RELX 2056 20.00 2081.24 1484.9 2.22 32.53 54823.67 GenDyn 190.21 0.86 197.51 129.17 2.31 17.22 53751.51 UtdHlthcre 420.22 0.17 425.98 289.64 1.16 25.98 396562.5
Volkswgn 280.00 -3.80 357.40 131.80 1.79 16.14 97572.24
Ch Rail Cons 5.03 -0.01 6.84 4.07 4.90 2.72 1344.55 Russia (RUB) RioTinto 5931 -211.00 6876.26 4226.5 4.74 13.52 109708.72 GenElectric 12.82 0.06 14.42 5.93 0.31-119.05 112542.18 ValeroEngy 65.98 -0.82 84.95 35.44 5.94 -95.66 26970
Ch Rail Gp 3.93 -0.01 4.33 3.33 5.05 3.10 2128.73 Hong Kong (HK$) GenMills 59.87 0.09 66.14 53.96 3.30 14.73 36353.69 Verizon 56.75 0.20 61.95 53.83 4.40 12.42 234928.14
Gzprm neft 281.50 1.34 13230.22 2.25 - - 89906.56 RollsRoyce 93.06 1.92 137.45 34.59 - -1.76 2386.99
ChConstBk♦ 5.58 - 6.74 4.93 6.79 4.40 172708.59 AIA 96.15 0.10 109.30 68.85 1.35 25.56 149737.25 GenMotors 56.33 -0.63 64.30 24.44 0.68 12.89 81709.04 VertexPharm 202.69 2.60 304.00 185.33 - 19.33 52469.48
Lukoil 6450 -50.71 6983.62 3718.45 - - 60291.87 RylDShlA 1399.4 -8.00 1718.36 878.10 3.37 -9.39 88724.45
China Vanke 23.40 0.30 35.00 22.40 5.12 5.46 5704.33 BOC Hold 25.55 -0.20 29.55 20.05 5.69 10.09 34777.36 GileadSci 68.79 0.49 78.94 56.56 3.99 681.77 86274.92 VF Cp 77.93 -1.83 90.79 57.59 2.49 85.67 30576.32
MmcNrlskNckl 25200 753.00 28011.97 343.80 - - 53799.94 StandCh 434.70 -5.80 533.20 334.25 1.50 21.73 19764.87
ChinaCitic♦ 3.68 0.01 4.29 2.93 7.75 3.53 7050.72 Ch OSLnd&Inv 18.38 0.18 25.00 14.92 5.98 3.84 25898.17 GoldmSchs 369.35 -4.00 393.26 185.52 1.35 9.18 125491.17 ViacomCBS 41.13 -0.17 101.97 24.11 2.36 10.93 24904.74
Novatek 1551.39 - 13307.81 953.54 - - 63550.25 Tesco 234.90 1.95 317.55 217.10 4.93 17.53 26525.26
ChinaLife♦ 14.02 0.02 20.50 13.72 6.25 6.61 13430.87 ChngKng 53.70 -0.45 56.05 35.65 3.61 12.02 25189.48 Halliburton 20.34 -0.36 25.00 10.60 0.88 -10.22 18092.43 Visa Inc 248.46 -0.09 250.46 179.23 0.50 51.35 420346.15
Rosneft 571.49 5.88 39143.78 133.30 - - 81713.01 Vodafone 116.60 1.30 157.52 1.56 6.58 359.88 42894.14
ChinaMBank 64.80 - 72.45 35.60 2.20 13.81 38299.13 Citic Ltd♦ 8.31 0.04 9.32 5.20 4.68 4.22 31121.93 HCA Hold 221.27 0.98 221.71 103.17 0.22 16.54 73164.14 Walgreen 46.56 0.31 57.05 33.36 3.94 -66.39 40275.88
Sberbank 302.89 - 568.52 2.82 - - 88211.61 WPP 948.20 -2.40 1024.46 558.00 1.05 -3.90 16557.16
ChinaMob 48.05 - 60.40 39.00 7.34 7.61 126661.13 Citic Secs 18.10 0.34 22.00 15.22 3.27 12.32 5308.98 Hew-Pack 28.07 -0.03 36.00 16.66 2.58 11.79 33719.24 WalMartSto 141.17 -0.49 153.66 126.28 1.54 29.59 395578.94
Surgutneftegas 34.70 - 43.50 30.34 - - 16724.77 United States of America ($)
ChinaPcIns 23.40 0.10 42.75 20.85 6.13 7.63 8360.67 CK Hutchison 58.65 -0.10 65.80 45.80 5.02 7.68 29057.08 HiltonWwde 123.50 0.60 132.69 73.50 0.12 -47.44 34398.91 WellsFargo 44.73 -0.28 48.13 20.76 1.81 30.86 184873.99
CNOOC 8.12 -0.11 10.60 6.50 8.74 12.10 46673.11 Saudi Arabia (SR) 21stC Fox A 35.64 -0.20 44.80 24.18 1.30 13.85 11652.08
ChMinsheng 3.75 0.01 5.06 3.65 11.70 4.73 4016.87 HomeDep 325.48 2.77 345.69 246.59 1.88 23.82 346069.36 Williams Cos 25.59 0.03 28.35 18.26 6.29 26.94 31079.69
HangSeng 152.80 -1.10 166.70 110.00 4.43 18.08 37608.97 AlRajhiBnk 108.20 0.20 115.00 56.50 0.93 23.30 72119.88 3M 201.09 -1.51 208.95 148.80 2.93 20.59 116563.95
ChMrchSecs 18.35 -0.04 28.18 17.82 1.80 16.32 21057.86 Honywell 232.68 -0.13 234.02 146.21 1.57 35.59 161610.93 Yum!Brnds 116.82 -0.18 122.73 88.08 1.62 39.38 34799.32
HK Exc&Clr 524.00 19.00 587.00 339.00 1.29 57.03 85528.46 Natnlcombnk 55.50 -0.50 59.50 35.60 - 14.31 44391.72 AbbottLb 117.54 0.88 128.54 94.29 1.30 36.86 208847.44
Chna Utd Coms 4.19 - 5.59 4.01 1.42 22.59 19924.74 HumanaInc♦ 469.70 2.77 475.44 370.22 0.55 16.70 60598.08 Venezuela (VEF)
MTR♦ 44.65 -0.30 49.00 37.65 2.78 -56.64 35543.13 SaudiBasic 119.00 0.80 128.20 86.10 3.155867.46 95182.23 Abbvie 118.14 0.96 118.35 79.11 4.10 43.94 208661.51
ChShenEgy♦ 15.24 0.02 18.32 12.42 9.88 6.24 6626.65 IBM 139.52 -0.94 152.84 105.92 4.67 23.74 124659.84 Bco de Vnzla 445000 70000 500000 7000 175.19 - 471.90
SandsCh 30.60 -0.35 40.55 26.50 3.26 -20.75 31882.88 SaudiTelec 126.20 -1.00 139.80 94.00 3.19 22.75 67294.1 Accenture 314.18 -0.76 317.12 210.42 1.05 37.74 209379.5
ChShpbldng 4.04 0.01 5.44 3.94 - -255.89 11421.04 IllinoisTool 229.40 -0.09 242.07 177.62 1.96 32.93 72463.5 Bco Provncl 6000000 600000 6900000 487000 - -16.93 188.12
SHK Props 116.80 -0.40 126.00 90.50 4.28 15.43 43573.69 Singapore (S$) Adobe 605.29 -0.88 611.62 418.51 - 53.45 288360.16
ChStConEng 4.67 -0.03 5.61 4.57 3.91 4.08 29347.83 Illumina 465.99 3.50 555.77 260.42 - 108.92 68034.54 Mrcntl Srvcs 5600000 350000 6600000 510000 0.02 2.33 99.13
Tencent 564.00 -1.00 775.50 499.40 0.24 28.48 696756.09 DBS 30.12 0.24 30.88 19.45 4.02 13.92 57032.4 AEP 87.55 0.37 94.21 74.80 3.29 19.16 43753.15
ChUncHK 4.13 -0.01 6.70 3.95 4.28 8.07 16269.02 Intcntl Exch 118.62 0.63 121.97 92.06 1.04 31.73 66755.27
JardnMt US$ 63.40 0.29 68.88 37.37 2.74 -58.73 45753.13 Aetna - - - - - - -
CNNC Intl 4.75 -0.16 5.77 4.27 2.53 12.07 11431.75 India (Rs) Intel 55.72 -0.10 68.49 43.61 2.40 12.53 224977.17 Closing prices and highs & lows are in traded currency (with variations for that
OCBC 12.07 0.02 12.77 8.36 3.67 12.24 39804.21 Aflac 53.55 -0.04 57.57 33.37 2.18 6.90 36396.18
CSR 3.40 -0.02 4.22 2.53 5.23 7.00 1913.3 Bhartiartl 541.15 15.70 623.00 394.00 0.38 -9.66 39856.63 Intuit 502.60 -0.57 511.69 281.19 0.46 64.03 137340.11 country indicated by stock), market capitalisation is in USD. Highs & lows are
SingTel 2.27 - 2.63 2.00 5.72 21.02 27638.05 AirProd 286.73 -1.37 327.89 245.75 1.92 33.99 63457.44
Daqin 6.04 -0.05 7.11 5.99 7.84 8.17 13883.95 HDFC Bk 1522.35 1.65 1641 993.00 - 27.75 112832 John&John 168.98 0.61 173.65 133.65 2.39 29.87 444991.26 based on intraday trading over a rolling 52 week period.
UOB 26.09 0.08 26.84 18.85 3.73 15.00 32256.93 Alexion 181.28 0.77 187.45 99.91 - 58.88 40066.37
GuosenSec 10.95 0.01 16.14 10.40 1.80 15.42 14944.75 Hind Unilevr 2417.4 5.05 2533.95 2000.05 1.58 69.68 76171.2 JohnsonCn 70.31 0.19 70.81 36.07 1.49 54.95 50389.23 ♦ ex-dividend
Allstate 131.17 0.68 140.00 86.51 1.66 7.51 39264.26
HaitongSecs 6.72 0.09 7.93 6.31 4.92 5.79 2949.75 HsngDevFin 2536.9 -3.20 2896 1623 0.85 24.84 61434.5 South Africa (R) JPMrgnCh 153.69 -1.77 167.44 91.38 2.34 12.20 465239.32
Alphabet 2523.95 -16.15 2586.53 1402.15 - 33.65 759070 ■ ex-capital redistribution
Hngzh HikVDT 63.00 -0.34 70.48 33.48 1.10 42.19 79506.73 ICICI Bk 660.30 -7.15 679.40 333.75 - 29.42 61324.71 Firstrand 53.21 -0.24 59.82 35.52 2.72 21.27 20704.45 Kimb-Clark 137.47 1.33 160.16 128.02 3.16 20.62 46386.72
Altria 47.51 0.02 52.59 35.83 7.20 20.31 87923.81 # price at time of suspension
Hunng Pwr 2.72 0.02 4.12 2.44 6.07 56.80 1645.93 Infosys 1555.45 -25.35 1596.85 892.15 1.39 35.04 88888.51 MTN Grp 105.45 0.61 109.41 52.65 3.33 11.38 13782.79 KinderM 17.82 -0.05 19.29 11.45 5.89 22.00 40343.54
Amazon 3576.66 -54.54 3773.08 2871 - 68.011803794.53
IM Baotou Stl 2.15 -0.10 2.31 1.12 - 82.55 10530.46 ITC 207.90 1.65 239.20 163.35 5.03 18.71 34318.04 Naspers N 2944.83 7.83 3888 2685 - 28.16 88962.53 Kraft Heinz 39.50 0.07 44.95 28.56 4.05 89.81 48314.32
AmerAir 20.52 0.06 26.09 10.63 - -1.36 13161.18
In&CmBkCh♦ 4.48 - 5.75 3.96 6.95 4.40 50059.33 L&T 1618.75 9.40 1625 843.00 0.50 66.71 30489.71 South Korea (KRW) Kroger 39.60 0.76 42.99 30.35 1.72 12.06 29586.89
AmerExpr 171.20 -1.66 174.76 89.11 1.00 28.08 137521.43
IndstrlBk 20.45 -0.35 28.07 15.50 3.68 6.44 62021.66 OilNatGas 116.80 -0.10 128.50 64.10 4.41 157.52 19705.37 HyundMobis 284500-2000.00 405000 200500 1.49 16.40 23668.12 L Brands 73.82 -0.39 77.87 17.33 0.41 24.50 20281.94
AmerIntGrp 47.52 -0.55 54.08 25.57 2.72 -6.85 40778.84
Kweichow 1955.9 -42.09 2627.88 1585 0.86 52.38 379893.27 RelianceIn 2112.4 30.05 2369.35 1830 0.31 27.55 191560.65 KoreaElePwr 25050 - 30050 18950 4.89 7.78 14113.12 LasVegasSd 48.80 -0.64 66.77 42.58 - -20.01 37281.47
AmerTower 282.66 1.38 283.22 197.50 1.60 65.61 125726.06
Midea 0.59 -0.03 0.85 0.52 - -3.71 22.87 SBI NewA 430.00 -1.70 441.95 175.50 - 16.07 51464.58 SK Hynix 121500-2000.00 150500 71300 0.97 16.16 77627.18 LibertyGbl 25.48 0.03 29.07 18.73 - -9.35 4595.5
Amgen 248.37 1.74 276.69 210.28 2.64 20.59 142701.97
New Ch Life Ins 23.85 -0.05 36.75 23.25 6.94 3.94 3175.19 SunPhrmInds 688.60 5.60 721.85 452.25 0.60 66.55 22156.88 SmsungEl 79800 -800.00 96800 53700 3.97 19.63 418086.5 Lilly (E) 232.12 0.65 239.37 129.21 1.32 34.76 222606.01
Anthem 395.41 -0.71 406.00 244.10 1.01 21.10 96812.44
PetroChina♦ 3.37 -0.07 3.96 2.16 4.65 27.43 9153.97 Tata Cons 3194.8 -8.15 3399.65 2125.1 0.93 36.14 158483.64 Spain (€) Linde 291.22 -0.84 305.71 214.14 1.36 53.07 151440.45
Aon Cp 232.11 0.85 260.97 179.52 0.78 25.35 52373.85
PingAnIns 73.40 0.35 103.60 69.85 3.39 7.64 70376.4 Israel (ILS) BBVA 5.09 -0.11 5.55 2.13 - 10.44 40079.27 Lockheed 378.78 0.53 402.38 319.81 2.64 15.17 105275.83
Apple 147.34 -1.15 150.00 89.15 0.56 32.972458672.11
PngAnBnk 21.34 -0.28 25.31 13.10 - 15.24 64029.68 TevaPha 29.75 -0.53 43.95 28.79 - -2.50 10049.08 BcoSantdr 3.04 -0.08 3.51 1.44 - -6.52 62210.94 Lowes 197.97 2.22 215.22 140.84 1.18 21.60 139943.04
Aptiv 151.85 -1.74 160.53 76.18 0.15 22.60 41069.77
Pwr Cons Corp 3.99 - 4.64 3.57 0.98 7.95 6875.2 CaixaBnk 2.44 -0.06 2.90 1.52 2.85 2.47 23244.97 Lyondell 97.47 -3.53 118.02 61.52 4.31 13.89 32589.48
Italy (€) ArcherDan 58.62 -0.40 69.30 40.22 2.47 15.94 32751.12
SaicMtr 20.79 0.27 28.80 17.78 4.17 9.38 37556.25 Iberdrola♦ 10.30 0.07 12.57 10.01 3.87 20.29 78028.03 Marathon Ptl 54.22 -0.03 64.84 26.56 4.28 -18.20 35386.67
Enel 8.01 0.08 9.05 6.73 4.26 30.97 96166.93 AT&T 28.61 0.18 33.88 26.35 7.27 -84.17 204239.7
ShenwanHong 0.07 0.00 0.10 0.04 - -7.49 77.78 Inditex 28.09 0.39 32.85 20.86 1.29 76.58 103384.18 Marsh&M 141.54 0.49 142.94 102.11 1.31 32.40 71977.61
ENI 9.83 -0.08 10.83 5.73 5.85 -3.89 41863.23 AutomData 208.22 1.19 208.22 127.31 1.77 36.16 88601.42
ShgPdgBk 9.98 0.04 11.75 9.22 5.93 5.72 45292.71 Repsol 9.16 -0.16 11.55 5.04 8.47 -6.53 16529.16 MasterCard 387.98 -2.25 401.50 281.20 0.42 59.53 381345.05
Generali 16.74 -0.07 17.92 11.18 3.12 13.23 31245.72 Avago Tech 472.65 -4.69 495.14 304.18 2.84 54.41 193909.65
Sinopec Corp 3.74 -0.02 4.69 2.95 6.06 5.43 12284.47 Telefonica 3.72 0.03 4.22 2.71 10.89 14.81 23884.27 McDonald's 236.57 -0.31 239.05 190.13 2.15 37.16 176522.45
IntSPaolo 2.23 -0.02 2.49 1.38 - 17.44 51214.23 BakerHu 20.79 -0.44 26.57 12.13 3.46 64.98 16084.34
Sinopec Oil 2.06 -0.02 2.37 1.74 - 87.15 4321.98 McKesson 189.85 0.35 204.66 141.32 0.88 -6.72 30031.66
Unicred 9.40 -0.13 11.04 6.09 - 34.13 24834.68 Sweden (SKr) BankAm 38.38 -0.45 43.49 22.95 1.88 16.48 328930.69
Denmark (kr) Medtronic 125.87 0.51 132.30 94.64 1.82 58.84 169157.22
Japan (¥) AtlasCpcoB 473.10 8.20 482.40 336.00 1.47 38.43 21274.86 Baxter 81.62 0.56 91.45 74.79 1.20 39.45 41042.78
DanskeBk 110.95 -1.40 125.60 80.28 1.79 10.56 15188.73 Merck 78.18 0.28 83.72 15.32 3.20 27.87 197956.32
AstellasPh 1905 -19.00 2025 0.00 2.32 23.70 32212.03 Ericsson 103.84 -10.82 121.80 92.00 1.68 18.73 36766.07 BectonDick 248.27 1.65 284.97 219.50 1.30 44.43 72201.51
MollerMrsk 17340 100.00 18895 8022 0.81 18.82 24525.25 Metlife 58.26 -0.38 67.68 35.19 3.16 46.28 51001.68
Bridgestne 4717 -1.00 5229 3078 2.32 165.64 30575.49 H&M 190.00 -1.46 229.50 132.55 - -175.89 31982.45 BerkshHat 419797.01-1552.99 445000 282560 - 6.46 267826.29
NovoB 555.80 5.40 557.40 400.20 1.62 29.55 156427.96 Microsoft 280.37 -0.66 284.10 196.25 0.76 38.212111627.56
Canon 2514.5 -20.00 2742 0.00 3.17 24.95 30459.54 Investor 211.30 2.20 212.10 127.65 1.06 3.47 44364.76 Biogen 328.46 0.30 468.55 223.25 - 16.93 49451.21
Mnstr Bvrg 93.41 -0.21 99.24 71.61 - 35.07 49373
BkNYMeln 49.29 0.61 52.90 32.65 2.54 12.76 43152.45

FT 500: TOP 20 FT 500: BOTTOM 20 BONDS: HIGH YIELD & EMERGING MARKET BONDS: GLOBAL INVESTMENT GRADE
Close Prev Day Week Month Close Prev Day Week Month Day's Mth's Spread Day's Mth's Spread
price price change change % change change % change % price price change change % change change % change % Red Ratings Bid Bid chge chge vs Red Ratings Bid Bid chge chge vs
IM Baotou Stl 2.15 2.25 -0.10 -4.44 0.46 27.2 36.94 Occid Pet 26.75 27.23 -0.48 -1.76 -3.49 -11.5 -12.44 Jul 16 date Coupon S* M* F* price yield yield yield US Jul 16 date Coupon S* M* F* price yield yield yield US
BOE Tech 1.06 1.07 -0.01 -0.93 0.10 10.4 32.50 Carnival 21.62 21.95 -0.34 -1.53 -2.65 -10.9 -26.26 High Yield US$ US$
L&T 1618.75 1609.35 9.40 0.58 118.05 7.9 7.15 Schlmbrg 28.15 28.73 -0.58 -2.02 -3.04 -9.7 -17.36 HCA Inc. 04/24 8.36 BB- Ba2 BB 113.75 4.24 0.00 0.12 - FleetBoston Financial Corp. 01/28 6.88 BBB+ Baa1 A- 129.00 2.54 -0.01 -0.05 -
Naspers N 2944.83 2937.00 7.83 0.27 209.38 7.7 -1.32 Halliburton 20.34 20.69 -0.36 -1.72 -2.05 -9.1 -15.73 High Yield Euro The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. 02/28 5.00 BBB+ A3 A 117.21 2.47 0.00 0.32 -
AmerMvl 15.89 15.91 -0.02 -0.13 1.11 7.5 1.60 EOG Res 75.34 76.19 -0.85 -1.12 -7.25 -8.8 -11.17 Aldesa Financial Services S.A. 04/21 7.25 - - B 71.10 28.23 0.00 0.64 25.98 NationsBank Corp. 03/28 6.80 BBB+ Baa1 A- 127.69 2.72 -0.01 0.06 -
HK Exc&Clr 524.00 505.00 19.00 3.76 34.00 6.9 12.62 ValeroEngy 65.98 66.80 -0.82 -1.23 -6.32 -8.7 -18.99 GTE LLC 04/28 6.94 BBB+ Baa2 A- 128.27 2.80 0.00 -0.11 -
Tencent 564.00 565.00 -1.00 -0.18 36.00 6.8 -6.08 BakerHu 20.79 21.22 -0.44 -2.05 -1.95 -8.6 -15.91 Emerging US$ United Utilities PLC 08/28 6.88 BBB Baa1 A- 130.43 2.62 -0.07 -0.22 -
Nokia 4.93 4.88 0.05 1.06 0.28 5.9 10.92 Biogen 328.46 328.16 0.30 0.09 -29.70 -8.3 -16.21 Peru 03/19 7.13 BBB+ A3 BBB+ 104.40 2.60 - - 0.34 Barclays Bank plc 01/29 4.50 A A1 A+ 96.46 5.02 0.00 0.02 -
ChinaMBank 64.80 64.80 0.00 0.00 3.55 5.8 -3.64 Suncor En 26.67 27.28 -0.61 -2.24 -2.30 -7.9 -13.49 Colombia 01/26 4.50 - Baa2 BBB- 109.50 2.33 0.16 0.52 1.28
Brazil 04/26 6.00 - Ba2 BB- 115.15 2.78 -0.01 0.65 1.73 Euro
SEB 117.45 116.80 0.65 0.56 5.70 5.1 7.41 RollsRoyce 93.06 91.14 1.92 2.11 -7.94 -7.9 -15.54 Electricite de France (EDF) 04/30 4.63 A- A3 A- 137.45 0.82 -0.01 0.10 -
Citic Secs 18.10 17.76 0.34 1.91 0.82 4.7 -8.76 Franklin 29.65 30.19 -0.54 -1.79 -2.50 -7.8 -12.38 Poland 04/26 3.25 - A2 A- 111.22 0.98 0.03 0.16 -0.07
Mexico 05/26 11.50 - Baa1 BBB- 149.00 1.61 0.00 -0.12 0.56 The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. 02/31 3.00 BBB+ A3 A 124.42 0.68 0.00 -0.11 -
BHPBilltn 51.87 51.53 0.34 0.66 2.21 4.5 5.38 Devon Energy 26.47 26.65 -0.18 -0.69 -2.18 -7.6 -8.98 The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. 02/31 3.00 BBB+ A3 A 121.70 0.93 0.00 0.02 -
GuosenSec 10.95 10.94 0.01 0.09 0.46 4.4 3.11 Phillips66 76.41 77.17 -0.76 -0.98 -6.29 -7.6 -15.80 Turkey 03/27 6.00 - Ba2 BB+ 101.26 5.82 0.00 0.17 3.07
Turkey 03/27 6.00 - B2 BB- 102.88 5.43 0.14 0.83 4.38 Finland 04/31 0.75 AA+ Aa1 AA+ 111.08 -0.27 0.00 -0.05 -0.87
Visa Inc 248.46 248.55 -0.09 -0.04 9.99 4.2 8.21 Marathon Ptl 54.22 54.25 -0.03 -0.06 -4.46 -7.6 -14.34
Peru 08/27 4.13 BBB+ A3 BBB+ 103.50 3.66 0.01 -0.02 0.80 Yen
DukeEner 104.73 103.94 0.79 0.76 4.07 4.0 2.85 Renault 30.97 31.34 -0.37 -1.18 -2.54 -7.6 -14.51
Russia 06/28 12.75 - Baa3 BBB 168.12 2.48 0.07 0.05 - Mexico 06/26 1.09 - Baa1 BBB- 98.73 1.34 -0.02 -0.14 0.27
MasterCard 387.98 390.23 -2.25 -0.58 15.04 4.0 6.60 Boeing 221.51 222.76 -1.25 -0.56 -18.08 -7.5 -8.54
MediaTek 957.00 948.00 9.00 0.95 37.00 4.0 -3.24 Ericsson 103.84 114.66 -10.82 -9.44 -8.30 -7.4 -4.56 Brazil 02/47 5.63 - Ba2 BB- 101.48 5.52 0.08 0.80 - £ Sterling
CSR 3.40 3.42 -0.02 -0.58 0.13 4.0 -7.12 Repsol 9.16 9.33 -0.16 -1.73 -0.68 -6.9 -20.12 Emerging Euro innogy Fin B.V. 06/30 6.25 BBB Baa2 A- 137.45 2.19 -0.03 0.02 -
Pepsico 155.42 155.25 0.17 0.11 5.94 4.0 5.68 CanNatRs 41.58 42.53 -0.95 -2.23 -2.93 -6.6 -8.35 Brazil 04/21 2.88 BB- Ba2 BB- 103.09 0.05 0.01 -0.09 -1.19 innogy Fin B.V. 06/30 6.25 BBB Baa2 A- 128.68 3.20 0.00 -0.01 0.40
JapanTob 2161.50 2155.50 6.00 0.28 81.00 3.9 -1.84 Hew-Pack 28.07 28.10 -0.03 -0.11 -1.97 -6.6 -3.36 Mexico 04/23 2.75 BBB+ A3 BBB+ 107.76 0.76 0.00 -0.07 -1.56 Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data LLC, an ICE Data Services company. US $ denominated bonds NY close; all other London
Mexico 04/23 2.75 - Baa1 BBB- 106.48 -0.26 - - -0.36 close. *S - Standard & Poor’s, M - Moody’s, F - Fitch.
Based on the FT Global 500 companies in local currency Based on the FT Global 500 companies in local currency
Bulgaria 03/28 3.00 BBB- Baa2 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.

INTEREST RATES: OFFICIAL BOND INDICES VOLATILITY INDICES GILTS: UK CASH MARKET
Jul 16 Rate Current Since Last Mnth Ago Year Ago Day's Month's Year Return Return Jul 16 Day Chng Prev 52 wk high 52 wk low Red Change in Yield 52 Week Amnt
US Fed Funds 0.00-0.25 15-03-2020 1.00-1.25 1.50-1.75 1.25-1.50 Index change change change 1 month 1 year VIX 17.11 0.10 17.01 41.16 14.10 Jul 16 Price £ Yield Day Week Month Year High Low £m
US Prime 4.75 30-10-2019 5.25 5.25 4.25 Markit IBoxx VXD 15.17 -0.30 15.47 47.53 2.67 Tr 3.75pc '21 100.50 0.06 20.00 50.00 50.00 -300.00 102.75 100.00 29.00
US Discount 2.65 30-09-2019 2.75 2.75 1.75 ABF Pan-Asia unhedged 220.27 0.19 -0.12 -3.12 -1.31 3.96 VXN 20.49 0.38 20.11 47.63 18.73 Tr 4pc '22 102.53 0.02 -50.00 0.00 -50.00 -120.00 106.68 102.53 38.77
Euro Repo 0.00 16-03-2016 0.00 0.00 0.00 Corporates( £) 400.65 -0.33 0.53 -2.00 0.92 2.75 VDAX 18.58 0.57 18.00 93.30 - Tr 0.125pc '23 100.02 0.11 -26.67 22.22 -8.33 -237.50 100.60 99.97 33.82
UK Repo 0.10 19-03-2020 0.25 0.75 0.25 Corporates($) 339.91 0.45 0.51 -0.48 0.51 -0.48 † CBOE. VIX: S&P 500 index Options Volatility, VXD: DJIA Index Options Volatility, VXN: NASDAQ Index Options Volatility. Tr 0.125pc '24 99.77 0.22 -12.00 29.41 4.76 -283.33 104.35 99.69 34.12
Japan O'night Call 0.00-0.10 01-02-2016 0.00 0.00--0.10 0.00--0.10 Corporates(€) 244.39 0.06 0.58 0.09 0.54 3.54 ‡ Deutsche Borse. VDAX: DAX Index Options Volatility. Tr 0.25pc '25 99.89 0.28 -9.68 12.00 3.70 -450.00 123.75 99.78 4.23
Switzerland Libor Target -1.25-0.25 15-01-2015 -0.75--0.25 -1.25--0.25 -1.25--0.25 Eurozone Sov(€) 258.12 0.07 0.96 -2.04 0.94 0.58 Tr 0.125pc '26 99.09 0.33 -8.33 13.79 -15.38 -1200.00 101.14 98.61 33.89
Gilts( £) 360.87 -0.56 0.93 -4.84 1.41 -5.10 BONDS: BENCHMARK GOVERNMENT Tr 1.25pc '27 104.97 0.41 -8.89 2.50 -19.61 -2150.00 109.23 104.13 39.34
INTEREST RATES: MARKET Global Inflation-Lkd 318.17 0.47 1.45 1.17 -0.11 8.24 Red Bid Bid Day chg Wk chg Month Year Tr 0.875pc '29 102.48 0.57 -6.56 -5.00 -22.97 612.50 107.70 100.42 41.87
Over Change One Three Six One Markit iBoxx £ Non-Gilts 387.09 -0.33 0.49 -1.99 0.84 1.75 Date Coupon Price Yield yield yield chg yld chg yld Tr 4.25pc '32 136.69 0.74 -5.13 -5.13 -18.68 196.00 147.41 133.57 38.71
Jul 16 (Libor: Jul 15) night Day Week Month month month month year Overall ($) 280.70 0.38 0.58 -1.39 0.58 -1.39 Australia 11/22 2.25 102.99 0.02 0.00 0.00 0.01 -0.25 Tr 4.25pc '36 145.81 0.90 -4.26 -7.22 -16.67 109.30 158.28 140.76 30.41
US$ Libor 0.08563 0.000 0.001 -0.002 0.08913 0.13388 0.15325 0.24100 Overall( £) 364.13 -0.50 0.81 -4.06 1.26 -3.25 05/32 1.25 99.22 1.33 -0.05 -0.03 -0.25 0.34 Tr 4.5pc '42 165.60 1.06 -3.64 -6.19 -13.82 70.97 182.64 157.72 27.21
Euro Libor -0.58429 0.000 0.005 0.000 -0.57471 -0.55486 -0.52486 -0.48643 Overall(€) 250.11 0.08 0.81 -1.52 0.79 0.97 Austria 05/34 2.40 130.03 0.05 -0.02 -0.01 -0.12 0.10 Tr 3.75pc '52 169.63 1.10 -3.51 -5.17 -12.00 71.88 192.54 158.62 24.10
£ Libor 0.04050 0.000 -0.001 0.002 0.05400 0.07813 0.09300 0.17625 Treasuries ($) 256.95 0.36 0.68 -2.06 0.68 -2.06 02/47 1.50 125.94 0.43 -0.03 -0.02 -0.13 0.19 Tr 4pc '60 193.77 1.04 -3.70 -6.31 -12.61 70.49 223.28 179.62 24.12
Swiss Fr Libor -0.002 -0.80280 -0.75940 -0.71880 -0.59580 FTSE Belgium 10/23 0.20 102.00 -0.67 -0.01 0.00 -0.03 -0.09 Gilts benchmarks & non-rump undated stocks. Closing mid-price in pounds per £100 nominal of stock.
Yen Libor -0.001 -0.07683 -0.08250 -0.07117 0.04233 Sterling Corporate (£) - - - - - - Canada - - - - - - -
Euro Euribor
Sterling CDs
0.002
0.000
-0.55700
0.50000
-0.54800
0.63000
-0.51300
0.78500
-0.48700 Euro Corporate (€) 104.47 -0.05 - - 0.54 -1.73 11/22 2.00 102.40 0.18 0.00 0.04 -0.05 -0.11 GILTS: UK FTSE ACTUARIES INDICES
Euro Emerging Mkts (€) 720.27 12.17 - - 4.78 8.97 Denmark 11/22 0.25 101.06 -0.55 0.00 0.01 -0.01 0.03
US$ CDs 0.000 0.14000 0.19000 0.22000 Eurozone Govt Bond 110.04 -0.19 - - -0.34 -0.64 11/30 0.10 114.96 -1.39 -0.01 0.00 -0.09 -0.20 Price Indices Day's Total Return Return
Euro CDs 0.000 -0.53000 -0.49000 -0.52000 Fixed Coupon Jul 16 chg % Return 1 month 1 year Yield
CREDIT INDICES Day's Week's Month's Series Series Finland 04/23 1.50 103.82 -0.67 0.00 0.01 -0.03 -0.07
04/31 0.75 109.03 -0.17 -0.02 -0.02 -0.13 0.02 1 Up to 5 Years 87.91 0.08 2473.96 -0.05 -0.73 0.21
Short 7 Days One Three Six One Index change change change high low 2 5 - 10 Years 180.48 0.28 3731.52 0.64 -2.80 0.52
Jul 16 term notice month month month year Markit iTraxx France 05/23 1.75 104.48 -0.65 -0.01 0.00 -0.01 -0.05
3 10 - 15 Years 215.55 0.47 4753.99 1.70 -4.20 0.84
Euro -0.74 -0.44 -0.70 -0.40 -0.68 -0.38 -0.64 -0.34 -0.67 -0.37 -0.66 -0.36 Crossover 5Y 237.97 0.66 4.94 3.58 273.86 224.88 05/27 1.00 108.42 -0.42 -0.01 -0.02 -0.10 -0.04
4 5 - 15 Years 188.46 0.35 3985.38 1.02 -3.18 0.67
Sterling 0.45 0.55 0.58 0.68 0.71 0.86 0.90 1.05 Europe 5Y 47.60 0.14 0.93 0.12 55.28 45.58 Germany - - - - - - -
5 Over 15 Years 369.92 0.87 6171.37 3.30 -7.87 1.06
US Dollar 0.11 0.31 0.02 0.22 0.04 0.24 0.09 0.29 0.12 0.32 0.18 0.38 Japan 5Y 45.04 0.09 -0.78 0.37 49.50 44.56 08/23 2.00 105.71 -0.72 -0.01 0.00 -0.03 -0.02
7 All stocks 184.11 0.50 3995.98 1.69 -4.73 0.94
Japanese Yen -0.10 0.00 -0.10 0.00 -0.10 0.10 -0.10 0.10 -0.15 0.15 -0.15 0.15 Senior Financials 5Y 54.76 0.07 0.44 0.04 64.29 52.84 02/27 0.25 104.97 -0.62 -0.01 0.00 -0.08 0.01
Libor rates come from ICE (see www.theice.com) and are fixed at 11am UK time. Other data sources: US $, Euro & CDs: 08/50 0.00 95.56 0.16 -0.03 -0.01 -0.13 0.18 Day's Month Year's Total Return Return
Markit CDX Greece 02/27 4.30 121.94 0.34 0.00 -0.05 -0.14 -1.16
Tullett Prebon; SDR, US Discount: IMF; EONIA: ECB; Swiss Libor: SNB; EURONIA, RONIA & SONIA: WMBA. Index Linked Jul 16 chg % chg % chg % Return 1 month 1 year
Emerging Markets 5Y 161.29 2.09 -1.11 5.50 191.34 148.48
Ireland - - - - - - - 1 Up to 5 Years 305.01 0.08 -0.29 0.51 2542.93 0.00 1.76
Nth Amer High Yld 5Y 283.03 3.82 0.65 1.70 316.77 269.30
- - - - - - - 2 Over 5 years 844.98 1.07 2.23 -0.34 6403.98 2.28 0.02
Nth Amer Inv Grade 5Y 49.32 0.93 0.28 -0.32 58.09 46.88
10/22 0.00 100.74 -0.59 -0.02 -0.01 -0.01 -0.06 3 5-15 years 514.07 0.46 1.21 -0.97 4118.57 1.41 -0.22
Websites: markit.com, ftse.com. All indices shown are unhedged. Currencies are shown in brackets after the index names.
Italy 08/22 0.90 101.42 -0.47 0.00 -0.02 -0.04 -0.55 4 Over 15 years 1120.86 1.28 2.58 -0.22 8261.00 2.58 -0.01
11/25 2.50 111.03 -0.05 0.01 -0.02 -0.06 -0.75 5 All stocks 749.33 0.97 1.96 -0.39 5787.68 2.04 0.06
05/31 6.00 150.67 0.65 0.02 -0.03 -0.10 -0.68
COMMODITIES www.ft.com/commodities BONDS: INDEX-LINKED 03/48 3.45 138.91 1.64 0.02 -0.03 -0.11 -0.46 Yield Indices Jul 16 Jul 15 Yr ago Jul 16 Jul 15 Yr ago
Japan 04/23 0.05 99.95 0.08 0.00 -0.01 -0.01 0.03 5 Yrs 0.32 0.36 -0.14 20 Yrs 1.10 1.14 0.64
Energy Price* Change Agricultural & Cattle Futures Price* Change Price Yield Month Value No of
06/27 0.10 101.33 -0.12 -0.01 -0.01 -0.04 -0.02 10 Yrs 0.72 0.76 0.17 45 Yrs 1.00 1.04 0.60
Crude Oil† Jul 72.00 0.49 Corn♦ Sep 568.50 6.00 Jul 15 Jul 15 Prev return stock Market stocks
06/34 1.50 117.55 0.13 -0.02 -0.02 -0.06 -0.09 15 Yrs 0.98 1.02 0.48
Brent Crude Oil‡ 73.67 0.44 Wheat♦ Sep 687.25 15.25 Can 4.25%' 26 129.47 -1.065 -1.065 0.81 5.25 80664.13 7
12/49 0.40 94.52 0.61 -0.03 -0.02 -0.06 0.01
RBOB Gasoline† Jul 2.26 0.02 Soybeans♦ Aug 1462.25 16.00 Fr 1.10%' 22 103.39 -2.139 -2.139 -0.01 19.85 272726.15 17
Netherlands 07/23 1.75 104.94 -0.70 0.00 0.00 -0.01 -0.08 inflation 0% inflation 5%
Heating Oil† - - Soybeans Meal♦ Aug 368.00 5.10 Swe 1.00%' 25 120.15 -1.674 -1.674 0.42 33.01 197221.25 6
07/27 0.75 107.83 -0.53 -0.01 -0.01 -0.10 -0.06 Real yield Jul 16 Dur yrs Previous Yr ago Jul 16 Dur yrs Previous Yr ago
Natural Gas† Jul 3.64 0.02 Cocoa (ICE Liffe)X Sep 1583.00 -22.00 UK 1.875%' 22 107.84 -3.731 -3.731 0.08 15.74 823708.45 31
Ethanol♦ - - Cocoa (ICE US)♥ Sep 2366.00 -5.00 New Zealand 04/27 4.50 117.78 1.28 0.03 0.12 0.04 0.65 Up to 5 yrs -2.69 2.77 -2.90 -2.46 -3.12 2.77 -3.20 -2.88
UK 2.50%' 24 357.48 -2.981 -2.981 0.10 6.82 823708.45 31
Uranium† - - Coffee(Robusta)X Sep 1779.00 29.00 05/31 1.50 98.67 1.65 0.00 0.08 -0.13 0.69 Over 5 yrs -2.26 23.89 -2.24 -2.33 -2.29 23.95 -2.26 -2.36
UK 2.00%' 35 296.68 -2.513 -2.513 1.35 9.08 823708.45 31
Carbon Emissions‡ - - Coffee (Arabica)♥ Sep 160.75 3.25 05/31 1.50 98.67 1.65 0.00 0.08 -0.13 0.69 5-15 yrs -2.60 9.37 -2.63 -2.76 -2.72 9.37 -2.71 -2.87
US 0.625%' 23 105.80 -2.598 -2.598 0.44 47.03 1728614.16 44
White SugarX 460.00 4.00 Norway 08/30 1.38 101.10 1.25 -0.02 0.06 -0.09 0.59 Over 15 yrs -2.22 28.56 -2.20 -2.27 -2.24 28.59 -2.21 -2.29
Diesel† - - US 3.625%' 28 136.02 -1.438 -1.438 1.33 16.78 1728614.16 44
Sugar 11♥ 17.35 0.00 08/30 1.38 101.10 1.25 -0.02 0.06 -0.09 0.59 All stocks -2.27 21.68 -2.25 -2.33 -2.30 21.77 -2.27 -2.36
Base Metals (♠ LME 3 Months) Representative stocks from each major market Source: Merill Lynch Global Bond Indices † Local currencies. ‡ Total market
Aluminium 2489.50 -21.50 Cotton♥ Oct 90.00 -0.23 Portugal 10/22 2.20 103.58 -0.65 0.02 0.01 -0.02 -0.23 See FTSE website for more details www.ftse.com/products/indices/gilts
value. In line with market convention, for UK Gilts inflation factor is applied to price, for other markets it is applied to par
Aluminium Alloy 2060.00 160.00 Orange Juice♥ Sep 133.45 -0.50 04/27 4.13 125.89 -0.34 0.00 -0.04 -0.13 -0.42 ©2018 Tradeweb Markets LLC. All rights reserved. The Tradeweb FTSE
amount.
Copper 9452.50 28.50 Palm Oil♣ - - Spain 10/22 0.45 101.33 -0.58 -0.01 0.00 -0.03 -0.20 Gilt Closing Prices information contained herein is proprietary to
Lead 2318.00 -11.50 Live Cattle♣ Aug 121.15 -0.15 BONDS: TEN YEAR GOVT SPREADS 11/30 1.00 120.61 -1.08 0.01 -0.04 -0.07 -0.67 Tradeweb; may not be copied or re-distributed; is not warranted to be
Nickel 19080.00 340.00 Feeder Cattle♣ May 134.88 - Sweden 11/23 1.50 104.18 -0.30 0.00 0.00 -0.05 0.03 accurate, complete or timely; and does not constitute investment advice.
Tin 33610.00 495.00 Lean Hogs♣ Aug 104.48 -0.85 Spread Spread Spread Spread 06/26 0.13 118.73 -1.70 -0.02 -0.01 -0.11 -0.32 Tradeweb is not responsible for any loss or damage that might result from the use of this information.
Zinc 2999.50 35.50 Bid vs vs Bid vs vs 06/30 0.13 118.64 -1.65 -0.03 -0.02 -0.15 -0.21
% Chg % Chg Yield Bund T-Bonds Yield Bund T-Bonds Switzerland - - - - - - - All data provided by Morningstar unless otherwise noted. All elements listed are indicative and believed accurate
Precious Metals (PM London Fix)
Gold 1823.75 0.55 Jul 15 Month Year 02/23 4.00 107.52 -0.77 0.01 -0.01 -0.01 -0.05 at the time of publication. No offer is made by Morningstar, its suppliers, or the FT. Neither the FT, nor
Australia 1.33 - - Netherlands -0.53 - -
Silver (US cents) 2620.50 3.50 S&P GSCI Spt 529.62 -0.06 56.57 United Kingdom - - - - - - - Morningstar’s suppliers, warrant or guarantee that the information is reliable or complete. Neither the FT nor
Austria 0.05 - - New Zealand 1.65 - -
Platinum 1130.00 -2.00 DJ UBS Spot 94.52 1.16 42.17 Canada - - - Norway 1.25 - - 07/23 0.75 101.22 0.14 0.07 0.08 0.07 0.22 Morningstar’s suppliers accept responsibility and will not be liable for any loss arising from the reliance on the
Palladium 2770.00 -68.00 TR/CC CRB TR 226.46 1.41 51.45 Denmark -1.39 - - Portugal -0.34 - - 07/27 1.25 104.73 0.45 0.06 0.11 0.01 0.43 use of the listed information. For all queries e-mail ft.reader.enquiries@morningstar.com
Bulk Commodities LEBA EUA Carbon 53.32 -1.90 86.37 Finland -0.17 - - Spain -1.08 - - 07/47 1.50 107.74 1.15 0.04 0.04 -0.09 0.47
Iron Ore 221.10 -1.20 LEBA UK Power 1661.00 -35.24 32.88 Germany - - - Sweden -1.65 - - United States 03/23 0.50 100.54 0.18 0.00 0.03 -0.02 0.01 Data provided by Morningstar | www.morningstar.co.uk
GlobalCOAL RB Index 123.00 8.00 Ireland - - - Switzerland - - - 03/27 0.63 98.59 0.88 -0.04 0.02 -0.12 0.43
Baltic Dry Index 3039.00 -34.00 Italy 0.65 - - United Kingdom - - - 04/32 3.38 149.19 - - - - -
Sources: † NYMEX, ‡ ECX/ICE, ♦ CBOT, X ICE Liffe, ♥ ICE Futures, ♣ CME, ♠ LME/London Metal Exchange.* Latest prices, $ Japan 0.13 - - United States - - - 02/50 0.25 115.13 - - - - -
unless otherwise stated. Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data LLC, an ICE Data Services company. Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data LLC, an ICE Data Services company.
17 July/18 July 2021 ★ FTWeekend 17

FINANCIAL TIMES SHARE SERVICE

Main Market
 :HHN 9RO  :HHN 9RO  :HHN 9RO  :HHN 9RO  :HHN 9RO  :HHN 9RO
3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ <OG 3( V 3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ <OG 3( V 3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ <OG 3( V 3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ <OG 3( V 3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ <OG 3( V 3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ <OG 3( V
$HURVSDFH 'HIHQFH %UHZ'OSK        3=&XVQV        3HDUVRQ        +DPPHUVQ        +D\V       
&W\/RQ,QY        5HFNLWW%?        +LEHUQLD é        +RPHVYH       
$YRQ 5XEEHU        0(',$
%$( 6\V        &ORVH%UV        5HGURZ        /DQG6HFV        +RZGHQ-Q\       
'%$* é        6XSHUGU\ 3O        5HDFK 3/&        /RQGRQ0WUF        ,QWHUWHN       
&KHPULQJ       
0HJJLWW        +DUJU /DQV        7D\ORU:P        0HGLD 0F.D\6HF        .LQ DQG &DU       
5ROOV5R\FH?        ,QGYDUGQ 6.U        7HG%DNHU        5(/; 3/&?        3DODFH &DS        0HDUV*S       
,&*        9LVWU\ *URX        5LJKWPRYH 3        3ULP\+WK        0HQ]LHV-       
$XWRPRELOHV 3DUWV ,QYHVWHF        6(*52        0LWLH       
,QGXVWULDO (QJLQHHULQJ 679 *US       
)RUG0WU ?        -XSLWHU        6KDIWEU\        5HQHZL       
%RG\FRWH        7KP5HXW &?       
/LRQWUXVW        :33?        7RZQ &WU        5HQWRNLO       
%DQNV &DVWLQJV       
/6( *S        7ULWD[%%2;        5LFDUGR       
$1= $?        *RRGZLQ        0LQLQJ
0 * 3OF        :NVSDFH        5EUW:OWV       
%FR6DQW        +LOO 6P       
3DUDJRQ        $QJOR$PHU        5HDO (VWDWH ,QY 6HUYLFHV 536       
%QN*HRUJLD        ,0,       
3URYLGQW        $QJOR3DFLI        &DS &RXQW        6,*       
%DQN,UH *US é        0HOURVH,QG       
5DWKEQ%U        $Q*ROG$ 5        &/6        9S       
%N1YD6 &?        5HQROG       
5HFRUG        $QWRIDJDVWD        *UDLQJHU       
%DUFOD\V?       
6 8        5+,0        %+3 *URXS       
7HFK  +DUGZDUH
&DQ,PS &?        5RWRUN        +DUZRUWK *U        6SLUHQW&0       
6FKURGHU        (95$=        +HOLFDO♦       
+6%&?        6HYHUIG       
19        )UHVQLOOR        +. /DQG         7HFK  6RIWZDUH 6HUYLFHV
/O\GV%NJ?        7ULIDVW       
6KLUHV ,QFR        *OHQFRUH?        /RQ $VVF        &RPSXWFQW       
1:*?        9LWHF       
73 ,&$3        +DUPRQ\ 5        0DFDX3US        0LFUR)RF       
3HUP76% é        :HLU       
:ONU&ULS        3HWURSYOVN        0QWYLHZ        1&& *US       
5\O%N& &?       
,QGXVWULDO *HQHUDO 3RO\PW,QWO        5DYHQ 3URSH        6DJH       
6HFXUH 7UXV        )RRG %HYHUDJHV 5LR 7LQWR?       
6WDQG&K?        $QJOR(VW        &RDWV *URXS        5DYHQ5 3UI        7ULDG*S       
-DUGQ0W ?        7UR\ 5HV $        6DIHVWUH       
3I        $VF%U)G?        7HOHFRPPXQLFDWLRQV
3I        %DUU$*        0DFIUOQH        2LO *DV 6DYLOOV       
6PLWK '6        6LULXV5(        %7?       
7QWR'RP &?        %ULWYLF        %3?       
6PLWKV        6PDUW-        7HOH3OXV       
:HVWSF $?        &DUUV*URXS        &DLUQ(QJ       
6PXUI.DS        6W0RGZHQ        9RGDIRQH *S?       
&RFD&ROD +        ([[RQ0E ?       
%DVLF 5HVRXUFH ([ 0LQLQJ 9HVXYLXV        8,        7REDFFR
&UDQVZN        *D]SURP 3-6        
)HUUH[SR        8QLWH *S       
'HYUR♦        ,QGXVWULDO 7UDQVSRUWDWLRQ *HR3DUN         %U$P7RE?       
0RQGL       
'LDJHR?        %UDHPDU        +DUERXU (QH        5HWDLOHUV ,PSHULDO %U?       
&KHPLFDOV *UQFRUH        (XURWXQQO é        +HOOHQ3HW é        &DII\QV       
+LOWRQ)G        +XQWLQJ       
7UDYHO /HLVXUH
&DUFOR        )LVKHU -        'DLU\ )P        
.HUU\ é        ,PS2LO &?         +OGJ       
&URGD        2FHDQ:LO        'LJQLW\       
3UHP)GV        3-6& /XNRLO         &DUQLYDO       
(OHPQWLV        5R\DO0DLO        'XQHOP       
6WFN6SLULW        5\O'6KO$?        &RPSDVV?       
-RKQVQ 0WWK        +DOIRUGV       
7DWH /\O        ,QVXUDQFH %        'DODWD +RWH       
9LFWUH[        ,QFKFDSH       
8QLOHYHU        $GPLUDO        6HSODW        HDV\-HW       
-'6SRUWV)♦        )LUVW*US       
&RQVWUXFWLRQ 0DWHULDOV 19        $YLYD?        7UQ&DQ &?        .LQJILVKHU       
$OXPDVF        %HD]OH\        7XOORZ 2LO        )OXWWHU (QW       
+HDOWK &DUH (TXLS 6HUYLFHV 0DUNV 6S        )XOOHU $       
%RRW+        &KHVQDU        :RRG *URXS        0RUULVRQ :       
&5+        &RQYD7HF        'LUHFW /LQH        *R$KHDG       
*16WUH NU        3KDUPDFHXWLFDOV %LRWHFK 1H[W        ,QW&RQ +WHO       
*DOIUG7        (FFOHV SUI        2FDGR       
.LHU*S        0HGLFOLQLF        +DQVDUG        $VWUD=HQHFD?        ,QWO &RQV $       
6PLWK 1HS        'HFKUD        6DJD        0DQGDU2        
0RUJ6GO        +LVFR[        6DLQVEXU\        
7\PDQ        8'*+OWK&        /DQFDVKLUH        *HQXV        0DUVWRQV       
*OD[R6PK?        6WXGLR 5HWD        1DWO ([S       
+RXVH /HLVXUH 3HUV *RRGV /HJ *HQ        7HVFR?       
(OHFWURQLF (OHFWULFDO (TXLS +LNPD3KP        33+( +WO       
%DUUWW'HY        2OG 0XW       
'LDOLJKW        2[IG %LR        6XSSRUW 6HUYLFHV 5HVWDXUW       
%HOOZD\        3KRHQL[*US       
'LVFRYHULH        5LFKWHU*         $JJUHNR        5\DQDLU +RO       
%HUNHOH\        3UXGQWO?       
+DOPD        9HFWXU*S        $VKWG*S        78,       
%XUEHUU\ *S        6W-PV3O       
0RUJDQ $G        %XQ]O        :KLWEUG       
2[IRUG,Q        &DLUQ +RPHV        /(,685( 5HDO (VWDWH
&WU\6LGH        &DSLWD        8WLOLWLHV
5HQLVKDZ        3KRWR0H ,QW        5(,7V '&&       
6SHFWULV        &UHVW 1LFKR        $VVXUD        &HQWULFD       
*DPHV:N        0HGLD 'H/D5XH        'UD[       
77 (OHFW        %LJ<HOOZ♦        'LSORPD       
;3 3RZHU        *OHHVRQ        LPSULQW        %ULW/DQG        1DWO *ULG?       
+HDGODP        $XWR 7UDGHU        ':) *URXS 3        3HQQRQ       
&DS 5HJ        (OFWUFPS♦       
)LQDQFLDO *HQHUDO 0F%ULGH        'O\0DLO$        &LYLWDV 6+        6HYHUQ 7UHQ       
L        3HUVLPQ        +\YH *URXS        (VVHQWUD 3/        66(       
'UZQW/GQ        ([SHULDQ       
DEUGQ        3KLOLSV é        ,QIRUPD        *UHDW 3RUWO        8WG8WLOV       
,79        )HUJXVRQ       

AIM
 :HHN 9RO  :HHN 9RO  :HHN 9RO  :HHN 9RO  :HHN 9RO  :HHN 9RO
3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ <OG 3( V 3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ <OG 3( V 3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ <OG 3( V 3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ <OG 3( V 3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ <OG 3( V 3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ <OG 3( V
$HURVSDFH 'HIHQFH =\WURQLF        7ULVWHO        0LQLQJ &OLQLJHQ *U        1:)       
&RKRUW        $0&        5HQHXURQ        3HWDUGV       
)LQDQFLDO *HQHUDO +RXVH /HLVXUH 3HUV *RRGV 6DUHXP        5HQHZ       
9HORFLW\ &R        $UNOH 5HVRX       
$SSUHFLDWH        $LUHD        5HVWRUH       
 %RWVZDQD'        5HDO (VWDWH
%DQNV $UEXWKQRW       &KXUFKOO        6PDUW 0HWHU♦       
&HQW$VLD0       
&DULEEHDQ ,        %3 0DUVK        )URQWLHU 'H        ,QODQG+PV       
 *HPILHOGV        7HFK  +DUGZDUH
%XUIRUG &DS        3RUWPHUQ       /RN
Q6WRU       
%DVLF 5HVRXUFH ([ 0LQLQJ *UHVKDP +RX        6DQGHUVRQ '        2LO *DV 3QWKU6HF        $IHULDQ SOF       
&URSSHU-        0DWWLROL:GV        %RU6WKQ3HW        6,5        ,4(       
1XPLV       
,QGXVWULDO (QJLQHHULQJ 7HOLW &RPPX       
&KHPLFDOV &ORQWDUI(Q        5HWDLOHUV
3RODU&DS         *US       
'LUHFWD 3OX        (JGRQ 5HV        7HFK  6RIWZDUH 6HUYLFHV
3UHPLHU 0LW        06 ,QWO        $626       
9HUVDULHQ 3        +XUULFDQH (       
670 *URXS        3UHV 7HFK        %RRKRR *URX        %R%OXH 3ULV       
3HWUHO5HV       
&96 *URXS 3        (FNRK       
&RQVWUXFWLRQ 0DWHULDOV )RRG %HYHUDJHV ,7 3KRHQL[ *OR       
,QJHQWD       
$FFV\V7FK       
&DPHOOLD        .H\ZRUGV 6W        5RFNKRS        6XSSRUW 6HUYLFHV 2[IRUG 0HWU       
$XNHWW        /HDUQLQJ 7H        6RXQG (QHUJ        %HJELHV       
)HYHUWUHH '        :$1GLVFR       
8Q-DFN2LO        &KULVWLH       
(OHFWURQLF (OHFWULFDO (TXLS )LQVEU\)G        /(,685(
1LFKROV       
8QLWHG 2 *        (PSUHV        7UDYHO /HLVXUH
&HUHV3RZ        6XPR *URXS        *DWWDFD        JDPLQJUHDOP       
&KHFNLW        +HDOWK &DUH (TXLS 6HUYLFHV 3KDUPDFHXWLFDOV %LRWHFK
0HGLD ,PSHOODP        -HW       
/3$        $EFDP       
$92        0LVVLRQ *UR        -KQVQ6UY        0LQRDQ*S       
7KRUSH):        $OOFH3KDUP       
&DUH7HFK        <RX*RY        /RQ6HF       

Investment Companies
&RQYHQWLRQDO ([ 3ULYDWH (TXLW\  :HHN 'LV %02 8. +,7        -30 $PHU        3RODU7HFK        $(: 8. 5(,7       
3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ <OG 1$9 RU 3P %02 8. +,7        -30 $VLD        5,7 &DS        %02 &RP3US       
L ,QIUD        %UXQQHU        -30 &KLQD        5XIIHU ,QY        %025HDO(       
)RU TXHULHV DERXW WKH /RQGRQ 6KDUH 6HUYLFH SDJHV HPDLO
$EQ$VLDQ,Q        &DOHGRQLD ,        -30(OFW 0&        6FKURGHU 7R        &XVWGQ5(,7       
IWUHDGHUHQTXLULHV#PRUQLQJVWDUFRP
$EUGQ 'LY ,        &DQ*HQ &        0*        6FKGU$VLD3        *&3 6WXGHQW       
$EQ(PJ0NWV        &LW\ /RQ        0,        6FKGU(XU5H(        /RQJERZ        $OO GDWD LV DV RI FORVH RI WKH SUHYLRXV EXVLQHVV GD\ &RPSDQ\ FODVVLILFDWLRQV
$EQ-DS,QY        &461DW5V        -30 (PUJ        6FKGU ,QF        6/,3URS,QF        DUH EDVHG RQ WKH ,&% V\VWHP XVHG E\ )76( VHH ZZZLFEHQFKPDUNFRP )76(
$EQ/DW$P,Q        'XQ ,QF        -30 (XU*WK        6FKGU-DS        75 3URS         FRQVWLWXHQW VWRFNV DUH VKRZQ LQ EROG
$EQ1HZ'Q        (FRILQ*ORED        -30 (XU,QF        6FKGU2ULHQW        7ULWD[ (XUR é        &ORVLQJ SULFHV DUH VKRZQ LQ SHQFH XQOHVV RWKHUZLVH LQGLFDWHG +LJKV ORZV
$EQ1HZ,QGLD        (GLQ ,QY        -30 (X6P        6FKGU5HDO(V        7ULWD[ (XUR        DUH EDVHG RQ LQWUDGD\ WUDGLQJ RYHU D UROOLQJ  ZHHN SHULRG 3ULFHHDUQLQJV
$EQ1HZ7KDL        (GLQ ::G        -30 &ODYU        6FKGU8.0G        8.&RP3US        UDWLRV 3(5 DUH EDVHG RQ ODWHVW DQQXDO UHSRUWV DQG DFFRXQWV DQG DUH XSGDWHG
$EQ6PO,Q&R        (3 *OREDO        -30*EO&RUH5        6FKGU8.3XE3        ZLWK LQWHULP ILJXUHV 3(5 LV FDOFXODWHG XVLQJ WKH FRPSDQ\ÜV GLOXWHG HDUQLQJV
9&7V  :HHN 'LV
$EQ6WG$VLD        (XUR$VVHW        -30 *(,        6FRW$PHU        IURP FRQWLQXLQJ RSHUDWLRQV <LHOGV DUH EDVHG RQ FORVLQJ SULFH DQG RQ GLYLGHQGV
3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ <OG 1$9 RU 3P
$6WG (TW ,Q        ) & ,QY 7UX        -30 *O *U ,        6FRWWLVK ,Q        SDLG LQ WKH ODVW ILQDQFLDO \HDU DQG XSGDWHG ZLWK LQWHULP ILJXUHV <LHOGV DUH
)LG$VLDQ        -30 ,QG        6FRWW0RUW        %DURQVPHDG        VKRZQ LQ QHW WHUPV GLYLGHQGV RQ 8. FRPSDQLHV DUH QHW RI  WD[ QRQ8.
$EI 6PO       
)LG&KL6S6        -30 -S&DS6P        6FRWW2UWOO        %6& 9&7        FRPSDQLHV DUH JURVV RI WD[ +LJKV ORZV \LHOGV DQG 3(5 DUH DGMXVWHG WR UHIOHFW
$EI 6SO ,QF       
)LG (XUR        -30 -DS        6PLWKVRQ        9&7        FDSLWDO FKDQJHV ZKHUH DSSURSULDWH
$OOLDQFH       
)LG -DS        -30 0LG        6WUDWHJLF(T        ,QF *WK9&7       
$OOLDQ]7HFK        7UDGLQJ YROXPHV DUH HQG RI GD\ DJJUHJDWHG WRWDOV URXQGHG WR WKH QHDUHVW
)LG 6SHF        -30 0OWL$V        7HPS %DU        1WKQ  9&7       
$UW $OSKD         VKDUHV
)LQV* ,        -305XVVLDQ        7HPS(PHUJ        1WKQ  9&7       
$VLD 'UDJRQ        1HW DVVHW YDOXH SHU VKDUH 1$9 DQG VSOLW DQDO\WLFV DUH SURYLGHG RQO\ DV D
)VW3DFILF + +.        -30 6POU        7HWUDJRQ         1WKQ9HQW       
$XURUD ,QY        JXLGH 'LVFRXQWV DQG SUHPLXPV DUH FDOFXODWHG XVLQJ WKH ODWHVW FXP IDLU QHW
*HQ(PHU        -30 86 6PO        75,*        3UR9HQ*,       
$9, *OREDO        DVVHW YDOXH HVWLPDWH DQG FORVLQJ SULFH 'LVFRXQWV SUHPLXPV JURVV UHGHPSWLRQ
*5,7#        .H\VWRQH,QY        75(XU*WK        3UR9HQ9&7       
$9, -DS2SS        \LHOG *5< DQG KXUGOH UDWH +5 WR VKDUH SULFH 63 DQG +5 WR ZLSH RXW :2
*ROGHQ3URV        /DZ 'HE        7UR\,QF *        8QLFRUQ$,0       
$[LRP        DUH GLVSOD\HG DV D SHUFHQWDJH 1$9 DQG WHUPLQDO DVVHW YDOXH SHU VKDUH 7$9
%* (XUR        +$1        /LQ7UDLQ e        8WLOLFR (PH        =HUR 'LYLGHQG 3UHIHUHQFH 6KDUHV  :HHN +5 LQ SHQFH
%* -DSDQ        +$1$        /RZODQG♦        8,/ ,QY        3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ 63 :2 7$9 
%* 6KLQ        +HQ 'LY ,QF        0DMHGLH        9(,/        $EI 6SO ,QF        ? )7 *OREDO  FRPSDQ\
%DLOOLH *LI        +HQ(XUR)        0DQ /RQ        :LWDQ        8,/ ='3         ♦ WUDGLQJ H[GLYLGHQG
%DQNHUV        +HQ(XUR        0DUZ\Q 9DO        :ZLGH+OWK        8,/ ='3         WUDGLQJ H[FDSLWDO GLVWULEXWLRQ
%% +HDOWKFD        +HQ)DU(V        0HUFDQW,7        8,/ /LPLWHG        # SULFH DW WLPH RI VXVSHQVLRQ IURP WUDGLQJ
&RQYHQWLRQDO  3ULYDWH (TXLW\  :HHN 'LV
%+ *OREDO#        +HQ+LJK♦        0UFK7VW        8,/ )LQDQFH       
3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ <OG 1$9 RU 3P
86' #        +HQ,QW ,QF        0LG :\QG        7KH SULFHV OLVWHG DUH LQGLFDWLYH DQG EHOLHYHG DFFXUDWH DW WKH WLPH RI SXEOLFDWLRQ
%*86*52:7+       
%+ 0DFUR        +HQ 2SS        0LWRQ *ORED       
%02 3YW(T       
Investment Companies - AIM 1R RIIHU LV PDGH E\ 0RUQLQJVWDU RU WKH )7 7KH )7 GRHV QRW ZDUUDQW QRU
86'         +HQ6POU        0RQNV        JXDUDQWHH WKDW WKH LQIRUPDWLRQ LV UHOLDEOH RU FRPSOHWH 7KH )7 GRHV QRW DFFHSW
+HUDOG        0RQWDQ6P        (OHFWUD         :HHN 'LV
%LRWHFK*WK        UHVSRQVLELOLW\ DQG ZLOO QRW EH OLDEOH IRU DQ\ ORVV DULVLQJ IURP WKH UHOLDQFH RQ
+,&/ ,QIUD        0XU ,QF        +93(        3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ <OG 1$9 RU 3P
%OFN5&RP        RU XVH RI WKH LQIRUPDWLRQ
+LJKEULGJH        0XU ,QW♦        +J&DSLWDO        %% %LRWHFK 6)U       
%OFN5)UQW       
,PSD[ (QY        1HZ&LW\+<        ,&* (QW 7U♦        &U\V$PEHU        7KH /RQGRQ 6KDUH 6HUYLFH LV D SDLGIRUSULQW OLVWLQJ VHUYLFH DQG PD\ QRW EH
%OFN5*W(XU       
,QG ,7        1HZ 6WDU ,7        3DQWKHRQ ,Q        *UHVKDP +RX        IXOO\ UHSUHVHQWDWLYH RI DOO /6(OLVWHG FRPSDQLHV 7KLV VHUYLFH LV DYDLODEOH WR DOO
%OFN5 , *       
,*&        1RUWK$PHU        3ULQFVV3( é        ,QIUD ,QGLD        OLVWHG FRPSDQLHV VXEMHFW WR WKH (GLWRUÜV GLVFUHWLRQ )RU QHZ VDOHV HQTXLULHV
%OFN5FN/DW       
,QW%LRWHFK        1WK$W6PO        6WG/I3Y        SOHDVH HPDLO VWHOODVRUUHQWLQR#IWFRP RU FDOO   
%OFN5FN1U$P       
%OFN56POU        ,QWO 33        2U\[ ,QW        'LVFUHWLRQDU\ 8QLW )XQG 0QJUV  :HHN 'LV
%OFN57KUPW        ,QY $VLD7U        3DF$VVHW        )
%OFN5:OG        ,QYHVFR %RQ        3DF+RU]Q        3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ <OG 1$9 RU 3P 'DWD SURYLGHG E\ 0RUQLQJVWDU
,367 %DO5        3HUS,QF *U       
%02 &S ,       
,367 *EO (T        3HU$VVHW       
5LJKW ,66        Guide to FT Share Service
%02*EO6POU       
,367 0QJG         &RQYHQWLRQDO  3URSHUW\ ,&V  :HHN 'LV
%020JG7       
,367 8. (T        3RODU+HDOWK        3ULFH &KJ +LJK /RZ <OG 1$9 RU 3P
%020JG7       
%02 8. +,7        ,3 8.6PDOO        3RODU)LQV        'LUHFW 3URSHUW\

ZZZPRUQLQJVWDUFRXN
18 ★ 17 July/18 July 2021

Twitter: @FTLex

Outlook is sunnier
for neglected
Paytm:
European shares
payment plan Carbon counter: not-so-dirty money
Annual footprint, CO2e (million tonnes) Carbon contribution to note and coin

Katie Martin
payments (%)
Asian fintech start-ups leave western
peers behind. Indian digital payments ATM Transport
app Paytm, reported to be on the verge Global card electricity 44
system 37

The Long View

of a $2bn-plus offering that values it at
about $25bn, allows users to trade gold, 3 Bitcoin
64
play games, shop and even book their

Covid-19 vaccination.
Yet even with a potential record IPO
on the cards, Paytm struggles to make
money. It reported a loss of $228m last
year. Its prospectus warns investors
that it expects “to continue to incur net
losses for the foreseeable future”.
Backed by a holy trinity of investors
— SoftBank, Alibaba affiliate Ant and
Berkshire Hathaway — Paytm wowed
merchants and consumers alike when
it appeared in 2010. India’s mobile-
friendly population played straight into
its hands. It also became a natural
beneficiary of the country’s 2016
madcap demonetisation scheme, which
rendered the bulk of banknotes invalid
overnight. Paytm took the opportunity
to spread its wings into new areas, such
as booking movie tickets and holidays,
as well as financial services.
Unlike Chinese peers, however, it is
not shielded from global competition.
Google Pay and Facebook-owned
WhatsApp Pay, which last year won
regulatory approval, both want some of
the world’s soon-to-be most populous
nation. Google, with PhonePe,
dominates the Unified Payments
Interface, a bank-backed payments
framework. Paytm’s revenues, which
come mostly from merchant fees, slid
15 per cent last year to $375.6m.
The reported valuation of $25bn
therefore looks punchy. Dominant
south-east Asian superapp Grab is set
to go public via a Spac merger. That
should value it at $40bn, implying an
enterprise value of 25 times trailing
sales. On a similar basis, and even using
pre-Covid revenues, Paytm would
achieve more than twice that amount.
Forecast numbers stack up better.
But all this comes with hefty
regulatory risks. Paytm will need to
count on India’s buoyant stock market
to make this unicorn fly.
McLaren:
race oddity
Supercar makers such as McLaren all
face the same dilemma: how to create
the quickest vehicle on the road and
out of the showroom. Clocking the
shortest time in both brings the most
cash flow but requires heavy
investment. So does keeping up with
electrification trends.
The privately owned UK carmaker
announced yesterday that Saudi
Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and
US buyout firm Ares will inject £400m
of preferred equity as minority holders.
Another £150m will come from its
majority investor, Bahrain’s sovereign
wealth fund, plus other new investors.
Britain once fostered its own niche
carmakers. No longer. Many have had
to turn to overseas funds for help or
have disappeared. Local hero Morgan
Motor Company was bought two years
ago by Italy’s Investindustrial — itself a
former stakeholder in Aston Martin.
China’s Geely controls Lotus. McLaren
has held out as an independent, even
avoiding partnerships with global car
manufacturers.
But finding the cash to produce new
Global
cash 4.2
system
Ethereum
27
Carbon footprint of global cash and card payments,
calculated using estimates for the Netherlands from 2015 and 2018 global CO2 output.
Source: Life cycle assessment of cash payments; Netherlands Central Bank
Like the proverbial bad penny, cash
refuses to disappear. Giving notes and
coins for goods and services can feel
archaic when digital payments exist
and have a smaller carbon footprint.
Privacy remains one of cash’s biggest
draws. But those qualities also make
cryptocurrencies appealing.
Notes, coins, debit cards and
cryptos all need energy to be useful.
The best estimate of the carbon
produced by a cash-payment system
was compiled by the Dutch central
bank. It came to a figure of 17,000
tonnes of CO2e, or 0.01 per cent of the
CO2 produced in the Netherlands in
2015. On average that is 4.6g of CO2e
per payment. This is about 20 per
cent more than the emissions created
by the average debit card transaction,
at 3.8g of CO2e.
The main cost for both is the
models has proved daunting.
McLaren’s first electric hybrid vehicle
arrives later this year. The company
pegs capital spending needs at up to
£200m annually. Last year, it booked a
pre-tax loss of £318m, multiples higher
than in 2019.
At least the track has cleared since
last year’s pandemic-induced inventory
pile up. In the 12 months through to
March, McLaren produced positive
ebitda of £97m, adjusted for asset sales
and impairments. By April, following
the sale and leaseback of its
headquarters, it had accumulated
£241m of cash. Those efforts must
have encouraged new investors.
After raising £1bn over the past two
years, McLaren has waved a chequered
flag on financings by claiming it is now
well-positioned.
But making pricey sports cars is an
expensive business. Expect talk of a
stock market listing to return in the
year ahead.
Richemont/luxury:
glitter hitter
Swiss luxury group Richemont is
showing off some sparkling numbers.
Amid a broad sector rebound, it more
than doubled sales for the past quarter.
The upswing in demand for pricey
labels has also helped Burberry to post
sales that are back at pre-pandemic
levels. But Richemont’s leading
position in jewellery should help it to
continue making outsized gains.
The sustainability of the recovery
now looks assured. There were
concerns that a short-term boost from
consumers’ inability to splash their
Other Copper Steel
6 5 trucks
8 US’s tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite and
electricity needed to power ATMs
and card readers that are rarely
switched off. The bulk of cash’s higher
cost comes from transport, usually by
diesel vans. Using an alternative
measure of total environmental cost,
which includes other pollution types,
the authors estimate that the impact
of cash rises to 40 per cent above
debit cards, mostly owing to metal
use in coins.
Cryptos promise to be the payment
technology of the future. But Lex
calculates the carbon footprint of the
world’s existing cash and card
payment systems at 7.2m tonnes of
CO2e — about one-sixth of bitcoin’s
estimated carbon footprint, using the
latest data from Digiconomist.
Those who wish to keep payments
private and do their bit for the planet
should stick with notes and coins.
cash savings on experiences might
reverse once economies reopen.
Yet the resilience shown by mega-
brands such as Cartier and Van Cleef &
Arpels has not flagged. Both are
benefiting from a shift to branded
jewellery, particularly driven by Asian
clientele. Innovations such as Clash —
an edgy and relatively affordable line
unveiled by Cartier in 2019 — have
proved popular with younger buyers.
There is room to grow market share.
Branded jewellery accounts for little
more than a quarter of the market at
present, far less than other luxury
sectors. It could rise to 40 per cent by
2030, says Citi. Not that Richemont
will lack competition. Other fashion
groups wish to move further into high-
end branded jewellery. This was
illustrated by rival Kering’s enthusiasm
for a tie-up, which was firmly rejected
by Richemont’s chair, Johann Rupert.
Accordingly, there is not much of a
speculative premium in the shares.
This has not stopped Richemont from
outperforming in the sector this year,
up 37 per cent. Even so, the shares, on a
2022 price-to-earnings ratio of 27, are
at a 10 per cent discount to the sector.
That discount should close in time,
but it will not disappear. Hard luxury
like jewellery is more cyclical than
fashion or leather goods. Purchases of
bigger-ticket items are more likely to
be postponed in downturns.
But the growth in branded jewellery
is a secular trend. Richemont is
exceptionally well-placed to benefit.
Lex on the web
For notes on today’s stories
go to www.ft.com/lex
I
nvestors have learnt to stop worry-
ing and love European equities.
Already, and with little fanfare,
the continent’s stocks have been on
a tear. The Stoxx 600 index is up by
14.4 per cent so far in 2021, now more
than a full percentage point ahead of the
not far behind the S&P 500.
Granted, the European benchmark’s
performance dims in dollar terms, to
just under 11 per cent. Still, just around
the halfway point of 2021, this would
already rank among the index’s best full
years in a decade.
Typically, the accepted wisdom on
Europe is that US investors ignore it.
The sovereign debt crisis, which peaked
with a restructuring of Greek govern-
ment bonds in 2012 and which came
close to felling key parts of the conti-
nent’s banking system, lingered long in
investors’ memory and helped to deter
them for years.
Euro-area equity bulls have long
claimed to be exasperated at the lack of
buy-in from the US.
Analysis from Goldman Sachs, how-
ever, suggests this supposed reticence
has been vastly overstated. “Europe’s
problem has not been a lack of foreign
buyers,” the bank said. “When there is
growth and a lack of crisis, there tends to
be a foreign bid for Europe equity; the
problem is a lack of domestic capital
allocated to shares.”
A relatively modest 10 to 15 per cent
of households’ financial assets are in
equities, the bank calculated, compared
with more than a quarter in the US.
Even Europe’s own institutional inves-
tors have been reluctant to get in, pre-
ferring, in part for regulatory reasons, to
park in bonds.
But local investors have started to
buy, while US and Asian counterparts
have also bulked up, Goldman Sachs
said. Multi-asset investors and hedge
funds — more influential forces on
equity valuations — also stick out,
drawn in by the relative allure of Euro-
pean stocks at a time when yields else-
where remain skinny.
Now it appears to be hard to find any
investor to bet on a reversal. In its latest
monthly European fund manager sur-
vey, Bank of America Securities found
that precisely zero respondents
expected to see a decline in European
equities to the end of the year. A small
band of doubters in the previous month
had melted away.
More than 80 per cent expected sin-
gle-digit percentage point gains, and for
almost half of respondents, the most
pressing risk was cutting equity expo-
‘Countries that got
whacked hardest by Covid
last year have been
climbing out of the hole’
sure too soon, not failing to hedge suffi-
ciently against a pullback. “A net 45 per
cent of global investors say they are
overweight European equities, the high-
est since January 2018,” the bank added.
Royal London Asset Management is
one of them. “Our models really like the
earnings revisions in Europe,” said
Trevor Greetham, head of multi-asset.
Refinitiv I/B/E/S data show second-
quarter earnings are expected to more
than double from the same period last
year.
“Countries that got whacked hardest
by Covid last year have been climbing
out of the hole. First it was China, then
the US and UK, and now it’s Europe,”
Greetham says.
The latest policy tweak from the
European Central Bank will probably
help to give this relationship a little
more staying power.
This month, the ECB announced it
would change its inflation target from
“close to but below 2 per cent” to “2 per
cent”, with a greater tolerance for moves
above that point. To anyone outside of
monetary policy or markets circles, that
is underwhelming. For the ECB, how-
ever, as my colleague Martin Arnold
succinctly put it, it is a break with “the
conservative monetary doctrine of Ger-
many’s Bundesbank that formed the
bedrock of the euro’s creation”.
All things being equal, it suggests the
ECB will be happy to see higher infla-
tion, and willing to keep interest rates
low even if inflation accelerates. Now, I
would also be willing to be four inches
taller and win the lottery. This does not
mean either of those things will happen.
None of this means that long-dor-
mant inflation in the eurozone will sus-
tainably pick up, although it is more
likely in the bounceback from the pan-
demic than it was earlier, and an addi-
tional move to loop housing costs in to
the inflation measure may help.
Also, the ECB tweak forms a clear con-
trast with the US Federal Reserve, which
has half an eye on the exit from super-
stimulative crisis-era policy.
“There’s going to be a big fracture
between the two most important central
banks in the world,” said Gregory Per-
don, co-chief investment officer at
Arbuthnot Latham, a UK private bank.
“There’s no way the ECB will come any-
where near the Fed in raising policy
rates,” he added.
This should help keep the euro pinned
lower, offering some gentle extra assist-
ance to the continent’s exporters.
True, an unanticipated early rate rise
from the Fed — a tiny possibility —
would be a global market shock. A little
extra latitude from the ECB would be
unlikely to cushion the blow. But for
now at least, investors are clearly bet-
ting on a warm summer for European
markets.
katie.martin@ft.com

Extreme climate events put focus on price of carbon pollution

Daily carbon prices, EU ETS futures price (€/tonne) Extreme climate events
New record ahead of EU plans
hit Europe and North
to phase out free allowances
America as the EU
60
revealed plans to curb
US, Canada, Japan and South global warming by
Korea set new climate targets
reducing carbon
50 emissions. Its focus on
Markets wobble on rising placing a price on
coronavirus infections China launches carbon, as an incentive
40 world’s largest to lower emissions, saw
EU proposes raising carbon market the level on the Emission
its emissions target
Trading System touch a
New UK Germany sets
30 Markets crash as new high. At the same
emissions new climate
pandemic hits target target time China took a step
forward to launch the
20 UK government world’s largest carbon
raises UK ETS market, although the
price floor effect was limited by the
10 issue of free allowances.
Jan Mar May Jul Sep Nov Jan Mar May Jul
For the FT’s latest
2020 2021 climate change stories
Source: Refinitiv Follow @ftclimate on Instagram ft.com/climate
Saturday 17 July / Sunday 18 July 2021
A
few weeks ago, I went off to
the races. Not the ones you
might know, at Ascot or
Churchill Downs. Instead, I
signed up at Zed Run, an
online horseracing platform, where I
discovered just how easy it is to buy
cryptocurrencies and crypto assets —
and just how hard it is to get out.
I watched a few races on my computer
to warm up. A dozen glistening equine
avatars lined up at a neon starting gate
and then — three, two, one — galloped
down a space-age track, hooves pound-
ing to techno music. No jockeys, no bro-
ken legs, just round-the-clock horserac-
ing on the blockchain.
My first task was to create a virtual
stable. I labelled mine “Life & Arts” and
described it as helping to “provide
essential news and analysis to ambitious
individuals and companies around the
world”. Then I signed up for a “drop”, an
online auction where I would bid for one
of thousands of Zed Run horses, each
unique in colour, name and bloodline.
Here are the steps: register with a
crypto exchange platform, such as Coin-
base, link to a bank account and transfer
money (using the financial app Plaid),
buy ethereum (the second-largest
cryptocurrency, known as ether or
ETH), transfer ether to a crypto “wallet”
(MetaMask), and then exchange ether
for “wrapped” ethereum, or wETH, a
version of ether that, at least for now, is
more seamlessly tradeable via the com-
mon standard known as ERC-20.
If you haven’t traded crypto before,
each step feels like a leap of faith. You
might find it disconcerting that MetaM-
ask’s software can “read and change all
your data on the websites you visit”, or
that anyone with your secret back-up
phrase “can take your ether forever”.
The bigger problem for me was that
some of the steps would take too long.
The horse drop was in five hours, not
five days.
Fortunately, there’s a shortcut: use a
credit card and pay a 5 per cent “slip-
page” fee. I clicked through terms and
warnings, and a blue box confirming “I
understand the risks”. The last step,
converting ETH to wETH, took five
minutes and required a fee called “gas”.
After starting with $400, I had 0.1436
wETH, worth just over $350 at the time.
It was a big cut. But I was ready to buy
my first racehorse.
SUPPLEMENT OF THE YEAR
Casting off Meet the families living the #boatlife — PAGE 6
My wild
crypto ride
How I set up a digital stable, raced a virtual thoroughbred to riches
(sort of ) — and got a first-hand look at the delights and dangers of
non-fungible tokens and cryptocurrencies. By Frank Partnoy
Illustration by As a former Wall Street derivatives
Timo Lenzen trader and a researcher who studies
financial market regulation, I am often
suspicious of financial innovation. The
2008 financial crisis reminded us that
financial instruments can carry hidden
dangers, and in March 2020 the mar-
kets nearly collapsed because of yet
more complex bets by banks, until regu-
lators flooded the global economy with
cash. So I approach crypto markets, and
the innovation there, with fascination,
but also caution.
The crypto world can seem mystify-
ing, but there are really only two main
concepts: money and assets. Bitcoin,
ethereum and wETH are just the latest
iterations of fungible money. They are
privately created versions of pounds or
Animals were popular in
fungible money around
600BC: a lion might be
worth more than an owl
dollars in that they are both valuable
and interchangeable.
In contrast, crypto assets are fre-
quently non-fungible. They resemble
other unique assets you own, such as
collectibles. That is why they are
labelled with the acronym NFT, for
“non-fungible token”, a commonly used
term in crypto. No Zed Run horse is the
same as the one I ultimately bought.
Below left: A Both cryptocurrencies and NFTs are
Lydian coin, rooted in the history of money and
most likely assets. The first fungible money is
minted by King attributed to King Alyattes of Lydia,
Alyattes, from now western Turkey, around 600BC. He
around 600BC; a created coins from electrum and
Bored Ape, stamped them with pictures that acted
versions of as denominations. Animals were popu-
which change lar: a lion might be worth more than an
hands for owl or snake. Privately created curren-
thousands of cies were vulnerable to government
dollars — Alamy expropriation, as they are now.
NFTs might seem new and esoteric,
but they share features of early non-fun-
gible assets. Instead of bartering with
animal skins or salts, our ancestors
might have paid for goods with a small
dagger. An unusually shaped dagger was
more valuable, a common one less so.
Crypto markets use technology to
protect against government interfer-
ence and to limit supply. In 2009,
Satoshi Nakamoto (a pseudonym) cre-
ated a secure computer-driven regime
that guarantees slow and gradual crea-
tion of bitcoins; many other cryptocur-
Follow us on Instagram @ft_weekend
population explosion). The priciest rager hosted by my students. Surveys
horses are from the purest bloodline,
called Nakamoto, a nod to the bitcoin
suggest that crypto markets are most
popular among millennials, and the
creator. The most common breeds are average age of Zed Run participants
labelled Buterin, after Vitalik Buterin, a appears to be about 30, based on
co-founder of ethereum. YouTube, TikTok and Twitch.tv broad-
The uniqueness of each NFT is a big casts. I consulted with one crypto guru
part of the draw. Each Bored Ape was and was warned that I would be bidding
generated from 170 possible traits, against thousands of people trying to
including expression, headwear and grab the same horses at the same time.
rencies follow this approach. New clothing. As the founders say: “All apes They sell out in seconds, he told me.
money comes not from decisions by are dope, but some are rarer than oth- “People have 15 stables, multiple
central bankers but from private com- ers.” The Zed Run horses also come with browsers and computers, and they
puter farms that solve puzzles in order to different characteristics, but their run bots and scripts that automatically
manufacture new currency, using vast unique racing potential is hidden, which buy a hundred horses.” Like a hot, hip-
amounts of electricity. Similarly, private makes them arguably even more dope ster IPO.
NFT founders create unique tokens and than the apes. Zed Run announced it would release
promise not to flood the market with I felt about as comfortable before the
new ones. Many people trust them more June 10 drop as I’d feel walking into a Continued on page 2
than they trust central bankers.
Cryptocurrencies are increasingly
popular, and volatile, often fluctuating
by more than 5 per cent a day. In a few
hours on June 16, a cryptocurrency
called Titan plummeted from about $60
a token, $2bn in total, to near zero. Sto-
ries of alleged hacks and exit scams
known as “rug pulls” abound (just look
up Safe Heaven, ShitCoin, or the thou-
sands of examples at tokensniffer.com).
As it becomes easier to participate in
crypto markets — you can purchase bit-
coin with a credit card or Venmo, and
use it to buy Starbucks coffee or a Micro-
soft Xbox — we face two inevitable ques-
tions, political and personal. First, what,
if anything, should governments do
about crypto? Second, as an individual,
are you in or out?
Zed Run is one of thousands of plat-
forms offering NFTs, which then trade
on peer-to-peer marketplaces such as
OpenSea, the world’s largest. The items
there feel like the collectibles you might
have in your home: paintings, furniture,
bonsai plants.
Animal NFTs have been especially
popular, starting with CryptoKitties,
which were in vogue in 2017-18. When I
visited OpenSea recently, Bored Ape
Yacht Club ranked first in trading vol-
ume. Each computer-generated cartoon
ape looks uniquely bored and comes
with a yacht club membership and
access to “The Bathroom, a collaborative
graffiti board”. I watched one morning as
Bored Apes changed hands every few
minutes, thousands of dollars per ape.
When I got bored, I switched to Ara-
bian Camels, where one polka-dotted
camel smoking a cigarillo was being
offered, its hat emblazoned with “That’s
so fintech”. The hat is rare — only 0.04
per cent of camels wear one — so this
particular camel was in high demand,
though not as much as the apes. Crypto
ape prices are up sixfold since May.
The supply of crypto assets is typi-
cally capped. There are a mere 10,000
Bored Apes. Zed Run says it will release
only 38,000 first-generation horses,
called “Genesis” (though breeding is
now allowed, so there could be a
2 ★ FTWeekend 17 July/18 July 2021

Life

A A vision of
few days ago, a delivery in the House of Philemon and Baucis” Another way I’ve been considering
person assembled some (c1620-25), the Flemish Old Master hospitality is about how we are coming

large household items in
my home. The entire
process took several hours
and, during that time, a conversation
naturally developed as they worked.
They ended up telling me about life
challenges they had overcome, and
about the current aspirations they had.
Peter Paul Rubens depicts a story of
hospitality told by the Roman poet
Ovid. A poor, elderly peasant couple
are the only ones in a village to offer
hospitality to two travelling men who
(unbeknown to everyone) are actually
Roman gods on a quest to see who will
practise hospitality. The story is rooted
hospitality
to terms with any emerging parts of
ourselves that seem unfamiliar to us.
I imagine many of us have discovered
for a that there are ways we have changed
over the pandemic that we have yet
to reckon with. Some of us have
reopening discovered that we can no longer
remain in relationships — romantic or

I listened and offered encouragement.
After the person left, to my surprise I
felt exhausted. Not for any bad reason,
but simply because it had been so long
since I engaged with a complete
stranger for such an extended period of
time, and in my own home. It left me
feeling depleted, as though someone
had scrambled over the protective wall
that I had erected in the past 16
months. I wasn’t sure I felt ready for
that to happen again any time soon.
But it did get me thinking about the
idea of hospitality, about showing care
and attention to others and welcoming
people back into our lives.
As the world opens up, I’m trying to
wean myself back into being social
again. Always more of an introverted,
private person, I found the
requirements of lockdown — social
distancing, staying at home, limited
numbers for gatherings — a welcome
reprieve at times, despite the
circumstances. With less social
interaction, the days bled into one
another and the world got quieter. At
times, I confess, I cherished that.
Now, with vaccinations available,
restaurants opening, galleries catching
up with new or delayed exhibitions,
and travel increasing, I’m trying to
break out of the now-normalised
seclusion. In some ways, the world has
gone from a place we knew, to a
stranger with whom we have to
reacquaint ourselves afresh. We have to
trust the world to be a hospitable place
again. We have to learn how to be
hospitable to one another.
In his painting “Jupiter and Mercury
in the ancient Greek practice of xenia,
the belief that part of living well
included practising a code of
hospitality that recognised a guest-host
relationship in which both parties had
responsibilities. It was linked to the
idea that gods mingled among
humanity, so one should treat
strangers as if they might be a deity,
capable of blessing or cursing you.
The host was obliged to welcome and
care for the stranger, protecting them
if necessary, and thereby converting
them into a guest. The stranger/guest
had their own obligations, chief of
which was appropriate behaviour and
boundaries and an assumption of
returning the hospitality to the host if
that were ever needed.
In the painting, despite the house’s
sparse interior, there is a choice basket
of fruit on the table, probably the
couple’s best, and the clean, fresh white
tablecloth isn’t even fully covering the
old table, as though thrown on in haste
for the benefit of the guests. The old
man dressed in a rough brown tunic is
engaged in conversation with the god
Mercury, whom we recognise by his
symbolic cap. The woman reaches out
her strong bare forearms — testament
to a life of hard work — trying to catch
a goose for dinner as Jupiter, shirtless
and chiselled like any king of the gods
worth his salt, looks on.
I’m stuck on this painting because
I’m imagining what it could be like to
take on a new code of hospitality as we
continue to re-emerge from lockdown.
The hosts in this painting were open to
having their lives interrupted, and to
welcoming people with new stories into
world
‘Jupiter and Mercury with Philemon and Baucis’ (1620-25) by Peter
Paul Rubens — Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; Alamy
their space. They were ready to offer
what was in their possession in order
to serve their guests.
As we try to find our footing back
into some semblance of regular public
and communal existence, to play a host
to others would mean considering
similar actions towards those we
encounter. Making space for new
conversations, as Philemon does with
Mercury. Or like Baucis, offering what
we have because we trust that when we
offer our lives generously, the gift is
multiplied and perhaps even returned
at some point.
I look at the guests in this painting.
They have chosen to abide by
unspoken rules of conduct that
honour the environment and the lives
of their hosts. Perhaps to be a good
guest in this next season of life is tied
to holding back from our usual
tendencies to try to control or
Enuma Okoru determine what exactly should
happen next and when. Maybe it’s an
invitation to trust in a new way, to step
The Art of Life out again and let life show you what
choice offerings it can bring.
platonic — because something has
shifted too much. Some of us might be
questioning the priorities we held, and
what we valued before being forced
into lockdown.
In her 2011 work, “Guy Reading The
Stranger”, New York-based artist
Nicole Eisenman fills a 6ft by 5ft canvas
with the broad, flattened forehead and
hunched shoulders of a man holding
Albert Camus’s existentialist novel The
Stranger (L’Étranger). His large left
hand rests on the side of his jaw, while
the other clutches the novel.
Yet his eyes appear to gaze above and
beyond the pages. Behind him, we see
part of a bookshelf with more
existential and metaphysical works
such as philosopher Martin Heidegger’s
Being and Time. Lines are etched
Being a good guest vertically, horizontally and diagonally
and in loops on his face like the
or good host may primitive beginnings of a map, for now
be an invitation going nowhere, uncharted territory
still to be plotted.
to trust in a new Who knows what questions of
way, to step out ontological existence are passing
through his mind? Who knows if he’s
again in faith actually in the midst of a crisis of
identity, or just taking himself too
seriously? Whatever the case, the
painting suggests a moment of renewed
questions and searching, trying to make
sense of the world and one’s place in it.
The painting is reminiscent of Auguste
Rodin’s sculpture “The Thinker”:
humanity rendered still yet restless and
introspective. Perhaps, as we offer our
homes and selves to others, we also
need to be hospitable to the different
people we ourselves have become over
these troubling 16 months.

Continued from page 1 backed money. Scepticism about sover-

Note from the new horses in waves, every 15 minutes.

eign currency goes along with the
youthful embrace of crypto. Almost

FTW editor
Sometimes editing seems almost,
well, straightforward. A few weeks
ago I contacted an old collaborator,
Frank Partnoy, to see if he had any
clever and/or zany thoughts on
cryptoland. I could, he replied, go
to the races . . . I hope you agree
that his flutter on the digital
racetrack satisfies my requests in
spades. (As for his cheekily named
“Life & Arts” digital stable — we
took it as a huge compliment.)
In the real world of Life & Arts,
I owe my editors, sub-editors,
designers and the picture desk an
especial debt this week: L&A was
named supplement of the year at
the UK Press Awards.
The judges saluted “brilliantly
readable and enchanting”
journalism which “utterly
understands” its audience. You
will be the judge of that. What I do
know is that the award is a tribute
to our troupe of never dull writers
— some of whom have reviewed
for Books and Arts for years —
and to so many others who have
worked tirelessly and creatively in
this tough year. I should also salute
our fashion editor Lauren Indvik,
joint fashion journalist of the year
— in her first year at the FT.
Crypto may have been a simple
call, but we did have a hard choice
this week: to devote our “Big Read”
in the main section to Cuba or
South Africa. Both have had
convulsive weeks. After nearly 30
years’ writing on South Africa,
I startled colleagues by opting for
Cuba. This may be a turning point
there, I argued, but that is not the
case in South Africa, dire as its
week has been. On the latter, I
hope I’m right. Thank you as ever
for reading us. Alec Russell
A private message board on the Discord
app was full of scepticism. The first
wave, at 5pm US Pacific time, was for
bidders who hadn’t bought during the
previous drop due to technical glitches. I
was in the second wave. I clicked my
link at precisely 5.15pm.
But nothing happened. One minute
passed, and then Twitter and Discord
exploded. No one could access any
horses: “Horses not loading”; “what a
f****** joke lmao”; “Another dumpster
fire. Stay awaaaaaay folks.”
For a split second, a batch of colourful
horses flashed on my screen. I clicked
one — and a miracle occurred. For about
$150, Tearaway Charlie, the lowest rank
of Buterin breed, was mine. As I
admired his Desert Sand coat, Zed Run
posted an apology. Few people had been
able to buy. Due to more glitches, the
remainder of the drop was postponed.
The next few hours were a blur. I
entered Tearaway Charlie in his first
race, and he took third. I moved him up
to the next level, and raced him again.
He won! I transferred him to OpenSea,
and put him up for sale. An offer came in
right away, for 0.35 WETH, or about
$820. On paper, I had made five times
his price.
I watched Tearaway Charlie prance
around my screen in 3D for the last
time. Then I hovered my cursor, poised
to click “sell”. But I couldn’t do it. He
had already moved up from Class V to
Class IV. I watched a replay of the
Stockholm Sprint Championship,
where he had fought off Bright Knight
and Gandalf the White to win by a nose.
This horse had potential.
Many of the arguments about crypto
boil down to a debate about centralised
sovereign control versus free-market
libertarianism. Crypto markets are part
of a movement known as decentralised
finance. “DeFi” advocates say crypto
can improve the finance industry in the
same way digital disintermediation has
revolutionised transport, news, enter-
tainment and various consumer goods
and services. They point to the ineffi-
ciencies and opacity of financial inter-
mediaries.
Both banks and technology firms
have significant market power, and
crypto is already eroding their domi-
nant share. There are an estimated
1.7bn unbanked people, and new crypto
technologies could provide low-cost
access to credit as an alternative to the
double-digit charges for credit cards,
payday loans or other usurious lending.
On the other hand, government regu-
lators say they can protect investors and
borrowers in ways DeFi will not. Regu-
lated institutions are also working to
reduce costs. Both centralised and
decentralised approaches can use
blockchain technology, which includes
records and timestamps that preserve
the safety and security of traded assets.
In practice, some algorithms that gov-
ern crypto platforms are intentionally
opaque. For example, Zed Run race
results and horse-trading are public, but
no one outside Zed Run is supposed to
know what makes horses more likely to
win, or when more will be created.
My wild crypto ride
Many crypto transactions have high
fees as well. Once you transfer money
into Zed Run, all of your later transac-
tions there will be free. But getting
money out will cost you.
A middle ground position is that there
is promise for both centralised and
decentralised markets. Technology
should make it easier for many people
to borrow and transfer money, wher-
ever that is done, and whether in euro or
wETH. For some, crypto will present
new and exciting opportunities. For oth-
ers, it will be a costly headache that puts
their savings at risk.
I raced Tearaway Charlie 10 times in
all. The results are public, on the block-
chain: he won two races and finished in
the top four nine times. I consulted an
expert and got updates about my horse’s
value from hawku.com, knowyour-
horses.com and zedranks.com.
Although my horse’s record was solid,
his winnings were small, net of race
entry fees. I listed him at OpenSea again,
and ultimately said goodbye, selling him
for 0.35 ETH. As the real estate adage
goes, the first offer is often the best.
Unfortunately, there was no shortcut
on the way out. The first step, from
wETH to ETH, required a transfer fee,
paid in ETH. But I didn’t have any ETH,
since I previously had exchanged it for
wETH, the only currency you can use to
buy a horse. I bought a small amount of
ETH to cover that fee (and paid a new fee
for that). But by the time the new ETH
arrived, the transfer fee had risen, pre-
sumably due to increased demand, so I
had to buy yet more ETH (and pay yet
another new fee). As the “Hotel Califor-
nia” lyric goes: “You can check out any
time you like, but you can never leave.”
Then there were nerve-racking delays
Place your bets: the volatility of crypto assets
% change on previous day
Bitcoin ($ per bitcoin)
S&P 500
Sterling ($ per £)
Largest change in S&P -12%
Largest change in sterling -8%
2012 15
Source: Refinitiv
How to
talk crypto
DeFi (decentralised
finance) a blockchain-
based form of finance
that uses smart
contracts instead of
financial intermediaries
ERC-20 a technical
standard used in the
ethereum blockchain
Ethereum (ether or
ETH) the next most
popular cryptocurrency
after bitcoin
NFT (non-fungible
token) a unit of data
that is certified as
representing a unique
digital asset
OpenSea largest peer-
to-peer marketplace for
trading NFTs
wETH a “wrapped”
version of ethereum
that is more seamlessly
tradeable than ETH
because it uses ERC-20
As the ‘Hotel
California’ lyric
goes: ‘You can check
out any time you
like, but you can
never leave’
100
50
0
-50
21
Left: a Zed Run
race; above: Frank
Partnoy’s horse
Tearaway Charlie
as my money moved through the steps,
from wETH to ETH, from Zed Run to
MetaMask, and so on. One expert who
has designed bots that scour NFT web-
sites described the steps as “entering
black holes”.
Eventually I was able to leave, with
$577 more than I had brought in. I
donated my net profits to Southern Cali-
fornia Thoroughbred Rescue, which
saves racehorses from slaughter and
abuse. I could have gambled more on
Tearaway Charlie, or kept him as a col-
lectible, but at least I know he won’t be
shipped off for meat.
The returns to cryptocurrencies and
NFTs have been volatile but high over-
all. Crypto markets offer the same fea-
tures that private, non-sovereign
money has for millennia: they provide a
medium of exchange, store of value and
unit of account, all of which are useful.
The store of value function is impor-
tant; in many countries, family heir-
looms are the main stock of wealth.
Crypto assets could ultimately be supe-
rior stores of value since they don’t
physically degrade in the way jewellery,
rugs or furniture do.
But because crypto is untethered to
the physical world, there is greater
potential for speculative mania. Some
economic historians defend price bub-
bles as rational, even skyrocketing prices
of 17th-century Dutch tulip bulbs (to five
times the cost of a house). But, as one
central banker quipped, referencing
crypto: “At least then you got a tulip.”
My wild ride at Zed Run was consist-
ent with many of the lessons, good and
bad, from thousands of years of creative
trading of financial assets and money
privately, outside of government regula-
tion. But the pandemic introduced some
wrinkles. Many people who have tasted
life without in-person contact are not
eager to return to the real world.
Cryptocurrencies and NFTs offer an
opportunity to make money without
getting up from the sofa; scratch a gam-
bling itch without treating horses inhu-
manely; amass a fortune from your par-
ents’ basement. The metaverse idea is to
enjoy a life that is simultaneously real
and virtual, drawing benefits from both.
At the same time, a new generation is
testing the limits of markets, assem-
bling to attack established interests and
questioning the viability of national cur-
rencies. They learn about new investing
strategies en masse on TikTok. There are
generational differences in how the cen-
tral banks’ rescue programmes have
been perceived, and many crypto pro-
ponents express concerns about infla-
tion and the credibility of sovereign-
two-thirds of the bidders for the $69m
NFT from the artist Beeple were under
the age of 40.
Tensions about crypto are palpable.
Social media influencers are persuading
millions of young people to put their
money in cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
Fintech firms are raising billions of ven-
ture capital. Meanwhile, PayPal, Square,
Venmo, Visa and Mastercard are inte-
grating cryptocurrencies into their sys-
tems. Large banks are resisting, but less
than ever. When Robinhood, the retail
trading app, recently announced finan-
cial results in its initial public offering
prospectus, many analysts were sur-
prised that so much revenue came from
retail investors trading dogecoin.
The value of bitcoin plunged last
month, after a regulatory crackdown by
China and an announcement that US
prosecutors had confiscated ransom
from a bitcoin wallet. Many government
officials view bitcoin and ethereum as a
serious environmental threat. China
clamped down on crypto “mining”
recently, after reports that these activi-
ties threaten to consume more than 5
per cent of the country’s electricity.
Ultimately, the policy questions
about cryptocurrencies and NFTs
should be resolved with the same two-
pronged approach we use for other
financial assets: disclosure and an anti-
fraud regime. Participants in these
markets should receive material infor-
mation about what they are trading,
and an enforcement mechanism should
protect victims when someone mis-
states or omits that information. If pri-
vate platforms do not provide both of
these protections, governments are
likely to step in.
What about the personal question? If
you like trading collectibles, you’ll
almost certainly enjoy trading NFTs.
But be careful. Racing horses can be
addictive, in any form. The Bored Apes
community is far from boring. My
friends obsess over their virtual bonsai
trees. It’s hard to stop.
Zed Run captures both the audacity
and promise of cryptocurrencies, NFTs
and the new generation of financial
innovators seeking to redefine money. It
feels like a chaotic party staged by a col-
lege fraternity. Yet its future looks
bright, perhaps even as bright as the
new 3D Zed Run racetrack, and horses,
sponsored by Stella Artois.
Regulators aren’t so sure about
crypto. Britain’s Financial Conduct
Authority has increased its oversight of
crypto markets; on June 25, the FCA
issued a warning about Binance, a large
cryptocurrency exchange, and barred
Binance’s UK subsidiary from regulated
activities in the country. US Senator
Elizabeth Warren has railed against
crypto markets, calling them the “wild
west”. More will surely join them soon.
Eventually, governments might spoil
the fun. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Frank Partnoy is professor of law at the
University of California Berkeley School of
Law and author of ‘The Match King: Ivar
Kreuger, the Financial Genius Behind a
Century of Wall Street Scandals’
17 July/18 July 2021
Lunch with the FT Heather Cox Richardson
‘Now people
see what’s been
happening.
Thank God’
The historian has won a vast following for her nightly
newsletter. Over a haddock Reuben in Maine, she tells
Edward Luce about the 19th-century parallels with today’s
political crisis in the US, banishing the trolls — and what
the local lobstermen taught her about telling stories
I
twice have to thread my way round
the packed Shaw’s Fish & Lobster
Wharf restaurant before I locate
Heather Cox Richardson. It is a
flawless midsummer day. She is
leaning against the wooden railings with
her back to the sundeck wearing shades
and a red baseball cap.
Richardson, who is a trim and youth-
ful 58, is intently studying a well-
thumbed copy of Sapiens, the sweeping
take on human history by Yuval Noah
Harari, the Israeli writer (“a little too
dry for my taste”, she tells me).
This idyllic corner of mid-coastal
Maine, which sits on one of the north-
eastern state’s numerous craggy penin-
sulas, lacks cell phone coverage. We had
agreed simply to seek each other out.
The restaurant — really a lobster shack,
as Mainers call it — does not take reser-
vations. Every outside seat seems to be
occupied by day-trippers. I thought I
was never going to find you, I tell Rich-
ardson. “I had no idea it would be so
crowded,” she replies after apologising
for turning up semi-incognito.
Like many Mainers, Richardson is a
private person and is reluctant to publi-
cise exactly where she lives. Much of her
caution stems from the unexpected
attention generated by her wildly popu-
lar daily post, “Letter from an Ameri-
can”, which she emails every 24 hours
during the night or early morning to
tens of thousands of subscribers.
Though Richardson’s day job is pro-
fessor of American history at Boston
College, 175 miles south of here, her
fame derives from the newsletter. It is
named after J Hector St John de
Crèvecœur’s Letters from an American
Farmer, which was published during the
American Revolution. Her title is also a
hat tip to the BBC’s Alistair Cooke,
whose radio series Letter from America
was beloved for decades.
Most people receive Richardson’s sub-
mission for free in their email inbox or
on her Facebook page, which has 1.4m
followers. Some, however, pay $5 a
month for the privilege of commenting
beneath her posts, which has made
Richardson into one of the most success-
ful writers on the newsletter platform
Substack. The New York Times esti-
mates that she earns more than $1m a
year from it, which is not bad for a New
England history professor.
Richardson writes in an understated
way that makes her an outlier on a site
filled with polemicists such as Glenn
Greenwald, the Brazil-based journalist
who collaborated with NSA whistle-
blower Edward Snowden, Andrew Sulli-
van, one of the original bloggers, now
scourge of “woke” liberalism, and Bari
Weiss, who resigned from the New York
Times last year in protest against its
alleged liberal intolerance.
I
have come to Maine to find out
about Richardson’s unlikely rise to
fame and fortune. But we must first
put in our orders at what looks like
a bus ticket kiosk inside the shack.
Richardson chooses the haddock
Reuben sandwich with a side of coleslaw
and a soda. “Like most Mainers I get
really bored of lobster,” she says. This is
in spite of the fact that her partner,
Buddy, is a lobsterman. As the tourist, I
order a standard lobster roll and a bowl
of clam chowder. Richardson needs no
encouraging to add a glass of wine. She
opts for Sauvignon Blanc. I go for Pinot
Grigio. “On a day like this, how can I
refuse?” she says.
Most of Richardson’s posts are about
what she judges to be the main news of
the day. In recent years, this has been
more often than not about the threat
that Donald Trump and today’s Repub-
lican party pose to US democracy.
Unlike others, though, she peppers her
letters with historical allusions — epi-
sodes such as the Missouri Compromise
of 1820, the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act
and the 1896 Plessy vs Ferguson
Supreme Court ruling that enshrined the
Jim Crow era of segregation in the
south. That story continues.
Alas, she says, things
have in some ways
deteriorated since
Trump left office.
Her last book,
which takes us
almost up to
the present
day, is called
How the South
Won the Civil
War. Richard-
son is consid-
ered to be one
of America’s
most distin-
guished scholars of the US
civil war and its aftermath,
as well as the legacy of
America’s relentless
westwards expansion.
To Richardson, at least, his-
tory never ends — still less,
American history. “I planned to
stop my newsletter after Biden’s first
100 days, but I found that I just
couldn’t,” she says. “As a historian I can
tell you that at no point in America’s his-
tory has one of the two main parties lit-
erally rejected the rules of the game.”
We have found a vacant picnic bench
partly shaded by a tall stack of lobster
cages far from the crowds. Richardson
tells me that the petrol gauge on her car
flashed red as she was driving down to
the wharf. When she refills after our
lunch, it will be for the first time since
the pandemic started. Covid-19 put an
end to her commute to Boston. Most
things she needs are in walking distance
of her home. “Suddenly it struck me
that’s why I feel so relaxed,” she says. “I
am so much more at home in Maine
than in Boston.”
That hardly seems surprising, I point
out. Didn’t her family settle here in the
early 1600s? It turns out only her
mother’s family did. Her father was
from Mississippi. Richardson’s parents
ran a hunting and fishing magazine in
Maine for several decades.
I tell Richardson that her deep ante-
cedents in this corner of New England
punctures two stereotypes about Amer-
icans. First, that early settlers are basi-
cally aristocrats. Richardson’s family
were “mostly mariners — a lot of sea cap-
tains”, she says. Second, that Americans
don’t have deep roots. I struggle to think
of many Europeans I know who could
say they are living where their forebears
had resided for the last four centuries.
“Many places round here are still
named for the property deeds that were
drawn up between the Cox family and
the indigenous people of this area,” she
says. But she disputes my suggestion
that her family’s relative ordinariness
would disqualify her for membership of
the Daughters of the American Revolu-
tion. “Because of my Dad, I could proba-
bly join both that society and the
Daughters of the Confederacy,” she
points out. “I’m not interested in either
of those things.”
I tell Richardson that there must be a
link between her meteoric recent suc-
cess and the very matter-of-fact,
almost Yankee, style in which she
writes her newsletter. Her posts even
include footnotes. The lack of jazz and
the quiet authority with which she
links things that happen today to the
American — often New England —
events of yore sets Richardson apart
from other correspondents.
“People say I am a good storyteller,”
she replies. “I have to tell you I am noth-
ing compared to the old storytell-
ers . . . These old guys would come over
★ † FTWeekend
and tell a simple tale about something.
S H AW ’S F IS H & ‘Some guy one day caught a raccoon in
LOBST E R W H A R F a bake bucket . . .’ And to hear that
129 ME-32 Suite A, New spun out over 35 minutes, you’d break
Harbor, Maine, 04554 your ribs laughing.”
W
Clam chowder $10.95 e are chomping our way
Reuben sandwich $10.95 somewhat messily
Lobster roll $28.95 through our meals. I
Soda $2.25
had forgotten to pick up
paper napkins. Rich-
Glass of wine x2 $24 ardson rushes off to grab a pile of them
Total (inc tax) $81.35 before I can offer. When she gets back, I
ask why she makes only commenters
pay for her newsletter. She explains that
this was a method of sifting out authen-
tic humans from the algorithmic trolls,
which used to come in waves.
The first lot were “almost certainly
bots posing as young Trumper men”,
she says. “They were often obscene.”
It would take hours to take them all
down. Then they vanished. Later came
“men hitting on women”, and finally
“women hitting on men”. This was all
on Facebook.
Once she launched her Substack let-
ter, she realised the easiest way of
cleansing her site was to make people
pay. Robots don’t have any cash. “It’s
more about creating a public space
where people feel comfortable, where
people can comment,” Richardson says.
“You’re welcome at my party but don’t
pee on my rug — if you do that, I’m going
to throw you out the door.”
It worked like a charm. Many of the
commenters write lengthy disquisitions
on their own family’s tales, or illuminate
some forgotten corner of US history.
Others pastorally urge Richardson to
get more sleep. She only writes late in
the evening after having done her day
job. Often she wakes up with bruises on
her forehead as she has fallen asleep on
the table. “Sometimes I think: ‘Oh man,
I don’t have the energy,’” she says. “But
then I get an email from an old lady who
says she can’t drink her coffee until she’s
read me, so I carry on.”
Plus, she adds, the paywall has
screened out almost all of the toxicity.
Richardson makes a point of replying to
as many commenters as possible. “If
you’re going to troll me, do it smart,”
she says. “Bring in a critique from Karl
Marx. Don’t just say: ‘You’re ugly.’ I
was asked to get rid of one person on
Substack and I just wrote to whomever
it was and said ‘you’re upsetting a lot
of people’ and this person wrote back,
and was unhappy they had upset me,
and apologised, and stayed on the
site without any further complaints.”
Is she surprised by how lucrative it
has become? “People appreciate it’s a
huge undertaking and they want to be
supportive,” she replies. “I feel very
much indebted, not for the money,
although that’s lovely, but for the appre-
ciation.” I suggest tentatively that
monthly cheques of this magnitude
would make it a difficult habit to drop.
“What do I need money for where I
live?” Richardson says. “Do you know
how much work a 40ft yacht is? I have a
14ft kayak. If something happens to it, I
use duct tape. My letters began organi-
cally and they will die organically.”
That moment will arrive when Rich-
ardson judges America’s democratic cri-
sis to be over. At that point she will quit.
She points out that America has had peri-
odic moments where newsletters have
flourished — during the 1790s in the
early stages of the republic, for
example, and in the populist era
of the 1890s. When she used to
do historical research in the
basement of Harvard Library —
“it was usually just me, an old
librarian and [the late novelist]
John Updike” — she would fre-
quently look at the letters people
wrote to newspapers. “These were the
commenters of their day,” she says.
I remind her that someone once joked
Trump’s campaign was “like the com-
ment section deciding to run for presi-
dent”. She laughs. “When Nixon ran for
president he would pay all these people
Ciaran Murphy
to flood the local papers with letters
about what a great man he was. Technol-
ogy has totally changed that game.”
But is today’s crisis as unique as
she says it is? Surely the civil war, and
possibly even the late 1960s and early
1970s were just as bad? “No and yes,”
Richardson replies. “We’ve had crises in
3
Life
America before that have similarities.
One of the differences is that we have for
the first time a significant number of
leaders who don’t believe in the demo-
cratic system — ‘the big lie’ [Trump’s
verdict on the 2020 election result] and
the attack on Congress on January 6,
where they flew the confederate flag
from the Capitol. That’s unheard of.
“The present changes our perspective
on the past. I think what we discovered
in the Trump years is that the oligarchic
pathway Republicans had carved before
he came along was adjacent to authori-
tarianism . . . and with Trump they
have made that leap. Biden gets this,
interestingly enough. We now recognise
in this moment what has actually been
there for a long time. Now people see
what’s been happening. Thank God.”
By now the place is almost empty.
What remains of our wine has warmed
in the sun. I tell Richardson it must be
hard to sustain her anxiety about Amer-
ica amid such beguiling surroundings.
She points out that several famous
writers live in town and are rarely spot-
ted. “They dress like everyone else,” she
‘As a historian I can tell you
that at no point in
America’s history has one
of the two main parties
literally rejected the rules
of the game’
says. But the area has many more prob-
lems than meet the eye. There are as
many Trump voters as liberals. They
used to say, “As Maine goes, so goes the
nation”, since it was once the first
national caucus to be held. There is still
some truth to that dictum.
“New Yorkers looking at Mainers
think everyone is committing incest,
drug addicts — they think it’s the worst
of everything,” she says. “Others think
it’s paradise. The truth is we have it all
and are aware of it all. If you live in an
area for a long time you’re accountable.
Your bad actions will haunt you but also
your grandchildren. Obviously there’s
addiction and violence and child abuse,
but not much gets swept under the rug
because it’s a small town. The coast is
pretty wealthy. Upstate is really
depressed — that’s a more rightwing
area. I spent 30 years in a wealthy Bos-
ton suburb but the doors were always
closed. You see a lot more here. It feels
much more authentic than the other
lives I’ve lived.”
As we saunter back to our respective
cars, Richardson points across the shim-
mering little harbour to a beautiful New
England clapboard house on the other
side. Its sweeping manicured lawn is
dappled with arboreal shade as it slopes
down to a private wharf. “Do you know
who lives there?” Richardson asks me.
No, I say, half-expecting her to say
Stephen King, or Updike’s family. “A
plumber,” she says. I express surprise
they could afford it. She points out that
the winters are often hard in coastal
Maine. “But once you move here,” Rich-
ardson adds, “you never want to leave.”
Edward Luce is the FT’s US national editor
4 ★ †
Style
The best beauty
products for
summer
Editors’ picks | From sun cream to
scent, the FT’s style team and
experts from the world of
beauty choose their favourite new
warm-weather essentials
Carola Long
La Roche-Posay Anthelios Age
Correct SPF50+ Cream, £25,
boots.com
With hydrating hyaluronic acid and
niacinamide, the French brand’s new
addition feels nourishing, and protects
my sensitive skin well on a sunny
Devon beach.
Faith in Nature Grapefruit
& Orange Hand &
Body Lotion, £5.79,
faithinnature.co.uk
Anya Hindmarch’s recent
pop-up hair salon used
Faith in Nature products.
The subtly scented lotions
come in recycled and
recyclable packaging, and
also in 5-litre refill bottles
to reduce waste.
Lancaster Sun Sensitive After Sun
Repairing Balm, £20.10,
feelunique.com
Lancaster’s non-sticky aftersun is
calming and moisturising with a
warm solar scent that evokes a
chi-chi beach club.
Diorshow Iconic
Overcurl Waterproof
Mascara, £29, dior.com
This mascara survived
a swim and a shower
without smearing, and
gave longer thicker
lashes. It takes a bit of
effort to remove though,
so best saved for a pool
party rather than
every day.
Supergoop Glow Screen, SPF 30, £32,
cultbeauty.co.uk
“It’s like if Glossier Futuredew and
an SPF had a baby,” declares one
reviewer. This SPF primer makes the
complexion look glowy and even,
and takes the place of make-up.
Tan-Luxe Super Glow Night Repair,
£39, spacenk.com
One vial contains a serum fake
tan with naturally derived DHA
enriched with
moisturising
peptides, the
other a blend
of oils. Apply
serum then oil
and voila, post-
holiday glow
in a bottle.
Ultra Violette Sheen Screen
Hydrating Lip Balm SPF 50, £16,
netaporter.com
Lip protection has moved beyond
chalky, opaque formulations.
Ultra Violette’s version feels silky
thanks to lanolin, cacao seed butter
and shea butter, and comes in four
shades.
Upcircle Coffee Body Scrub
with Lemongrass, £14.99,
upcirclebeauty.com
Upcircle have just tweaked the
packaging on this popular scrub so it’s
plastic-free, and launched a service
whereby you can post empties back for
refilling. Made using repurposed coffee
grounds and combined with natural
oils, this feels like a caffeine kick and
leaves skin smooth.
FTWeekend 17 July/18 July 2021
Rodarte spring/summer 21
Funmi Fetto Dior Tom Ford Research Intensive Essie Tangerine Tease
Eden-Roc Treatment Emulsion, £153, Nail Polish, £8, boots.co.uk
British Vogue and Observer Candle, £80, tomford.co.uk A tangerine-hued nail polish which
magazine contributing editor, dior.com A lighter take on a traditional was quick drying, glossy and suffered
author of ‘Palette, the Beauty The moisturiser, this features the signature minimal chipping after several days.
Bible for Women of Colour’, distillation of ingredients from Ford’s Research A limited edition, it’s available
host of ‘On Reflection’ beauty the Hotel du skincare line: white porcelain cacao, until September.
podcast @orbpodcast Cap-Eden-Roc on the French Riviera — energising caffeine and Gyokuro,
a medley of florals, woods, citruses intended to refresh and recharge the Dr Michael Prager Urban Protect
Hourglass Equilibrium and pine wafting by the sea — is skin. The result? Minimised redness Acid Peel Mask, £80,
Broad Spectrum SPF 30 especially welcome at a time when and optimal hydration. pragerskincare.com
Day Fluid, £101, travel abroad is restricted. If you want a glow up
libertylondon.com Dermalogica Smart this is a good one.
I was initially cynical Davines Momo Shampoo Bar, £14, Response Serum, £130, Ingredients such as
about skincare from a davines.com dermalogica.co.uk salicylic and glycolic
make-up brand but this is Momo is particularly good for dry or A clever all-rounder with a light acid remove dead skin
a triumph. The light dehydrated hair — which many of us texture, designed to adapt to every cells and reduce blemishes.
milky texture is intensely battle with in summer. The formula, individual skin type’s specific needs.
hydrating, supports the from the B Corps-certified beauty Left my skin firm, nourished and Dior Mono Couleur Couture
skin barrier and it doesn’t brand, is as matte, without feeling dry. eyeshadow in Rouge Trafalgar,
leave a white cast so is appropriate on good as its liquid £27.50, dior.com
all skin tones. counterparts Sisley Black Rose Beautifying On first glance this shade of eyeshadow
but comes Emulsion, £120, sisley-paris.co.uk is alarming, a plummy, bruise-hued
Jo Malone Tangy with just paper The Paris-based skin maestros’glow- purple. But upon application, it is more
Rhubarb Cologne, wrapping. inducing emulsion of a rusty red -
£55, jomalone.co.uk does exactly what it and I to my
The idea of a signature Dr Barbara Sturm Good C Serum, says on the tin. It surprise liked it a
scent or one you wear £110, spacenk.com beautifies. lot. Applied above
according to the Vitamin C serum is great for getting Containing padina and below the lash
climate has never rid of hyperpigmentation, sunspots pavonica extract, line I was
appealed. I rotate and combating uneven tone. That said, camelina oil and transported to
fragrances and wear not all vitamin C serums are equal. aqueous black rose my teenage fantasy, think Megan Fox
what I like, when I like. This is my most There’s a belief that the higher the extract, the ultra- and J Lo in the early noughties.
recent scent addition and addiction. It concentration of vitamin C, the light liquid hydrates
really does remind me of rhubarb in better the product, but while reducing shine. Votary Brightening Hyaluronic
the wild but the dash of cedarwood fundamentally it comes Serum, Narcissus and AHA, £75,
adds a wonderfully smoky dimension. down to Haeckels 60% H2O Ocean votary.co.uk
a good Cleanse Concentrate + Containing narcissus extract and
Drunk Elephant T.LC. Sukari Baby formulation. Allantoin — 1 year glycolic acid, this mighty serum
Facial, £67, cultbeauty.co.uk Dr Barbara supply, £120, accelerates skin renewal and
When this resurfacing treatment Sturm’s is one haeckels.co.uk improves brightness. Plant extracts
landed in the UK earlier this year, it of the best Eco-aware British such as bilberry fruit and neroli
was a big deal in the beauty world. It’s a vitamin C brand Haeckles uses flower improve hydration and help
blend of exfoliating acids that de-clogs formulations water-free concentrate to protect the skin’s natural barrier.
pores, resurfaces skin on the market. to cut down on the extra I’ve noticed more ‘glow’ and
texture and makes you energy used to transport improved skin texture.
look more alive. It’s Teo van den Broeke liquid. Simply take three pills,
formulated in a way add boiling water, et voila, shower gel. Rok n Dol, Large
that sidesteps the Style and grooming director, Scented with lemon, geranium and Ultimate Scrunchie
sensitivity associated British GQ beetroot, consider this the bright new (pack of three),
with acid products and future of your mornings. £39.50,
has made a significant Paris-Édimbourg by Chanel, £112, rokndol.com
difference to the chanel.com Flora Macdonald Johnston Rok n Dol’s
quality of my skin. Inspired by Gabrielle Chanel’s love scrunchies made from cruelty-free silk
of Scotland and described by 111skin, Y Theorem Concentrate, and plastic-free elastic are kind to hair
Zara Cult Satin Lipstick, £11.99 the maison’s in-house £125, 111skin.co.uk and don’t rip it when you undo
zara.com perfumer Olivier Polge I loved these little ampoules which your ponytail (a common
Make-up artist and catwalk show as “the fragrance of a encourage collagen, elastin and occurrence with bleached and
stalwart Diane Kendal tweed jacket borrowed hyaluronic acid production (all of dyed tresses).
is the creative genius from the men’s which help repair the skin and
behind the formulas, wardrobe”, it’s light, decrease fine lines). I used the Y Louis Vuitton On the Beach eau de
all the products are woody and woven Theorem over seven days, blending parfum, £200, louisvuitton.com
refillable and the red, through with threads each ampoule with my moisturiser and Incredibly light and refreshing with
high pigment lipstick of juniper berry, after two days found my skin firmer citrus notes, a hint of salt, and
lasts all day without cypress, lavender, and more hydrated, but the real benefit cypress, this is a wearable
reapplication. cedar and vetiver. was a more even complexion. day-to-day scent.
17 July/18 July 2021 ★ † FTWeekend 5

Travel

Switzerland | For those who missed the

slopes last winter, Zermatt’s lofty glaciers
offer a second chance. By Tom Robbins

I
t was a tough winter for skiers. I got
my kit down from the attic in early
December, only to pack it away
again by Christmas as borders shut.
Possible windows came and went,
hopes rose and fell. Would the situation
come good in time for a weekend in
Scotland? A late-season trip to the Alps?
An even later one to Iceland? No — the
skis stayed in the attic. The worst thing
was that by late spring, I could feel the
yearning for snow starting to fade.
Would it be such a loss if I gave it up
altogether? I was becoming institution-
alised as a non-skier.
Then, out of the blue at the end of
June, the door to the lost ski season

unexpectedly creaked ajar. Switzerland
announced it was to begin admitting the
fully vaccinated without quarantine
from the US, UK and many other
nations. And Switzerland just happens
to have the highest ski lifts in Europe
where, though many skiers don’t realise
it, you can get your fix 365 days a year.
Within a week, I was heading for Heath-
row, the only person on the sweltering
London Underground network to be
carrying ski boots.
I flew to Zurich, then took a double-
deck intercity train to Visp, on the floor
of the Rhone valley. There, I switched to
a little red narrow-gauge train that
would take me 30km south, almost to
the mountain wall that separates Swit-
zerland from Italy. It was a warm Friday
night and we opened the windows, let-
ting in the breeze as we passed bright
green vineyards. Soon we were rattling
through sheer-walled rocky gorges, the
rack-and-pinion noisily engaging to pull
us upwards — by journey’s end, in
Zermatt, we would have climbed nearly
1,000 vertical metres.
Waterfalls poured down on either side
of the valley. Chamois stood motionless
beside darkening forests, watching us
pass. And high above there were
glimpses of snow, glowing gold in the
last light. The Swiss teenagers onboard
were oblivious, noisily watching the
European Championships on a phone.
When we got to Zermatt, they jumped
out and on to their skateboards, sliding
down the station ramps, skis in hand.
From the train you don’t see the
Matterhorn — the mountain that graces
every Toblerone only comes into view
when you arrive in Zermatt. Instead the
toothy peak you see through the car-
riage windows at the high, distant end
of the valley is the Klein Matterhorn,
3,883 metres tall, and if you squint you
can see the cable car station drilled
right into its summit.
I arrived there early the next morn-
ing, the cable car having carried me
from the lush pastures around Zermatt
into a world of glaciers and moraines,
deep crevasses you can peer down into
and chaotic tumbling ice cliffs. With me
was local ski instructor Ralph Schmid-
halter who laughed at my woolly hat —
“I see you have the Austrian helmet!” —
and showed me how much the glacier
had retreated since he skied here as a
schoolboy. The glacier might be shrink-
ing, but coming up after a year’s exile in
the muggy lowlands, it still seemed
pretty miraculous. From the docking
station you walk through a long dark
tunnel, roughly hewn from the rock, to
emerge onto a dazzling expanse of
snow-covered glacier, a high plateau
sequestered among the clouds.
To our right, we could see the ski pis-
tes and T-bar lifts, the slalom gates set
High summer
out by race teams who come up for off-
season training, and the jumps and rails
of the freestyle park. It amounts, of
course, to a fraction of what’s available
in winter: on my visit there were 18km
of pistes open out of a possible 21km,
and six lifts, compared with a maximum
of 360km and 54 lifts in winter. But it
still feels substantial — the “vertical”
(the difference in elevation from the top
of the highest lift to the end of the lowest
run) is 980 metres. That is more than
celebrated US resorts such as Alta, Park
City, Squaw Valley and Killington can
manage even in the middle of winter.
And the snow was good. We made a
few gentle laps of the T-bars before tak-
ing a blast down the long, gentle and
deserted blue run to Trockener Steg.
Skiing is like riding a bike, in that you
Visp
SWITZERLAND
Mont Zermatt
Fort Matterhorn
Gornergrat
Klein Matterhorn
Cervinia
Alagna
Champoluc
Aosta
I TA LY
©Mapcreator.io/©HERE 10 km
don’t forget the basics, but you can cer-
tainly revert to bad habits and find last
year’s advances have been wiped out. I
tried not to worry, instead just relishing
the return of once-familiar sensations,
the snappy rhythm of short turns and
the rush of carving a good wide arc,
when the skis seem to come alive and
you just let them run.
Apart from Chamonix, Zermatt is the
most storied of Alpine resorts — its fame
built on the majesty of the Matterhorn
but also in being perhaps the first and
most successful example of “dark tour-
ism”. The Matterhorn was the last great
alpine peak to be climbed and when the
Englishman Edward Whymper made
the first ascent on July 14, 1865, it
marked the end of the “golden age of
alpinism”. That would have been
notable in itself but what catapulted it to
international notoriety was the accident
on the way down. The seven-strong
party were roped together but when one
man slipped, three others were knocked
off their feet. At the top of the rope
Whymper and two local guides hung on,
but the rope tightened, then snapped.
The lower four, including the 18-year-
old aristocrat Lord Francis Douglas,
tumbled to their deaths; Douglas’s body
was never found.
The tragedy caused a sensation in
Britain; newspapers were furious —
“Why is the best blood of England to
waste itself in scaling hitherto inaccessi-
ble peaks, in staining the eternal snow?”
the Times thundered. Queen Victoria
apparently considered a ban on climb-
ing. But the public was enthralled —
Whymper became climbing’s first big
star, and tourists flocked to Zermatt to
see the site of the scandal.
“That short valley is a picture-gallery
of a notable kind, for it contains no
mediocrities; from end to end the Crea-
tor has hung it with His masterpieces,”
wrote Mark Twain after visiting in 1878.
Theodore Roosevelt, the future presi-
dent, climbed the Matterhorn in 1881;
Winston Churchill later summited the
nearby Monte Rosa. By 1891 the railway
up from Visp was complete, prompting
a rush of hotel building.
Even now the fascination with that
calamitous first ascent persists. In the
main square there is a plaque marking
the hotel from which Whymper set out;
a 1955 film Whymper’s Way up the Matter-
horn is still screened every week. In the
Whymperstube restaurant you can eat a
Whymper-Teller, a SFr29 (£23) plate of
beef, ham and cheese. And in the excel-
lent museum, where I stopped by after
skiing, you can look at Zermatt’s holy
relics: Whymper’s ice axe and, on a red
cushion in a glass case, the fateful rope
itself, frayed end held out for inspection.
After its 150 years of fame, Zermatt
has the occasional tendency to glitz —
luxury car adverts flash at you in lift sta-
tions, and does it really add anything to
have “embellished” some of the cable
cars with Swarovski crystals? For the
main part though, it has managed to pre-
serve a sense of authenticity, perhaps
because the valley sides are too steep to
From top: Ralph
Schmidhalter (in red) and
Tom Robbins on the
glacier; the Matterhorn
and the roofs of Zermatt
Michael Portmann; Alamy
i / D E TA I L S
Tom Robbins was a guest of
Switzerland Tourism
(myswitzerland.com), Swiss Air
Lines (swiss.com), Zermatt Tourism
(zermatt.ch), and the Hotel Bristol
(doubles from about SFr160, hotel-
bristol.ch). For lessons with Ralph
Schmidhalter see zermatters.ch. A
two-day summer lift pass costs
SFr130; children under nine go free.
For the latest details on entry
requirements see bag.admin.ch
allow major expansion. In
the car-free centre, you still
see wooden barns from the
16th and 17th centuries,
propped up on stone mush-
rooms against vermin and
damp. I wandered past smart
boutiques but also a parked
tractor, and neat chalet gar-
dens bursting with cabbages
and lettuces. I stayed at the
Hotel Bristol, unpretentious
and delightfully welcoming,
the only drawback being that
I had to lean out from the bal-
cony and around the corner
of the building to catch a
night-time glimpse of the
Matterhorn.
In the morning, I took the
6.30am cable car up, stand-
ing next to a skier in red team strip who
told me his name was Erik Read. Was he
training for anything in particular, I
asked slightly patronisingly? Only when
I googled him later did I find out he was a
decorated member of the Canadian
Olympic team. He told me Covid-19 had
brought a renewed focus on glaciers for
off-season training, since trips to south-
ern hemisphere ski areas had become
difficult. Zermatt isn’t the only option —
Austria’s Hintertux and Stubai, Tignes
and Les 2 Alpes in France and Stelvio in
Italy are among about a dozen Alpine
resorts to offer summer skiing.
Later I rode Europe’s highest T-bar to
the top of the Gobba di Rollin, at 3,899
metres, then skied down for coffee at
the Rifugio Guide del Cervino, a wooden
restaurant and climbers’ refuge perched
on the cliff that falls away into Italy and
the lifts and slopes of Cervinia. In early
summer you can actually ski down into
Italy and take the cable car back up, but
the slope was now closed — bisected by a
just-visible crevasse.
Ralph told me about the big plans in
play: a new cable car, the Alpine X, is
under construction, to link this Italian
side of the summit plateau with the
Klein Matterhorn. When complete, in
autumn next year, the SFr30m project
will make it possible for non-skiers to
travel up and over the Alps from Cer-
vinia to Zermatt without ever getting
their feet wet. In part it is a diversifica-
tion from relying on skiing, given the
potential challenges of climate change,
but it will also make it easier for visitors
from Zermatt to access this flatter part
of the glacier in summer, where there
are plans to offer ski rental so absolute
beginners can get a taste of the sport.
“Once people have that first experience
of the sensations, they will want to come
back to see how the real snow is in win-
ter,” said Ralph.
The big difference between winter
and summer skiing is that with the lat-
ter, it’s all over by lunchtime. The exact
schedule changes depending on the
weather but during my visit the ski lifts
were closed by 1pm when the lower
slopes were getting slushy. That makes a
summer ski holiday a much more multi-
activity affair, with afternoons free for
mountain biking, hiking, lake swim-
ming, sitting on a sun terrace or, if you
are Erik Read, doing some hard sessions
of weight training and gym work. I went
for a glorious run, up from the town,
through forests and alpine meadows, to
the Gornergrat ridge at 3,089 metres,
from where I caught another historic
mountain railway back down to spare
my historic knees.
Coming up after a year’s
exile in the muggy
lowlands, the glacier
seemed pretty miraculous
The one summer activity that
Zermatt locals would never do for fun is
skiing. “For us it’s winter about eight
months of the year, so we really want to
enjoy the warmth,” Ralph told me. He
likes the beach, or heading off exploring
on his Harley-Davidson: “That’s real
freedom!” The pull of the open road
must be strong if you’re from a traffic-
free town ringed by 4,000-metre peaks.
For me though, being up there in the
cold air at the height of summer felt like
liberation.
When they turned off the lift on my
second and last morning I sensed
another familiar feeling, a craving for
one more run, an urgent need for a few
more turns. On the way home I started
googling winter trips; my spell as a non-
skier was definitely over.

R
ome is a strange place to be
POSTCARD cripplingly lonely. From
robed priests striding
FROM . . . towards the Vatican to the
remains of temples
GARBATELLA, decomposing on street corners, there’s
something melodramatic about the
ROME city. Every emotion seems heightened
here. Throw in travelling solo, a recent
break-up and finding myself
unexpectedly caught in a far stricter
lockdown than anticipated and you
have the perfect recipe for rampant
self-pity — Italian style.
Throughout my trip, Rome moves in
and out of “colour zones” (the
equivalent of the tier system), each
bringing with it a slew of restrictions on
socialising. During my 14-day
quarantine I co-ordinate meals with
the family who live above me despite
the fact they have no idea I exist,
enjoying the murmur of their muffled
voices. When nail salons open I’m first
in line, purely so I can hold the nail
technician’s hand. Desperate times,
desperate measures.
When the proprietor of my local
coffee bar — pretty much the only
other person I speak to — tells me
i / DETAILS about Garbatella, a suburb famed for
its tight-knit community located a
Valeria Castiello’s Garbatella tour costs €125 for a mere two metro stops from the Circus
private two-and-a-half-hour guided visit, in Maximus, my interest is piqued. His
English. For details see her Facebook page: descriptions of open-armed families
facebook.com/UnexpectedRome feasting on velvety artichokes and
street football games call to me with as
much conviction as cacio e pepe might
to a Roman stranded in Illinois.
Faded, fabulous and with a distinct
anti-establishment whiff, the historic
part of Garbatella was built in the
1920s and is similar in size to Vatican
City. A team of architects at the
Institute of Public Housing (or ATER as
it’s now known) led by Innocenzo
Sabbatini borrowed concepts from the
UK’s burgeoning garden city
movement to create an urban district
with the intimacy of a village. Romans
flock here at weekends to sip spritz, see
street art and wash down pasta with
flagons of wine at family-run trattorias.
The area is divided into 62 lotti,
Matthew Cook
low-rise apartment blocks built around
garden squares to encourage
neighbourly mingling. ATER still owns
most of them and caps rents, which
allows many of the original families to
remain — but also explains the peeling
paint and ripped awnings. In Italy, no
institution moves fast.
Garbatella’s blue-collar roots run
deep. It was originally designed to
house country folk who’d found jobs in
the industrial Ostiense district; one of
the area’s waymarkers is the
Gazometro, a gasworks affectionately
nicknamed “the working man’s
colosseum”.
In the latter half of the decade,
Garbatella was co-opted by Fascists to
rehouse families displaced when many
of the medieval alleys in Rome’s centre
were torn down to create avenues wide
enough for military processions.
Unlike the rest of Rome — which the
late writer Graham Joyce described as
“a place almost worn out by being
looked at, a city collapsing under the
weight of reference” — Garbatella is
barely mentioned in guidebooks. Those
that do visit will find a unique
“barocchetto” architecture, which
references everything from Baroque to
Art Nouveau. Panthers stalk
curvaceous arches, chubby cupids prop
up drainpipes and distinctive stone
slabs slyly mock Rome’s noble elite, as
the style was traditionally used on
Renaissance palazzi.
Few people are better equipped to
bring the area to life than Valeria
Castiello, a local travel photographer
and licensed guide who trained as an
architect and now runs a B&B called
Unexpected Rome with her husband.
She has just launched the first walking
tour of Garbatella in English and I’m
her inaugural, and only, guidee. After
weeks of deafening silence, she
couldn’t have a more eager audience.
“Sabbatini understood the value of
community and how architecture can
help foster it. To cultivate a new shared
heritage, you have to respect where
people have come from and understand
what really matters to them.”
Over the next two hours Valeria
points out numerous examples of
architectural kookery: an inviting
square copied stone for stone from a
village in Lazio; a coat of arms
engraved with the housing institute’s
initials instead of a noble crest; the
shrine dedicated to Roma FC
(long the city’s left-wing football
team) rather than a saint.
“Rather than destroying the
landscape, Sabbatini’s team
incorporated it — see how those
Baroque-style stairs hug that hill,”
she points across the leafy courtyard
of lotto 14.
Towards the end of Valeria’s tour we
pause at what was Sabbatini’s final
project: the Scalinata degli Innamorati
(lovers’ staircase). This elegant curve is
where local teenagers come to smoke
cigarettes, eat gelato and fall in love —
or so I’m told. On this particular
afternoon, it’s as empty as the grave.
Love waits.
“The spring at the bottom is called
‘Carlotta’s fountain’. Neighbourhood
kids reckoned the statue looked like
a lady who used to live here and the
name stuck. They say if you drink
three sips and make a wish it will come
true.” I wander down the staircase,
look Carlotta bang in the eye and wish
with all my might.
Imogen Lepere
6 ★ FTWeekend 17 July/18 July 2021

Travel
per episode. They now have their own
PR firms and subscription accounts via
sites such as Patreon.

Erin Carey, an Australian former gov-

ernment communications executive,
has half a dozen clients at Roam Genera-
tion, her waterborne PR firm. She says
their YouTube channels have exploded
as pandemic portholes for housebound
dreamers. The revolution in work is
now tipping armchair sailors into
action. “I spent 15 years pushing to work
from home and could never get it
approved, then suddenly we’re all doing
it,” she says. “It frustrates me because I
could have lived this lifestyle years ago.”
Carey, 40, is herself a boatlifer. She
and her husband, an aviation engineer,
were inspired by a documentary about
Laura Dekker, the Dutch teenager who
in 2010 fought in the courts to be
allowed to sail solo around the world.
Carey had been ridiculed herself as a
child when her father dragged her to a
small lake to sail dinghies. “All the cool
kids were in speedboats and called me
‘sailor girl’ as an insult,” she recalls.
“Now I’m sailor girl and proud of it.”
After watching the Dekker film in

Living the
2015, as well as early YouTube channels,
Carey felt increasingly stifled by the
polite routines of suburban life in

#boatlife Austin and Arthur Siegal off Culebra in May

A
ndrew Siegal had a nice life.
He lived in a nice house in
Napa with his wife and two
young sons. He made good
money in the California
wine trade. But there was always an itch.
Siegal, 51 and originally from New
York City, had long been inspired by
Henry David Thoreau, the American
thinker who turned his back on materi-
alism “to suck out all the marrow of life”
in the woods. “The mass of men lead
lives of quiet desperation,” Thoreau
wrote in 1854 in Walden, his personal
declaration of independence.
“I swore when I read that book as a
young man I wouldn’t be that person,”
Siegal tells me. “Yet here I was, in my
forties, thinking this can’t be it . . . I
can’t just do this and then find myself as
a 70-year-old wishing I’d had some great
adventure.”
If a nearly 170-year-old book was the
inspiration for change, the pandemic
was the trigger. Siegal and his wife Sara,
37, had already felt drawn to the free-
dom of the sea, despite barely having
sailed before. But they had not felt ready
to cast off.
“Then Covid hit,” Siegal says. “Our
kids were reduced to being treated like
germs, and we were Zooming into
school. We both just looked at each
other and said: ‘If we don’t do it now we
never will.’ It was the perfect opportu-
nity to shake up everything in our lives.”
Weeks later, the family had sold their
house and belongings and driven to
Florida to buy a boat. When we talk by
phone, Siegal is at the helm of One Tusk,
a 45ft catamaran that has been his fam-
ily’s home for the past five months. They
are sailing east from Puerto Rico to
Culebra, a sleepy Caribbean island and
honeypot for rat-race fugitives.
The Siegals have joined a growing off-
grid armada. While the ultra-rich have
retreated to superyachts in record num-
bers to navigate the shifting border con-
trols and pandemic travel restrictions,
couples and families of more average
means are themselves setting sail.
The “boatlife” lifestyle was already
buoyant, gaining pace on “van life”, its
landlubbing equivalent. Just as demand
has soared for motorhomes and vans
that are being converted into Insta-
grammable bases for work, adventure
and personal branding, the market for
yachts is humming.
The pandemic has added a gale to the
#boatlife trend, inspiring people to
escape the rigours and monotony of
lockdowns. Despite adding complexity
to any kind of travel, Covid-19 has also
triggered a shift in attitudes towards
digital nomadism — the unmooring of
workers not only from offices but time
zones, too.
“It has been absolutely insane,” says
Behan Gifford, 51, who has raised three
children on a yacht with her husband,
Jamie. The American couple, who left
dry land 13 years ago, now run a coach-
ing service for newcomers. Sailing
Totem, named after their yacht, advises
on buying and fitting out boats, as well
as schooling, tax and insurance.
“For about a month last March we fig-
ured income would dry up but the exact
opposite happened,” Gifford says. The
couple had about 15 clients before the
pandemic. They now have 62. “We are
seeing a normalisation of what was once
a fringe lifestyle.”
Yacht brokers are racing to meet
demand for vessels of all sizes. Fraser
Yachts, one of the biggest brokers,
says sales of 79ft-plus boats leapt 18
per cent from 2019 to 2020 — the
Monaco firm’s best year for more than
a decade. Gifford, who is from San
Francisco, says sellers are increasingly
also by-passing brokers on listings
‘I spent 15 years pushing to
work from home and could
never get it approved, then
suddenly we’re all doing it’
sites and social media.
While cruisers typically used to be
retirees and experienced sailors, Gifford
says the shift is now being driven by
younger newbies with jobs who need all
the help they can get. She lays out for cli-
ents the joys and pitfalls of marine life,
which can scuttle marriages and bank-
rupt the naive (Gifford is talking from
Puerto Peñasco in Mexico, where Totem
is being renovated. Works include a new
$25,000 engine).
Siegal had sailed dinghies as a kid at
summer camp, but he was not a sailor. A
Florida broker found his catamaran
in the US Virgin Islands. It cost
$700,000 — enough for a plush 2019
model. Siegal flew to the Caribbean to
collect it last August, hired a captain,
and got a crash course on the nine-day
voyage back to Florida.
The family spent four months prepar-
ing and fitting out One Tusk with solar
panels and a machine to make seawater
drinkable. In January, they plotted a
2,000-mile course from Sarasota to Gre-
nada via islands including the Bahamas
and the Dominican Republic.
When we speak, Siegal’s sons Austin,
10, and Arthur, eight, are at school
below deck, where they are enrolled in a
distance learning program.
When they’re not studying, they’re
sailing, fishing and diving. Siegal hopes
to drop anchor in time to catch a
The pandemic and greater acceptance of remote working have
prompted growing numbers of families to seek new lives at sea.
Simon Usborne hears the stories behind the phenomenon
not deterring new sailors with much
smaller budgets and a need to work.
Marte Loge is a 29-year-old software
developer from Norway. Her voyage
began before the pandemic, when
she and her boyfriend, Hakon Amdal,
also a developer, became bored with
life in Oslo. A year earlier they had
sailed in Croatia and fallen in love.
When the time came to buy a new apart-
ment, it suddenly felt too “permanent”,
Loge says.
The couple sold their flat, car and
belongings in the spring of 2019 and
bought a boat. By November, they were
sailing south past France and Portugal,
and across the Atlantic to the Caribbean
on Hello World, a 43ft monohull yacht
worth about £100,000.
They did no work during the crossing,
but the pandemic left their options for
sailing and tourism increasingly lim-
ited. So they went back to work full time
— in dockside cafés with WiFi, or on the
boat using data via local sim cards.
Loge is at anchor in Antigua when I
reach her via Zoom. Behind her I can see
Falmouth Harbour, a large bay fringed
From top: mahi mahi for dinner. Austin has by verdant hills. There are fewer yachts
Mairen Gifford become proficient with a scuba mask than normal. “But these are mostly peo-
in the Sea of and fishing spear. ple living this lifestyle,” she says, looking
Cortez, 2020; The Siegals have enough savings not over her shoulder.
schoolwork on to have to work for a while, despite In September last year Loge got a new
board the Totem annual costs of more than $50,000 for job in the burgeoning industry that has
in Tonga, 2010; supplies and maintenance, including sprung up to meet demand — boosted
Hakon Amdal more than $15,000 to insure the boat. by the pandemic — for digital nomad-
on Hello World Sailing can be a full-time job. But this is ism. Formerly a freelance consultant,
she is now a developer at SafetyWing, an
Oslo-born insurance company dedi-
cated to remote work.
Affordable travel and medical insur-
ance has traditionally been a problem
for nomads. There are visas and taxes to
think about too. Loge pays tax in Nor-
way, and has to be careful not to be liable
a second time by staying too long in cer-
tain countries. The French Caribbean
islands are part of the EU for tax pur-
poses, meaning Loge could stay for six
months without coughing up. She says
many boatlifers try to wing such affairs.
Other cruisers make money by char-
tering their yachts or hosting visitors.
Branding the dream is a burgeoning
alternative — and has a self-fulfilling
effect on the trend. The biggest boatlife
Erin Carey runs her PR firm from the family yacht YouTube channels get millions of views
Adelaide. The family considered a cara-
van but settled on a boat. Carey is talk-
ing to me from Roam, a sturdy 47-ft
British monohull yacht built in 1984.
“It’s all wood inside like an English
pub,” she says.
Roam has been home to the couple
and their three sons, aged six to 12, for
three years. Carey started writing arti-
cles about life at sea, which led to an
interview with Brian Trautman. The
former Microsoft analyst runs Sailing
SV Delos, one of the biggest yacht
channels on YouTube, with 710,000
subscribers. Trautman became Carey’s
first client.
While marine living involves close
confinement, boatlifers tell me the
social side of cruising is as rewarding as
the act of escape. They join growing
online communities and friendly flotil-
las. “Their life in the Caribbean was idyl-
lic,” Carey says of her boys from their
current mooring in the Azores, 950
miles west of Portugal. “They’d go to the
beach every day, building forts with
their friends.”
No one seems to fear stepping off the
ladders of grown-up life: career, prop-
erty, education. “People have to not be
scared of breaking out of societal norms
because there’s so much out there,”
Carey says. “Even if for some reason we
could never buy a house again, I can’t
imagine us being on our deathbeds
going, ‘gee, I wish we hadn’t spent 10
years sailing around the world’, because
it’s amazing.”
Gifford, whose children are 17, 19 and
22, found that when Niall, their eldest,
was applying for university, admissions
departments saw his unconventional
educational background and decade at
sea as an advantage rather than obsta-
cle. Homeschool stigmas are fading, she
says. “People used to think we were
ruining their future. But I think they’re
more confident and socialised.”
Andrew Siegal, who briefly pauses our
conversation to check his bearing as he
sails on to Culebra, is hoping for a
similar outcome. The family decided
to spend a year at sea and go home if
it didn’t work out. Five months
in, they’re thriving and plan to keep
going for years.
Coming to realise how quickly the
boys’ childhoods were flashing by partly
inspired the change. Now Siegal loves
nothing more than watching Austin
diving with his spear.
“We’re in the middle of the most
beautiful pristine water on the planet
and he’s charging after grouper,” he
says. “You should see the smile on
his face when he comes up. It’s hard
to convey how gratifying it is to see him
in that environment doing something
like that.”

Short cuts
Suffolk Dragoman, the tour operator
that helped pioneer long-distance
“overlanding” trips by truck, has
announced it is no longer taking
bookings and will go into “full
dormancy” until travel restrictions ease.
The company was set up 40 years ago
when two friends bought an old Bedford
truck and set off from Felixstowe to
Nairobi. It has grown to offer trips
worldwide ranging from two-week
National Geographic Endurance
during sea trials last year
journeys to epic itineraries such as Cape
Town to Cairo and Alaska to Tierra del
Fuego. Dragoman said its fleet of 27
trucks had now stood idle for 15 months
“and there is still no clarity in when long-
haul global travel will be able to resume”.
Once it has refunded all bookings, it will
close its main office in Debenham,
Suffolk. But the company insists the
mothballing strategy will allow it to
restart once travel becomes easier:
“When the time is right, we will insert the
key, turn over the engine and get the
wheels rolling again.” dragoman.com
Iceland National Geographic Endurance,
a vessel its owner claims is “the world’s
most advanced polar expedition ship”
will depart from Reykjavik next week on
its maiden voyage, bound for Greenland.
The ship, which carries up to 126 guests,
has the distinctive X-Bow design that
improves fuel efficiency and stability in
rough seas, as well as expanded fuel and
water tanks for extended operations in
remote areas. The strengthened hull has
a Polar Class 5 rating, allowing it to
operate year-round in polar waters.
“This means we can explore deeper
into the pack ice, or further north to the
unexplored reaches of the Arctic,” said
Sven Lindblad, founder of New York-
based Lindblad Expeditions, which owns
the ship and operates it in partnership
with the commercial arm of the National
Geographic Society. The name is in
honour of the ship used by Ernest
Shackleton on the Imperial Trans-
Antarctic Expedition of 1914-17;
hopefully the new Endurance will enjoy a
better fate. Rates for a 13-day voyage in
August begin at $13,350;
expeditions.com
Tom Robbins
17 July/18 July 2021 ★ FTWeekend 7

T
he most remarkable fact WeWork’s
about WeWork is not that a Adam Neumann
hyped-up twist on a busi- Camera Press/Chris Floyd

ness as old as office-leasing

ended up imploding; it is
that Adam Neumann, its messianic co-
founder, convinced so many people for
so long that his unoriginal, lossmaking
start-up could change the world — and
the laws of corporate valuation.
Before the near-collapse that cost the
Israeli entrepreneur his job, turned his
motivational T-shirts into Halloween
costumes and brought WeWork within
weeks of running out of cash, Neumann
had managed to raise more than $10bn
at valuations peaking at $47bn.
To believers, he was the model of a
visionary founder: a hyperactive, hus-
tling immigrant disrupting one of the
world’s largest asset class, convincing
followers that they were rethinking the
very idea of work itself by paying him
over the odds for tiny workspaces.
A WeWork building — with its medita-
tion rooms, pool tables, vegan food stalls
and aroma of small-batch coffees —
could make insecure freelancers feel
like they were on a Google campus. Neu-
mann had captured a moment where
the gig economy sounded like freedom,
where Silicon Valley seemed more cool
than creepy and thousands laid off in
the financial crisis were starting afresh.
Benchmark Capital, the venture capi-
talist veteran that funded eBay and
Instagram, bought what Neumann was
selling, as did Harvard’s endowment,
Fidelity and Alibaba’s Jack Ma. But most
importantly, there was Masayoshi Son,
the Saudi-funded SoftBank boss who
liked to throw more cash at founders
than they had asked for and then berate
them for not thinking big enough.

Why We didn’t work

“These investors were considered the
smart money,” the Wall Street Journal’s
Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell
remind us in The Cult of We. It is a retell-
ing of a story that Reeves Wiedeman got
to last year in Billion Dollar Loser, which
brought out Neumann’s skill at flatter-
ing such audiences and telling them
what they wanted to hear.
Brown and Farrell’s most memorable
contribution to the reams of earlier
WeWork coverage was their September
2019 reporting that during Neumann’s
attempt to go public that year, he had
stashed a cereal box full of marijuana on
a cross-border private jet flight, and
smoked so much that the oxygen masks
came down. If investors still needed an
excuse to skip the initial public offering,
this reminder of Neumann’s rash
excesses provided one.
Having added to the pile of WeWork
stories myself, I have witnessed Neu-
mann’s flattery. As a colleague and I
prodded him on his business model in
his serene New York office in May 2019,
his answers were prefaced with “great
question . . . beautiful question . . . you
guys are hitting all the marks”.
When we pointed out the conflicts of
interest in his ownership of some of the
buildings that WeWork leased, Neu-
mann suggested the FT should charge
companies to have its journalists pre-
pare CEOs for the tough questions they
would face on an IPO roadshow. (He
seemed not to see that this might itself
create conflicts of interest.)
I had wondered whether another
book could bring much fresh insight
into one of the most scrutinised CEOs of
recent years — yet Brown and Farrell
The fate of WeWork and its charismatic founder is a seductive story and
a parable of the perils of easy money, writes Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson
have unearthed dozens of new tales,
adding colour to a portrait whose out-
lines are already well known.
At one impromptu office party, they
report, Neumann and colleagues
lobbed the expensive tequila bottles
they had been drinking from, deliber-
ately smashing the glass panes separat-
ing his private office from the desks
outside. At another tequila-fuelled
event, Neumann is said to have sprayed
a fire extinguisher over Hony Capital’s
The Cult of We:
WeWork and the John Zhao, one of his investors. And in
Great Start-Up Hong Kong, the authors capture Neu-
Delusion mann stumbling through a starchy pri-
by Eliot Brown and vate club, blasting Jay-Z on a Bluetooth
Maureen Farrell speaker and yelling: “We are taking
Mudlark/Crown over the world!”
£20/$28, 464 pages More substantively, they show how a
decade of low interest rates and plenti-
ful private capital allowed splashy start-
ups such as Uber, Airbnb and WeWork
to avoid the disciplines of the public
market while private investors under-
wrote their losses for years.
When a founder has billionaire inves-
tors and fee-hungry advisers telling him
he is a visionary and branding his crea-
tion a mythical unicorn, it is almost
understandable that he keeps a hair
stylist on staff, snowboards to work
The line between a world-
changing dream and the
selling of a tall tale has
long been vanishingly thin
behind a colleague’s Jeep in winter or
has his surf coach Jet Ski him out to the
best waves. (“I don’t have time for pad-
dling,” Neumann reputedly explained.)
Brown and Farrell do not labour the
point, but such absurdities look even
more crass when set alongside Neu-
mann’s claim to be “elevating the
world’s consciousness”. When he tells a
staff meeting that WeWork must lay off
70 people, then pivots to a performance
by a hip-hop veteran from Run DMC,
the reader is left to wonder how that ele-
vated anybody’s consciousness. Ditto
with the millions of dollars in stock he
was selling while telling investors to buy.
How did Neumann get away with it?
The short answer is the capital and
cover supplied by SoftBank’s Son. The
Cult of We provides a useful reminder of
how the billions that Saudi crown prince
Mohammed bin Salman had committed
to the SoftBank Vision Fund were burn-
ing a hole in Son’s pocket when he
decided to pour $4bn into a company
that had previously raised only $1.7bn.
More than 18 months after Son
slashed SoftBank’s valuation of the com-
pany to $2.9bn, it is clear that nobody
did more to inflate the WeWork bubble
than the inventor turned telecoms
mogul who almost lost his first fortune
in the dotcom bust two decades ago.
Son once projected that Neumann’s
company could be worth $10tn by 2028
(which makes the $96bn valuation in
Goldman Sachs’ pre-IPO pitch deck look
almost modest). Plenty of other inves-
tors were just as willing to indulge what
the authors call “a prolonged adoles-
cence” for the free-spending founders
they backed. When Neumann bought a
company that made wave pools for surf-
ers, for example, nobody blinked.
The WeWork bubble was inflated by
not just by a glut of capital, Brown and
Farrell argue, but by a fear of missing
out. Such “fomo” haunted once cautious
mutual fund managers such as T Rowe
Price and Fidelity and seasoned bankers
like JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, who
craved the bragging rights that come
with advising hot tech companies.
Participants in such bubbles “are
often intelligent — even aware of the
madness”, they observe. For a corporate
cult to succeed, in other words, its early
followers need to believe that the cult
leader can recruit enough true believers
for them to get out at a profit.
The failed IPO proved that Neumann
could not. His early enablers may have
dismissed his wilder habits as a vision-
ary’s privilege, but the public markets
saw how fast his excesses were burning
through the billions he raised.
The hubris and excess that The Cult of
We cast as a parable of the 21st-century
economy may already look like relics of
a pre-pandemic world. Yet as we watch
investors pump up meme stocks and
special purpose acquisition companies
(including one with via which WeWork
now plans to go public at a $9bn valua-
tion), perhaps the lesson is that the line
between those pursuing a world-chang-
ing dream and those hustling to sell a tall
tale has always been vanishingly thin.
Once the marijuana haze clears, it
becomes clear that the WeWork story is
a timeless one, even if this version
involves a lot more weed and tequila.
Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson is the FT’s
US business editor

The natural high life

A stimulating examination
of our relationships with
opium, caffeine and
mescaline. By Dick Pountain
humans through selective breeding for
desired qualities like sweetness or
intoxication.
This latest book applies a similar
structure to three plant-derived drugs
valued solely for intoxication: opium
from the poppy, caffeine from tea and
This Is Your come back for more. Caffeine moder- travails of the Native American Church James Gleick, Marcia Angell, Harold
Mind on Plants: ates appetites for both food and sleep in in trying to preserve its right to consume McGee, Jared Diamond and more — who
Opium — humans too, inducing monks to culti- peyote as a sacrament, in the teeth of demonstrate through the night of
Caffeine — vate the tea plant to help them pray all institutional racism, the war on drugs Trumpism, QAnon and the anti-vaxx
Mescaline night. Cultivation of tea and coffee and the hedonistic over-enthusiasm of movement that the flag of scientific lit-
by Michael Pollan plants spread around the world during the drug’s hippy devotees. eracy still waves in America.
Allen Lane £20 the age of imperialism, caffeine having While his previous books may have

E
very morning during the Cov-
id-19 lockdowns I’ve been
measuring my constrained
existence in spoonfuls of cof-
fee (Lavazza Black loaded
into a DeLonghi espresso machine). I
was well aware that TS Eliot’s Prufrock
was there before me, but I now discover
that so was Michael Pollan, on page 122
of the essay “Caffeine”, which makes up
one-third of This Is Your Mind on Plants.
Readers will probably know Pollan for
the famous aphorism “Eat food. Not too
much. Mostly plants” from his 2008
best-seller In Defense of Food, which
together with his earlier The Omnivore’s
Dilemma proposed a profound critique
of the food chain in modern industrial
societies.
In 2018 Pollan turned his attention
from food to drugs, with How to Change
Your Mind, a book about psychedelic
drugs that has become something of a
manifesto for the “micro-dosing” com-
munity, who advocate taking tiny doses
of hallucinogens to improve mental
health and creativity. An earlier book,
The Botany of Desire, had already
touched upon drugs, explaining how
four plants — the apple, the tulip, mari-
juana, and the potato — co-evolved with
coffee, and mescaline from various
cacti. Instead of focusing on cultivation,
Pollan examines their status within
human society from economic, legal,
sociological and anthropological angles.
While he does briefly discuss their
pharmacology and toxicology, the book
is really about the relation between
each plant and the humans who con-
sume it, tackled in a non-judgmental
and objective way that seeks to dispel
the ignorance, prejudice and demonisa-
tion they attract.
Each drug is handled differently. The
first, “Opium”, is actually a meta-essay
in which Pollan recounts how in 1996 he
wrote an article for Harper’s Magazine
about growing the opium poppy
Papaver somniferum in his garden
and sampling it as a tea made
from the pods. Harper’s
lawyers discovered that
under Nixon’s 1970
Federally Controlled
Substances Act and
Clinton’s 1994 Crime
Bill, Pollan’s article
counted as a confes-
sion that could expose
him to being raided by
a police special weapons
team and landed with a
Penguin Press $28
320 pages
lengthy jail sentence as well as severe
financial penalties.
The magazine eventually published it
with the most offending section
removed, a section that he only now
feels safe to publish. Around it he’s built
an impassioned account of the massive
damage to civil liberties caused by
Nixon’s “war on drugs”, a defence of the
value of opiates as still the best painkill-
ers, and a denunciation of the plague
of addiction to the semi-synthetic
opioid OxyContin that made billion-
aires of some members of the
Sackler family.
In “Caffeine”, the most
impressive essay, Pol-
lan begins with the
fact that some plants
evolved this bitter
alkaloid to spoil the
appetite of caterpil-
lars and similar her-
bivores for their
leaves, then put it into
nectar where it addicted
the bees and made them
proved invaluable as a way to extract had their critics, This Is Your Mind on Dick Pountain is the author of ‘Sampling
more work from workers. Plants, places Pollan, for this reviewer at Reality: Matter, Information and
Pollan portrays it as the drug that least, among those science writers — Imagination’
helped make the Enlightenment and
modern capitalism, by dispelling those
alcohol-fuddled Middle Ages when peo-
ple went to bed at sundown. It cried out
for artificial lighting to extend the day,
and the same steam that drove the
engines of the Industrial Revolution
issued from tea kettles that kept the
night-shift going. His descriptions of
London’s coffee house culture and Hon-
oré de Balzac’s barbarous habit of
ingesting dry coffee grounds to fuel all-
night scribbling sessions are worth the
book’s price alone.
For me “Mescaline” was the least
interesting section, mostly because hav-
ing entered journalism via the under-
ground press I’ve had an untypical prior
exposure to hallucinogens. Pollan adds
little to descriptions of the drug’s effect
and seems slightly embarrassed (“how
saccharine these words must sound!”)
by the difficulty of writing about it.
Much of the chapter is about his
attempts to attend a peyote ceremony,
repeatedly thwarted by the coronavirus
pandemic and Californian wildfires.
The real interest of this section lies its
detailed and sympathetic account of the
8 ★ FTWeekend 17 July/18 July 2021

Books

Cutting the cloth A matter of

interpretation
The global addiction to cheap Katie Kitamura delivers a brilliant examination
of language and its effects. By Lucy Scholes
clothing comes at a high
human cost, as this powerful Intimacies and specificity are her stock in
trade — it’s not “linguistic apti-
by Katie
Kitamura tude” that makes her a good inter-
study shows. By Lauren Indvik Jonathan Cape
£14.99/
preter, but rather her “extreme
precision.”
Riverhead
It makes sense, then, that what

C
Books $26
240 pages she’d struggle with is the absence
lothing has never been of communication. Yet this is what
cheaper, nor its volumes so she increasingly encounters, both
immense. A casual browse in her personal and professional
of the summer sales at lives. Silences that she takes to

Swedish fast fashion pur-
veyor H&M unearths a sleeveless dress
in white cotton for £3, and a pair of
“Conscious” drawstring-waist trousers
cut from a viscose-polyamide mix for
£9. At Manchester-based Boohoo,
which is running a 70 per cent off pro-
motion, bandeau tops and a “Mindful”
white cotton T-shirt will each set you
back just £2.
For less than a cup of coffee, you
might be tempted to buy that T-shirt
and, even if you didn’t really like it, toss
it in a donation bin after a wear or two.
At £2, what’s the harm?
But there are vast — and for those of us
in the west, often unseen — conse-
quences to be paid for these small, mind-
less purchases, as Maxine Bédat outlines
in her smart new book Unraveled: The
Life and Death of a Garment. Although
fashion’s abuses have been well docu-
mented for decades (see the sweatshop
controversies of the 1990s) the problem
has ballooned rapidly.
In the first 15 years of this century,
global garment production is estimated
to have doubled to as many as 150bn
items per year — a staggering figure
when you consider the size of the global
population (7.9bn) and the number of
clothes already stuffed in our closets.
The toll of our cheap fashion thrills is
paid by the women (and it’s mostly
women) who work 12 to 14-hour days
on a gruelling assembly line making less
than the legal minimum wage in Dhaka,
Bangladesh — an experience one
woman likens to a “cage”. It’s paid in the
ink-black, sinus-clogging rivers where
Chinese factories allegedly dump their
chemical waste, and which dangerously
feed the local crops.
It’s paid in the early-onset cancers of
pesticide-spraying farmers in Texas,
who unload their cotton in opaque
exchanges before it is shipped halfway
around the world to be spun, woven and
saturated with industrial chemicals (a
third of a pound of which are involved in
the making of an average T-shirt, Bédat
reports). And it’s paid in our accelerat-
ing climate emergency, of which fash-
ion, with its relentless demand for raw
materials and energy to power its facto-
ries, is a significant contributor.
For those who have seen Andrew
Morgan’s documentary The True Cost
(2015), or read Elizabeth Cline’s Over-
dressed (2012) or Dana Thomas’s Fashio-
nopolis (2019), all of which investigate
the human and environmental abuses
of the globalised garment trade, none of
this might sound particularly new.
Bédat is a former lawyer and fashion
entrepreneur who in 2019 founded the
New Standard Institute, a not-for-profit
that combats greenwashing in the fash-
ion industry. What she brings to that
Used jeans packed for recycling — Getty
growing body of literature is a meticu-
lously researched, even-handed and
remarkably human account of how
fashion, in its pursuit of ever-lower
prices and higher profits, became so
reckless, dirty and inhumane.
The author’s journey begins in Texas,
where she discovers what half a century
of spraying fertilisers and chemicals has
done to the soil and to farmers’ health,
and yet why so few are willing to make
Unraveled: The the switch to organic. (It’s simply too
Life and Death costly for them to do so without further
of a Garment government-sponsored financial incen-
by Maxine Bédat tives, and even though only 0.7 per cent
Portfolio, £22.99/$27 of the world’s cotton is organic, there is
272 pages not enough demand for it, meaning cot-
ton sometimes trades at a lower multi-
ple to conventional cotton than other
kinds of organic crops.)
She then travels to China to see why
manufacturing jeans there costs only a
fifth of the price it does in El Paso, Texas,
once the denim capital of the world —
low wages and poor environmental and
worker protections have a lot to do with
it. Later, in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka,
she meets the seamstresses who toil in
factories, some of whom are also
coerced into sex work when there are
not enough garments to sew.
Back in America, Bédat observes the
robot-like way in which warehouse
Bédat gives a workers must operate at Amazon, now
human cast to a the US’s largest clothing retailer. And
finally she looks at where our clothes,
book that might once discarded or “donated”, end up:
have otherwise often, in burning refuse piles in Africa.
Throughout — and this is where the
been mired in book excels — she connects the dots
statistics between what she is seeing first-hand,
and the many forces that have turned
fashion into the dangerous and discon-
nected industry it is today. Among
them, neoliberalism, labour unions,
western trade policies designed to pro-
tect domestic manufacture that in fact
have the opposite effect, and fashion
brands’ shift away from making their
own clothes to merely curating and
selling them.
In profiling individuals and telling
their stories, Bédat gives a human cast
to a book that might otherwise have
been mired in statistics, as so much
writing about fashion and sustainability
(mine included) often is.
But is it enough to get readers to
change their shopping habits and to
become, as she suggests in her final
chapter, not just consumers but citizens
advocating for change? Perhaps
because of Bédat’s approach — so meas-
ured in her language, so careful not to
sensationalise — I didn’t feel the same
rousing drive to change my habits as I
have after digesting certain articles and
documentaries on fashion and climate.
And the suggestions to buy less but bet-
ter, and to put social media pressure on
fashion executives, have appeared
many times before.
Yet her stories of the people she so
empathetically profiles in this book —
the cotton farmer who said he’d “rather
spray” than switch to organic, the sew-
ing women living in shanties in Bangla-
desh and Sri Lanka, who profess no
hope for themselves and only for their
children — will stay with me a long time.
Lauren Indvik is the FT’s fashion editor
A
bout halfway through
Katie Kitamura’s
spellbinding new
novel, Intimacies, her
unnamed narrator —
an interpreter, who’s recently
moved from New York to The
Hague to work at an international
court — attends a private opening
at the Mauritshuis, where she
becomes transfixed by Judith Ley-
ster’s “Man Offering Money to a
Young Woman”.
In the painting, a seated girl
works on a piece of embroidery in
her lap, her face illuminated by a
lighted candle on a nearby table.
Standing behind her, a man looms
over the girl, his left hand resting
on her right arm. The longer the
narrator looks at the image, the
more she sees; namely, that it’s
“not a painting of temptation, but
rather one of harassment and
intimidation,” the way the woman
holds herself — hunched over, her
gaze averted downwards — indica-
tive of unease, not coyness.
“The painting operated around a
schism,” the narrator realises, “it
represented two irreconcilable sub-
jective positions: the man, who
believed the scene to be one of
ardor and seduction, and the
woman, who had been plunged into
a state of fear and humiliation.”
Intimacies itself operates in a sim-
ilar way. Its narrative is propelled
by the tension that results from a
series of situations and encounters
that are read by different people to
denote different things.
Six months after she arrives at
the international court, the narra-
tor gets put on a particularly
demanding case; that of a former
West African president who stands
accused of war crimes. This coin-
cides with certain troubling issues
in her private life. Her nascent
romantic relationship with a man
named Adriaan (who’s only
recently separated from his wife)
stalls in mysterious circum-
stances, while at the same time,
she finds herself drawn into the
aftermath of a violent mugging
that landed the brother of a new
friend in hospital.
The narrator is someone who is
used to understanding and being
understood. There are, we’re told,
“great chasms beneath words,
between two or sometimes more
languages, that could open up
without warning.” Thus, it’s an
interpreter’s job “to throw down
planks across these gaps.” Nuance
mean one thing, when often, as
we eventually learn, they mean
something else entirely to the
other party involved. And it’s
here, in these slippages, that the
novel’s thrilling, ominous energy
is found.
Rachel Cusk is an obvious point
of comparison. The void-like pres-
ence of Kitamura’s narrator — the
character’s realisation, for exam-
ple, that the former president sees
her as “a consciousness-free zone,”
or the way in which she tries to
“slip into the fabric of [Adriaan’s]
life” — is reminiscent of the elusive
blankness of Faye, the narrator of
Cusk’s recent Outline trilogy.
The pervasive sense of
threat that envelops the
book is heightened by
the clarity of the prose
But there’s so much more going
on here too. In the same way that
Kitamura’s previous novel, A Sepa-
ration — a psychological medita-
tion on the ties that bind a mar-
riage — cunningly masqueraded as
a murder mystery, Intimacies is a
brilliant examination of language
conveyed with the kind of pacing,
tautness and menace usually asso-
ciated with a thriller.
The pervasive sense of threat
that envelops the book is further
heightened by the piercing clarity
of the prose. Kitamura’s every bit
as precise as her narrator, and the
cool restraint of her writing — even
when dealing with heightened
emotional and moral stakes — is
nothing short of magnificent.
Intimacies is both a gripping read
and a chilling consideration of
what’s involved when we choose to
ignore the things we don’t want to
see, let alone understand: “It is sur-
prisingly easy to forget what you
have witnessed,” admits the narra-
tor, “the horrifying image or the
voice speaking the unspeakable, in
order to exist in the world we must
and we do forget, we live in a state
of I know but I do not know.”
Now read on . . .
For recommendations
of what to read this
summer, from
economics and history
books to novels and
poetry, go to ft.com/
summerbooks2021

Peace, profit and geopolitics

A new history challenges our
assumptions about the 18th-
century Anglo-French rivalry.
By Christopher Silvester
pursue other means of enabling free Trading With Bourbon empires to undermine its and proposed a Franco-British partner- trade, but post-1776 he embraced,
trade. As today’s world veers towards The Enemy: rivals, while the French used freeports ship to control global trade on the in Shovlin’s words, “an expansive vision
increased geopolitical rivalry in mat- Britain, France, as a counterpunch. Free trade was not so grounds that no other nations could sus- of a new global free-trade order centred
ters of trade, “we can benefit by looking and the 18th- much a goal as one strategy among sev- tain conflict without either British or on America” and urged Britain to pur-
back upon the earliest stumbling Century Quest eral for maintaining the balance of French finance. David Hume deplored sue a leading role therein. Indeed,
efforts to institutionalise a stable and for a Peaceful power between trade rivals. the retarding effect on the economy of American commercial independence
peaceful global order”. World Order But Shovlin is more interested in the Britain’s war debts and opposed Pitt the was the game-changer and the benefits

D
uring the brief regency of
Philippe II, duc d’Orléans
(1715-23), a Scotsman
named John Law urged the
French monarchy to adopt
his “System” of public credit and paper
money. Law fell out of favour and was
exiled in 1720, when the failure of his
joint-stock vehicle, the Mississippi
Company, caused France’s newly estab-
lished Banque Générale to collapse.
France did not issue paper banknotes
again until 1795, but Law believed that if
his System had lasted “it would have
kept the peace of Europe”. The Ameri-
can academic John Shovlin calls Law’s
legacy “jealousy of credit”, by which he
means “wary scrutiny of a rival’s public
credit with a view to imitating its inno-
vations or undermining its successes”.
Shovlin challenges the conventional
perception of unbridled Franco-British
rivalry and aggression in the 18th cen-
tury by giving greater emphasis to the
cumulative process by which diplo-
mats negotiated and merchants lob-
bied to cut cross-channel tariffs and
The period following Britain’s Glori-
ous Revolution of 1688, which con-
firmed parliamentary and Protestant
primacy, was the first in which geopoli-
tics was driven primarily by capitalism
rather than religious or dynastic rivalry.
Britain stole a march on France by intro-
ducing public credit, expanding its
money supply, and thereby stimulating
commerce, when it founded the Bank of
England in 1694. If France, with its agri-
cultural resources and vast population,
had persisted with Law’s system, he
believed it would have grown to domi-
nate Europe as a “benevolent hegemon”
without the need to compete with Brit-
ain and the Dutch Republic for Spanish
American trade and thus secure the sil-
ver specie that sustained its currency
and held back its money supply. Paper
money was the key to ending jealousy of
trade, Shovlin argues, because although
there would still be some need for silver,
it “would no longer be the lifeblood of
the kingdom”.
Instead, intense French and British
trade rivalry spilled into a series of wars.
As Shovlin puts it: “Hegemony once
by John Shovlin
Yale £25
416 pages
established was stabilising; hegemony
in prospect could loose tremendous vio-
lence.” The first of these wars had lasted
from 1688 to 1713, when France, Britain
and the Dutch Republic signed the
Treaty of Utrecht. (The ingenious John
Law also came up with the idea, in 1717,
of converting 250m livres of unfunded
French war debt into highly liquid com-
pany shares that contributed to the
money supply.) In the 1720s and 1730s
there was a long peace between Britain
under Sir Robert Walpole and France
under Cardinal Fleury. Walpole fell
from power in 1742, Fleury died in 1743,
and the following year Britain and
France were at war again, this time for
four years. Then in 1756 the Seven Years’
War began, with Franco-British conflict
in America, Canada, the Caribbean, and
India as well as Europe.
In the 1760s, Britain tried to use
smuggling between the British and
various attempts that were made to
move away from war policy and the var-
ious schemes proposed by diplomatic
officials, men of letters, and philosophes
to encourage trade as a substitute for
war. For example, the French Physio-
crats, originally wanted France to
become an agricultural dynamo above
all else, but later changed their mind
Elder’s dream of a universal monarchy
of trade because the burden of main-
taining sovereign imperial territory far
outweighed the commercial gains from
a closed empire.
And Thomas Pownall MP, a former
governor of Massachusetts and South
Carolina, had been a staunch defender
of Britain’s monopoly of American
‘Robert Clive
and Mir Jafar
after the Battle
of Plassey, 1757’,
by Francis
Hayman (1760)
Alamy
of free trade to Britain in the 19th cen-
tury would more than compensate for
the loss of her American colonies. At
the same time a new French India
Company reached a rapprochement
with Britain’s East India Company over
trade in Bengal, while the count de Ver-
gennes negotiated a trade treaty
between France and Britain. Those who
agonise over Brexit should perhaps
take note.
For Shovlin it is not so much a ques-
tion of how different things would have
been had certain counterfactuals pre-
vailed as it is a question of to what
extent such counterfactuals caused pol-
icymakers to temporise and change
course. He is careful not to over-em-
phasise the influence of Physiocrats
and Scottish political economists on
policy. “Officials borrowed ideas eclec-
tically,” he writes, “and mobilised them
instrumentally in line with their own
priorities.” Free trade became the gos-
pel of the 19th century, but its advo-
cates were laying a path for it through-
out the 18th century and on both sides
of the English Channel.
17 July/18 July 2021 ★ FTWeekend 9

Books

I Cults that cast

f only books could speak,” a charac-
ter in The Pages wistfully reflects.
Here, at last, one does. The little
volume overhearing that remark
can’t inform the people who handle spells through
it “what I know, what I witnessed”. It can
tell us, though, the readers of Hugo
Hamilton’s ninth novel.
language
This is a book narrated by a book: spe-
cifically, a first edition of Joseph Roth’s
Rebellion, published in 1924 and over- Nilanjana Roy
shadowed ever since by “a masterpiece
about a sanatorium that came out in the
same year” (Thomas Mann’s The Magic Reading the world
Mountain). Now, this battered copy of
Roth’s tale about a poor Vienna organ-

grinder scourged by the injustices of
post-first world war society can finally
account for itself.
With his voluble paper narrator,
Hamilton has revived the so-called
“novel of circulation”: stories told by
objects as they pass from hand to hand.
The genre, pioneered in 1709 by the gos-
siping guineas of Charles Gildon’s The
Golden Spy, took off as both commerce
and fiction boomed in Georgian Eng-
land. More recently, authors such
as Marguerite Yourcenar (A Coin in
Nine Hands; 1934) and Annie Proulx
Hamilton avoids
indigestion with a brisk
and swift narrative style
that echoes Roth’s own
A street scene in Vienna, 1934
W
hat kind of person joins
a cult? After hearing
one too many stories
of friends and
acquaintances who’d
handed their lives over to charismatic
godmen in India, or of once-
questioning college-mates who had
succumbed to QAnon conspiracies in
the US, I wanted to know more.
Cults are hardly a modern invention,
but four new books on the subject offer
some answers. If there’s one thing they
make clear, it’s that given the right
circumstances, intelligent — even
sceptical — independent thinkers, as
well as the vulnerable and credulous,
can easily become ensnared.
In Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism,
— ullstein bild via Getty Images linguist and journalist Amanda
Montell makes the persuasive case
sticky web of conspiracy theories. “The
hope that fuelled his initial belief,” he
writes of one QAnon member, “turned
into a type of addiction — an addiction
to the discourse, to the special feeling
of knowing something other people
didn’t. And ultimately to that
desperate need for something better.”
Rothschild is brilliant at outlining
the process by which people who were
not previously drawn to political
extremism come to see themselves
as “patriotic researchers”, able to see
patterns in the information that is
fed to them.
That sense of higher purpose can also
cause people to overlook suffering, and
even abuse. Bexy Cameron’s parents
were fervent followers of David Berg,
a failed preacher who founded The
Children of God, later superseded by

(Accordion Crimes; 1996) have revital-
ised it. “Circulation” yarns often seek,
and find, connections between dispa-
rate times, places and people. So it
proves here. There turns out to be some-
thing in this modest copy of a 1920s pro-
test novel that “had the ability to align
the universe”.
Hamilton’s talking book interleaves
several strands of story across a century
of life on and off the shelf. In the present,
its current owner — American artist
Lena Knecht — visits Berlin to retrace
the paths taken by her German grandfa-
ther. Lena, a divided soul of Irish and
German parentage, has a fiancé back in
the US, Mike, who works in cyber secu-
rity — later, a vital detail. Her grandfa-
ther, then a student, received Rebellion
for safekeeping after his Jewish litera-
ture professor, David Glückstein, res-
cued the volume from the infamous
Nazi book-burning on Opernplatz in
May 1933. As Heinrich Heine first
noted, book-burners will become peo-
ple-burners.
Hamilton counterpoints Lena’s mis-
sion to reopen the closed chapters of her
family’s past with her encounters in
today’s Berlin, and with the life of Joseph
Roth himself. That spellbinding story-
teller, born on the fringes of the mori-
bund Habsburg empire he elegised in
The Radetzsky March, became both jour-
nalist and fabulist — an archetype of the
“restless, refugee, itinerant, stateless
writer on the run”. Roth’s unhappy wife
Friedl joins this story; her descent into
depression and schizophrenia parallels
Joseph’s flight from Hitler’s Germany.
He would die, a broken alcoholic, in
Paris in 1939; the following year, the
Nazis murdered her.
There’s much, then, for our vintage
volume to recount. Hamilton, who has
drawn on his own Irish-German
Interleaved lives
A talking book — Joseph Roth’s ‘Rebellion’ — tells the stories of its owners
across a century in a new take on the ‘novel of circulation’. By Boyd Tonkin
ancestry in novels such as Dublin Palms
and his outstanding memoir The Speck-
led People, avoids indigestion with a
brisk and swift narrative style that ech-
oes Roth’s own. Although ideas of mem-
ory, legacy and repetition — the indeli-
ble imprints of history — fill The Pages, it
moves with a fast and fluid gait.
Lena’s adventures in multicultural
Berlin, once again a home for Roth’s
dream of “diversity and open borders”,
The Pages pile up around the time-travelling epi-
by Hugo Hamilton sodes that trace the book’s, and author’s,
4th Estate £14.99/ progress. She meets a refugee brother
Knopf $28, 272 pages and sister, Armin and Madina, who bear
inner and outer scars from the Chechen
wars. Madina — a singer who, like Roth’s
hero, has a prosthetic leg — must fend off
her jealous ex Ulrich, a care-home
worker capable of kindness but tempted
by far-right militancy. Ulrich is another
migrant from the splintered Soviet
empire in whom the unresolved past,
that “dormant virus”, may burst out in
some “irrational piece of cruelty”.
As his various threads entwine, Ham-
ilton sometimes risks confusion or dis-
traction. Mostly he sidesteps them
thanks to his sharp, laconic, cam-
era’s-eye observation, akin to the Neue
Sachlichkeit (“New Objectivity”) of Wei-
mar-era prose.
Roth, however, was not simply an
observer but a myth-maker. In Rebel-
lion, the hapless street-musician’s strug-
gles with authority become a parable of
the doomed quest for justice in a world
of predators and prey. In The Pages, the
book’s transit from prewar Europe to
our own allows Hamilton to depict the
first epoch as mirror, and harbinger, of
the second. In the earlier era, political
liars cultivated “an appetite for dishon-
esty” as they dissolved “the boundaries
between fact and fiction”. Now lying big-
otry, with Ulrich’s face, returns to Ber-
lin. The book warns that “My time is
coming back.”
The novel’s overlapping strata enrich
its texture but can blur its focus. In par-
ticular, Friedl’s poignant fate, as her
mental torment enacts in miniature a
continent’s collapse, feels unduly com-
pressed. And in Hamilton’s contempo-
rary plot, a far-fetched, thriller-like
showdown — when Mike’s cyber skills
come into play — leaves everyday real-
ism far behind. With The Pages, as with
Roth himself, fable rather than report-
age gains the upper hand. It reminds us
that, even in an age when people “live in
a rush to forget” (Roth’s words), we
must read the book of the past in order
to understand the present.
that it is language, far more than
esoteric brainwashing techniques,
that helps cults to build a sense of
unshakeable community.
“With emotionally charged
buzzwords and euphemisms,
renamings, chants, mantras, and even
hashtags, pernicious gurus are able to
instil ideology, establish an ‘us’ and a
‘them’, justify questionable behaviour,
inspire fear, gaslight followers into
questioning their own reality . . .
essentially everything a cult needs to
do in order to gain and maintain
power,” she writes in a related feature.
Montell draws a useful distinction
between relatively benign self-help or
fitness movements that might use
“insider” language to create a sense of
belonging, and destructive cults.
Montell’s father, now a successful
neurologist, was forced to spend four
years in the early 1970s in Synanon, a
drug rehabilitation programme run by
an unqualified addictions counsellor,
Chuck Dederich, that spiralled into
an abusive quasi-religion. Group
encounters at the centre near San
Francisco included “haircuts”, sessions
where members were subjected to
verbal abuse, ostensibly to help them
discard the baggage of the past.
Cults and cultish movements of all
kinds — religious, political or social —
thrive on convincing those who are
disillusioned there is a better solution
— and the internet is a force multiplier,
enabling new, fringe movements to
reach far more potential followers than
was possible in the offline world.
Mike Rothschild’s timely and chilling
study, The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon
became a Movement, Cult and Conspiracy
Theory of Everything, traces the path
back from the 2021 attack on Capitol
Hill in Washington to the chat forums
that drew over 40m Americans into a
a sect known as The Family
International, in California in the late
1960s. Berg drew in Christians and
hippies with his blend of religiosity
and free love ideals, but his sect came
to be accused of promoting child sex
abuse and rape. In her memoir Cult
Following: My Escape and Return to The
Children of God, Cameron demonstrates
that the urge to find a more perfect
way of living in harmony with one
another, and the Earth, can be as
dangerous as any drug.
The Indian-American journalist and
author Akash Kapur’s haunting Better
to Have Gone: Auroville — Love, Death
and the Quest for Utopia narrates the
story of his parents-in-law, Diane and
John, two charismatic dreamers who
moved to the utopian community of
Auroville in India in the late 1960s, and
this book is a harrowing quest to
understand the blinkered idealism that
led to John and Diane’s deaths, on the
same day, in 1986. “The sixties,” Kapur
writes. “All that hope, all that youthful
confidence — and the darkness right
around the corner.”
Reading Cameron, Kapur, Montell
and Rothschild, I begin to understand
that people walk into cults one step at
a time, drawn into a community that
seems so welcoming, so promising,
that they are hooked before they know
where they’re headed. The “language
of fanaticism” that Montell describes
so well can be as comforting as a
tranquilliser.
“The truth is, I’ve always mistrusted
faith a little,” Akash writes in a moving
passage in Better to Have Gone. “Maybe
it’s because I’ve grown up around its
surfeit. And also, I’ve seen what faith
can do.” Without that hard-won
caution, it seems that much of
humanity has no natural immunity to
those who would play God.

Picture this Moms and monsters

T Catherine Taylor enjoys a
he extraordinary The Cat and the Rat and the Hat might make a better pet. Dog Nightbitch are thrilling. But the woman soon
popularity of the late (Nosy Crow, £11.99), by Em lovers know, however, that by Rachel realises that although her family
Eric Carle’s books Lynas and Matt Hunt, is a more imperfections are all part of fantastical tale that sinks Yoder relationships have improved, she
isn’t simply due to rambunctious affair. A cat and a the fun. its teeth into motherhood Harvill Secker/
Knopf £14.99/
must find an equilibrium between
the vivid collage art- rat vie over a shocking-pink hat. Speaking of which, Barbara her outward and inner self.
work or the text that can endure Then, to complicate matters fur- Nascimbeni’s pleasingly whimsi- and our animalistic side $26, 256 pages
The evolution of Nightbitch has
umpteen re-readings. A good pic- ther, along comes a bat in a no- cal Home Alone (Thames & Hud- also become integral to her son’s

ture book, if it’s to stand the test of
time, should have some universal
lesson embedded within. In the
case of Carle’s best-known title,
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
(1969), the imagery of a food-
fattened caterpillar becoming a
glorious butterfly teaches that
change may be difficult but can
also be positive.
David Ouimet’s I Get Loud
(Canongate, £12.99) conveys a
similar message. A girl who
expresses herself demonstra-
tively, symbolised by the bright
red kite she flies, finds compan-
ionship in a smaller, quieter girl.
The pair then become displaced
from their home town. They cross
the sea in separate boats, part of a
flotilla of desperate, haunted-
looking refugees, and are reu-
nited in a new land.
The language is poetic while the
illustrations are darkly gorgeous,
with muted hues and linework as
blocky as a woodcut. The book is a
follow-up to 2019’s I Go Quiet and,
like its predecessor, offers balm to
the introverted and to anyone
unsure of their place in the world.
Sunflower Sisters (Owlet Press,
£7.99) by Monika Singh Gangotra
and Michaela Dias-Hayes is like-
wise about two girls who are
friends. Amrita and Kiki come
from different communities —
GENRE ROUND-UP
CHILDREN’S
BOOKS
By James Lovegrove
south Asian and Nigerian respec-
tively — and find commonality in
their love of bright dresses. The
book also tackles colourism: the
belief in some cultures that paler
skin is more desirable. Self-
acceptance, regardless of familial
pressures, is the focus here.
The theme of Daisy’s Dragons
(Studio Press, £6.99) is feelings.
Each of Daisy’s key emotions —
happiness, calmness, anger,
fear, sadness and bravery — man-
ifests as a dragon only she
can see. When they get out of con-
trol, some dragons loom larger
while others dwindle. The solu-
tion lies in a balance of all six
and the understanding that even
feelings that seem negative
are there for a reason. The
book, by Frances Stickley and
Annabel Tempest, is lovingly
rendered and its central conceit
is well sustained.
less-pink cravat, resulting in a
dispute that nobody wins. The
text’s pounding rhyme scheme
will be picked up by toddlers in no
time, and the knockabout
humour, which owes something
to Tom and Jerry, is a hoot.
The latest from collaborative
cohabitees Sue Hendra and Paul
Linnet, I Spy Island (Simon and
Schuster, £6.99), sees a treasure
chest wash up on the shores of a
sentient desert island. At first the
chest is standoffish, keeping
apart from the other inhabitants
— a glove, a banana, a bottle and a
bird — in order to protect the val-
uables inside it. Soon enough,
though, it’s joining in their
games, and even sacrifices its
riches to give its newfound
friends shelter during a storm.
There’s surely a moral about
the “one per cent” here; there’s
also the gaudy, nonsensical fun
we’ve come to expect from the
creators of Barry the Fish With
Fingers and Supertato.
Lo Cole’s We Want a Dog (Sour-
cebooks, £13.99) is a more toned-
down affair. The art restricts itself
to a palette of black, white and red
and has a beautiful design aes-
thetic. The text lists all the kinds
of dogs one might adopt, and their
various drawbacks, before com-
ing to the conclusion that a cat
son, £10.99) imagines what our
canine friends get up to while
we’re out of the house. In the
case of Frido, it’s scootering, raid-
ing the fridge, having guests
round, ordering pizza, and even
doing yoga. And definitely not
making a mess.
Lisa Sheehan’s Just Being Ted
(Buster Books, £6.99) is a lovely
fable about a shunned, misunder-
stood dragon with a creative soul.
He infiltrates the bears’ picnic
disguised as one of them in order
to make friends, only to discover
that being himself is enough.
A sense of loneliness in a time of
coronavirus permeates the book,
as it does more explicitly in The
Longer the Wait, the Bigger the
Hug (Faber, £6.99). Here, hug-
loving Hedgehog — from two ear-
lier books by Eoin McLaughlin
and Polly Dunbar — emerges from
hibernation yearning for best
friend Tortoise, who is nowhere to
be found. The simplicity of the
tale resonates.
The Wonderful World Was
Waiting (Owlet Press, £7.99) by
Lauren Fennemore and Zoe
Damoulakis, is specifically about
lockdown, with mentions of
masks and the two-metre rule.
These references will date it
quickly, but it’s a book very perti-
nent to the here and now.
T
he theme of women’s
transformation and
empowerment through
the radical adoption of
hybrid identities
storms through contemporary fic-
tion, from Angela Carter’s The
Bloody Chamber to the more recent
work of Sarah Hall and Daisy
Johnson. The conflicting demands
of motherhood are being newly
confronted too, in novels such as
Jenny Offill’s Dept of Speculation
and Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar.
Now American author Rachel
Yoder enters the fray with her
debut, Nightbitch, a deliciously
untamed satire on mothering and
collapsed ambition, in which a
frustrated woman wrests back
her autonomy in gloriously
omnivorous fashion.
Referred to in the first part of
the book simply as “the mother”,
and later as the feral persona of
“Nightbitch”, Yodel’s unnamed
narrator is an exhausted stay-at-
home “mom” of a lively two-year-
old boy. In her late thirties, and
formerly a conceptual artist run-
ning her own gallery, the woman
is now enraged and imprisoned
by solo parenting as her husband
works away during the week and
barely registers her, or their son,
on weekends home. “She did not
care about anything anymore.
Politics, art, philosophy, film: all
boring. She craved gossip and
reality TV.”
Disheveled and sleep-deprived,
she studiously avoids the seem-
ingly perfect mothers and equally
pristine children who make up the
Book Babies group at the local
library. Then she begins to notice a
furry black patch growing on the
back of her neck, and a hard
stump forming on her tailbone;
her teeth are becoming sharper.
But most of all there is a thrum-
ming, incandescent fury that
appears to be channelling these
peculiar but not wholly unwel-
come changes. She wonders if she
is perimenopausal, or even psy-
chotic. “‘I think I’m turning into a
dog,’ she said to her husband
when he arrived home after a
week away from work. He
laughed and she didn’t.”
As Nightbitch begins to assert
herself, she roams freely at night
as a dog woman, rolling naked in
the earth, killing small animals
that cross her path. It isn’t pretty,
nor is it meant to be, and Yoder’s
descriptions of wild self-release
development. He insists on
“doggy” games and when he
finally sleeps somewhere other
than his parents’ bed, it is in a
kennel. Sex with her husband is
revitalised and animal.
Nightbitch is in essence a fan-
tasy, one that contains sharp
observations about the perennial
issue of women whose identity
becomes subsumed into that of
one-sided carer. Yoder writes as
well on this as she does on the par-
adox of motherhood, with its
simultaneous feelings of alien-
ation and deep bonding. The
neatly portrayed cult of “moms”
is revealed as a community of
emptiness behind the claustro-
phobic nature of competitive
friendship groups.
Ultimately, Nightbitch tasks
herself with filling this vacuum
into empathy, alongside a new,
controversial direction for her
neglected artistic expression.
This final aspect of the book
appears too contrived and osten-
tatiously earnest. More perti-
nently, her recollections of grow-
ing up in a religious community in
the Appalachians and of her own
mother, a talented opera singer
who thwarted her career, ably
stitches together the threads of
rebellion and rude resistance that
propel the novel on.
10 ★ FTWeekend 17 July/18 July 2021

Books

W Parisian haunts
ithin a few hours of the
“Ghosn arrested” head-
lines, it was clear that
books would be written
about this extraordi-
nary, yet perhaps inexorable, turn of A multilingual Asian protagonist drifts through disparate
events. By the time the fallen superstar
chief executive and charismatic exem- vignettes in this startlingly original debut. By Doug Battersby
plar of “Davos Man” was smuggled out
of Japan in a musical equipment box just
over a year later, the whole story Paris Is a Party, tranquil surface of Henrik’s prose.
seemed fit for a Netflix dramatisation. Paris Is a Ghost Most moving are the scenes towards
Collision Course, written by two jour- by David Hoon Kim the end of the novel focusing on Hen-
nalists with long experience of both Farrar, Straus & rik’s relationship with his goddaughter,
Japan and the auto industry, is among Giroux $26 Gém. The two become so close that Gém
the first attempts to sensibly chronicle 256 pages takes to pretending that Henrik is her
and contextualise this remarkable epi- biological father in public, to the delight
sode. The briskly paced result is quick to of both and the bafflement of their
set the scene and also to reassure us that Parisian audience.
while there’s no shortage of colour and Carlos Ghosn pictured in Beirut in January 2020, by which time he had fled trial in Japan — Contrasto/Eyevine But these performances, in reminding
insight on Ghosn himself, one of the out- Henrik of his visible difference from

The flight P
comes of the drama has been to reveal Gém, also revive childhood memories of
the inner workings of “Big Auto”. Automotive News. Collision Course draws aris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost is being the only dark-haired child in a
More specifically, it shows the dys- on his past interviews with Ghosn, and a haunting and surreal debut sea of blond, sharpening his adult
function of the Renault-Nissan alliance on one extensive discussion for the book from David Hoon Kim, a sense of being foreign to everyone he
that might have become the biggest itself. And while the book does not pro- Korean-born American encounters, whether French, Danish

automotive group in the world. Born in
1999 through the French carmaker’s
rescue of the Japanese giant, it was held
together by Ghosn for two decades
before his spectacular downfall.
Alongside serious analysis, Hans Gre-
imel and William Sposato never lose
sight of how jarring it was that a com-
pany and country that celebrated Ghosn
as one of its greatest imports can have
been so fiercely instrumental in laying
him low. It is a dissonance that we were
reminded of this week as Ghosn gave
interviews to international media seek-
ing once again to defend his reputation.
The world’s media have been waiting
for explanations ever since November
19 2018 when reporters were sum-
moned to a 10pm press conference at
Nissan’s Yokohama HQ. Ghosn, still at
that point chairman of Nissan and head
of the tormented global alliance of
Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi, had
abruptly been forced from a company
jet to a detention centre, having earlier
been arrested upon arrival at Haneda
airport on unspecified allegations.
Ghosn was now in the hands of a jus-
tice system notorious for its sky-high
conviction rate and reliance on confes-
sions extracted from suspects held
under the same conditions as Ghosn.
That first press conference, conducted
by Nissan’s CEO, made it plain that
Ghosn’s downfall had been precipitated
through collaboration between Nissan
executives and prosecutors.
A great deal has followed since then,
including Ghosn’s astonishing escape,
the extradition from the US of those who
aided him and the now unanswerable
questions about what might have hap-
pened in Japan’s “trial of the century”.
of Ghosn
The daring escape of the fugitive Renault-
Nissan chief caps an authoritative exposé of
frictions at the giant carmaker. By Leo Lewis
New revelations, supposedly promising
clarification, have often made the story
more opaque.
Any good Ghosn book was also going
to encounter the issue of how much
should be viewed as entirely sui generis,
and how much might be seen as wider
parables about Japan and its business
culture. The authors have opted not to
push such comparisons too far, leaving
readers to draw their own conclusions.
Collision Course: The rush to publication leaves a few
Carlos Ghosn and gaps in Greimel’s and Sposato’s account.
the Culture Wars The biggest is that we will not know until
That Upended October the outcome of the trial of Greg
an Auto Empire Kelly, the former Nissan executive
by Hans Greimel arrested the same day as Ghosn and
and William Sposato fighting one of the four charges on which
Harvard Business his boss would have stood trial. The
Review Press £22 authors acknowledge the proxy role this
256 pages
trial plays in the eventual perception of
Ghosn’s guilt or innocence; future
authors may have more to work with.
Greimel, who had covered Nissan
before Ghosn’s arrest, reported on
events after it in meticulous detail for
duce great flourishes of new informa-
tion, its strongest appeal lies in the solid-
ity of exposition, the access to high-qual-
ity sources and the clarity of the thesis
that the alliance was, and remains, a gen-
erator of extraordinary frictions.
This has been achieved by framing
each strand of the story as a type of colli-
sion — between Ghosn and Japan; Nis-
san and Renault; France and Japan;
innovation and inertia; government and
business, and so on. The framework
allows them to move confidently to and
fro between the events that followed the
arrest and the factors that lay ahead of
it. The result is a plausible cause-and-
effect account that helps explain a com-
plex, often bewildering story.
Key to this device is a series of short
chapters interspersing the central nar-
rative with sharply drawn essays on rel-
evant aspects of modern Japan. Some
feel unnecessarily broken-out from the
main narrative, but the ones on the jus-
tice system, on corporate scandals and
on Japan’s history of dealmaking with
foreign companies serve as important
correctives to some of the mispercep-
tions unleashed by the Ghosn saga.
If Collision Course can be accused of
short-changing readers, it is because of
its reluctance to dip into a line of specu-
lation created by its own structure.
Were there ever clear moments where
any of the key players — Ghosn, Nissan,
Renault, the prosecutors or the plotters
— could have steered everything off the
collision course? We reach its final page
with a beautifully clear picture of why
disaster occurred, but very little sense of
how it might not have done so.
Leo Lewis is the FT’s Asia business editor
writer educated in France,
who publishes in both English and
French.
Kim shares this cosmopolitan,
multilingual background with his
protagonist, Henrik Blatand, who is
born in Japan, raised by Danish foster
parents, educated in Sweden, and
lives in Paris, where he is writing a doc-
toral dissertation on Samuel Beckett,
that consummate chronicler of existen-
tial alienation.
The novel opens in the days leading
up to the suicide of Henrik’s girlfriend,
Fumiko, who locks herself in a bedroom
one day and is found dead several
weeks later, a half-smoked cigarette in
her hand.
After an interlude narrated from the
perspective of a medical student tasked
with dissecting Fumiko’s body, the
remainder of the novel jumps forwards
and backwards in time to relate
vignettes from Henrik’s life, in what at
times can feel more like a collection of
short stories than a sustained narrative.
Vividly drawn characters — such as
Pascal, a researcher of “pathological dis-
orders affecting East Asian natives,” and
Raoul de Gadbois, a blind theoretical
physicist attempting to disprove Ein-
stein’s theory of relativity — burst into
the plot, only to disappear without
trace. Though Fumiko is unmentioned
for the best part of 200 pages, her
absence — and Henrik’s obscure sense of
culpability for her death — casts an
indelible shadow over his life.
With a confidence rare for a debutant,
Kim trusts readers to make the connec-
tions between the novel’s seemingly dis-
parate scenes and to attend to the rip-
ples that hint at turmoil just beneath the
or Japanese.
Though Henrik’s social isolation is
partly a product of his position as an
ethnically Asian man in an overwhelm-
ingly white culture, Kim’s novel remains
a powerful exploration of universal feel-
Those willing to immerse
themselves in its
mysterious and forlorn
landscapes will be amply
rewarded
ings of loneliness and of profound dis-
connection from others.
An encounter between Henrik and a
stranger in an Italian train station,
where both inexplicably confess their
most intimate secrets, is “like two spies
in a movie who meet at the drop-off
point to exchange information” — a
description that encapsulates the pecu-
liar disassociation of personal familiar-
ity and intimacy in the relationships in
Kim’s novel.
Fittingly, it is ultimately the fear that
Gém might be able to discern “the chaos
and turmoil and sorrow inside” him that
prompts Henrik to give his goddaughter
up to her legal guardians.
Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost, with its
patchwork plot, otherworldly visita-
tions, and high-wire performance of a
tonal flatness that just fails to conceal
the anguish beneath will likely try the
patience of some readers too far. Those
willing to immerse themselves in its
mysterious and forlorn landscapes will
be amply rewarded by this startlingly
original debut.

CHESS LEONARD BARDEN
Garry Kasparov, for many
still the all-time No1, made a
rare cameo comeback at the
weekend, but it ended in
disaster at Zagreb in the
blitz section of the St Louis-
organised Grand Tour. The
former world champion won
only one game, with three
draws and 14 defeats.
Kasparov relied on his
openings from his peak
years a quarter of a century
back, but lost three Najdorf
Sicilians in a row. It was
blitz, five minutes per
player, a format where he
used to be dominant. Now
his clock management was
poor and he lost several
games directly or indirectly
due to running out of time.
Kasparov’s seven-move
loss to the world No6 Shak
Mamedyarov was the
shortest ever competitive
defeat for a reigning or
former world champion.
Vishy Anand once lost in six
moves, but that was years
before the Indian won the
title. Shak Mamedyarov v
Diversions
BRIDGE PAUL MENDELSON
8
Bxc4 ... but this early attack All around the virtual room, A5 4 Dealer: South Love All Three diamonds can be
Q3
7
can be tricky. Nf6? Bb4+! both declarer and a 64 discarded, 12 tricks made
North East South West
6 forces exchanges. 6 Qb3! defender misplayed this K 10 9 4 3 2 — — 1H NB and a good result is achieved.
5 Qe7 7 0-0 Resigns (see deal. Chances come and go N
2C NB 3H NB Did you spot the defensive
J 98 7 3 Q 10 6 2 4H
puzzle text) at bridge: you must be ready 10 5 2 86 error? If East refuses to play
4 W E
2427 to seize them . . . J 9 3 2 AKQ suit is foolhardy otherwise. a club honour at trick 1 —
7 QJ 6 5
3 Mamedyarov v Kasparov, West led 7♣. South can see S
When East plays J♣, South and he should — South wins
2 final position. Black to 10 tricks: six hearts; two K wins A♣, draws all the cheaply with 8♣, but he can
move. Kasparov’s king and clubs; two spades. At AK J 97 4 trumps and plays a club to never enjoy both two spades
1 10 8 7 5
A B C D E F G H queen on the same line as duplicate pairs, simply A8 dummy’s K♣. Now, 10♣ is and two more clubs; the
the white rook will lead to making 4H may not score led; if East covers, declarer blockage prevents him, and
Garry Kasparov, Zagreb heavy material loss, so well. How should you plan focus. To this end, do not ruffs; if East ducks, declarer only 10 tricks are scored.
blitz 20211 d4 d5 2 c4 probably Black had planned to make overtricks? unblock K♠: entries to runs it. Either way, East’s However, most Easts played
dxc4 The Queen’s Gambit 7...d4-d3 here. How would Dummy’s long club suit dummy must be maintained. club honour is ruffed out. J♣ automatically and the
Accepted, normally a safe White have replied? could yield extra tricks — The lead is a singleton — Declarer reaches dummy by opportunity to make 12
line ... 3 e3 e5 4 Nf3 exd4 5 Solution, back page and it is on this you should leading dummy’s first bid overtaking K♠ with A♠. tricks now presents itself.

POLYMATH 1,135 SET BY HAMILTON CROSSWORD 16,840 SET BY MUDD

Jotter pad

Crossword competitions suspended

Dear readers — we have suspended the Crossword and
Polymath competitions while our editors work from home.
We hope you continue to enjoy completing them until
normal newsroom services resume.
17 July/18 July 2021 ★ FTWeekend 11

Cruel connoisseurs
logical champion of poets and musi-
cians who survived a visit to the under-
world. The leader’s nude, buff bod is
adapted from the first-century BC
statue known as the “Belvedere Torso”.
Demoting a divinity to a mortal hero,
Bronzino elevates stone to flesh, making
each sinew seem to quiver. The god/
hero/duke glances over one mountain-
ous shoulder, flexing biceps and lats,
and gripping the viol with which he has
just ensorcelled the three-headed dog.
Cosimo is the sensitive muscle man,
capable of doling out pain but choosing
tenderness instead. The elements of this
scene — the erotic charge, the awkward
pose, Cerberus’s goofy snout — give it an
enchanting strangeness.
The crema della crema of Florentine
society appears in the Met’s galleries,
clad in fabulous plumage. Bronzino lav-
ished his perfectionism on the pearls
Bronzino’s ‘Eleonora di Toledo and Francesco and gold thread criss-crossing the bod-
de’ Medici’ (c.1550) — Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Reale, Pisa ice of Eleonora, Cosimo’s bride; on the
fitted doublet of a haughty young man,
artfully slashed to reveal glossy shades
of black; and on the nearly transparent
Medici | A Metropolitan Museum silk curtain hanging behind an imper-
turbable duchess.
Vividly decked out in crimson dam-
exhibition casts the 16th-century ask and yellow satin, she calls to mind
the Browning poem in which the Duke
of Ferrara contemplates a portrait of his
Florentine elite as ‘Renaissance late wife, Cosimo’s daughter Lucrezia.
“That’s my last duchess painted on the
influencers’ who used exquisite art Bridgeman Images

for PR purposes. By Ariella Budick

A
s populism rages around
the globe, the Metropolitan
Museum is making a stand
for an old-fashioned kind of
elitism: everyone should be
able to experience the luxuriant dis-
plays of quality and craft the wealthy
can command.
The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512-
1570 is a layer cake of superlatives: the
finest painters’ most celebrated like-
nesses of the potentates who ruled one
of the world’s richest cities in its most
fertile decades. The exhibition boasts an
ensemble cast of greats (including Rap-
hael and Cellini), all honouring the
sober, dandyish flair of the 16th-century
Florentine ruling class. But two pairs of
men stand out: the artists Pontormo and Above: Bronzino’s ‘Cosimo I de’ Medici as Orpheus’ (1537-39) — Philadelphia Museum of Art Raphael’s ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici’ (1518)
Bronzino, and two young Medici dukes,
Alessandro and Cosimo I. Art in Renaissance wall / Looking as if she were alive. I call /
If this veneration of rulers and their That piece a wonder, now.” The duchess,
slavish geniuses seems archaic today, Florence was a way of it turns out, “had a heart . . . too soon
the Met’s marketing clarifies other ways invoking the highest values made glad” by other men, a tendency
in which the exhibition is current. “How that prompted her husband to have her
to be a Renaissance influencer,” its web- of a civilisation sustained killed at age 16. The duke can dispense
site explains: “1. Build your brand. 2. by cruelty and caprice with the girl but not her picture, for that
Grow your reach. 3. Secure your legacy.” is something he can own completely,
It’s true that the Medici shaped the con- without compromise.
cept that still permeates the social Cruelty and connoisseurship were The exquisite pictures on the walls of
media age — everything is about appear- both fine family traditions. Pontormo the Met should invite us to discomfort as
ance. They enlisted art to promote their portrayed Alessandro as a man driven well as awe. As in so many other eras, art
oligarchical ambitions and clothe not by crude appetites but by poetic love in Renaissance Florence served as cover
authority in delight. and a taste for refined draughtsman- and misdirection, a way of invoking the
In the exhibition, sumptuous fabrics ship. The moody tyrant sits in a dark- highest values of a civilisation that was
Right: signal wealth, grace implies virtue, and ened room, dressed in black, gazing into sustained by cruelty and caprice.
Bronzino’s etiquette rushes to fill a vacuum of eth- the distance. He brandishes a stylus and Pontormo, Bronzino and company
‘Laura ics. The dynasty’s dictators may not a drawing of a woman — possibly an were the Medici’s propagandists, veiling
Battiferri’ always have earned their public roles, invocation of Petrarch’s devotion to his ugly faults behind a surface of sprezzat-
(c.1560); the but they certainly looked the part. And muse, Laura. Alessandro appears as a ura, or nonchalant ease. The paintings’
artist’s ‘Portrait art was a way of publicising their style of into Europe’s artistic capital. Under lican interregnum. A chaotic and brutal contemplative soul, saddened, perhaps, magnificence lies in what they don’t
of a Woman high-class restraint. family management, Florence became man, more devoted to affairs of the bed- but not inflamed by the storms and vio- reveal, in the substitution of flawless
(probably The show tracks the elevation of the the crucible of culture in which the Ren- room than of the state, he exhausted lence outside his chambers. Art is his- dignity for uneasy depth. The age’s
Cassandra Medici out of the ashes of the Florentine aissance was forged. even his relatives’ patience so com- tory’s magic, transforming a lout into an greatest painters proposed an ideal of
Bandini)’ republic. A succession of dukes ruled This centre of humanism was not pletely that his cousin Lorenzino assas- emblem of serene noblesse. ravishing reticence — a lie, we would call
(c.1550-55) the city for most of the 16th century, especially humane. The Medici family sinated him five years later. The 17-year- Bronzino, too, placed his patron in an it, but a lie that’s so much more persua-
— Musei Civici Fiorentini/
Museo di Palazzo Vecchio;
winning over enemies by inducting had been in and out of power for nearly old Cosimo (another cousin) took over, intimate, staged tableau meant to sug- sive and beautiful than truth.
Galleria Sabauda, Turin. Scala/ them into the grand project of trans- a century when Alessandro de’ Medici running the city with authoritarian gest a deep reserve of inner riches. Here
Art Resource, NY forming a provincial banking centre grabbed it back in 1532, ending a repub- ruthlessness and a sensitive eye for art. we see Cosimo as Orpheus, the mytho- To October 11, metmuseum.org

him from his faith, they exiled him to
THE LIFE the island of Patmos.
The extraordinary imagery of the
OF A SONG Book of Revelation, its melding of Old
and New Testaments and its depictions
JOHN THE of the survival of hope amid terrible
scenes, have long resonated with
REVELATOR African Americans. In the 19th and
jauntily, describing in bee-hum
harmonies a rumble that sounds like
chariot wheels. In 1950 another gospel
group, The Trumpeteers, backed their
urgent litany of apocalyptic scenes with
a twangly electric guitar. In a similar
vein, Harry Belafonte tackled it in 1964
with churchy organ, thumping drums
Blues musician first of several recordings, a solo a
Blind Willie cappella version with handclaps as
Johnson in 1927 accompaniment, listing the fall of man,
Getty Images
the crucifixion and the resurrection in
his verses. His voice sounds world-
weary and full of foreboding, and his
version — along with Johnson’s 1930
“original” — set the template for those
violence and dread of the song,
with Kate and Anna McGarrigle on
backing vocals.
In the Blues Brothers sequel Blues
Brothers 2000, the film opens with
Taj Mahal’s gruff Son House-style a-
cappella-and-handclaps rendition,
while later in the movie Sam Moore

A
nd behold a great red
dragon, having seven
heads and 10 horns, and
seven crowns upon his
heads. And his tail drew
the third part of the stars of heaven,
and did cast them to the Earth: and the
dragon stood before the woman which
was ready to be delivered, for to devour
her child as soon as it was born.”
These terrifying verses are from the
Book of Revelation — the Bible’s
apocalyptic finale, in which all manner
of strange and hideous creatures and
events are described, foreseen and
enumerated, culminating in the
destruction of the world and the birth
of a “new Jerusalem”. Its author, John
of Patmos, was said to have been
immersed in boiling oil by the Romans
as punishment for his Christian beliefs;
when this failed to kill him or dissuade
early 20th centuries, slave songs and
spirituals mentioned John and “the
book of the seven seals” (ie
Revelation). In 1930 came the first
recording of a song called “John the
Revelator”, by the blues
singer Blind Willie Johnson.
It has the ring of a call-and-
response work song: in the
recording, with acoustic
guitar accompaniment, a
rasping Johnson asks:
“Who’s that writing?”, to
be answered by the voice
of an unidentified woman
(possibly his first wife,
Willie B Harris): “John
the Revelator.” It’s a
thrilling, chilling song.
The song’s next
iterations were
somewhat different. The
Golden Gate Quartet sang it almost
and throaty backing singers. that followed.
As the blues revival of the 1950s and Since then, singers have mined the
1960s took hold, veteran singers were song for its mystery, its mythology, its
being rediscovered and revered as imagery, its darkness. Among the finest
keepers of the blue flame. In 1965 one performances was one by Nick Cave.
of those singers, Son House, made the In 1999 and 2001 the producer Hal
Willner, famous for curating
concerts themed around great
figures in popular music,
staged a series of shows in
tribute to the musicologist
Harry Smith, whose 1952
Anthology of American Folk
Music was a huge influence
on the blues and folk revival
that followed (Blind Willie
Johnson’s “John the
Revelator” was among its
tracks). Among the acts
featuring on the resulting album
and DVD (released in 2006), Cave
gave a stunning performance of “John
the Revelator” that channels the
leads a gospel choir in a joyous
celebration of the apocalypse — until
the police turn up.
In John Mellencamp’s 2003 version,
the singer engages in a biblical battle
with his howling backing singers,
electric guitar ringing and wowing.
Depeche Mode’s 2005 electro-blues
“John the Revelator” bears little
resemblance to any other version, but
is instead a doomy condemnation of
political and religious leaders who lay
claim to “truths”.
Some have adapted it as a kind of
stomp, including Tom Waits on a 2016
tribute album to Blind Willie Johnson,
metallic and clangy, and roots-rockers
Larkin Poe (2017), vowels stretching
and guitars growling, biblical and
bluesy. This truly is a song for the end
of days.
David Cheal
More in the series at ft.com/life-of-a-song
12 ★ † FTWeekend 17 July/18 July 2021

Arts

Katherine Waterston | The

actress tells Raphael Abraham
‘I need which Jude Law, a father of six, plays a
man who has lost a child.
“I remember talking to Jude about it,”
she says. “The question arises: is it

everything
exploitative of yourself in some way to
imagine this sort of tragedy? It’s uncom-
about connecting with her fortable and feels disgusting and
almost shameful, to be honest. But on

to disappear
the other hand you think of everyone
co-stars and facing tragedy in who’s actually been through this.
You are simply someone who gets to
play it and you have a responsibility to
new film ‘The World to Come’ play it accurately.”

around me’
The intimacy and intensity of such a
role must feel a far cry from the upscale

F
ifteen minutes into my inter-
view with Katherine Water-
ston, she suddenly stops mid-
answer and pauses for some
time. “You’re coming at me on
a funny day,” she says with a chuckle but
a furrowed brow. “I’ve been sanding my
floors all day . . . and I was contemplat-
ing press interviews and how compli-
cated they are for me. I find them really
tricky on so many levels.”
It’s a surprising confession from
someone who is hardly a stranger to the
media spotlight and seems a relaxed
and amiable presence. The daughter of
beloved American actor Sam Water-
ston, she came to fame starring opposite
Joaquin Phoenix in 2014’s Inherent Vice
and is the heroine of the Harry Potter
Fantastic Beasts prequels.
This brings with it an unusual amount
of fan attention: a YouTube video
dedicated to her character titled “Tina
Goldstein being adorable for almost
eight minutes” accrued more than
700,000 hits before being removed for
copyright reasons. “It’s not my first
rodeo,” the 41-year-old British-Ameri-
can actress acknowledges. “I can’t
believe I find this so hard.”
The mood of introspection is under-
standable, given the long periods of
lockdown we have all experienced, and
strangely fitting for the film we have
met on Zoom to discuss, Mona
Fastvold’s downbeat period romance
The World to Come (now due for UK cin-
ema release after months of delays).
Waterston plays Abigail, a stifled but
stoic woman living in a kind of perma-
nent lockdown in 19th-century New
York state, her existence a punishing
rustic routine of milking, mending,
feeding and foraging. No Ocado or Net-
flix here. Her loving but unsmiling
workaholic husband Dyer (played with
customary laconic charm by Casey
Affleck) is her only companion. The
recent death of their only child casts a
pall over the film.
Into this unsplendid isolation arrives
the transformative Tallie, herself
unhappily married but brimming with
confidence. Embodied by Vanessa
Kirby, she shimmers on to the screen
like a Pre-Raphaelite vision. The two
women’s first meeting is electric and
every meeting thereafter pulses with
increasing voltage.
Casting is key: Kirby’s bright-eyed,
searing presence is in stark contrast to
Affleck’s low-watt energy. For Abigail’s
birthday Dyer lavishes her with raisins,
a needle case and a tin of sardines; Tallie
brings her the atlas of the world for
which she has been yearning.
Above: with Vanessa Kirby in ‘The World to
Come’; right: with Jude Law in ‘The Third Day’
“They’re two women ready for a dif-
ferent kind of world,” observes Water-
ston. But — as the film’s title suggests —
it is one that does not yet exist. Instead,
we are invited into Abigail’s inner world
through a diaristic voiceover whose lit-
any of mundane daily duties is inter-
rupted by entries that quietly convey
her frustration and fervour. “From my
earliest youth I was like a pot-bound
root, curling in on itself,” she declares.
Waterston notes: “One interpretation is
she’s shy, but I think she’s talking about
the limitations of her life and her place
in the world.”
Among those limitations are the
harsh conditions inflicted by the natural
surroundings. Fastvold insisted that
Main: Katherine But the resulting verisimilitude was a
Waterston boon for the cast. “That was really help-
photographed ful,” Waterston says. “Today the mud
for the FT by sticking to my boots, tomorrow the mud
Gabby Laurent as hard as a rock. Knowing this land inti-
at the Natural mately, knowing what it does at differ-
History Museum ent times of the year. Anything that’s
Below: with her real helps.”
father Sam Something else that informed her
Getty; CTMG; Alamy
performance was having recently
become a mother. “Before I had a
kid it never occurred to me when I
was cast as someone who had chil-
dren that I needed to do research,”
she admits. “I thought: ‘Well,
my siblings have children,
filming in rural Romania b e I’ve been around a lot of
split into two parts so she could kids, I was a kid once,
capture the changing demands of I know what this is . . .
the seasons — a decision that lends massive mistake. I regret
the film a novelistic sense of time every performance I did
passing but required extra funding before I had kids where I
for a project that was already a played a mother because I
hard sell. didn’t know.”
“Obviously there’s tre- While being pregnant and
mendous pushback when having a baby became “a
you have a low-budget film certain kind of research” for
with two female leads that’s the role of Abigail, Waterston
about feelings,” Waterston says. also had to contemplate some-
“It’s really hard to convince thing unthinkable for any par-
anyone to give you the money to ent: losing a child. As it hap-
start shooting in the summer, stop pened, the shoot of The World to
shooting, come back. Mona really Come coincided with her filming
fought for it.” the TV series The Third Day in
surroundings of a CGI-heavy block-
buster set, I remark. “I don’t know if my
process changes that much,” Waterston
reflects. “But the little kid in you goes:
‘There’s tremendous
pushback when you have a
low-budget film with two
female leads about feelings’
‘Wow! This is what I imagined a movie
set would be like!’”
Yet while the trappings may be more
luxurious, the fundamentals of acting
remain the same. “You can feel the
money on the bigger films: the trailers
are fancy and there are lots of sets and
people employed. But, ultimately, if I
have a romantic scene with Eddie
[Redmayne] in Fantastic Beasts, it
feels exactly the same. I need everything
to disappear around me and I just have
to figure out how to connect with this
other person.”
I ask about the painting of a London
street scene that sits behind her,
propped on a wooden sideboard. Like
Waterston herself, it began life in Lon-
don and eventually made its way back
again. “My parents sent this to me. My
grandmother was a painter and it’s the
only painting she did that I’m in. She
was a wild woman. She ran away from
home to be a painter and hung out
with Jackson Pollock and then went on
to teach.”
Waterston is clearly full of admiration
for women who strike it out alone
and challenge previously accepted
boundaries, and is heartened by the
awards success enjoyed by female film-
makers this year.
“It feels like it’s only the beginning,”
she enthuses. “In the thirties and forties
there were only exceptions — there
could be one woman at the paper
because she’s Dorothy Parker and she
has her funny column or she writes
those biting reviews and [slipping into
screwball movie mode]: ‘Y’know, we
need a woman’s perspective every now
and then and she’s not really a woman
because she’s so tough. She sure can
drink like one of the guys!’
“But now it’s starting to feel like: ‘Oh
sure, everyone’s allowed to do this.’ And
that’s a wonderful thing in all areas of
life. Everybody should be allowed to do
everything that they wish to do.”
Abigail and Tallie would no doubt
agree wholeheartedly.
‘The World to Come’ is in UK cinemas
from July 23

Cannes gets frenetic and fantastic after slow start

Film | Despite the presence of stars and big-name directors, many movies stalled before Wes Anderson and Julia Ducournau rode to the rescue. By Damon Wise

A
few months ago, the idea
that the Cannes Film Festi-
val would go ahead seemed
like a pipe dream. Who in
their right mind would
want to attend? After last year’s cancel-
lation there would be no shortage of
films, but what of the stars and industry
networking? It was predicted to be a
stellar year on screen and a wasteland in
the streets, but the 74th edition, delayed
from its usual May date, has confounded
expectations in a number of ways.
First, the stars did come, with jury
president Spike Lee leading the charge:
the likes of Matt Damon, Tilda Swinton,
Sean Penn, Jodie Foster and Bill Murray
made the journey.
Second, fears of a curfew proved
unfounded, and the nightlife flourished,
albeit in slightly smaller events. But the
most surprising aspect was the official
selection; after a splashy opening with
Leos Carax’s eccentric musical Annette,
the competition seemed to flatline, only
to recover in the second week with the
arrival of Wes Anderson’s long-delayed
10th feature, The French Dispatch.
Before that, Cannes had the air of
Eurovision about it, with each compet-
ing country presenting a version of its
national cinema. François Ozon deliv-
ered Everything Went Fine, starring
Sophie Marceau in the drab story of two
sisters helping their bohemian father
with an assisted suicide. Finland came
with Compartment No. 6, a dry-as-bone
road movie in which a Finnish girl takes
a train from Moscow to Murmansk with
a surly Russian to see rare rock carvings.
Sean Penn, meanwhile, represented
the US with Flag Day, a dreadful near-
parody of a Terrence Malick movie,
starring his horribly miscast daughter
Dylan in the true-life tale of a woman
trying to live down her criminal father
(Penn himself).
From Italy, Nanni Moretti’s Three
Floors gave us a souped-up EastEnders,
telling the seemingly never-ending sto-
ries of three families living in the same
building. There is a fatal car crash, a sex-
ual assault, and postnatal depression,
but Moretti paints everything in such
broad strokes that it seems merely silly.
Even the Netherlands’ Paul Verho-
even let us down. Teased for last year’s
Cannes, his new film Benedetta proved
to be a copper-bottomed dud. In princi-
ple it could have been the hot ticket,
being the true story of Sister Benedetta
Carlini, a 17th-century lesbian nun who
rocked the Catholic church with her
outrageous stunts, which in the film
include displaying stigmata, being pos-
sessed by a demon, and coming back
from the dead.
After the elegantly subversive rape-
revenge thriller Elle, one would expect
Verhoeven to make the most of such
material: a strong woman playing the
patriarchy (represented by a scenery-
chewing Lambert Wilson) at its own
game. Instead, it becomes a gaudy sub-
Ken Russell romp that will mostly be
remembered for the wooden dildo that
Benedetta’s lover carves from a statue of
the Virgin Mary.
But some did get it right. Norway’s and not the intellectual sleight-of-hand. over the first week, and so the arrival of
Joachim Trier came from left field with a A brief flurry of attention also accom- Anderson almost felt like the coming of
refreshing, bittersweet romcom, The panied Ahed’s Knee by Israeli director the cavalry.
Worst Person in the World, starring new- Nadav Lapid, who won the Berlin Film Surprisingly, The French Dispatch
comer Renate Reinsve as a woman navi- Festival’s Golden Bear for Synonymes in might be Anderson’s weightiest film to
gating her thirties. Meanwhile, Mia 2019. Lapid’s new movie told another date and, if any criticism must be lev-
Hansen-Love gave us Bergman Island, in story of filmmaking, but this time from elled, there’s actually too much there.
which a filmmaking couple (Vicky the perspective of a director struggling Inspired by the rich, long-form story-
Krieps and Tim Roth) go on a writing to express himself in a country cracking telling tradition of magazines such as
retreat on the island of Faro, home to down on artistic freedom. The film The Paris Review and The New Yorker,
Swedish cinema legend Ingmar Berg- eventually becomes exhaustingly it stars Bill Murray as Arthur Howitzer
man. This leads to a thoughtful didactic but Lapid’s style is something to Jr, the expat editor of the eponymous
meta-drama — and, somewhat inevita- behold, notably in an eye-popping dispatch, whose death precipitates a
bly, a film within the film — but Hansen- dance scene featuring Israeli soldiers. portmanteau-style look back at his eye
Love keeps her focus on the emotion Such visual flair was in short supply for an interesting story and the eccen-
tric writers he took under his wing.
Those sceptical of Anderson’s talents
might not be converted here — it is as
meticulously crafted as ever — but
there’s a level of storytelling he hasn’t
quite achieved before. There are some
stunning tableaux, and just when you
think he might not have anything left,
along comes a bande dessinée car chase.
It was an invigorating start to week
two, which promised the return of pre-
vious Cannes heavyweights Asghar
Farhadi with A Hero, Jacques Audiard
with Paris, 13th District, and Apichat-
pong Weerasethakul with his Tilda
Swinton-starring Memoria. Even Gaspar
Noé would be coming, with Vortex, a
dementia drama starring Italian horror
legend Dario Argento that the prolific
provocateur shot over 25 days in April.
Nevertheless, it was beginning to feel
as though the festival hadn’t found any-
From left: Elisabeth Moss, Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, Fisher Stevens and thing new during the lockdown. That all
Griffin Dunne in Wes Anderson’s ‘The French Dispatch’ changed with the premiere of Julia
Ducournau’s Titane, a bizarre genre
mash-up that blew the last cobwebs
from the festival’s Debussy theatre.
Making the giant step from critics’ week
strand to competition, Ducournau fol-
lowed her impressive debut Raw — the
comparatively intimate story of a teen-
age girl’s cannibal awakening — with a
film that exploded into existence, mix-
ing blood, guts, sex and oil in a phantas-
magoria driven by nightmare fuel.
Ducournau refused to provide a syn-
opsis for the festival’s publicity materi-
als, which instead offered the dictionary
definition of titanium. Here, the tita-
nium is a metal plate fitted into the head
of Alexia (newcomer Agathe Rousselle)
after a childhood car crash. Alexis grows
up to be a lap-dancing serial killer, leav-
ing a trail of bodies both male and
female, before going on the run.
This is where the film gets really
weird. To escape the police, Alexia tapes
down her breasts and poses as Adrien, a
boy who has been missing for 10 years.
The child’s father (Vincent Lindon)
takes her in, even though it’s clear
there’s something strange about Adrien,
not least his pregnancy . . .
What happens next is a riot, a crazed
story in the style of David Cronenberg
but given depth and pathos by two
astonishing performances. Lindon is a
revelation but Rousselle is the breakout
star, and her commitment to putting the
unbelievable on screen is what had been
missing from this Cannes.
Ends July 17, festival-cannes.com
17 July/18 July 2021
Composers | John Corigliano and
Mark Adamo tell Richard Fairman
about drawing on ‘Dracula’ and ‘The
Bacchae’ for their first opera together
W ‘This is the first time
e have separate studios
i n t h e c o u n t r y,”
explains composer John
Corigliano of his work-
ing arrangement with
librettist Mark Adamo. “Mine is not
attached to the house, and his is, so we
can make all the noise we want and still
not hear each other. He is working on his
own opera and doesn’t want to hear
from me. Mainly I speak to him when I
am frustrated and he pep talks me back
into going to work. That is the relation-
ship here.”
The fruits of this collaboration, more
than 10 years in the making, will be
revealed when The Lord of Cries has its
premiere this weekend. It is the major
attraction at Santa Fe Opera this sum-
mer and the most prestigious opera pre-
miere of 2021 so far.
There is a lot that makes this opera
unusual, starting with its two American
creators. Both Corigliano and Adamo
are composers, Adamo having written
more operas, though he has only pro-
vided the libretto in this case. This is not
unknown, as Verdi and Boito were com-
posers who collaborated on Verdi’s last
operas, Boito supplying the librettos,
but it remains unusual.
In addition, Corigliano and Adamo
are married. This is not entirely without
precedent either, as Samuel Barber and
Gian Carlo Menotti collaborated in the
1950s, when they were partners, on
Vanessa, so memorable at Glynde-
bourne three years ago. Even so, this
kind of working relationship must
throw up some interesting conversa-
tions over the breakfast table.
“Mark doesn’t have any problem with
writing,” says Corigliano with a wry tone
of envy. “Whatever problems he has,
and he says he does, he sails through and
writes these operas like touch-typing.”
“That’s one version,” says Adamo.
“Another version is that I will have a
frustrating day, trying out 16 ideas, none
of them good, and I guess it is time to
★ FTWeekend
‘No blood was shed’
sound in my head, as I had known him
so long, and the language was already
trying to invoke what I knew he would
do with the singers and orchestra with-
out him having to ask. Sometimes I have
the problem with my students that the
playwright and composer will not quite
decide that they are writing the same
opera at the same time. I wouldn’t say
this was effortless, but we both knew
what we were doing very early on.”
“No blood was shed,” says Corigliano.
The opera is ambitious on several lev-
els. Adamo had been asked some years
Top: Mark start dinner. John thinks I walk on ago to consider a project on Bram
Adamo and clouds of melody.” Stoker’s Dracula, but says he could not
John Corigliano Having a librettist who is a composer crack it. Then a colleague suggested a
himself has the advantage that he is link to Euripides’ The Bacchae, in which
Above: a more likely to deliver a text that fits the the authoritarian Pentheus falls victim
rehearsal for composer’s needs. “This is my fifth to an orgiastic frenzy inspired by Diony-
‘The Lord of libretto,” says Adamo, “but the first to a sus. Adamo was keen to write a human
Cries’ — Robert Godwin score that is not my own. I had John’s story, and by combining Dracula and The
Bacchae saw that he could “simultane-
ously make the themes of the Greek play
clearer to a contemporary audience and
impart to the Dracula personae a depth
they didn’t always have”.
Here is an opportunity to find out
what two of the leading American com-
posers can achieve when they put their
heads together. Adamo came to promi-
nence in 1998 with his opera Little
Women, which has had more than 100
productions internationally, and he has
gone on to enjoy further operatic suc-
cesses, including Lysistrata, also from a
Greek play, and Becoming Santa Claus.
Corigliano has only written one previ-
ous opera, but it was a big one. The
Ghosts of Versailles, which premiered in
1991, was the first new work commis-
sioned by New York’s Metropolitan
Opera in 25 years. Other highlights
include the lauded Symphony No. 1 of
13
Arts
1990, paying tribute to friends who died
of Aids-related illness, and his Oscar-
winning score for 1998’s The Red Violin.
Colliding the Gothic horror of Dracula
with the demonic mania of The Bacchae
might seem to call for music of wild vio-
lence. Early extracts from Corigliano’s
score (clips produced using new tech-
nology to attract potential sponsors)
promise otherwise. There is a kind of
paranormal, inner intensity to the
music that suggests repressed passions.
I have written a libretto
for another composer and
it is a delight for me’
Corigliano cites the experience of
writing the film soundtrack for Ken
Russell’s Altered States in the late 1970s.
Faced with the film’s themes of drug hal-
lucinations and human regression, he
says he felt his music had to explore fur-
ther. “That was when I started to go
deeply into the subconscious, forgetting
about pitches and rhythms and just
going to what sounds seemed right.”
The other composer in the house says
this is exactly why he thought the opera
would be a perfect fit for Corigliano.
“[His music] is particularly apt for this
piece, where the Apollonian world of
reason and order, the day-lit world of
music, dissolves into something quite
else. Some of it is pretty close to what I
would write. In other parts it would
never have occurred to me to do what he
did. This is the first time I have ever
written a libretto for another composer
and it is a delight for me not to micro-
manage, but to be able to lift off.”
Corigliano says he always finds writ-
ing music difficult, so it was inevitable
that The Lord of Cries would be a long
time in the making. Ten years on, it
seems unlikely that anything about it
could be topical — but perhaps it is?
The mob violence at the US Capitol
this year might have been just the sort of
frenzy Euripides imagined. “The direc-
tor and conductor have both said the
opera is eerily prescient,” says Adamo.
“What it is talking about is more in the
private sphere, but it is a contemporary
piece, not simply a 19th-century lens
trained on a Greek play. Neither Diony-
sus nor Pentheus has ever left us.”
Today to August 17, santafeopera.org
14
Arts | Collecting
On the road again
Music | Indie band Wolf Alice
talk to Michael Hann abo
a ut
preparing to headline
Latitude,
a the firstt major UK
rockk festival
a in two
w years
N
ext Friday, July 23, three
young men and a young
woman from London will
do something no one has
done in the UK for two
years: tthey will step outt at a major music
festival as the headline act on the main
stage. The foursome are the band Wolf W
Alice, and on the floor
f of their east Lon-
don rehearsal room are the scraps of
paper they are using to work out the
order of their 18-song set for Latitude
Festival in Suffolk.
“We’
W ve always ffelt mildly out of our
depth,” says
a Joff Oddie, their guitarist,
who has the airr of a benevolently trendy
science teacher. “We look calm as we’re
doing it, but at every big show we’ve
done, it’s alway
a s been that thing off never
being ready until we’ve done it. When
we played Dingwalls [a small club in
north London], thatt was the most nerv-
ous I’d ever been — 500 people.” He
recites the progression of largerr venues
since: “Then Heave a n, then Shepherd’s
Bush Empire, Kentish Town Forum,
Brixton Academy, Ally Pally. All of
those gigs. I didn’tt walk out for any of
them going, ‘I’ve got this.’”
“It would be strange to do that,”
says bassist Theo Ellis. “Quite nice.
Less stressful.”
“Playing live is the mostt intense expe-
rience you can have a , or that I’ve ever
had in my life,” Oddie says a . “Connect-
ing, or trying to connectt with that many
people is fantastic. It takes you out of
yourself and whatever you’re doing.”
It’s taken a decade — and three
★ FTWeekend
Above: Joff albums — for Wolf Alice to become ffesti-
Oddie, Ellie val headliners. Att first they seemed to
Rowsell, Joel be just another raucous indie band —
Amey and Theo albeit a more imaginative one than
Ellis of Wolf most. They were turned down byy scores
Alice; left: of labels before being signed to Dirty
Rowsell on stage Hit, the label set up byy The 1975’s man-
at Latitude 2015 ager, Jamie Oborne, after they too had
Jordan Hemingway;
Matthew Baker
been reje
e cted by the major labels. And,
like The 1975, they have proved the
majors wrong: in June their third album,
a it is often assumed that the men have a
the widescreen and epic Blue Weekend
reached No 1 in the UK.
The most unusual thing about Wolf
Alice is their singer, Ellie Rowsell. She is
present, sitting between Ellis and Oddie,
butt is almost entirely silent — as she evi-
dently often is during interviews —
except when asked a direct question.
Singers are usuallyy the embodimentt of a
band’s collective ego: the orator, the
focus, the shining light.
When Rowsell does talk, she talks
thoughtfully, and it is about things that
Football puts dent in Old Masters
r Sotheby’s sale lacklustre but Leonardo bear sets record. By Melanie Gerl
The Art Market
Thee England d footballl team were not
the only ones to face disappointment
last week. Sotheby’s London evening
sale of Old Masters, which coincided
with England’s more successful
semi-final match againstt Denmark,
turned out a lacklustre total off £14m
(£17.2m with fees, est £16.7m-
£24.6m). The sale had its fair share
of detailed, earlyy Netherlandish
paintings, and was thought also to
have
a suffered frof m pandemic-related
restrictions thatt prevented would-be
buyers from seeing such works
in person.
Specialists putt on a brave
a face,
f at a greater physical presence in Asia,
noting thatt manyy of the 28 lots out of
49 that did sell went forr more than
expected. These included Anthony van
Dyck’s c1616-17 portraitt of the family
f
of fellow artist Cornelis de Vos, which
sold for
f £2m (£2.4m with fees) against
a presale estimate of £1m to £1.5m.
The work, forciblyy sold frof m the Dutch
dealer Nathan Katz to commander-in-
chief of the Luftwaffe Hermann Göring
in 1941, was among those recovered
four years later byy the so-called
“Monuments Men”, a special force of
artt experts. Soaringg above estimate
was a high-impact, grotesque portrait
of a jester attributed to Quinten
Massys (1466-1530), which sold for f
£420,000 (£523,200 with fees f , est
£40,000-£60,000).
Italy
a y camee out onn top
p at Christiee’s,
where the
t highest price of this season’s ’
London Old Masters paintings sales
went to Bernardo Bellotto, nephew
of the Venetian painter Canaletto.
Bellotto’s 1745-57 vieww of Veronaa sold
forr £9m (£10.6m with fees
f , est £12m-
£18m). Overall, the dedicated Old
Masters auction farf ed betterr than at a
Sotheby’s the previous evening and
its total £37.3m (£45.1m with fees)
nudged within its presale estimate of
£36.7m to £56.7m.
Leonardo stole the
t week’s limelight
in a separate Christie’s auction of
mixed-category items called “The
Exceptional Sale”. His c1480 exquisite
studyy of a bear’s head sold for £7.5
7 m
(£8.8m with fees
f , est £8m-£12m), a
record auction price for a drawing
byy Leonardo. Its seller, as reported
in The Art Newspaper was Thomas
concern her, rather than her desire to
conquer worlds. An exchange about
how songwriters are often believed to be
writing autobiographically, even more
so than novelists or screenwriters, leads
her to go further. “I often think people
jump to that conclusion with women
writers, wayy more than with men.”
She notes that when a woman artist is
one of several named writers on a song,
done the heavyy lifting. “I’m reluctantt to
use names because I might be wrong,
but Ed Sheeran is seen as a songwriter
even though he writes with justt as many
people as a female pop star does. But
they are nott seen as songwriters.”
Indeed, Sheeran is one of three writ-
ers credited on his current No 1 single
“Bad Habits”. But then, holding a guitar
in front of you always
a conceals a multi-
tude of sins.
Rowsell laughs gently at that. “With
some hindsight, I think
t k I’ve used playing
e is
Kaplan, an American collector of
mainly Dutch Old Masters. According
to dealers in the saleroom, an
American couple at the auction placed
the winning bid. Christie’s confirms
that the Leonardo buyer was in the
room but otherwise “respects the
t reach helped grow the number off Asian
confidentialityy of
ourr clients”.
Hybrid art sales are here to stay
t y,
accordingg to Christie’s chieff executive
Guillaume Cerutti. On a Zoom call to
mark a successful first half off 2021, he
Quinten Massys’s portrait of a jester
with a spoon soared above estimates
said thatt while the Covid-19 pandemic
had been “an extraordinarily
challenging time ffor us”, it also
“provided the opportunity to change
ourr business model”. The fforced move
online and subsequentt mix of the
digital and physical helped propel art
sales to $3.5bn, up 13 per centt from the
equivalentt period before the pandemic
in 2019. The total includes private
sales, negotiated awayy from the auction
glare, which accounted for 25 per cent
of the total.
“Our clients are aagnostic about how
they transact with Christie’s,”, Cerutti
said. Highlights during the period
included tthe watershed sale of Beeple’s
digital, NFT-backed
k “Everydays a : The
Firstt 5000 Days” (2021) for
f $69.3m
in March.
17 July/18 July 2021
the guitar to be taken more seriously, y
when actually I don’tt really enjoy play-
ing it. But I’ve always used it because I
thought otherwise I’d be just another
girl singer. I do play a lot, but there’s
a part of playing guitar that’s like
smoking — it’s something to do with
your hands.”
Wolf Alice have done all their growing
up in the band. Rowsell and Oddie were
still in their teens when they began it in
2010, Ellis and drummer Joel Amey
joining a little later. They have
a tthe famil-
iarity of people who communicate with
in-jokes
k rather than whole sentences (at
‘The waya I look at it is
that [the applause] is
neve
e r at me as a person,
it’s at
a the work’
one point I ask if their career has been
carefully planned or — and all four
chime in, as one — “aa series of unfortu-
nate events?”). When the worth of what
you do is assessed in the most direct
form — byy applause at shows or sales of
records — do you depend on strangers
forr your validation?
“The way I look at it is that [the
applause] is never att me as a person, it’s
at the work,” Oddie says. “I don’t sit
there thinking, ‘Wow W w, these people
really love me.’ But you don’t have to
look far for rock stars who do [think
that]. It’s a lifestyle that’s nott conducive
to a healthy mental state. If there’s a bot-
tom floor
f of feeling bad and a top floor
f of
excitement, the way you should live is
somewhere in tthe middle.”
In the past year Wolf Alice have a sat
still for the first time since the band
began. Three of them live in London,
Amey in Hastings on the south coast.
“I don’tt really know any other way of
being an adultt or having a relationship,”
says
a Rowsell. “This is the longest we’ve
ever spent in one place.”
Next week, Wolf Alice will start mov-
ing again. London to Suffolk isn’tt that
long a journey, but after two years off
the road, it might as well be the longest
journey off theirr lives. And for the largest
UK crowd to have watched live music
since the summer of 2019, it will ffeel like
k
something extraordinary. r
Latitude Festi
e val, Julyy 22--255,
latitudefestival.com
A total off 76 sales were held online-
only and 88 held live (and
livestreamed) in the t ffirstt halff of this
year, with one London auction
attractingg more than 400,000 viewers
in March, Christie’s said. Such digital
buyers in all countries and categories
to accountt for 39 per cent, orr $1bn, of
first-half sales att auction, up ffrom 25
per centt in 2019. “Buyers in the Asia
Pacific region are younger than ever,
high spenders and very engaged
digitally,”
, said Francis Belin, Christie’s
president in thet region. He hinted too
saying that Christie’s was exploring
options in Jakarta,
a Indonesiaa and in
Bangkok, Thailand.
Artt dealerr Emmanu
a el Dii Donna will
show forr the first time att the Intersect
Aspen art fairr (August 1-5) and will
bring a painting byy the Colorado
favo
a urite Clyfford Still, priced between
$20m and $25m. This is likelyy the
highest price tagg ever att the local fair,
which was founded as Art Aspen in
2010. Di Donna’sa decision underscores
the importance of chicc second-home
destinations since tthe pandemic
struck. The showing in Aspen is
through Di Donna’s a recently launched
artt and design gallery in the Hamptons,
Sélavy,
v which also ran as a pop-up at a
Sotheby’s Palm Beach in February.
“It’s abo
a utt going where the collectors
are, and when they have a a more
relaxed schedule,” Di Donna says. a
There are relativelyy few works by
Still in private hands. The artist
withdrew from tthe markett during his
lifetime, and when he died in 1980 the
bulk off his paintings were given to the
city of Denver, with the stipulation that
t
they could not be sold or exchanged.
Di Donna’sa trademark Still abstract,
“PH-568” (1965), was first
f boughtt from
Marlborough Gallery in 1969. More
recently, the
t work sold aat Sotheby’s
Hong Kong in April fforr the equivalent
of $16.2m. Di Donna says a that
t t this price
level doesn’t reflectt the value of the
painting, which likely missed some
marketingg opportunities to make way
forr another Still at Sotheby’s,
’ which
sold outt of Anne Marion’s collection ffor
$30.7m in May.
17 July/18 July 2021 ★ FTWeekend 15

The Utoya survivors: 10 years on

Cecilie Herlovsen
A decade ago, a 32-year-old
2012, age 17
Herlovsen hid with her best friend
with a rifle turned a peaceful Andrine. She was shot in the shoulder,
chin and arm, which was later amputated.
Andrine died. “I am actively working to
Norwegian island into hell get out of what I call the Utoya prison,”
says Herlovsen. “But because of the
on earth. Here, the survivors physical injuries, I believe that I will never
be completely free. Even though I am
strong, it is still difficult to survive
tell us what they have learnt everyday.”

2021, age 25
about life. By Richard Milne “Don’t just look at the dark side, but
continue the process that you have
begun. Stop isolating yourself. Open up
and Andrea Gjestvang about your feelings to those closest to
you. You are not a burden.”

N
orway’s capital was quieter
than usual on July 22 2011, a
wet Friday during the sum-
mer holidays. At 3.25pm a
bomb hidden inside a van
exploded outside the prime minister’s
office, shattering the nation’s peace and
setting in motion an afternoon of
scarcely believable terror. By the end of
the day, 77 people had been murdered.
Most of them were teenagers.
The attacks, the deadliest violence in
Norway since the second world war,
were carried out by 32-year-old Anders
Behring Breivik. He began in Oslo’s gov-
ernment quarter where, dressed as a
police officer, he left the homemade
bomb of about 950kg. Nine minutes
after he walked away, the device deto-
nated, destroying the facade of not just
the tower block housing the prime min-
ister’s office but several other ministries
and the best-selling newspaper VG.
Most workers were on holiday, but
eight people died in the bombing. “The
whole building was shaking. I was in the
middle of this extreme chaos,” says
Andrea Gjestvang, a photographer and
VG picture editor. “I was just really,
really scared.”
As shock and confusion gripped Oslo,
Breivik drove 40km north-west out of
the capital to the small island of Utoya in
Tyrifjorden lake. Each year, the island
played host to a summer camp for AUF,
the youth organisation of the ruling cen-
tre-left Labour party.
Hundreds of teenagers as young as 14
flocked there from all over Norway for a
mixture of socialising, camping and ear-
nest political debate. Some were politi-
cally engaged; many were tagging along
with friends. On July 21, culture
minister Anniken Huitfeldt had sent a
text message to the head of the AUF
One newspaper estimated
that as many as one in
four Norwegians knew
somebody affected
on Utoya saying, “I wish I were you”.
Armed with a pistol and rifle, Breivik
presented himself as a policeman who
had come to the island to check all was
OK after the bombing. He began moving
around Utoya methodically killing vic-
tims. Some he told he’d been sent to help
before shooting them. Others he shot as
they pretended to be dead. “You are
going to die today, Marxists,” he report-
Top of page: the
island of Utoya
Portraits:
Photojournalist
Andrea
Gjestvang has
been following
the lives of July edly yelled. Twice Breivik called police democracy, more openness and more as 9/11 is in the US. Due to the tight-knit
22 victims, to surrender. But their response was humanity,” he said. He endorsed the nature of this country and the wide geo-
making chaotic and plagued by mistakes. Cru- comments of an AUF member who had graphical spread the victims came from,
portraits and cial information wasn’t shared between said, “If one man can create that much one newspaper estimated as many as
interviewing departments. At one point, heavily hate, you can only imagine how much one in four Norwegians knew somebody
many of them armed police tried to use a boat that was love we as a togetherness can create.” affected. “We were not prepared at all,”
over the past 10
years. Her
too small and had to turn back because
it started to sink. By the time police
Breivik’s criminal trial began in April
2012. He was initially diagnosed as para-
says Huitfeldt, a former leader of the
AUF and Labour minister. “We could
photographs reached Breivik, he had killed 69 people noid schizophrenic, before a second not imagine something so horrible
and their stories
appear
on Utoya. More than 500 survived,
many by swimming into the frigid water
evaluation judged he suffered from nar-
cissistic personality disorder. He calmly
could happen in our peaceful country.”
Seierstad, best known for her books
throughout this of Tyrifjorden where they were picked described to the court how he killed 77 chronicling everyday life in war zones
essay, along with up by boating locals and tourists. people, and said his original plan had including Kabul and Baghdad, says that
what they would Many had at first assumed the attacks been to behead Gro Harlem Brundtland, the impact of July 22 was different from
tell themselves were perpetrated by Islamic fundamen- the former Labour prime minister who 9/11. “September 11 changed the world.
in hindsight. talists. Discovering Breivik was Norwe- left Utoya shortly before he arrived. In It changed my life. It changed American
Some have no gian, that he was “one of us” — as the August 2012, Breivik was given the society. It changed our way of flying,
answers title of journalist Asne Seierstad’s book maximum sentence allowed, 21 years, geopolitics. July 22, it didn’t even change
Andrea Gjestvang
/Panos Pictures
on the attacks called it — was a shock. with the possibility of indefinite exten- Norway,” she says. “Yes, we have this
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg cap- sion. Since then, he has been kept in iso- wound and we have to recover and it will
tured the national mood in a speech in lation, receiving only visits from a chap- never be as it used to be. But what has
Oslo cathedral two days after the attack, lain and, before her death, his mother. changed?”
saying that Norway would never give up “22 juli”, as the attacks are known in
on its values. “Our response is more Norway, has become as infamous a date Continued on page 16

Aleksander Sandberg
2012, age 16
Sandberg hid under a sofa in the island’s school house. Along
with 46 others, he stayed in the building until police arrived.
“What I want the most is a completely normal life,” he says. “I Ina Libak
want to get married, start a family, have a house, a car and a dog.
To be in a job I enjoy. It doesn’t need to be something ambitious. 2012, age 22 I have become both lighter and a little darker.”
I want to experience life for what it’s worth.” After surviving the attack, Libak became the head of
the AUF between 2018 and 2020. “As the leader, it 2021, Age 31
2021, age 25 was my job to give other people hope. Therefore I “Be kind to yourself, what you have been through is
“You will reach further than it might feel like right now. Maybe it had to feel good myself, to deal with everything we big and painful. It is allowed to feel that it is difficult.
seems hopeless, but it is not over. Everything you do from now had experienced,” she says. “It is a great Fortunately, the picture will gradually expand, it feels
on will be a personal achievement; to pass the exam, get your responsibility for a young person. I have a lot very present now, but eventually it will become a
drivers’ licence, buy an apartment, be in a long-term relationship. of good things in my life. But I sometimes feel smaller part of the big life. Good things are waiting
Even if you believe that none of this is going to happen.” that July 22 has given me earnestness and depth. for you in the future.”
16 ★ FTWeekend 17 July/18 July 2021

Spectrum
Why Covid is a
W
hen England have administered just 0.4 the Amazon is climate’s Delta variant.
drops nearly per cent,” Tedros Adhanom When Brazilian rainforests shrink, rich

predictor of the
all its Covid- Ghebreyesus, director- countries heat up too.
19 restrictions general of the World Health The rich world is now making
on July 19, it Organization, said in June. leisurely attempts to save the Amazon

climate crisis won’t be the end of the

pandemic. It may not even be
the beginning of the end. But
it is a foreshadowing of an
ending of sorts. One day, rich
countries will emerge from
Covid-19 while poor countries
remain stuck in it. And this
isn’t just the scenario for the
pandemic. It is probably also
a preview of the climate crisis.
Both crises crept up on us
in similar ways, notes David
Fisman, a Canadian
epidemiologist and member of
Ontario’s Covid-19 Science Advisory
Table. There is exponential growth (in
infections, in carbon emissions) but
initially without visible damage. Life
continues happily, for weeks in the case
of Covid-19, for decades with carbon.
By the time we act, we’re already
behind. Then each country works out
almost entirely by itself what to do.
Should it close schools, build wind
farms? Global problems require global
co-operation, but “global government”
has become a political swear word like
“foreign aid” or “technocracy”.
Expert advice bounces off harried,
ignorant national leaders who worry
about today’s headlines. Meanwhile,
disinformation narratives — “It’s just a
Simon Kuper flu!”, “The climate’s always changing!”
— continue to ensnare a large minority
even as the crisis hits. Quite a few
Parting shot people are now willing to lay down
their lives in the culture war: in some
Illustration: Harry Haysom
rich countries, deaths from Covid-19
have become concentrated among
unjabbed anti-vaxxers.
We are an inventive species and, in
an emergency, rich people and places
will save themselves, through tech fixes killed more people worldwide than in
or otherwise. There’s no vaccine for
climate change but as floods worsen,
New York and London will beef up
their protective barriers. Americans
will start leaving dried-up California
and doomed Miami for cooler regions,
just as their ancestors went west. More
drastically, the Dutch might end up
largely abandoning their low-lying
country. The joke among Dutch water
experts is, “We’ll all just move to
Germany and learn German.”
Luckily for the Dutch, that’s not
impossible. But poor countries lack the
means to dodge climate change or
Covid-19. “High-income countries have
administered almost 44 per cent of the
world’s doses. Low-income countries
Frustratingly, he added,
the statistics hadn’t changed
in months.
So Covid-19 is becoming a
poor-world problem. England
is celebrating “Freedom Day”,
rich countries are jabbing
adolescents and Israel is
offering third doses to people
with weak immune systems.
Meanwhile, in Bangladesh,
the army has been patrolling
streets to enforce the latest
lockdown, while children
have missed 15 months of school.
Tunisia’s own government says its
“health system has collapsed” under a
new wave of infections. By early June,
Covid-19 already appeared to have
all of 2020. But poor people’s deaths
aren’t news. In practice, the value of a
human life depends on its nationality.
This is a rerun of the HIV crisis. Once
new drugs started saving rich
westerners in the 1990s, the west
moved on, while African people kept
dying. The global death toll from HIV is
now about 32m.
With Covid-19, many NGOs are
rightly saying that it’s in the rich world’s
interest to help vaccinate the poor.
Delta won’t be the last partially
vaccine-defying variant of the virus to
emerge from a poor country and bite
the rich. Nobody is safe until everybody
is safe, is the mantra. The same is true
of the environment: the destruction of
The destruction
and send vaccines to poor countries.
But its Plan A is simpler: save ourselves,
then barricade off the poor. Travelling
of the Amazon is to Fortress Europe from the mostly poor
climate’s Delta red-list countries is almost impossible
for all but the very rich. Britain has
variant. When considered deporting asylum seekers
Brazil’s rainforests to Rwanda. It’s brutal, but it’s how
nation-state democracy is designed to
shrink, rich work: politicians worry about their own
countries heat voters. That’s why Britain cut foreign
aid in the year that global poverty rose
up too for the first time since 1998. Covid-19
has fed the rich world’s self-pity.
All this is a preview of the climate
crisis, when poor countries destroyed
by desertification or rising seas will be
isolated — struck off the global map, in
effect. All we’ll want from them are raw
materials. The model is the relationship
that rich countries have with the
Democratic Republic of Congo: it’s
valued almost solely as a supplier of
minerals, such as the cobalt that allows
us to power our devices and electric cars.
If the only hope now is moral
awakening, then there’s no hope. Based
on what we’ve learnt from Covid-19,
our best chance to avoid climate
catastrophe is a tech fix developed in a
rich country in its own self-interest
that would save the world at modest
additional cost. I’m told that sucking
carbon out of the atmosphere at the
scale required might not prove
totally impossible.
@KuperSimon; simon.kuper@ft.com

The Utoya
tion since then” with his actions and
beliefs “totally contrary to our policies
and values”.

survivors:
Parliamentary elections are set for
September, with opinion polls pointing
to a return to government for the
Labour party for the first time since

10 years on 2013. The country has had a centre-

Continued from page 15
Security has been tightened around
government buildings and parliament,
but she argues little else is different.
Many Norwegians try to block out the
memory of the attacks and some, wish-
ing to deny him infamy, refuse to refer to
Breivik by name, calling him just “the
terrorist”. The 10th anniversary has
refocused attention on the place of the
tragedy in the national consciousness.
Some feel that while Norway handled
the immediate aftermath well, it has
struggled recently.
Parts of the government quarter in
the heart of Oslo stand unrepaired amid
an ongoing dispute about how to
rebuild. A striking memorial at Utoya,
featuring a section of rock removed
from the island to create a symbolic
“gash” on the landscape, was aban-
doned in 2017 after public outcry. Oppo-
sition from neighbouring communities
on the lake led to a court battle that fur-
ther traumatised many of the victims’
families. A new memorial on the island
will still be under construction after the
anniversary passes.
“Everyone has underestimated the
symbolic power of this wound. It’s a sign
that we are not healed,” says Gjestvang.
She adds that the original proposal was
potent for how it captured suffering. “It
is painful. We have to face it.”
Huitfeldt says the lack of a memorial
is “unbelievable”, but points to the con-
troversies in New York over a 9/11
memorial, which opened on the 10th
anniversary of those attacks. “People
are more united in the beginning, and
then they start to disagree.”
Seierstad is less sure, arguing that
there is little with which to compare
such a large national trauma. “I don’t
say it has been smooth. But in the whole,
Norway has done the right things,” she
says, pointing to the government’s
response and the openness of the trial,
which acted as “both catharsis and a
‘Everyone underestimated
the symbolic power of this
wound. It’s a sign that
we are not healed’
fact-finding mission”. A national com-
mission revealed serious shortfalls with
Norway’s emergency preparedness. But
it was most scathing about the police,
arguing that they could have prevented
the bombing and arrested Breivik ear-
lier in the day. Norway’s head of police,
who had been best man at Stoltenberg’s
wedding, was forced to resign. Seierstad
is similarly highly critical of the police,
noting that as Breivik shot dead on aver-
age about one person every minute dur-
ing his massacre, a delay of 20 minutes
cost many lives. “We were like a failed
state that day,” she says.
Perhaps the area where Norway has
most struggled to process the attacks is
the most surprising: politics. Breivik
was explicit in targeting the Labour
party and its youth organisation, claim-
Torje Hanssen
2012, age 14
Hanssen was the youngest person to attend the
camp. He hid with his brother Viljar and others. When
Viljar was shot, Hanssen tried to swim away and was
later rescued by boat. “I always knew that darkness is
life-giving,” he says. “I have been obsessed with pain
and death, the fact that one can die at any time. I do
not think about the future and I do not need
ambitions to succeed. I’m already enjoying myself.”
Hanne Hesto Ness
2012, age 20
Ness was in the café when she was shot.
She was hit in the left arm. A bullet
shattered her finger and another severely
damaged her neck vertebrae. Her best
friend died on her lap. “The first years
after Utoya I was scared for my life,” she
says. “I was intimidated by uniforms and
loud noises. Now I am afraid of losing
those I love the most, since I lost my best
friend on the island.”
ing they were guilty of encouraging mul- ideas don’t come from nowhere. They
ticulturalism and helping Muslims come from somewhere. All of us have to
“take over” Norway and western take responsibility.”
Europe. “The aim of the attacks was to Siv Jensen, then Progress party leader,
give a symbol to the people. The Labour used the phrase “sneak Islamisation” in
party has betrayed the country and 2009 to describe the situation in Nor-
the people,” Breivik said in his first court way. Seierstad says she believes “there is
appearance according to the judge. a link between Progress and [Breivik]”.
“They paid the price for that yesterday.” She says her research shows that
Breivik had been a member of the Progress stopped talking to the future
nationalist, anti-immigration Progress murderer “not because he was too
party, which has long been defined by its extreme but because he was stupid”. She
opposition to Labour. But Breivik left says the party never truly acknowl-
Progress well before the attacks, and edged its ties to Breivik and that “we as a
Labour officials have resolutely refused society have never made them”.
to pin any blame on the party itself. “It’s Jensen wrote in The Wall Street Jour-
just unfair to give them responsibility nal in 2011 that Progress was “embar-
for what occurred. In a political debate rassed, disgusted and truly sad” Breivik
that is more polarised than before, they was once a member. She added that he
can’t be held responsible for his con- left the party in 2006 and appeared “to
duct,” says Huitfeldt. But she adds, “His have undergone an extreme radicalisa-
Eirin Kristin Kjaer
2012, age 20
While trying to protect
younger campers, Kjaer was
shot in the stomach, arm, right
knee and armpit. “As a person
who has been shot four
times,” she says, “I am doing
very well. There is nothing my
body can’t do. I have had
experiences that most other
people do not have. It
provides an insight that I take
with me in my political
involvement.
I learned a lot about myself.
Not least to enjoy life while
having it.”
2021, Age 29
“Do not lose faith in yourself.
You are good enough. Skilled
enough. Strong enough. Dare
to be vulnerable and sad
when you need it, because
what you have experienced is
so incomprehensible and
painful. Live in the moment
and do not think about
everything that did not
become as you planned.”
right coalition for the past eight years,
including Progress for more than six
years. The party faced controversy after
Sylvi Listhaug, then the justice minister,
said that Labour thought “terrorists’
rights are more important than the
nation’s security” before it finally left
government early last year.
Since then, Labour and AUF officials
have argued more and more that Brei-
vik’s ideas did not grow in a vacuum.
Asmund Aukrust, a survivor of July 22,
told the FT in 2018, “I think we [as a
country] have not processed what really
happened on July 22. Now we need to
Some of the survivors face
online hate, receiving
comments such as ‘you
should have been shot’
discuss what was behind the attack.”
Huitfeldt says part of the issue was
that Stoltenberg and others framed the
attacks as “an attack on our nation”,
rather than one targeting the Labour
party, in a successful attempt to unite
the country. But a side effect, she feels, is
that the AUF and Labour party were
often not acknowledged as victims.
“Because we were accused of taking
advantage of the situation, we almost
feel guilty when we talk about it. When
they accused us of playing the so-called
Utoya card, it is difficult to have a politi-
cal debate on the causes of extremist
thought,” she says. Still, some suggest
Labour have tried to exploit the circum-
stances. “It’s impossible to take advan-
tage of the situation. But then you are
accused of doing so. It’s something we
can’t argue against. You are accused of
being too emotional, your ideas don’t
count,” Huitfeldt adds.
Some of the survivors face online
hate, receiving comments such as “you
should have been shot”. Seierstad com-
pares such internet trolling with the
denial by some that the Sandy Hook
school shootings in the US ever took
place. She says, “We don’t live in a vac-
uum. Everything that exists in other
countries exists here too.”
As the anniversary approaches, dis-
cussing the attacks’ legacy has become
more natural. But while debate about
Utoya may be opening up, many wonder
how well Norway is addressing the
issues underlying rightwing extremism.
In 2019, Philip Manshaus, a 21-year-old
Norwegian, shot his stepsister to death
and then opened fire in an Islamic cen-
tre near Oslo (fortunately no one at the
mosque was killed). Meanwhile, for all
the furore over Listhaug’s comments,
she has since become leader of Progress.
Ten years ago, as news of the bombing
began circulating, initial speculation
centred on Islamist terrorism. Seierstad
says that if that had been the case it
would have been “easier and much
harder” for Norway to deal with. “The
fact is that he was one of us. Where do
you put the blame? It is of course him.
But is it also a bit us? Is there something
we have done to inspire him?”
Richard Milne is the FT’s Nordic bureau
chief. Andrea Gjestvang is a member of
Panos Pictures, and is based between Oslo
and Berlin
17 July/18 July 2021
A How to vaccinate
ndrew Lloyd Webber
should be in jail. No,
really. The multimillion-
aire composer promised
that if the government
didn’t allow his latest musical, Cin-
derella, to open at full capacity in June,
he would go ahead anyway. To hell
with the handcuffs.
It put theatre, one of the overlooked
casualties of the pandemic, on Brit-
ain’s political agenda. Privately,
though, Lloyd Webber soon received
legal advice “that every member of the
company, every member of the cast,
every member of the audience could
be fined £500 each”. He bowed to real-
ity. Cinderella would not go to the ball
immediately.
The incident illustrates two things
about Lloyd Webber, whose scores for
Cats, The Phantom of the Opera and
Evita have helped to create a fortune
estimated at more than £500m.
The first is his absolute love for the-
atre. At 73, he is half-man, half-ar-
chive. Listening to him, you get used
to nodding along to lines such as: “‘Say
a Prayer for Me Tonight’ was Eliza’s
song going to the ball in My Fair Lady,
and became a big song in Gigi.”
He struggles with people who do not
share this passion. Between 1997 and
2017, he sat in the House of Lords as a
Conservative peer, but says, “I don’t
feel like a Conservative at the
moment . . . I just can’t support a gov-
ernment that has so little time for the
arts.” His threat of civil disobedience
was in “desperation and frustration”,
he says, after culture secretary “Oliver
Dowden said to me one day, ‘Unfortu-
nately, the government thinks theatre
is nice to have but not essential.’”
The second lesson is his style of
negotiation. It’s been 50 years since
the first major staging of a musical by
Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice,
Jesus Christ Superstar, on Broadway. In
that time, he has become accustomed
to getting his way, or at least making
clear what that way is. “When he sees
his vision going off beam, his way of
getting it back on beam is getting
pretty cross about it,” says Madeleine,
his third wife. “Quiet negotiation
doesn’t really happen.”
The lyricist Don Black recalled
Lloyd Webber saying 15 minutes
before a performance of Sunset Boule-
vard: “I think I have time for one more
tantrum.” Lloyd Webber himself
admitted to behaving “appallingly in
theatres because of bad sound more
times than I care to mention”. He is
often known as “ALW”, and he is cer-
tainly an ALW unto himself. Actors,
producers, investors, politicians — he
confronts them all.
The single-mindedness that has
made Lloyd Webber successful has
also often made him unloved. He sees
himself as a champion for the indus-
try, but the industry doesn’t always
feel the same way. It’s not just the crit-
ics, who have frequently looked down
on his work, despite its echoes of Puc-
cini and Prokofiev. “He’s been rich and
successful for 50 years. That does
something to a man,” says one fellow
theatre entrepreneur. “He’s greedy.”
Thanks to The Book of Mormon and
Hamilton, musicals are cool again.
Lloyd Webber, the man who glo-
balised the musical, is not. His music
is a rite of passage for school players,
the accompaniment to car trips, the
ultimate family theatre treat. Yet pow-
erful male artist-cum-visionaries are
now sometimes viewed with suspi-
cion. And like the poet John Betjeman,
whom he admires, Lloyd Webber has
upheld a vision of traditional English-
ness, and in the process become both a
snob and a target for snobs.
Which brings us to Theatre Royal
Drury Lane, Britain’s oldest theatre
site still in use. Lloyd Webber bought it
in 2000; he has now spent £60m to
revive it. You could buy several other
West End theatres for that amount of
money. This is a project so grand, so
permanent, that it will give him a vic-
tory over the naysayers.
“I don’t think anybody’s done any-
Time for AI to pull up a chair to the negotiating table
Tech World Systems developed to poll people on
peace deals are also being applied to more everyday
problems such as public transport. By Helen Warrell
S
cience fiction has sparked
decades of debate about
whether future wars will be
made more deadly by weap-
onised artificial intelligence.
Yet, in the real world, AI is already being
harnessed to broker peace.
This idea first emerged four years ago
when members of a UN team asked how
technology could be used to survey resi-
dents of conflict zones about what they
wanted from peace agreements. Asking
people’s views is important because
peace deals and ceasefires are more
likely to last if they reflect the views of
Andrew Lloyd Webber at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London’s West End
A labour of love
The British composer’s £60m theatre restoration is nearly done — and his
latest musical is about to open. But he’s not a happy man. By Henry Mance
thing of this scale to a theatre of this
kind for years and years,” he says. “It’s
been a labour of love.” The only recent
comparison is the £50m renovation of
the Royal Opera House, financed by 15
philanthropists.
When we meet in early July, Drury
Lane’s restoration is almost finished.
Lloyd Webber peers past me into the
saloon. “I’m just seeing what things I
don’t like.” His eyes alight on a sofa in a
side room, with its back to the door-
way. “That sofa makes a barrier. It
makes me say, I don’t want to go back
there.” A compromise is soon found.
For all his professional bluntness,
Lloyd Webber can be emotionally eva-
sive. When we are seated in what used
to be a fire escape and is now the
downstairs brasserie, I ask whether he
hopes Drury Lane will endure even
more than his shows. “It’s not really
for me . . . ” he begins, coyly.
Madeleine, his partner in the resto-
ration, is blunter: “In years to come,
when people say, ‘What on earth did
Andrew Lloyd Webber do with all his
money?’ This is where it is.”
Lloyd Webber first came to Drury
Lane in 1958, aged nine, to see The
Tempest with John Gielgud; he was
back months later for My Fair Lady.
Music had already entered his life: his
mother thrust a violin on to him aged
three. His father was a composer.
Lloyd Webber wrote his first musi-
cal at 13. He dropped out of Oxford,
where he had won a history scholar-
ship, to collaborate with the slightly
older Rice. They wrote a song for Elvis.
Lloyd Webber collaborated with Plác-
ido Domingo. His music has been sung
by Barbra Streisand, Madonna and
Taylor Swift. He won an Oscar (for
Evita) and had, in Phantom, one of the
the whole population, rather than just a
few negotiators. But polling people face
to face is difficult in a country at war:
security requirements make it complex,
expensive and time-consuming.
A New York start-up, Remesh, may
have found a solution — an AI-assisted
poll that can reach more than 1,000 peo-
ple, engaging them in real-time conver-
sations about the changes they want.
The polls were trialled in Libya in
October ahead of a permanent ceasefire
that ended nearly a decade of instability.
The dates of the discussions were publi-
cised on social media and interested
★ FTWeekend
highest-earning entertainment pro-
ductions of all time. He even wrote the
UK a decent Eurovision song in 2009.
His most memorable songs — Joseph
and the Amazing Technicolor Dream-
coat’s “Any Dream Will Do”, Cats’
“Memory”, Evita’s “Don’t Cry for Me
Argentina” — are overtly sentimental.
But is the man? “I probably would err
on the side of being a romantic, even
though I might be a rock romantic,” he
insists. Madeleine offers an alibi: “Any
of those [Richard Rodgers] musicals, I
won’t sit next to him, because he just
cries all the way through them!”
His love for theatre has been
rivalled by his love for architecture
and art, especially pre-Raphaelite
‘I’m not having bloody
hoardings. When the
theatre’s a work of art,
you want it to be the star’
painting. He bought up country
homes and West End theatres, and
made them his own.
A playhouse has stood at Drury Lane
since 1663. Lloyd Webber’s aim is to
return it to the grandeur of its 1812
reincarnation, with less social segrega-
tion. It is a statement of marble pillars
and stone floors, a rebuttal to those
who see the West End as synonymous
with cramped seats and collapsing ceil-
ings. Although conceived before the
pandemic, it could become a Phoenix-
like symbol of theatreland’s rebirth.
Lloyd Webber says he wants to
“prove wrong” two people, no matter
that each has been dead for at least
two decades. The first is Robert Nes-
bitt, once the king of variety, who said
participants were invited to access
Remesh’s platform anonymously from
their mobile or computer. Respondents
were asked their priorities for reunify-
ing the country, stabilising the economy
and improving living conditions.
To the organisers’ surprise, the initia-
tive attracted such attention that one of
the mass polls was broadcast live on a
Libyan news channel, with studio com-
mentators discussing responses. “The
most important part of it was that peo-
ple felt engaged,” says Jean El Alam, an
official at the UN mission in Libya. “We
brought these findings to the [peace-
making] dialogue table and said, this is
what your people truly want — not what
you’re saying or you think they want . . .
This added to the transparency of the
process. It gives it more credibility.” The
resulting ceasefire deal, though fragile,
has held so far. Further dialogues are
planned as the peace talks progress.
Beyond the UN negotiating table, AI-
powered polling platforms are already
— Portait by Silvana Trevale
that Drury Lane was cold. “[Nesbitt
said:] ‘When you’ve half an audience,
the London Palladium is half full, but
The Lane is half empty’. It’s stayed
with me all my life.”
The other is Gielgud, who, Lloyd
Webber says, lamented on the last
night of The Tempest that Drury Lane
had been lost to US musicals. The 1812
theatre was declared on its opening
night by Lord Byron to be a “shrine for
Shakespeare”. Lloyd Webber says he’d
“love to see Shakespeare come back
here” — although paradoxically he’s
renting it out to Disney’s Frozen The
Musical for the foreseeable future. He
has commissioned and installed eight
large oil paintings by the artist Maria
Kreyn representing Shakespeare
plays. He has also included a young
version of himself in a new grisaille
artwork alongside his hero, Rodgers.
Storerooms have been ripped out,
staircases unboxed. “With a Greek
Revival building, the one thing you
don’t want to do is to clutter it,” says
Lloyd Webber. Neon advertising has
been torn off the façade and relocated
next door. “I’m not having bloody
hoardings . . . When you’ve got a thea-
tre that’s an architectural work of art,
you want the theatre to be the star and
the show will follow from that.”
The stage has been extended and
the circle has been brought forward,
increasing the intimacy. The circle
itself can be dismantled in sections,
allowing the theatre to play in the
round. “It could be done in theory in
24 hours, let’s give it 48.” He takes a
look at the fixtures installed for Fro-
zen, and grimaces at the clutter. “It’s
very inconsiderate putting on a show.”
I mention that Cameron Mackintosh,
Continued on page 18
Illustration: Pâté
helping to build consensus on more eve-
ryday disagreements. Taiwan has used
Pol.is, an open-source technology devel-
oped in Seattle, to agree on how to regu-
late Uber. And local governments in the
US and Canada have used Ethelo, a sur-
vey tool, to poll communities on town
planning and transport pricing.
Andrew Konya, co-founder of
Remesh, says running the dialogues has
been described as being like “talking to
a collective superintelligence”. To a
journalist who asks questions for a liv-
ing, this was an enticing prospect.
the world more
quickly
Tim Harford
Undercover economist
W
ith more than half the
UK population fully
vaccinated and the UK
government just a little
too eager to declare
victory, spare a thought for Cameroon.
With a population about half the size of
England, Cameroon has — according to
Our World in Data — administered just
160,000 doses. On a typical day, the UK
manages that many before lunch.
I have a certain romantic attachment
to Cameroon, but the west African
nation is not alone in lacking vaccines.
More than six months into the global
vaccination campaign, fewer than a
quarter of people around the world
have received even a single dose. It is
no wonder that more people have
already died of Covid in 2021 than died
from the disease in 2020.
So what can be done? There has been
much talk about vaccine equity, but
the main problem is not vaccine
hoarding or price-gouging. It is that
manufacturers can’t make doses fast
enough. (If they could, then India, a
huge vaccine producer, would have
fully vaccinated more than 5 or 6 per
cent of its population by now.)
Global production has been
impressive and accelerating: according
to Airfinity, a life sciences analytics
company, the billion-dose production
mark was hit only on April 12. A billion
more were produced by May 26 and
the third billion by June 22. That’s
good. But we need 11bn doses to fully
vaccinate 70 per cent of the world,
which may not happen until 2022.
Recently, however, some momentum
has built up behind an idea that sounds
almost childishly simple: if we reduce
the dose size, we can vaccinate more
people from each vial. Why not give
people half doses? What about quarter
doses? With quarter doses, we could
have already vaccinated the world’s
adult population.
The idea seems absurd — you can’t
get drunk more cheaply by diluting
your beer — but it all depends on how
effective lower doses might be. Five
years ago, faced with a yellow-fever
outbreak and a shortage of vaccines in
the Democratic Republic of Congo,
seven million people received one-fifth
of a dose each. The strategy, endorsed
by the WHO, seems to have worked.
Alex Tabarrok, a professor at George
Mason University, has been pushing
the idea of alternative dosing regimes
for months. Recently, he and other
researchers, including vaccine market
specialist and Nobel laureate economist
Michael Kremer, released a working
paper exploring the issue. At the same
time, a letter advocating fractional
dose trials by epidemiologists Benjamin
Cowling and Wey Wen Lim and a virus
evolution specialist Sarah Cobey has
been published in Nature Medicine.
What evidence is there that low-dose
vaccinations might also work for Covid?
From full-scale clinical trials, not much
— although there was the serendipitous
discovery that the Oxford/AstraZeneca
vaccine seemed to work better when
the first injection consisted of a half
dose. But there is plenty of data on the
antibody levels that people produce in
response to small doses, and, according
Remesh put together a mini-poll of 80
Americans, drawn from a variety of
backgrounds. Over 45 minutes, I asked
them about the US’s place in the world,
and whether its international reputa-
tion was rising or falling (55 per cent
said the latter). The system grouped
replies with similar meanings and asked
respondents to agree or disagree with
selected statements on a spectrum of
views. At any point, I could ask the sys-
tem to analyse responses according to
age, gender or political affiliation.
The breakthrough was ditching my
planned script and adapting my ques-
tions to the answers I was receiving.
When several participants said they
thought the US should use its power
responsibly, I asked what this meant.
“Accepting equal footing in the interna-
tional scene instead of acting like an
overgrown bully,” came one reply highly
rated by fellow respondents.
Online polling tools have obvious pit-
falls. They rely on participants having
17
Spectrum
to a recent paper in Nature Medicine
by David Khoury and colleagues, those
antibodies are strongly correlated with
real-world protection against Covid.
As Kremer and his colleagues
observe, if antibody levels really are a
good measure of protection, then the
mRNA vaccines (BioNTech/Pfizer and
Moderna) may protect as well as the
highly effective AstraZeneca vaccine
even if they are deployed at two-thirds,
50 per cent or even 25 per cent
strength. A recent preliminary report
yet to be properly reviewed also finds a
two-dose course of Moderna’s vaccine
at 25 per cent strength produces an
antibody response comparable with
that of a case of Covid. A trial is under
way in Belgium exploring alternative
doses of the Pfizer vaccine. Moderna has
said it is also investigating lower doses.
The concept of a standard or full
dose is fuzzier than one might imagine.
These vaccines were developed at great
speed, with a focus on effectiveness
Illustration: Anna Wray
that meant erring towards high doses.
Melissa Moore, a chief scientific officer
at Moderna, has acknowledged this. It
is plausible that we will come to regard
the current doses as needlessly high.
This isn’t to say that we should
abandon the standard doses, which
have been tried and tested in large
clinical trials. But it does suggest we
should test alternatives immediately. Is
there a downside? If low-dose vaccines
don’t work as well as studies suggest,
that is a problem that booster shots
should be able to fix.
More worrying is the prospect that a
large pool of low-dosed people might
push the virus to evolve towards
vaccine resistance. Cobey acknowledges
that risk but argues if fractional doses
help to reduce the number of infected
people, that gives the virus fewer
opportunities to mutate. Dangerous
mutations might be reduced, rather
than increased — it is unclear.
What is clear is that millions of lives
might be saved if fractional doses are
proved to work well. There is a lesson
to be learnt here. While the production
and testing of these vaccines has been
little short of miraculous, next time we
can do better. We should run more
trials, earlier, to produce evidence on a
wider variety of questions than “Are
they safe?” and “Do they work?”
Such trials are expensive; the
understanding they produce is worth
paying for.
access both to good internet and func-
tioning devices. There is also the risk
that without the highest levels of cyber
security, these survey platforms are vul-
nerable to hacking.
Still, Katharina Höne, an expert in the
use of technology for diplomacy at the
non-profit DiploFoundation, believes
these systems have promise. As they
develop, she suggests they could be
helpful in combating the political and
ideological divisions that flourish dur-
ing online interactions. “We have social
media tools which seem to amplify
social echo chambers . . . and focus on
scandal and outrage, and on the other
hand we have the potential to build tools
that allow us to have conversations in a
different way,” she says. “Digital tech-
nology can come down on both sides,
fuelling conflict potentially, but contrib-
uting to overcoming it too.”
Helen Warrell is the FT’s defence and
security editor
18 ★ FTWeekend 17 July/18 July 2021

Food & drink

The right
Easy altitude

does it Jancis Robinson

Wine

N
ayan Gowda, 50, is a
winemaking gun for
hire. Although he took
to making wine only in
his mid-thirties, after
working as a chef at The Ivy in
Covent Garden, he has already
made it in Australia, New Zealand,
Germany, France, Hungary,
Ukraine, South Africa, Norway,
Chile, Kazakhstan and, most
recently, Bolivia, where he has
created two vintages during the
pandemic and overcome some of
the biggest challenges any wine
producer could face.
Bolivia is home to some of the
world’s highest vineyards, but the
most remarkable aspect of
Gowda’s work is not altitude
but the 200-year-old vines
themselves. In the Cinti
Valley, they do not grow in
neat rows on trellises, nor as
low bushes, but clamber,
undisciplined, up trees.
The most essential bit of
vineyard equipment is a
ladder. Vines, whose natural
instinct is to climb, could
easily grow six metres tall
Food photography by Patricia Niven
without humans poised to
interfere. The main job during
any meaningful time in the kitchen. You the pruning season, when first
Recipe | Conjure up that holiday spirit with this want the nourishment in as few moves
as possible.
the trees and then the vines
must be trimmed, is to cut
If you are somewhere hot, just slice down the highest growth so the
no-fuss meal from Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich the bread and leave it out to dry. If not, part of the vine that produces
simply toast it quickly. If your tempo- fruit is reachable — by ladder.
rary kitchen has a grater, that’s great. Gowda was recruited by María
or disappeared into blends with
the international varieties that
are planted in Bolivia’s more
conventional vineyards, many of
them near the town of Tarija.
At 2,300 metres, the Cinti valley
is twice as high as the European
mainland’s highest vineyard in the
Alps. To get there involves a
beautiful but perilous drive across
two mountain ranges from the
Tarija winery that has loaned space
to the Jardin Oculto project. Just as
the grapes for Gowda’s first vintage
in 2020 reached peak ripeness,
there were storms so fierce that the
country shut down. Harvest had to
be delayed. While Gowda feels the
Illustration: Leon Edler
2020 grapes were a little riper than
(María José instructed Gowda that
it “shouldn’t taste like a Moscatel”).
The Negra Criolla is much more
sophisticated than many of the
new-wave light reds produced
today from its cousin País on the
other side of the Andes in Chile.
I picked up a pepper note in this
wine and apparently this particular
vineyard is full of the pink-
peppercorn trees known as Schinus
molle. One of the two additional
vineyards they sourced fruit from
this year is called Los Membrillos
because it is full of wild quince
trees, which have a predictable
effect on the grape juice.
They made only 5,000 bottles in
2020 — with some difficulty
because Gowda dislocated
his shoulder — and have not
increased production in 2021
since they haven’t yet been
able to develop export
markets. They are also
stymied by a chronic lack of
equipment. All Gowda had
access to while winemaking
was a hydrometer, a
thermometer, a pump, two
hoses and a few small tanks.
The wines can boast of being
unfined and unfiltered for
entirely practical reasons.
The sort of analysis required
for international trade is
virtually impossible as there
are no accredited labs in
Bolivia and, besides, any
chemicals needed are tightly

C
ut this page out and take it
with you on your next self-
catering holiday: this is
rented accommodation
cooking at its best.
It’s a dish to whip up when the “fully
equipped kitchen” advertised online
turns out to be a wonky pan, tiny chop-
ping board, blunt Ikea knife, impossibly
small oven and a hob that seems to work
but never heats up. It is a dish for when
the cupboard consists of little more than
strawberry jam, peanut butter and
three pots of black pepper left by the
previous incumbents.
Old bread, sardine and tomato salad
Makes a light lunch for two
or a fancy starter for four
Ingredients
4 thick slices of old bread
2 large plum tomatoes
1 large garlic clove,
peeled and minced
250g selection of fancy tomatoes,
small or large
2 tins of sardines in olive oil
½ small red onion or shallot,
peeled and thinly sliced
A couple of sprigs of fresh oregano
or ½ tsp dried oregano
2 tbs olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
No complicated shopping is required.
You don’t have to buy anything that
needs a fridge or excessive handling. And
you needn’t venture further than the
shop on the beach that sells lilos, bug
repellent and local booze, as well as bread
in various stages of freshness, tinned
goods, sprouting onions and tomatoes on
the verge of turning into sauce.
It is the perfect dish to make after a
day of sunshine. Whether you’ve been
scaling a mountain or lying beside a
pool, the holiday sun whets the appetite
for something salty and filling but not
too rich. It also stifles the will to spend
Method
Toast the bread or leave it in the
sunshine or an oven to dry out. Halve
the two plum tomatoes and grate them
on a coarse grater (cut side first) over
But you can also crush the tomatoes José Granier, who belongs to a
with your hands to make the pulp before family of more conventional wine
soaking the bread in it. If there are herbs producers in Bolivia. She was
growing outside, lucky you. If not, you alerted to the unique qualities of
will still have a delicious little meal in no the arboreal vines of the Cinti
time. The chunks of tomatoey bread Valley by Dutch Master of Wine
make a sweet base, while the sardines Cees van Casteren who, pre-
plus more tomatoes give the salad body pandemic, visited Bolivia frequently
and taste. The onions and garlic bring as part of a Dutch government
sharpness and crunch. development programme.
Fortunately, this also works splen- The Granier family make the sort
didly at home, especially if you splurge of big, beefy reds that have been
on fancy sardines, designer tomatoes favoured by Bolivian wine drinkers
and sourdough from some chi-chi bak- historically. Yet María José wanted
ery. Even if you aren’t poolside, you to produce something different.
deserve holiday food. The idea of rescuing heritage vines
and providing a livelihood for local
subsistence farmers also appealed
to her and she was determined that
her and Gowda’s wines, called
Jardin Oculto (hidden garden),
a bowl until you are left with the skin should be pitched at a premium
in your hand. Discard the skin and mix price, the equivalent of $15 a bottle
the minced garlic and one tablespoon in Bolivia, 10 times the cost of the
of the olive oil into the tomatoes. most basic wine available.
Season with a little salt and pepper These tree-climbing vines come
and mix to combine. in three varieties, adding to the 54
Spoon the grated tomato over the that Gowda had previously vinified.
toasted bread and sit the slices of The Moscatel is the same as the
bread back in the bowl containing the Muscat of Alexandria grown in
remains of the tomato purée. Cut the southern Spain, while the two red
remaining tomatoes into all shapes and wine grapes are Negra Criolla (the
sizes and mix with the thin slices of red same as Chile’s País and California’s
onion. Add the oregano and top the Mission) and a local speciality
soaked bread slices. named after the Bolivian town of
Add the tinned sardines and the Vischoqueña. Until the arrival of
remaining olive oil. Sprinkle more salt Granier and Gowda, these grapes
and pepper and mix to combine. were primarily distilled into the
country’s favourite spirit, singani,
ideal, the three 2020 wines I tasted controlled because, I am told, they
were genuinely thrilling. are often assumed to be used for
Perhaps the most unusual was a drug production. Sampling the
still white wine made from the local grapes, vital in deciding when to
Vischoqueña grape. They had set pick, is hampered by the wide
out to make a sparkling wine, but variation in height off the ground.
realised it would have to be a little The sugar content of grapes across
less fizzy than sparkling wines the bunches from low to high can
drunk elsewhere. That’s because, at vary by up to 2 per cent in terms of
altitudes such as the capital La Paz’s potential alcohol levels.
3,640 metres, wine would gush Temperature control is a luxury
inconveniently unless they reduced that Gowda doesn’t have. But the
the pressure in the bottle. They also truck transporting the grapes parks
understood they would have to overnight in the mountains at 3,400
leave the sediment in the bottle metres, so that fruit picked in
because, in Bolivia, there is none of temperatures of 25C arrives having
the disgorging equipment that been cooled naturally to 8C.
leaves champagne crystal clear. Throughout his Bolivian
But with Covid, the border with adventures Gowda has kept his
Argentina was closed and their social media followers enthralled
order of the sturdy bottles needed with tales of sneaking into the
for sparkling wine never arrived. It winery during the pandemic to
meant Gowda had to turn his base check on the progress of his
wine for fizz into a still wine. And ferments, equipment shortages,
he seems to have achieved this with electricity outages and quarantines.
aplomb. The 2020 Blanc de Noirs What next? He really wanted to
has proved so popular with Bolivia’s help out a friend with a vineyard in
better-heeled wine drinkers that he Bhutan, which is at about the same
has made it again in 2021. “I just elevation as Cinti Valley, but
have to remember what I did. We’re winemaking is on hold there
learning every time we open a because of the pandemic.
bottle,” he confesses. He describes Meanwhile, he has persuaded his
himself as “addicted to learning”, doctor parents to return to India
which is what drew him to Bolivia. from Derbyshire. Perhaps he could
The other two 2020s consist of a offer a helping hand to the
white from the Moscatel grapes and developing Indian wine industry?
a very pale, dry Negra Criolla. The
Moscatel is a pungent, dry white More columns at ft.com/
with some Burgundian features jancis-robinson

Labour of love are private,” says Lloyd Webber.

Continued from page 17
his collaborator-cum-rival, once
added extra boxes to the Gielgud theatre
to maximise revenues. “You don’t want
to do that,” he says. “I’ve gone the other
way.” Drury Lane’s capacity has
slimmed from 2,250 to just under 1,900.
The project has faced various disas-
ters since work began in January 2019: a
contractor going bust, a radiator flood-
ing the dressing room, a warehouse fire
destroying furniture. Restaurateur
Richard Caring agreed a 15-year conces-
sion but put the project on hold after the
pandemic. At least “it hasn’t burnt down
yet like [Richard Brinsley] Sheridan”,
says Lloyd Webber, referring to the fire
that destroyed the theatre in 1809, when
the famous playwright co-owned it.
He insists he ploughs all profits from
his seven theatres, which sold 2.3m tick-
ets a year pre-pandemic, back into the
buildings. (His separate licensing busi-
ness paid him £14m in royalties in 2019,
and made £7m in pre-tax profit.) The
refurb has been financed through a mix
of borrowing and his own funds (after
personal experience, he is contemptu-
ous of private equity). Kreyn, the artist,
likens him to a Renaissance patron.
“We’re lucky in the West End that
three of the four major theatre owners
“There’s me, there’s Cameron Mackin-
tosh and there’s Nica Burns and Max
Weitzenhoffer. I don’t regard the theatre
as a business — I regard theatre owner-
ship as custodianship.”
In fact, his and Madeleine’s desire is
for more than a theatre, with afternoon
teas served upstairs, lunches downstairs
and a Cecil Beaton-themed bar by the
foyer. Compare that to Broadway, he
says, where “the theatres have tiny front
of houses. Even the queues for the men’s
loos are such that they send a lot of peo-
ple across the road to the café opposite.”
At Drury Lane, people should be lured
in whether or not they have tickets,
whether or not there is a show. “The
most important thing is that this place is
alive, and people feel they can just come
here and there’s always new work going
on. Otherwise, it’s just a great big mau-
soleum in the middle of Covent Garden.”
Lloyd Webber has history with pan-
demics. In 1979, his then father-in-law —
who he suspects may have worked for
MI6 — came to him very depressed. “He
said [a new disease] was going to wipe
out a huge amount of the world’s popu-
lation . . . He said it will manifest itself
in America, probably through San Fran-
cisco or something . . . I didn’t think
anything of it, apart from, oh God, he’s
obviously having a rough day.”
Madeleine says she deduced from a
text from a senior scientist in February
2020 that things were bad with Covid.
Despite his connections, Lloyd Webber
feels neglected by those in power. He
was anti-Brexit, Madeleine pro. Perhaps
ministers think theatre is a leftwing pre-
serve? “They had a wonderful opportu-
nity to show the Tories did care about
theatre . . . But they’ve sure as hell
made it a leftwing preserve forever.”
He says his theatres have been losing
£1m a month, and that any further
delays would lead him to close Cinderella
in London “and do it somewhere else”,
costing the UK tax revenues. Les Miséra-
bles, Cats and Phantom have each
“grossed 10 times what [the biggest-
grossing movie] Avatar’s done . . . Chan-
cellors don’t see this. ‘Oh, we must sub-
sidise the film industry’. Theatre’s irrel-
evant — a nice thing to have.
“My economic lesson to Rishi [Sunak]
would be: why do you think the then
head of Disney [Michael Eisner] came to
see me about setting up a theatre divi-
sion? Answer: because he realised he
could make far more money exploiting
The Lion King in the theatre than he ever
could out of a film in the cinema.”
Yet such hits don’t come easily. Lloyd
Webber’s last new one was arguably
Phantom in 1986. A great musical is a
symbiosis of score, lyrics, story and
choreography. “It doesn’t happen that
often. It hasn’t happened to me
that often,” he says, giving the last word
its royal pronunciation, closer to how
most English people say “orphan”.
He lost two years to prostate cancer
and two to back problems. At one point,
illness prevented him from going and
looking at buildings: “That’s my therapy
— looking at architecture.” He contem-
plated Dignitas. “When you’re living
with pain all the time, you do get very
low.” He was struggling when Love Never
Dies opened in 2010, and on morphine
through the musical Stephen Ward in
2013. “Luckily, I’m fine now. School of
Rock was the first show I’d been really on
top of for a long time.”
“Do we mention the other lowest of
the low moments?” says Madeleine.
“The Cats film. I’ve never seen Andrew
With his wife, Madeleine — Silvana Trevale
so upset.” He had sold the rights and was
sidelined. “I’ve never known anything
so ghastly. It was disgraceful, the whole
process,” he says. “I wrote a letter to the
head of Universal Pictures, Donna Lang-
ley, which I didn’t even get [a response
to] and I said, ‘This will be a car crash
beyond belief if you don’t listen to me.’”
He blames the director Tom Hooper.
“You’ve got to have somebody who
understands the rhythm of music . . . I
had right of approval over some of the
musical elements. But they really rode
roughshod over everything.” Things
were so bad that he had to console him-
self by buying a Havanese puppy.
Meanwhile Madeleine, 15 years
younger than him, had become “a bit
frustrated on some of the subjects he
was writing about, which were inher-
ently uncommercial”. She pursued Par-
amount for the theatre rights to the film
School of Rock. “I thought, we’ve just got
to get him back to his really fun days of
Joseph and some of the rock operas.”
Cinderella is in that vein, with a mod-
ern twist that the fairy godmother is
now an evil plastic surgeon. “I’m always
restless and looking for projects. I really
want to get on and do the next one,”
says Lloyd Webber. “I don’t really
analyse. I just like writing musicals.”
After Hamilton, could British history
generate a musical? “Well, I didn’t
clock Henry VIII, which others have
done extremely well . . . I’ve always
thought historical musicals are tricky.”
Lloyd Webber’s work does not have an
obvious moral like Hamilton. He drama-
tised parts of the Bible, but is an agnos-
tic. He lionised Eva Perón, but is a con-
servative. Perhaps the real lesson of his
work is his desire to have it all, over and
over again. He craves the approval that
only a packed audience can bestow.
Some lean into it: Madeleine joined
her husband on the Drury Lane renova-
tion because if you don’t work with him,
you might not see him. Some tire of it:
Tim Rice is temperamentally different.
“We haven’t written together since
1976,” says Lloyd Webber. “I’d have
loved to do another show with him. But I
think now we have really moved on.” He
assures me their relationship is “per-
fectly fine”, which, it occurs to me, is not
a standard he would normally regard as
acceptable. Even sitting in his own thea-
tre, with his own selection of overtures
playing, Lloyd Webber cannot quite
relax. He has to dash to another of his
seven theatres for a meeting.
It was Rice who described a 17-year-
old Lloyd Webber’s contradic-
tions: “awkward and confident . . . inno-
vative and derivative . . . generous and
self-centred”. You could add one more
to the mix: Andrew Lloyd Webber is des-
perate to leave a good impression, but
only on his own terms.
Henry Mance is the FT’s chief feature writer
17 July/18 July 2021 ★ 19

America’s upper lip is

stiffer than England’s

Janan Ganesh
Citizen of nowhere

The 2.1m-strong community of
SNAPSHOT Mennonites, a Christian
denomination that has its roots in
the upheavals of the 16th-century
‘Teenage boys Protestant Reformation, is now
spread around the globe, from Africa
hanging out after to North America, Asia and beyond.
Since the 1950s, the central
church’ (2021), American country of Belize has been
home to a small community of this
by Jake Michaels Anabaptist group.
In c.1950, American photographer
Jake Michaels captures their slow,
self-sufficient lifestyle (and a few
modern incursions, such as the
phones of the teenage boys
pictured here).
“The landscape recalled the simple
agricultural society of the American
Midwest in the 1950s,” says Michaels,
“a placid utopia frozen in time,
sprung from the seeds past
generations had planted.”
Cheyenne Darko
‘c.1950’ is published by Setanta Books
A
Stefan Zweig-reading
polyglot, Roy Hodgson
coached in Sweden,
Switzerland, Italy and the
UAE before leading
England from 2012 to 2016. The club of
his life was Crystal Palace, whose
catchment area, where I grew up,
might be the most ethnically varied in
European football. Clues to his guarded
politics suggest the shrewder kind of
Labour man.
There was cause, in other words, to
hail “Woy” as the voice of modern
England, liberal patriotism and other
non-oxymorons of the day. The nation
never got around to it. For reasons
that are hard to place – it pre-dates the
knee-taking activism – his heir gets
the honour. Or perhaps not all that
hard. Gareth Southgate has a winning
team. Hodgson didn’t. A moral spin
has been put on what is at bottom glee
at success. Don’t expect the high-
minded rapture to survive a bad
World Cup.
Shallow or not, England’s ecstatic
summer was audible from across an
ocean. As in 2018, American friends
find it hard to square with the decorum
they were reared to expect from us and
less given to abrupt surges of the stuff.
It is the choice between pricking a boil
and draining it: the same contents
enter the world with a quite different
violence.
Delineating these ways of going at life
is not the same as naming a winner.
The price of the American model is a
sort of ambient psychobabble. “The
means by which people talk about
themselves without revealing
anything”, is how the writer-doctor
Theodore Dalrymple defined this mode
of speech. In my quarter of
Washington, flags invite passers-by to
A culture with a high
average level of emotional
candour is less given to
abrupt surges of the stuff
“live” their “truth”. Deepak Chopra
remains at large. To sit through a
date’s worth of this stuff is to hear
celibacy calling.
But then weigh, if you would, the
spoils. The emotional binges averted,
the feelings aired before they run out of
has become almost biennial in England
over my lifetime.
If its loudness were the worst of it,
England’s boom-and-bust approach to
feeling might win out. But, choosing
my words carefully here, there are
moments in England – as serious as a
royal’s death, as frivolous as a World
Cup – when one becomes aware of a
certain potential. It is not that
dissenters from the collective mood are
unsafe. But they might catch
themselves being less than candid for
the sake of a quiet life. The country’s
ancient hospitability to the offbeat, the
contrarian and the cussed can seem
very theoretical, very quickly. John
Stuart Mill did not have foreign
countries in mind when he cited social
pressure, not just statute, as a curb on
free speech. No doubt, some
Americans felt the same chill after
9/11. But England can summon a
censorious mood for lesser events.
Even a happy mob is still a mob.
Most of this, in the end, is a harmless
quest for belonging. By rights, it should
be the younger country needing
constant reassurance that it is a nation
and not just a market with a flag on it.
But I sense ever more of that neurosis

Freedom Day? Just what they are used to here. The

surprise is misplaced. One in the eye
hand: a personal openness that might
grate in the short term can stave off
in England’s reverence for such binding
institutions as the national team and

give me a minute
for reputations, I know, but the US is
the country with the stiffer upper lip.
My hunch (“theory” is too strong) is
as follows. If a nation contains its
feelings most of the time, they are
mass surges of it. On that score, the US
also profits from its internal schisms.
The blessing of a 50-50 electorate is
that there is seldom such a thing as a
truly national mood. Adjust for
what must be the most sacralised
health service in the world. Upon
hearing that 21st century trope, “We’re
all in it together,” you need not strain to
make out an unspoken addendum.

Jo Ellison
liable to gush out with sporadic but
absolutely torrential force. The inverse
is just as true. A culture with a high
average level of emotional candour is
geographic vastness and ethnic “Aren’t we?”
diversity, and it takes something
exceptional (at least in peacetime) to janan.ganesh@ft.com; read more columns
foster the kind of herd emotion that at ft.com/janan-ganesh

Trending

C
omplete freedom is as
much curse as boon,” writes
David Byrne in his 2012
non-fiction How Music
Works. “Freedom within
strict and well-defined confines is, to
me, ideal.”
Byrne’s essay is a quasi-
autobiographical, part academic
journey through the history of music,
looking at the various influences that
have contributed to certain genres as
well as offering his thoughts on the
success of each era’s sounds. Total
freedom in music, he argues, rarely
makes a symphony.
“The expanded and unlimited sound
range was now, or would soon be,
available to everyone,” he writes of the
advances made possible by CD
technology, which gave rise to
“artificially loud” albums and the
advent of the “volume wars”. But while
he contends that the music was initially
amazing, pretty soon there was “ear
fatigue” all around. “The technology
that was supposed to make music more
popular than ever instead made
everyone run away from it.”
Byrne may be talking about the
changes in our aural culture, but his
words seem keenly apposite when
considering the political landscape
now. Currently, the UK stands on the
threshold of “Freedom Day”, an
arbitrary anniversary conceived by
Boris Johnson on which he plans to end
this period of “government by diktat”
and erase all remaining Covid
restrictions so that we can return to
normal once again. Freedom Day has
been held in breathless anticipation by
the hospitality industry, travel agents
and the public for months now — a
magic marker in the diary after which,
it has been presumed, our Covid
worries will be forever gone.
And, on first hearing, it sounds
amazing. But even while Johnson’s
typically grandiose gesture will erase
most mandatory restrictions, the date
has merely allowed him to shunt
responsibility for difficult decision-
making down the line. Infection rates
in the UK are still in the realm of
bonkers. Both the mayor of London
and Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon have
already moved to fill the freedom
chasm, with Sadiq Khan insisting that
masks will still be compulsory on
London’s public transport, and the first
minister urging “continued caution”
and saying that masks will be
mandatory for some time.
As per usual, it’s just another bloody
shambles: a policy that comes with the
merest suggestion of some
orchestration overscored with a
cacophony of artificial noise. We
should by now be used to government
by amplification — what Boris Johnson
lacks in subtlety he sure makes up for
in volume — but after a whirlwind year
of stop-start leadership the British
public have been pressed to operate by
instinct and intuition rather than by
The day will be just as
advertised: it will be a
miracle if we make it past
the 24-hour mark
the well-defined guidelines that most
reasonable people crave.
Will Freedom Day find our streets
rejoicing in new liberties or will
unfettered freedom cause everyone to
run away? Will we wear masks or won’t
we? Given that in some companies up to
20 per cent of the workforce is already
self-isolating due to exposure, track and
trace will surely hold festivities at bay.
And what kind of freedom is it anyway?
In a surreal moment of extreme
magical thinking, my brother (double
vaxxed) joined Prince William, Boris
Johnson, and 60,000 further football
fans at Wembley to watch England play
Denmark in the Euros semi-final 10
days ago. “Covid’s coming home”, his
wife remarked as he shared another
video of tens of thousands of supporters
united in a toxic mist of bonhomie.
True enough, he’s just tested positive
for Covid. If that’s any indicator of the
future, the day will be just as
advertised: it will be a miracle if we
make it past the 24-hour mark.
Meanwhile, other countries look
upon the UK with bemusement. My
phone is piled with texts and messages
from people pointing out that we have
gone completely mad. In Paris, during
couture week, while going about the
fashion dinners, Brits were met by
a curious mixture of disbelief and pity.
A Brexit deal that has decimated the
creative industries, the febrile football
stadiums and the cavalier approach
towards contagion have not been kind
to our public image. No one
differentiates between our national
borders, they just see us Brits as being
a bunch of hoodlums. Like a nursery of
toddlers, or those football fans who
trashed Leicester Square.
It’s an amusing counter-narrative to
the public image we hold dear. Past
weeks have encouraged Britons, and
especially English people, to reimagine
our national character as something
akin to that of Gareth Southgate, the
England football manager considered
a paragon of humility, thoughtfulness
and calm. It’s possible that Freedom
Day might see us exercising the same
Southgate wisdom even though all
evidence suggests that the contrary
is true. Each time we’ve been offered a
modicum of freedom, we’ve been
caught up in an ecstasy of excitement
and the carapace of civility has quickly
come crashing down. And on the world
stage our behaviour is less aligned with
Southgate than with Johnson, who
seems no more capable of sensible
judgment than the England football fan
who stuck a red flare up his bum.
Freedom Day presents us with yet
another opportunity for redemption.
To try and conduct ourselves with
decorum and deploy our fabled
“common sense”. Right now I don’t
hold too much by way of expectation.
When you’re led by hooligans, the
noise is just too deafening. I don’t need
untapped freedom, festivals and
frenzy. I just want a foreign holiday.
And, like David Byrne, some strict and
well-defined rules.
Email Jo at jo.ellison@ft.com

Cycle with the FT

Calling all cyclists! We have
something fun in store for you
this summer. Every Monday for
the next couple of months, FT
Globetrotter will have a new
guide to exploring a great city by
bicycle, with insider tips, tricks —
and thrilling routes. Last week
we tackled Tokyo and beyond on
two wheels, taking in an Edo-era
town, sampling superb seafood
and realising Olympian-cyclist
dreams. Coming up this week:
four breathtaking Hong Kong
bike rides with intense climbs,
speedy descents and spectacular
views. See it all and follow along
at ft.com/cycling

Chess solution 2427 7...d3 8 Ng5! with a triple attack on f7 is decisive. The best Black can do is 8...h6 9 Bxf7+ Kd8 10 Ne6+ Bxe6 11
Bxe6 Nbd7 12 Bxd7 Qxd7 13 Qxb7 Qd5 14 Qxd5 and White will soon win the d3 pawn with a winning endgame two pawns up.
20 ★ 17 July/18 July 2021
Saturday 17 July / Sunday 18 July 2021
Pandemic Paris Reluctant buyers slow the market — FRANCE PROPERTY PAGES 3 & 4
A slice of Tuscany in Surrey
At home with the FT | Hotelier
Rocco Forte has lost £100m
due to the pandemic. From
his farmhouse-cum-palazzo,
he tells Alice Hancock about
lockdown ‘nonsense’,
‘dreadful scientists’ and his
penchant for clutter
T
he pocket of countryside
just off the A3 from west
London that millionaire
hotelier Sir Rocco Forte
calls home could be labelled
“peak” Surrey. As I turn off the main
road, a red vintage Buick cruises past,
tailed by a Porsche four by four. Every
hundred metres or so down the lane is
another set of high brick walls set with
automatic gates.
Forte’s walls are topped by clipped
box hedges and the drive is lined with
lavender. If it weren’t for the June rain
and English roses tumbling out of the
garden, you might believe you were
approaching a Tuscan palazzo. In fact, a
farmhouse dating back to the 16th cen-
tury emerges, faced across a courtyard
by newly renovated farm buildings.
Forte’s family have lived here since
the early 1960s. Forte himself was
brought up in the UK but has Italian
roots and his wife, Aliai, is from Rome.
“[The house] is my wife’s taste. She
has a slightly crazy approach to
decoration, a lot of fantasy. She is able to
bring all sorts of things together,
antiques and modern stuff and make it
work,” he says.
When I arrive, most of the family are
in stock, including a two-week-old
granddaughter named after Aliai.
Forte steps lightly from the wide glass
doors of the old dairy and garage
Follow us on Instagram @ft_houseandhome
buildings, which they started convert-
ing three years ago into the family
home, tanned and dressed in a mono-
grammed blue and white shirt and grey
loafers. The old “cottage”, as he calls
the five-bedroom farmhouse across
the Yorkstone yard, is used alternately
by his three children.
(Clockwise from The hotelier, who turned 76 in Janu-
main) Rocco
Forte in his
ary, seems in good condition for some-
one laid low with Covid-19 in March last
living room with year and whose group of 15 hotels has
the painting lost £100m due to the pandemic.
‘Generator’ by Restrictions and curbs on travel are still
Mequitta Ahuja costing the business £6.5m each month.
(2010) behind “The reality for business is, what do
him; pots in you do if you don’t have any income?
the hallway;
a Venetian bone
You have to use up any cash you have or
borrow more money so you end up at
commode, the end of this period with a much
a Sophie greater level of indebtedness, if you sur-
Birdwood vive,” he says. “The aftermath of [the
painting and pandemic] is huge.”
chairs designed Despite this, spending lockdown
by Forte’s wife in Surrey appears to have eased the
Aliai; the garden pain: “We were here for three months
Photographed for the FT by
Lesley Lau
for the spring and arrival of summer
and I saw the almost daily changes
in the garden . . . In a way it was a
rather pleasant period, except I had
concerns about the business and how
we organise ourselves and how we
could survive.”
Continued on page 2
2 ★ FTWeekend 17 July/18 July 2021

House Home

A forage My former airing cupboard is taken

up with a new water tank and there’s
makes the
experience of
original off-
white paint. At
currently available via Lorfords in
Gloucestershire. I like its inlaid oval

for storage
no room for my linen. I need a
solution that would look appropriate
in a Grade II-listed Herefordshire
farmhouse. This building dates from
medieval times and every generation
has added something to it. I also need
a cupboard for table linen
downstairs. Any ideas?
Ah, the joy of cupboards. When it
comes to home improvements, some
may dream of swimming pools, some
may pine after a home cinema, tennis
court, gym or wine cellar. What do I see
in my wildest dreams, half-hidden in
swirling fog and shimmering in golden
light? More cupboards. I’m running out
of space, you see, and fast.
Currently, one half of a kitchen
cupboard in the country is dedicated to
napkins, tea towels and coasters.
Another cupboard across the room is
stuffed with tablecloths, placemats,
cushions and miscellaneous objects
(an old film camera, a giant Christmas
bauble and a couple of margarita
glasses). Upstairs, spare bedsheets,
pillows and towels are crammed into
our wardrobe, which itself is no bigger
than a shoebox.
I would love to have a downstairs
cupboard dedicated to kitchen linen,
and some sort of situation upstairs that
means I don’t have to elbow folded
Luke Edward Hall sheets into any available nook or
cranny. When it comes to household
chores such as washing and bed-
Questions of taste making, I believe that giving all
associated articles a proper home
actually doing
those tasks
a lot more
pleasurable.
(Of course,
my dreams
aren’t that
modest. I see
also Georgian
panelling
and Gothic
windows and a grotto and reflecting
pool in my garden.)
So, where to find cupboards that
will suit your Herefordshire
farmhouse? I don’t believe you should
necessarily fixate on finding something
extremely old because, as you say, past
inhabitants have added to the building
(meaning, I assume, its appearance is
not totally uniform).
Besides, as you may have gathered
from reading this column, I am also
not a slave to the concept of period
perfection. Still, you will want to find
something full of character and charm.
Arcadia Antiques usually has
a large and brilliant selection of linen
cupboards in various shapes and sizes.
I am often drawn to cupboards with
an original painted finish — I love the
patina you usually find with original
paint, the marvellous flaking and
varying shades and subtleties of
colour, with patches of old wood
poking through.
Currently in stock at Arcadia is
a beautiful 19th-century English
housekeeper’s cupboard with its
nearly 170cm
wide, it would
provide ample
space for linen,
and includes
drawers as
well as
shelves inside.
For a
downstairs
linen cupboard,
I also very much like a limed or
bleached oak finish, or even
a pale pine. Buckinghamshire’s
Pinefinders is currently selling a large
c1910 pine Dutch linen press with
fantastic detailing and a very lovely
oversized cornice.
I tend to prefer a painted or faded
pale wood over mahogany in kitchens,
boot and utility rooms, but upstairs I
fancy the idea of a mahogany or darker
oak cupboard for bed linen or clothing.
Look just across the border from you in
Herefordshire to Carmarthenshire’s
Tim Bowen Antiques. Bowen recently
sold a small Georgian Welsh oak linen
press with very charming, Gothic,
shaped panelled doors above three
small faux drawers. It could be worth
your while getting in touch with this
dealer because they have had many
similar cupboards in stock in the past.
If you think you might want
something a little smarter, you
wouldn’t be able to go much wrong
with the classic, handsome and
timeless appearance of a George III
piece, such as a mahogany linen press
panels very much.
Perhaps we should think outside
the cupboard. Based in Hampshire,
Elmgarden is selling a 19th-century
What do I see in Italian linen press with bold black and
ecru painted stripes (and gold
my wildest dreams, highlights), painted around 1900.
half-hidden in There is no doubt about it, it’s a
striking piece. The graphic simplicity
swirling fog and of its design, however, would make it
shimmering in suitable for a variety of interiors.
Last, let’s swap Herefordshire for
golden light? Paris. I love an armoire, which in my
More cupboards mind is similar to a wardrobe, and
could function just as well as a linen
cupboard. (A linen press, I have
recently gathered, tends to be defined
as having two sections, like a mini
wardrobe atop a chest of drawers.) It is
easy to find a fancy armoire, but I like
the humbler versions. Hampshire’s
(Above left) Luke Pappilon is selling a very elegant
Edward Hall’s kitchen; 19th-century French provincial
(below) mahogany linen armoire with original ochre paintwork.
press, Lorfords Antiques The beauty is in its rustic simplicity.
One more idea: John Penderell
Antiques in Northern Ireland has in
stock a bespoke oak cupboard with
highly characterful 16th-century doors.
It’s not in the best shape — a part of its
back is missing — but the price is good.
I love this mix of new and very old:
could be just the thing for a medieval
farmhouse with new additions.
If you have a question for Luke about
design and stylish living, email him
at lukeedward.hall@ft.com. Follow him on
Instagram @lukeedwardhall

Inside A slice of her habit of scanning auction websites

late into the night.
There are several pieces given by

Tuscany Forte to his parents when they lived in

Warehouse wizardry
Gigantic properties once used for
storage from London to Barcelona
Page 6
Full-on Fulham
The community spirit and
spacious homes lure buyers
Pages 8 & 9
Madison Darbyshire
The FT journalist’s return to New
York was not what she imagined
Opinion, page 10
‘Daleks’ and DNA
Home security
reaches new
heights of
high tech
Pages 12 & 13
Spry society
Robin Lane Fox on the florist and
educator Constance Spry
Page 14
FT Weekend Festival
The FT Weekend Festival returns
to London’s Hampstead Heath on
September 4 — the first time it has
been held live since 2019.
Speakers on the House & Home
stage will include FT columnists
Luke Edward Hall and Robin Lane
Fox, among others. More details at
ftweekendfestival.com.
House & Home Unlocked
FT subscribers can sign up for our weekly
email newsletter containing guides to the
global property market, distinctive
architecture, interior design and gardens.
Go to ft.com/newsletters
Continued from page 1
Forte describes the troubles of his
eponymous hotel chain, hit by lockdown
measures across Europe, with reserve,
merely adding: “If one had known it was
going to be an 18-month period, one
might have behaved differently.”
Two golden labradors, twins from the
same litter, potter over the mosaic hall-
way floor designed by Aliai in collabora-
tion with the architect Maria Clara
Lafuente. White walls are adorned with
expansive contemporary paintings, stag
sculptures pop out of mirrors, two-foot-
wide butterflies hang in a stairwell,
antique porcelain lines one of the guest
bedroom walls. Aliai says she is “totally
obsessed” with hunting for new art.
Sipping a pre-Monday lunchtime
glass of Pol Roger, she explains that
most of what they eat comes from the
10-acre garden, before launching into a
brief lesson about how to produce
mulch. The couple have gardeners but
there is no doubt that Aliai gets dirt
under her fingernails. Forte says that his
only input has been to insist they keep
the Yorkstone outside, rather than
replace it with lawn. “My wife does all
the gardening. I come here to relax.”
This is usually Forte’s weekend escape
where, during non-Covid times, he likes
to host pheasant shoots. In a sense, it
feels not unlike a luxury hotel. The
shoots have been off during lockdown
but, Forte says, the pandemic has been
good for his efforts to improve his golf —
a more solitary sport. He also trains five
‘[Johnson] seems to be
captured by these ultra-
cautious people in the
cabinet advising him’
days a week in a gym at the back of the
house and a 20m pool is under construc-
tion, next to a games room featuring a
portrait of Forte as a 16-year-old fencer.
It is one of several large portraits of the
hotelier in the house.
Usually the couple would be in Chel-
sea, not far from Forte’s five-star hotel
Brown’s, in Mayfair, which opened its
doors in the first year of Queen Victo-
ria’s reign. Like its central London coun-
terparts, Brown’s has remained all but
empty for much of the pandemic. Occu-
pancy is currently 20 per cent on week-
days, although bookings for summer
weekends have picked up. Among the
best performing Rocco Forte hotels,
occupancy sits at about 50 per cent.
The UK government’s decision to
delay the full relaxation of restrictions
from June 21 to July 19, announced just
days before we meet, is “a disgrace”,
Forte says. This from the man who
spent £100,000 on prime minister
Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign
and who hosted a party for Johnson on
election night.
“[Johnson] seems to be captured by
these ultra-cautious people in the cabi-
net and these dreadful scientists he has
advising him,” Forte says. We meet days
before Matt Hancock, Johnson’s health
secretary, resigned, having been caught
contravening social-distancing rules in
a clinch with a colleague. “He should
have been sacked a long time ago,” Forte
says with a grimace.
At least, he says, the July reopening
date is “a step in the right direction”
even if there are “still too many ifs and
buts”. He bemoans the test and trace
system forcing whole teams of hotel
staff into self-isolation.
On a futon in front of me sits A State of
Fear by the journalist Laura Dodsworth,
which Forte describes as a “wonderful
book” about how behavioural scientists
“got us to believe all this nonsense
[about lockdowns]”. On his desk is a
copy of The Daily Telegraph, turned
neatly to a graph showing Covid death
tolls across Europe.
Forte says that we never should have
locked down in the first place. “Sweden
is a country that didn’t lock down and
had a much better outcome than we
did,” he says, rehearsing an argument
often used by lockdown sceptics. With a
somewhat nihilistic tone, he adds,
“There is always something that gets
you in the end.”
Favourite thing
Forte’s favourite piece is a
wooden chicken, about the size
of two rugby balls, that sits next
to the expansive
modern fireplace in
the main room. The
hotelier bought it
for his Venetian
mother, Irene Mary
Chierico, who died
in 2010.
“It’s rather unusual
because it is carved out
(Clockwise from top)
Rocco Forte’s office; the
hallway’s handmade
mosaic floor was designed
by Aliai Forte in
collaboration with
architect Maria Clara
Lafuente, while the mosaic
on the wall depicting
Helios, the Greek sun god,
is by sculptor Pietro
Cascella and architect
Julio Lafuente (1950); the
original farmhouse dates
back to the 16th century
© Lesley Lau for the FT
of one piece of wood,” he says.
Chierico had a collection of
ornamental chickens and
Forte says that having
the wooden chicken in
the house reminds him of
her. The family also keeps
chickens on the farm.
“The fox comes and eats
them every so often,” Forte
admits, but adds that
“having fresh eggs is
something special”.
Also on the leather-topped desk,
which looks out over part of the 1,800-
acre estate, is a pile of yellow lined paper
etched with Forte’s tidy, slanted script. It
is an opinion column ready for his secre-
tary to type up. “It’s a bit of a blast,” he
says, admitting that he is a two-fingered
typist so “it would take me ages”.
He has aired his pro-Brexit and anti-
lockdown “blasts” in the Telegraph and
Daily Mail and argues that the govern-
ment is wasting the Brexit opportunity:
“Brexit has been about getting back con-
trol of the laws of this country, being able
to do what we want, making an enter-
prise culture and now we are talking
about putting more restrictions on busi-
ness.” The government’s raising of cor-
poration tax, enormous expenditure
during Covid and “absolutist approach”
to the pandemic is “not how a Conserva-
tive government should operate”.
Forte admits he was pleased with the
result of the Chesham and Amersham
by-election in June where the Conserva-
tives lost the safe seat to the Liberal
Democrats. “It is a wake-up call.”
With a wealth of £345m, according to
the 2020 Sunday Times Rich List, Forte
dropped out of the top 250 rankings of
the UK’s wealthiest this year. He says
that the couple has “very much” curbed
their spending during the pandemic,
although it would be hard to guess from
the 18th-century Sicilian tiles that cover
the seven bathroom floors or the hand-
embroidered wallpaper in several
rooms including the downstairs loo.
Much of this was installed before last
year but, Forte says, his wife has kept up
the original house. One is a set of
1700s Portuguese tiles he bought from
the golfer Henry Cotton, who won a
series of titles in the 1930s and 1940s.
They are set above a fireplace in the
old milking parlour, which contains a
large table to host shooting lunches.
Forte is a second-generation hotelier
and hopes to pass his business on to his
three children, all of whom work for
him. In 1992, he took over his father
Charles’s company Trusthouse Forte —
which owned Little Chef, Travelodge
and Lillywhites, and a controlling stake
in the Savoy — only to lose it after a hos-
tile takeover bid in 1996 by the media
conglomerate Granada, which later
became ITV.
Granada paid £3.9bn for the com-
pany. The Fortes walked away with
‘Brexit is about making an
enterprise culture and now
we are talking about more
restrictions on business’
about £350m. At the time of the bid,
Forte was on the golf course with
friends. “An unfortunate coincidence,” a
friend tells me later. Several reports pre-
sented the scenario as the party-loving
Forte not caring about the business.
“The sad thing about it is that it was
completely destroyed and broken up,”
says Forte of his father’s group. But he
seems oddly content to have started his
own more boutique business from the
ruins. In a piece of poetic justice, the
first hotel in his empire, The Balmoral in
Edinburgh, was an ex-Trusthouse Forte
hotel that Granada put up for sale.
Despite the pandemic setbacks, plans
to open a hotel in Milan are under way
for 2023. Forte is looking at a site in Ven-
ice and another Italian location, but
heads of terms are not yet agreed.
He is less positive about the outlook
for the UK given the country’s stringent
restrictions on international travel:
“The government doesn’t care, they are
quite happy to make it difficult for peo-
ple to travel. The countryside hotels are
doing all right because a lot of Brits are
staying in them . . . [but] until travel
returns to normal my type of business is
not going to work.”
I ask if he is envious of his sister, Olga
Polizzi, mother of the BBC’s Hotel Inspec-
tor presenter Alex Polizzi, who runs
hotels with her daughter in staycation
hotspots in Cornwall, Sussex and
Devon. “She has good bookings and
good luck to her,” he says, but admits
that he is looking for sites in “upmarket
tourist destinations’‘ such as Oxford and
the Cotswolds rather than solely target-
ing big European cities as was the Rocco
Forte strategy pre-Covid. Typically,
only 9 per cent of Brown’s guests come
from the UK.
Despite backing Brexit, Forte adds
that the UK needs to encourage Euro-
pean staff to return to plug an acute
labour shortage that has emerged as
hospitality venues reopen: “I think if
you had limited time visas of a year, two
years, that would change the situation
quite significantly.”
Eyeing up the guest kitchenette, care-
fully supplied with tea, coffee and a dish
of nuts, I ask what the key difference
between a hotel and home is. The hotel-
ier looks pensively around the suite
before saying: “It has to be comfortable,
a house. I like clutter. I don’t like these
very modern houses very much.”
Alice Hancock is the FT leisure
industries reporter
17 July/18 July 2021 ★ FTWeekend 3

House Home

Paris’s not so
moveable feast
France property | Buyers prove reluctant as uncertainty
about a ‘fourth wave’ of coronavirus and international
travel restrictions slow the market, writes Hugo Cox

S
elling his three-bedroom
Paris apartment in the 9th
arrondissement has been dif-
ficult for Jérémie Faivre. The
43-year-old has had the prop-
erty on the market since October, but
with no outside space and located on the
busy Rue La Fayette, it languished. Ini-
tially listed at €1.2m, he has dropped
the price and recently accepted an offer
for €1.05m. “People have been reluc-
tant. Even now the market is awfully
calm,” he says.
Paris’s property market is slowing.
Prime prices in the three months to
March fell 3.7 per cent, compared with
the year before, the largest fall since
2016, according to Knight Frank. In for studios it is typically three or more. (Clockwise from Ultimately, however, she thinks the
Ile-de-France, the greater Paris region, With France’s health minister recently main) The PARIS restrictions scared off less committed
total home sales fell 12 per cent in the warning a fourth wave could arrive at famous Café buyers, giving her more of a chance.
year to February, compared with -2.3 the end of July, Kieffer says buyers are de Flore on 9TH 10TH “[The restrictions] cut out those that
per cent in France as a whole, according sitting on their hands. “They tell me the Boulevard ARR ARR wouldn’t physically go to visit.”
8TH
to Notaires de France. they are not sure if they are staying in St-Germain; the ARR Champs- Flaws are hard to find in Charlotte’s
Since restrictions imposed by the Paris or moving out, or even whether Luxembourg Elysées home, which is fully renovated and has
Canal
city’s third lockdown — which started in their businesses will survive.” Gardens and 16TH
7TH Saint-Martin views of the Sacré-Coeur basilica, the
ARR
March — began to ease in May, the At the higher end of the market, travel the Panthéon; ARR Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. The vogue
strong demand from local buyers of the restrictions continue to limit buying by the Canal Saint- 6TH for fully refurbished high-spec apart-
Eiffel

Riv
ARR
past year or so has not returned, says UK and US buyers. Christine Tung of the Martin — Jérôme Tower ments aimed at international buyers

er
Se
Frédéric Kieffer, an agent with Sextant Paris office of Home Hunts, a top-end Labouyrie/Alamy; Bruno de
dates from about six years ago, accord-

in
FRANCE

Properties. “Before we had 20 people to
view an apartment, now it is four or
five,” he says. Where most homes typi-
cally sold within days at the start of the
year, now most take one or two weeks;
‘Buyers tell me they are not
sure if they are staying in
Paris, or even whether their
businesses will survive’
French agency specialising in sales to
international buyers, sold one in five
homes to US buyers before the start of
the pandemic. Excepting homes that
were viewed before Paris’s first lock-
down in March, US buyers have bought
none since then, with German, Italians
and Scandinavians the main buyers.
Charlotte, 59, who has just had her
offer accepted on a three-bedroom
apartment in the city’s prestigious 6th
arrondissement for about €5m, braved
e
Hogues/Getty Images; Pierre
Suu/Getty Images
1 km
©Mapcreator.io/©HERE
the UK quarantine requirements to
carry out her search. With logistics such
as Covid tests required, organising trips
took longer and, on two occasions,
promising apartments sold before she
had a chance to visit, says Charlotte,
who did not want to give her real name.
ing to Tung.
“You started to see developers buy
flats in the best neighbourhoods and
bring them up to those international
standards to satisfy [these buyers’] very
specific demands — en-suite bathrooms,
walk-in closets, air conditioning, guest
toilets, apartments fully furnished.”
Space constraints limit what can be
achieved in the 6th arrondissement, long
Continued on page 4
4 ★
House Home
Continued from page 3
popular with international buyers for its
Left Bank location, leafy boulevards,
chic boutiques and famous restaurants.
“Surface or interior design, yes, but if
it’s a big project — smashing walls and
creating bedrooms — you won’t find
much in the 6th,” says Roddy Aris, head
of Knight Frank’s Paris business. He
says that larger refurbs are more com-
mon in the 7th and 8th, where the
Champs-Elysées is a big draw for many
international buyers, and the posh 16th.
‘Paris is basically a historical
monument’: you can’t attach
unsightly air conditioning
units to historical facades
At €19,600 per sq m, the average price
of Paris’s prime homes remains well
below New York’s, at €24,480, and Lon-
don’s, at €27,990, according to Knight
Frank. The number of high-spec apart-
ments in Paris has lagged that of other
global cities in part because restrictive
planning laws prevent developers from
upgrading properties to exacting inter-
national standards.
“All of Paris is basically a historical
monument: there are so many different
levels of historical classification,” says
Tung. She says the scarcity of air condi-
tioning owes partly to restrictions on
attaching unsightly units to the front or
sides of historical facades; protected
staircases mean that many buildings
will never have elevators.
Getting permission from other resi-
dents for large-scale improvements
to buildings is hard, says Aris. “Gener-
ally speaking, the common parts
[of apartment buildings] are a bit
shabby: the French are not too fussed
about them, preferring to focus on
their apartments.”
Agents suggest that the pandemic saw
many affluent Parisians move outside
the city centre in search of space, a
garden and safety. But the number who
chose the suburbs was comparable with
previous years. According to Knight
Frank, 34 per cent of those who left cen-
tral Paris in the second half of 2020
chose inner suburbs such as Neuilly-sur-
Seine, compared with the 10-year aver-
age of 30 per cent.
For the outer suburbs, including Le
Vésinet or Croissy-sur-Seine, the equiv-
alent figures were 11 per cent in 2020
and 8 per cent in 2019.
i / BUY IN G GU I D E
Total purchase costs, including sales
taxes and notaries’ fees, on a €2m Paris
home are 7 per cent.
The median price of a greater Paris home
sold in April was €10,600 per sq m,
according to Notaires de France.
Direct flights connect Paris to New York in
7hr 30m. London is 2hr 16m by Eurostar.
Owners of property in France with a
combined value over €1.3m are liable to an
annual real estate wealth tax called IFI. It
is levied on the amount above €800,000
and proceeds from 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per
cent, as the total value increases.
Kate Everett-Allen, head of interna-
tional research at Knight Frank, reck-
ons the exodus was at best temporary.
“My assumption is a lot of the move-
ment was to second homes and a short-
term relocation.”
With a larger budget, Faivre found
the extra space he needed just around
FTWeekend 17 July/18 July 2021
PROPERTIES
FOR SALE
PARIS
B Duplex loft, 10th arrondissement,
€1.295m
A three-bedroom apartment in a former
laundry building with open-plan kitchen/
living space, separate living room and
courtyard. It nods to its industrial past
with polished concrete floors throughout.
Available through Knight Frank.
B Apartment, 8th arrondissement,
Price growth in Paris slowed €3.29m
at the end of last year
A three-bedroom apartment with 3.75m-
Annual change in average property high ceilings, full-length windows and
price (%) period features such as mouldings and
10 parquet flooring. A continuous balcony
8 overlooks a tree-lined boulevard. For sale
with Christie’s International Real Estate.
6
4
2
0
2016 18 19 20
Sources: Knight Frank Research; Macrobond;
Paris Notaires
for example.” But it is larger and has
two balconies.
After spending the first lockdown in B Penthouse, 8th arrondissement, €21m
(From top) A the corner in the 10th arrondisse- the country, returning to the confines
A two-storey apartment attached to Le
stroll on the ment, where in May he had an offer of their small Paris flat proved a real
Royal Monceau, a five-star hotel, with
Champs- accepted on a three-bedroom flat near test for Faivre and his girlfriend, and interiors by Philippe Starck. There are
Elysées; the the Canal Saint-Martin for slightly with the threat of another lockdown, three bedrooms, terraces on each floor, a
busy Bar du below €2m. Faivre is taking no chances. He has library plus an independent studio flat.
Marché in Built in the 1990s, the home is not in applied for a bridging loan to ensure On the market with Sotheby’s
St-Germain the archetypal Paris style — “It lacks the sale completes even if the buyer of International Realty.
Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters;
Kiran Ridley/Getty Images
elaborate cornicing and parquet floors, his current home pulls out.
17 July/18 July 2021 ★ FTWeekend 5
6 ★ FTWeekend 17 July/18 July 2021

House Home

Hot property
Warehouse living
K Ransome’s Dock, Battersea,
London, UK, £2.195m
Where Ten minutes from Victoria
station, with fast links to Gatwick
Airport. The warehouse is reached
by a riverside footpath from Albert
Bridge or Battersea Bridge.
By Rachel Hagan What A 1,900 sq ft three-bedroom
apartment overlooking the
Thames. The property features a
roof terrace, wood panelling, an
exposed concrete ceiling and a
polished concrete floor.
Why Once home to Victoria
Beckham’s design studio, this
apartment is housed in an ex-
engineering warehouse dating
back to the 1880s. A natural spring
in the basement provides a source
of water to the building.
Who Nestseekers

I Diagonal Mar, Barcelona,

Spain, €6.74m

Where In the heart of Barcelona’s

tech hub, the 22@ district, just
10 miles from Sabadell Airport,
which has direct flights to London.
The area is minutes from the
beach with designer boutiques
and parks also nearby.
What A five-bedroom, five-
bathroom apartment over three
floors, with a lift, five-car garage,
roof terrace, heated pool, wine
cellar, home cinema, a gym
with Jacuzzi and office space
for 10 people.
Why This vast warehouse flat was
used for wine storage in the 1930s
and was transformed by an B Chappell Lofts, Camden, parquet flooring. Residents have
architect and sculptor in 2016 London, UK, £2.95m access to the ground floor Club
to function as a house, office, Lounge with cocktail bar, DJ booth,
gallery and studio complete with Where Between Primrose Hill and cinema and spa.
courtyards and footbridges. Camden Town. The Northern Line Why This Victorian factory
Who Sotheby’s International Realty takes you to King’s Cross St originally housed a piano
Pancras and Eurostar in 15 minutes. company whose clients included
What A two-bedroom, two- Beethoven. During the second
bathroom apartment with 12ft-high world war it was used to produce
ceilings, exposed brickwork, wood Spitfire propellors.
panelling, cast-iron radiators and Who Aston Chase

K Brunswick, Melbourne, K Bermondsey, London,

Australia, A$1.76m (£945,000) UK, £1.635m

Where In northern Melbourne. Where In south London, a 10-

Trains on the Upfield line from minute walk from London Bridge
Brunswick station reach Melbourne station. Direct trains to Gatwick
Central station in about 16 minutes. Airport take 40 minutes.
What A three-bedroom, two- What A two-bedroom, two-
bathroom apartment designed by bathroom apartment with a
DREAMER and Breathe balcony that features original
architecture studios. The fossil- warehouse windows, exposed
fuel-free development is powered beams and brickwork.
exclusively by green energy. Why The building dates back to
Why This new property’s brick the 1850s and was once
facade is aged to replicate the surrounded by tanneries and
neighbouring — now closed — antique dealers. Part of a terrace of
Hoffman Brickworks factory. warehouses, it once housed cork
Who Belle Property importers Rankin Brothers & Sons.
Who The Modern House
17 July/18 July 2021 ★ FTWeekend 7
8 ★
House Home
Fulham’s
feelgood
factor
UK property|The small-town, community feel of
the London borough and the race for space during
the pandemic have boosted appeal. By Liz Rowlinson
I
n March, Anna Anderson and her
husband moved to a new house just
five streets away from their old one
in Fulham, south-west London.
They sold a three-bedroom flat to
buy a four-bedroom, three-storey
house. “We spent lockdown toying with
a move to the country but for a Swedish
person leaving London was too daunt-
ing,” says Anna, who works at the media
company Condé Nast.
“Instead, we chose more space, and a
big kitchen opening on to a garden, so
we could have BBQs and lots of local
friends and children running around. I
love the small-town feel of Fulham.”
Sitting above a loop of the Thames,
Fulham is often described as a sort of
compromise — better value than next-
door Chelsea or Notting Hill but more
convenient than Putney and Barnes
and other neighbourhoods on
the south side of the river — especially
since the closure of Hammersmith
Bridge has made crossing even
more torturous.
Fulham is a predominantly residen-
tial area of Victorian and Edwardian
properties that attracts high-earning
young professionals, with a hefty
number of first-time buyers helped
financially by their parents, says Faith
Cook of agent Winkworth. “People tend
to stay in Fulham if they can.”
Fulham’s property market has been
boosted since the pandemic, as buyers
look for roomier houses with outside
space. In the first five months of the
year, the number of house sales in the
SW6 postcode was 59 per cent higher
than in the same period in 2019, accord-
ing to LonRes, which tracks the prime
London market.
It is a turnaround for a market that
has struggled since 2014, when stamp
duty reforms increased the tax bill on
more expensive properties. That year,
house prices in Fulham peaked at
£1,007 per sq ft, and fell 13 per cent in
four years. Flat prices dropped 10 per
cent between 2016 and 2019, to £871 per
sq ft. In the past year, prices have risen 3
per cent and 2 per cent for houses and
flats respectively.
While prices have yet to recover to
their mid-decade peaks, the race for
space and the just-ended stamp duty
holiday have helped the market surpass
its 2018 levels. The average discount
achieved on asking prices reduced from
-10 per cent (in 2018) to -6.7 per cent in
the year to date, according to LonRes.
The time on the market to exchange has
fallen from 213 days in 2018 to 180 days
in the year to date.
In the year to date, 43 per cent of sales
were houses, many with bigger gardens
than those in Chelsea. “If you are in
FTWeekend 17 July/18 July 2021
(From top) Chelsea or South Kensington and need
Enjoying a drink that extra 1,000 sq ft-1,500 sq ft of living
in Parsons space and can’t find it (or afford it)
Green on the there, Fulham is the logical next move
day pubs for many,” says Paul Price of agent
reopened in Marsh & Parsons.
April; its parks For Brazilian-born Jade Samuels, the
are one of the move to Fulham from South Kensing-
attractions ton three years ago brought extra space
of Fulham; but also a welcoming sense of commu-
terraced houses nity. She and her husband and three
in Parsons
Green Road — Nick ‘It’s easy to run into people
Harvey/Shutterstock; Alamy;
Greg Balfour Evans/Alamy
we know, which didn’t
happen in South Ken, and be
able to walk to everything’
young daughters live in a five-bedroom French schools service a notable
house close to South Park, an Edward- expat community.
ian walled park. She runs the Parsons “Some French in the financial sector
Green outpost of The Bump Class, an predictably left because of Brexit and
antenatal course. Covid but others working in different
“It’s so easy to run into people we spheres are coming, though well below
know, which didn’t happen in South the numbers before 2016,” says
Ken, and to be able to walk to every- Kristina Aster of Breteuil, a French
thing.” Her eldest daughter, who is specialist estate agent. “The current
five, attends Thomas’s Fulham, a market is unpredictable; negotiations
popular independent primary. Two are difficult.”
17 July/18 July 2021 ★ FTWeekend 9

House Home

Fulham prices peaked

in the middle of the decade PROPERTIES
Average price per sq ft, by property (£)
FOR SALE
1,000
House
900 FULHAM,
Flat LONDON SW6
800

700

600
2010 13 15 17 19 21
Source: LonRes

Time to sell in Fulham

Average number of days spent
on the market
Flats Houses B Garden flat, £700,000
200
A two-bedroom, two-bathroom ground
150 floor flat in the Munster Village area with
a private garden. Craven Cottage — the
100 home of Fulham’s football club — and the
river Thames are half a mile away. For
50 sale with Chestertons.

0
2014 15 16 17 18 19 20
Source: LonRes

‘Working from home means Common — including Delvino, Cron-

i / BUYING GUIDE
Fulham, in Zone 2, is very well connected
with three Tube stations — Fulham
Broadway, Parsons Green and Putney
Bridge — on the District Line and
Hammersmith on the Piccadilly Line.
Fulham is in the London Borough of
Hammersmith & Fulham. The council tax
band D for 2021-22 is £1,195.62.
Between 2010 and 2021 the average sold
price of a house in Fulham has increased
by 45 per cent, from £1,182,763 to
£1,712,758, according to LonRes. The
average apartment price has risen
14 per cent to £723,091.
Many Fulham residents from over-
seas will rent first, says Katinka Hill, let-
tings director at Chestertons, who
arranged a four-bedroom property near
South Park for an American family
moving in this month, through a reloca-
tion agency acting on behalf of the US
embassy at Nine Elms. It was one of sev-
eral similar requests this year.
She says the rentals market was on its
knees, with transactions 60-70 per cent
(From top) The down in June 2020, but it’s returning to
sculpture garden 2019 levels — unlike Chelsea, Kensing-
at Bishops Park; ton and Mayfair.
Craven Cottage, the “With flexible working, there’s not
home of Fulham’s the need to be in such prime central
football club —Greg areas any more and tenants are looking
Balfour Evans/Alamy; Scott Hortop
Images/Alamy
for better value and more space
in Fulham.”
According to LonRes, the average
annual rental rate of £34 per sq ft in
2021 is 3 per cent down on 2019; in
less need to be in central
areas. Tenants are looking
for better value in Fulham’
Chelsea the £44 per sq ft average is 14
per cent down for the same period.
Olivia Morrow has loved renting a
three-bedroom flat with a large terrace
with her sister and a friend for three
years, but the landlord is selling up.
Minutes away from the dozens of res-
taurants, shops and gyms of the Fulham
Road, it sold within 48 hours.
“Despite struggling to find a new place
to rent we are staying in this area,” says
the 27-year-old, who works in market-
ing. “That area [the western end of Ful-
ham Rd] is not exactly hopping at
night,” she says, adding that she and her
friends often head to nearby Parsons
Green for a night out, to Aragon House,
“which has a young, fun crowd”, or the
White Horse.
The profusion of independent eater-
ies around Eel Brook Common and
Parsons Green village help attract buy-
ers, agents say. Roads west of the
dace, Irene and Parthenia — are very
popular, says Faith Cook, as are “the
alphabet roads” — parallel roads
between Fulham Palace Road and the
riverside ribbon of Bishops Park and B Town house, £3.5m
Craven Cottage football ground.
A four-storey, renovated Victorian town
Closer to Putney Bridge or Hammer-
house with six bedrooms and four
smith Underground stations, houses bathrooms. The house is on Finlay Street,
come with 60ft-70ft gardens, and one of the sought-after “alphabet
are listed for £2.5m-£4.5m, depending streets” in the Bishops Park conservation
on whether they are extended area. On the market with Winkworth.
modernised.
“People will pay over the odds for the
C, D, E roads [Cloncurry, Doneraile and
Ellerby],” she says. Just over the border
with W6 is Fulham Reach, the area’s
only large new-build scheme.
For large family houses, there are
two key conservation areas: the Peter-
borough Estate, where 1890s four-sto-
rey red-brick “Lion” terraced houses
(with sandstone lion motifs) sell for at
least £3m, and the Moore Park Estate, B Terraced house, £3.8m
which is south of Stamford Bridge foot-
A six-bedroom, four-bathroom “Lion”
ball stadium, where houses cost
house on the Peterborough Estate. The
£2m-£3.5m, according to Paul Price of basement has been converted into a
Marsh & Parsons. media or entertainment space, along with
“If you can afford much more than study and bedroom. There is also a small
that, you’ll probably choose Chelsea roof terrace. Available through Savills.
over Fulham.”
10
House Home
The tricks
an old dog
can teach
Perspectives
Madison Darbyshire
I imagined ‘Sex and the
City’ glamour for my
return to New York, not
caring for our dying family
dog on my own. But the
experience has helped me
say the goodbyes I was
unable to this past year
When the FT asked me to relocate to
New York from London this summer,
I was ready for a change. I imagined
my post-pandemic NY life would
resemble Carrie Bradshaw’s, a
youngish single journalist writing
in a quirky one-bedroom, batting
handsome men away with a
broomstick. I would dash to my
flashy new job in an outfit I didn’t
have to cover with a raincoat.
But instead of moving forward into
this reasonable fantasy, I seem to be
stuck in a new-life birth canal.
While New York City is 70 per cent
vaccinated and dancing through “shot
girl summer”, in a potent distillation of
almost every possible pandemic theme
I am living alone at my parent’s house
in the suburbs and babysitting the
geriatric family dog.
My parents did not saddle me with
my own personal fourth lockdown
on purpose. When they booked their
pre-retirement honeymoon to Iceland,
there was no reason to believe our
dog would still be alive. She is 112 in
dog years, about to celebrate her
16th birthday.
At the end of 2019, it seemed like any
day could be her last. To aid her elderly
digestion for what everyone assumed
★ FTWeekend
were her final weeks, she was switched
to a fancy dog food.
But she was resurrected by the
pandemic. My stressed mother,
desperate for excuses to leave the
house, septupled the daily dog-walking
regime. With all-day access to ear rubs
from my dad, no longer commuting,
our dog flourished. Eighteen months
later she still eats like a duchess.
The food is so expensive that it is
ordered in two-week tranches to avoid
having extra . . . just in case. But we
keep buying more, week after week.
Only the love of an old dog can bring
you to willingly open fragrant cans of
pet food at 6:30am.
On the surface I am resentful of my
bonus lockdown, which involves a fair
amount of cleaning up dog vomit. It’s
isolating to be alone without the crucial
knowledge that no one is having any
fun anywhere else.
I wonder if those millions of families
who got puppies during the pandemic
(and then wrote think pieces about
it) imagined themselves 15 years
down the road. I doubt many did.
Adding 15 years to any current age
is traumatic.
They will be caring for old dogs, if
they are lucky. The houses they
Illustration: Ewan White
purchased for more space in lockdown
will no longer be new. Their towns will
be unrecognisable. Mine is.
As frantic millennials continue to
buy into in the property FOMO
economy, houses in my little
hometown, just outside New York City,
I still know all the
now sell within hours of listing, often
houses in my hundreds of thousands of dollars over
the asking price, sometimes in cash.
neighbourhood
The old guard, people my parents’
by the names of age, are taking their cues to cash
in and move along. A cascade of
families who used
younger, sleeker families are arriving.
to live there. They I still know all the houses in my
neighbourhood by the names of
are almost all gone
families who used to live there. They
are almost all gone.
This cute but decrepit old dog is
one of the last things left that made
home feel familiar. And when she is
napping it is not always obvious that
she is breathing.
While I am saying hello to my new
life in the US, at the same time I am
tangled in this mess of letting go.
Every night I give my old dog an extra
good belly rub, because I’m just not
ever sure if it will be the last time we
say goodnight.
When she was a puppy she looked a
large cotton ball crossed with a mop.
17 July/18 July 2021
She would knock you sideways if she
mistimed her stop in her rush to
say hello. Now her bony legs struggle
to climb our front stairs. She is thin
but has lumps with their own centres
of gravity.
Ageing is not a particularly dignified
process. She eats standing on a yoga
mat to keep her paws from sliding
slowly out to the sides until her face
plants into her water bowl.
So much of the time spent raising
dogs involves saying no, setting
boundaries. With an old dog, the
script reverses. Life is all about yes.
A handful of cheddar crackers on top
of her lunch because it helps the
medicine go down. A spoonful of
peanut butter just because.
If she nudges my elbow while I’m
working, I don’t shoo her away.
I pause my writing to scratch her so
well that her wasted back legs give
out. I’m flattered that she’s asked.
On our many daily walks, we plod
along so slowly that I see things about
the street where I grew up that I never
noticed before. I was always in a rush.
I never used to let her linger. She has
demanded a slow down at exactly the
moment I least wanted but probably
most needed it.
I am also secretly grateful for this
long goodbye. I was in London for the
better part of the past four years.
During that time, I said goodbye to
both of my beloved grandmothers over
FaceTime calls. I wasn’t there to give
them hugs or tell them how much
I needed them. I didn’t get to care for
them at the end.
But I know the way our old
goldendoodle’s bones feel in my arms
as I carry her upstairs, see where
the tumour is growing that will
probably be the thing that finally
takes her away.
Taking care of our old dog alone is
about as unglamorous and opposite
from my Sex and the City fantasy as
I could have designed. But she is
helping me learn to say all the
goodbyes many of us were unable to
this past year. She is helping me find
my way back to my life here.
The tender, tedious rituals of her
day — preparing her food and her
medicine, the head-to-paw rubdown
first thing in the morning to celebrate
another day — help me find meaning
in mine.
Madison Darbyshire is an FT US
investment reporter
17 July/18 July 2021 ★ FTWeekend 11

Property Gallery UK Office: +44 20 7873 4907 | US Office: +1 212 641 6500 | ASIA Office: +852 2905 5579
www.ft.com/house&home
France

England

France England

Greece Switzerland Monaco

England
12
House Home
Fit for a
fortress
Security | Motion-activated burglar alarms are old hat
compared with the latest high tech, writes Mark Ellwood
E
ighteen months ago, Phil
Cleary met with a new client.
The billionaire had just sur-
vived a brutal home invasion,
where a group of criminals
beat him to try to find out where he
stored an expensive watch. The thieves
had seen him wearing it in a magazine
and resolved to steal it. They bypassed
his existing cameras, scaling a wall at his
30-acre country estate without alerting
the on-site security staff. The client
“was very, very lucky to survive”, Cleary
says, and he now wanted to make his
home impregnable.
Cleary suggested Daleks. Not the vil-
lains from Doctor Who but, rather, a fleet
of miniature, CCTV-enabled robots with
an aggressive affect that remind him of
the sci-fi mutants. Positioned at strate-
gic intervals around the perimeter,
these battery-operated sentinels patrol
their turf 24/7; they’re primed not so
much to exterminate as intimidate.
Cleary’s robots sit inert until their
attention is piqued by unexpected
move ment. Then they swing into
action, blazing a spotlight at a would-be
burglar while blaring an announcement
that the police and security team
have been alerted to their presence.
With a dozen of these devices
dotted around his prop-
erty, the billionaire client
hasn’t been troubled at
home since.
Cleary runs a company called
SmartWater, which offers a suite of
security solutions including
those “Daleks” —
though they are actu-
ally called Video-
Guard 360 units, and
★ FTWeekend
are part of SmartWater’s Perimeter
Intruder Detection systems.
His is not the only company specialis-
ing in cutting-edge home-protection
tools. The world of domestic security
has evolved far beyond motion-
activated burglar alarms bolted to the
side of a house, or even doughnut-
chewing security guards staring blankly
at a screen. Today, it’s as likely to include
invisible, motion-activated sensors,
unbreachable zones or Minority Report-
style predictive surveillance.
Cleary’s robots have already received
international endorsement: 100 of them
were deployed as part of the protection
around the recent G7 summit in Corn-
wall. Many clients use them as tempo-
rary upgrades to a home system, per-
haps when they’re at another home or
on vacation: dot a few around a classic
car collection, for example, or to keep
an eye on thoroughbreds in a stable.
“You can plonk them anywhere, as
they operate on 2G, and they act like an
electronic sentry standing guard while
you’re away,” Cleary says. They are
affordable, too: the robots come in dif-
ferent sizes with prices ranging from
£50 to £150 per unit per week.
His next step is to combine
them with another of his
company’s products, its
namesake SmartWater.
This is an invisible, UV-de-
tectable liquid that is water
resistant enough to survive on skin
for weeks, and that contains a blend
of synthetic DNA-like markers; the
blend is unique to each
client. Spray it proac-
tively on to precious
items, Cleary says, and
it will allow categorical identification
when a stolen watch is recovered.
More intriguingly, why not include
SmartWater in a motion-triggered
sprinkler system, which will coat any
intruder in this ersatz DNA? If you do,
even burglars who manage to evade
arrest on site can be identified later.
Turn a UV light on to their skin, and any
SmartWater will glow bright yellow.
Take a sample of that residue, and if the
DNA-style markers match, it places that
person on site beyond reasonable
(Clockwise from doubt. Cleary plans to add misting
top) Okto’s nozzles to the VideoGuard 360 units so
invisible tech that would-be intruders are trackable
‘serenity zone’; even after they’re scared off a property.
Dice Corp’s In case someone manages to breach
‘anticipative’ those fortress-like measures, though, cli-
software); ents can commission a refuge inside the
Agresti safe home — just don’t call it a panic room.
room; sculpture Instead, think of it as a “serenity zone”,
on Fortecho’s says Philips Dowds, managing director
pressure- of Okto Technologies. His company has
sensing plinth worked on several such projects in Lon-
don, often costing £1m or more.
17 July/18 July 2021
Why not put SmartWater
in a motion-triggered
sprinkler system to coat an
intruder in its ersatz DNA?
In the past, panic rooms were more
like prison cells, but Okto will rather
repurpose a large, existing room — the
master bedroom suite, for example —
and outfit it with concealed details that
allow it to transform from everyday use
to an intruder-proof zone. Think Kevlar
walls, with bulletproof, steel-reinforced
doors plus multiple communication
channels, from 5G to satellite, so that
anyone inside has fail-safe ways of
reaching the outside world, including a
security team.
“A panic room was quite small, and
probably had no windows in it, and was
probably a bit of a reclusive space,”
Dowds says. “Nowadays we want to
keep people as relaxed and calm as pos-
sible in the event a family is attacked, so
a larger space is better.”
It must be as beautiful as it is func-
tional, too, a speciality of Agresti. The
Florence-based company started out
more than 70 years ago building high-
17 July/18 July 2021 ★ FTWeekend
end cabinetry but pivoted towards safe
rooms after trialling strongboxes in its
armoires. It introduced its own high-
design, high-tech riff on the idea at
Milan’s Salone del Mobile in 2018.
Chief executive Paolo Agresti explains
the USP of its serenity rooms: why not
combine fine craftsmanship — Italian
leather, wood veneers — with cutting-
edge technology? Fingerprint-operated
locks, for example, that can be accessed
using more than one digit; such entry
panels are programmed to sound a
silent alarm and summon security if,
say, the index finger is used to open the
door rather than a thumb. Agresti’s
serenity zones start at about €150,000
but often cost far more.
Such refuges, of course, become vital
only after a problem occurs; better, per-
haps, to prevent invasions before they
Fortecho’s tiny happen. That’s the focus of Fortecho
chips can be Solutions, which has a niche focused on
imperceptibly protecting artworks and other precious
attached to objects against theft.
artworks in “Once a picture is out of a building,
museums and it hasn’t been tracked in the first few
and private hours? It’s gone,” says chief executive
collections Robert Green. Fortecho uses various
Hugh Threlfall/Alamy
chips, including ones it designs and
manufactures itself that are just 4mm
thick, and that can be invisibly attached
These battery-powered
sentinels contain several
sensors, all aimed at
protecting a masterpiece
to any artwork. These battery-powered
sentinels contain several sensors, all
aimed at protecting a masterpiece;
they’re programmed to send regular
readings back to the central system and
alert when anything changes.
There’s an accelerometer that flags
movement, but these miniature com-
puters also contain sensors for tempera-
ture and humidity. If the latter tracks
past a certain level, for example, it will
also alert Fortecho’s team. “One of our
clients got a leaking pipe behind a stud
wall, and within an hour, we knew
something was happening,” Green
explains. For a Degas pastel, he says,
such protection is as important as pre-
venting its theft.
Fortecho started in museums, work-
ing with the National Gallery in Lon-
don two decades ago. Now, Green says,
around half its clients are institutions,
while the rest are high net worth
individuals. For both sectors, it has
developed pressure-sensing plinths for
sculptures, relying on piezo crystals
which can detect minute changes in
weight as low a few grammes. Any
slight shift in the pedestal and the sen-
sors sound an alarm.
Fortecho has also installed infrared
lighting behind paintings, measuring
the time it takes for the light to bounce
off the back of the picture. “If you move
it even 5mm forwards, that time of flight
changes and the alarm is alerted.”
Fortecho is often asked to deploy its
technology beyond artworks, although
Green says he had to decline the brief
from one client who wanted his Ferrari
collection protected. “He wanted to
know if a car was on the move, but he
also appreciated that his son might
jump into any one of them at any time,
and whisk a girlfriend out,” Green
recalls. “Sometimes you can’t have your
cake and eat it.”
That client could instead have
opted to work with Michigan-based
Dice Corp. It specialises in safe-
guarding software, in particular,
a new service its co-president
Avi Lupo dubs “anticipative
security”. Put simply, Dice
Corp’s system uses AI to
chew through data —
13
House Home
(Above from weather reports, CCTV camera footage,
left) Agresti safe news events, social media posts — and
rooms start at predict problems before they occur,
€150,000; Minority Report-style.
SmartWater’s “Say you know there is going to be
forensic liquid rain on a holiday weekend, when there’s
and (below) a also a parade,” Lupo says. “You can allo-
‘Dalek’ unit cate resources differently than you
would if you didn’t take all these other
factors into consideration.” More
guards, for example, or suggest a family
spend the weekend elsewhere.
Lupo says its systems aren’t limited
to detecting danger. They can also be
used in more mundane ways — in a
gated community, perhaps, footage
from CCTV cameras could be proc-
essed by Dice Corp’s AI. The pool-
maintenance team, for example, might
be expected at a certain time every
week, and to perform a series of tasks;
its AI can flag if they’re late, or if they
fail to complete their assignment.
“The same infrastructure you
have for security can service you
for a lot of other things,” Lupo
says. “That $100 camera
ins talled by the pool can
become the Swiss Army
knife of security.” Just
don’t mention it to
the Daleks.
14
House Home
A florist who
never wilted
The demands of her life as a high-society flower
arranger, educator of women, celebrity chef and
ardent lover failed to daunt Constance Spry
C
ut flowers, cooking,
adjusting the garden:
summer holidays are with
us again, the weeks that an
overstretched reader has
just summed up for me as “visitors and
vegetation”. Over mine presides a past
British authority, Constance Spry, who
sets standards I will never meet.
I have her books on flower arranging
and two of her famous white vases.
I also have her huge Constance Spry
Cookery Book, bound in 1956 in rose
pink, which is never short of advice:
“Iced coffee . . . one of the
devastatingly simple things so difficult
to make.” She can still complicate an
entire afternoon, but she insisted,
“I was first, and hope last, to be a
gardener.” Is gardening the key to her
many-sided life, or does such a life
never have a single key?
Spry conjures up varied memories
for older readers: flower arranging,
cookery lessons, her shops in London
and Manhattan and her recipes for
anything from braised lettuce in cream
to devilled leftover turkey. She had
a pink, myrrh-scented double rose
named after her, still good as a bush or
climber. She loved philadelphus and,
like me, had an avenue of its scented
flowers. She drew heavily on her
garden for flower arrangements, but
amazed high society by including
hedgerow flowers too. She was already
sympathetic to a bit of wilding.
Her stratospheric career as a florist
began by chance in 1927. Sidney
Bernstein, the impresario, came to
lunch and was impressed by her
garden’s natural look, seeing its
potential as decor for his cinemas. It
took her to royal weddings and
bouquets, including those at the last
coronation, where she also commanded
the menu. She devised a new
“coronation chicken” for the occasion.
Last Friday I ate a derivative of it with a
notable amateur cook. She served the
update, called “cold curried chicken”,
from a 1970 cookbook by Katie Stewart,
saying it was better: it omits Spry’s
tablespoons of apricot purée.
There are still female survivors of
her schools and classes, trained in
domestic skills and cooking at
Wingfield House in Berkshire, which
she bought as a wreck in autumn 1946.
She made it into the finishing school of
choice for society girls who needed to
run postwar houses without their
mothers’ servants. I sometimes wish
for a Wingfield alumna to come and
take over my life. I particularly wished
for one last weekend when my attempt
at iced coffee went badly wrong.
Until September 26, an evocative
exhibition at London’s Garden Museum
looks at Spry’s achievements through
photos, items and paintings. It is a
fascinating cameo of social mobility.
Female education, gender and
business, fashion and high society
interlock with sex and orientation.
Spry, born Fletcher, married in
Ireland in 1910, had a son in 1912 and
then began an affair with Henry Spry,
the head of her office in London’s
wartime Ministry of Munitions. She
divorced her Irish husband and lived
with Spry but never married again.
★ FTWeekend
In 1932, aged 46, she called on a new
client who was ordering bunches of her
well-chosen white flowers: the artist
Hannah Gluckstein (“Gluck”). At first
sight, high voltage sizzled between
them and for four years, they had a
passionate affair. Meanwhile Spry
encouraged the head of her London
flower shop to have an affair with
Henry Spry, her male partner. Gluck
then fell in love with another woman.
Spry had to rally and cope with
spiralling demands from high society
for her flowers. She never wilted.
In 1937, she did all the flowers for
the wedding of Wallis Simpson to the
Duke of Windsor. It was marked
with a flowery photo of the bride by
Cecil Beaton, on show at the Garden
Museum. “To Mrs Spry who made my
Robin Lane Fox wedding so lovely,” Simpson signed her
copy, though Spry was not married.
During her affair with Gluck, she had
On gardens bought a striking picture by her called
“Flora’s Cloak”, showing a naked young
(Left) Constance Spry in her garden,
c1942; (above) ‘Flora’s Cloak’ by
Hannah Gluckstein, c1923 — © RHS Lindley
Collections; Tate © Estate of Gluck (Hannah Gluckstein)
Flora in a cloak of flowers. Even after
their split, it continued to hang in her
flower shop and was known fondly as
Inter-flora. In 2018 it was bought for
the Tate to mark the centenary of
British women’s right to vote.
In 2010 Sue Shepherd, then at the
BBC, published The Surprising Life of
Constance Spry, which lived up to its
title. In 2013 the dramatist Alison
Burge wrote Storm in a Flower Vase,
which ran well in London’s West End
and focused on the relationship of Spry
and Gluck. As it opened, I heard a
recording of Spry on BBC Radio 4: “Let
your inhibitions go . . . if in doubt,
ladies, leave it out.”
She championed restrained
arrangements of flowers, not the
crammed displays of modern florists
in foyers. She even referred to her
“male counter-principle: if in doubt,
stick it in”. I nearly drove off the road.
The presenter of Woman’s Hour then
interviewed a former employee at a
lowly level in Spry’s office. She began
by stressing that “Mrs Spry was very
well connected” but when pressed
about the lesbianism, remarked: “If
you went into her office you could
catch a whiff of it.”
The exhibition does not dwell on that
scent too much. It is accompanied by
an excellent little book, Constance Spry
and the Fashion of Flowers, which I
strongly recommend. It has superb
17 July/18 July 2021
photos of her life and excellent
chapters by Shane Connolly, himself a
major flower arranger and curator of
the exhibition. Flower arranging was
a profession for young women, partly
for their dexterity but also because the
wages were low. No doubt Spry loved
presiding over as many as 70 female
employees but her orientation was not
the key to her life.
What comes out is her profound
commitment to female education. She
came from a working-class family in
Derby and first trained as a health
lecturer. She began her career, aged
19, in rural Ireland, travelling in a
caravan and instructing mothers how
to care for their babies. After the first
world war, she returned to the UK and
ran the Homerton and South Hackney
Continuation School for Girls.
Gardening had been her solace in
her unhappy marriage and so flower
arranging was already on the
curriculum. Styling the coronation was
miles away, but the teaching in her
books, and her courses at Wingfield,
had deep roots. In 1937, she shipped
over to America for a gruelling
itinerary of lectures from coast to
coast. She was delighted by American
ladies’ keen interest in their homes and
High voltage sizzled
between Spry and painter
Hannah Gluckstein and
they had a passionate affair
gardens. She also discovered Sellotape
and its use as a fixative for wobbly
flowers in vases.
From the 1930s, fascinating photos
record the vast crowds and her flowery
extras at high-society weddings. At
one, the bridesmaids’ dresses were
colour coded according to their degree
of intimacy with the bride. Try it post-
lockdown: gold is for absolute best
friends only.
I much like the show’s memories of
her, written by Helen Kirkpatrick. “She
had an insatiable curiosity and an
extraordinary talent for arousing it in
others. Her opposition to mediocrity in
any form and a rollicking sense of
humour made her a rare human being.
She was always so alive and so full of
fun and enthusiasm: we never noticed
she was growing older.” A born teacher,
I sense, whom we would all have loved
in lockdown. That cookbook on my
shelf has come to life.
 '
JULY 17/18 2021
DON'T JUST
LOOK AT THE
DARK SIDE.
STOP ISOLATING
YOURSELF.
OPEN UP
ABOUT YOUR
FEELINGS
TO THOSE
CLOSEST
TO YOU.
YOU ARE NOT
A BURDEN'
Cecilie Herlovsen, survivor
of the terror attack on Utoya,
Norway, 10 years ago

WHAT
SURVIVORS
KNOW
 F E AT U R E S

14
TEN YEARS ON FROM THE
M A S S A C R E AT U T O YA
What the young survivors of the
deadliest violence in Norway
since the second world war have
learnt about life.
By Richard Milne

26
T H E S H O W M AY G O O N
Andrew Lloyd Webber has overseen
a glorious restoration of London’s
oldest theatre and his newest
musical is finally about to open.
Shouldn’t he be happier?
By Henry Mance

32
▶
A TA S T E O F E R I T R E A
In Yorkshire, six young women who
fled their homeland as children
recreate the recipes that connect
them with their culture.
By Polly Russell

COLUMNS FOOD & DRINK DIVERSIONS

5 Simon Kuper 12 Tim Harford 38 Honey & Co 6 Inventory

What the pandemic can teach How to vaccinate the world Old bread, sardine and Patrice Evra, football coach
us about the climate crisis more quickly tomato salad 8 Letters
8 Robert Shrimsley 46 Gillian Tett 41 Jancis Robinson 45 Games
Passport control: now at a I adore Venice without the Trailblazing Bolivian wine
high street near you crowds. Is it here to stay? 43 Tim Hayward
10 Tech World Noble Rot Soho, London
Time for AI to pull up a chair
to the negotiating table

Issue number 930 • Online ft.com/magazine • FT Weekend Magazine is printed by the Walstead Group in the UK and ON THE COVER
published by The Financial Times Ltd, Bracken House, 1 Friday Street, London EC4M 9BT © The Financial Times Ltd 2021
No part of this magazine may be reproduced in any form without the prior express permission of the publisher P O R T R A I T B Y A N D R E A G J E S T VA N G
Publishing: Daphne Kovacs, head of FT Weekend Magazine – daphne.kovacs@ft.com
Production: Danny Macklin, advertising production – daniel.macklin@ft.com or magscopy@ft.com @FTMag

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021 3


SIMON KUPER
OPENING SHOT
How the pandemic
foretells the
climate crisis
W
hen England drops
nearly all its Covid-19
restrictions on July 19,
it won’t be the end of
the pandemic. It may not even be
the beginning of the end. But it is a
foreshadowing of an ending of sorts.
One day, rich countries will emerge
from Covid-19 while poor countries
remain stuck in it. And this isn’t
just the scenario for the pandemic.
It is probably also a preview of the
climate crisis.
Both crises crept up on us in
similar ways, notes David Fisman,
a Canadian epidemiologist and
member of Ontario’s Covid-19
Science Advisory Table. There is
exponential growth (in infections,
in carbon emissions) but initially
without visible damage. Life
continues happily, for weeks in the
case of Covid-19, for decades with
carbon. By the time we act, we’re
already behind. Then each country
works out almost entirely by itself
what to do. Should it close schools,
build wind farms? Global problems
require global co-operation, but
“global government” has become
a political swear word like “foreign
aid” or “technocracy”.
Expert advice bounces off
harried, ignorant national leaders
who worry about today’s headlines.
Meanwhile, disinformation
narratives – “It’s just a flu!”, “The
climate’s always changing!” –
continue to ensnare a large minority
even as the crisis hits. Quite a few
people are now willing to lay down
their lives in the culture war: in
some rich countries, deaths from
Covid-19 have become concentrated
among unjabbed anti-vaxxers.
We are an inventive species
and, in an emergency, rich people
and places will save themselves,
through tech fixes or otherwise.
There’s no vaccine for climate
change but as floods worsen, New
York and London will beef up their
protective barriers. Americans will
start leaving dried-up California
and doomed Miami for cooler
regions, just as their ancestors went
west. More drastically, the Dutch
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021
ILLUSTRATION BY HARRY HAYSOM
might end up largely abandoning
their low-lying country. The joke
among Dutch water experts is,
“We’ll all just move to Germany and
learn German.”
Luckily for the Dutch, that’s not
impossible. But poor countries lack
the means to dodge climate change
or Covid-19. “High-income countries
have administered almost 44 per
cent of the world’s doses. Low-
income countries have administered
just 0.4 per cent,” Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus, director-general of the
World Health Organization, said in
June. Frustratingly, he added, the
statistics hadn’t changed in months.
So Covid-19 is becoming a
poor-world problem. England is
celebrating “Freedom Day”, rich
countries are jabbing adolescents
and Israel is offering third doses to
people with weak immune systems.
Meanwhile, in Bangladesh, the army
has been patrolling streets to enforce
the latest lockdown, while children
have missed 15 months of school.
Tunisia’s own government says its
“health system has collapsed” under
a new wave of infections. By early
June, Covid-19 already appeared to
have killed more people worldwide
than in all of 2020. But poor people’s
deaths aren’t news. In practice, the
value of a human life depends on
its nationality.
COLUMNIST OF THE YEAR
This is a rerun of the HIV crisis.
Once new drugs started saving rich
westerners in the 1990s, the west
moved on, while African people
kept dying. The global death toll
from HIV is now about 32 million.
With Covid-19, many NGOs are
rightly saying that it’s in the rich
world’s interest to help vaccinate
the poor. Delta won’t be the last
partially vaccine-defying variant
of the virus to emerge from a poor
country and bite the rich. Nobody
is safe until everybody is safe, is
the mantra. The same is true of the
environment: the destruction of the
Amazon is climate’s Delta variant.
When Brazilian rainforests shrink,
rich countries heat up too.
The rich world is now making
leisurely attempts to save the
Amazon and send vaccines to poor
countries. But its Plan A is simpler:
save ourselves, then barricade off
the poor. Travelling to Fortress
Europe from the mostly poor red-
list countries is almost impossible
for all but the very rich. Britain
The destruction of the has considered deporting asylum
Amazon is climate’s Delta seekers to Rwanda. It’s brutal, but
it’s how nation-state democracy is
variant. When Brazilian designed to work: politicians worry
rainforests shrink, rich about their own voters. That’s why
countries heat up too Britain cut foreign aid in the year
that global poverty rose for the first
time since 1998. Covid-19 has fed the
rich world’s self-pity.
All this is a preview of the
climate crisis, when poor countries
destroyed by desertification or rising
seas will be isolated – struck off the
global map, in effect. All we’ll want
from them are raw materials. The
model is the relationship that rich
countries have with the Democratic
Republic of Congo: it’s valued almost
solely as a supplier of minerals, such
as the cobalt that allows us to power
our devices and electric cars.
If the only hope now is moral
awakening, there’s no hope. Based
on what we’ve learnt from Covid-
19, our best chance to avoid climate
catastrophe is a tech fix developed in
a rich country in its own self-interest
that would save the world at modest
additional cost. I’m told that sucking
carbon out of the atmosphere at
the scale required might not prove
totally impossible.
simon.kuper@ft.com
@KuperSimon
5
 Patrice Evra, 40, was born in
Senegal. His family moved to
Europe when he was one, first
to Brussels, then to Paris. Evra,
who captained both Manchester
United and the French national
team, is recognised as one of the
best left-backs of his generation.
He retired from playing
professional football in 2019.
What was your childhood or
earliest ambition?
To buy a house for my mum.
I promised her that and I did it
when I had my first contract.
Private school or state school?
University or straight into work?
The school in the street where I
grew up. It wasn’t a great school –
I made friends more than I studied.
I found myself a pro contract when
I was 17 and went to Sicily.
Who was or still is your mentor?
My mentor is myself. I’ve never
looked to someone else. I believe
I’ve got two angels looking after
me and when I need them they’re
always there.
How physically fit are you?
I love working out and I eat healthy.
I’m still fit to play. I retired not
because I wasn’t fit, but because
I wanted to do other things and a
moment comes when you have to
stop. Being fit is my nature.
Ambition or talent: which matters
more to success?
Ambition, 100 per cent. Talent:
I N V E N T O R Y P AT R I C E E V R A some people, they’ve got it and
FO OT BA L L C OAC H they don’t work at it. With talent,
yes, you can win a game, but with
ambition you can win the league.
Someone who is less talented but
working hard will pass the person
who’s more talented but lazy. The
work ethic is really important.
How politically committed
are you?
I don’t like injustice. Sometimes I
will speak about what’s happening
in Senegal, but I don’t want to be
involved in the politics. There’s a lot
‘My mentor is
of corruption, it’s difficult. I debate
with people, but it’s not something
I’m really connected to.
myself. I’ve
What would you like to own that
you don’t currently possess?
I’ve already got everything.
never looked to
I’m healthy. I feel really blessed.
I feel lucky.
What’s your biggest extravagance?
someone else’
I don’t know. I love everything! It’s
difficult to pick something. Just
being awake and having a nice day.
6 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021
In what place are you happiest?
With my fiancée Margaux.
What ambitions do you still have?
Since I retired, helping the most
people in my life that I can.
What drives you on?
Happiness, positive energy,
loving life. Being good to the
universe. Be good to the universe
and the universe will be good to
you. Doing the best I can drives
me on and seeing happy people
around me.
What is the greatest achievement
of your life so far?
My shelter in Senegal. I opened it
in 2005, I think. When you play
football, you think of winning
the league, winning the trophy,
winning the Champions League,
but I remember the day I went
to the shelter and saw those kids
thanking me for providing food
and school, and I realised why I was
here on earth.
What do you find most irritating
in other people?
When they are dishonest. When
they lie. When they are unjust.
To pick just one is difficult.
If your 20-year-old self could see
you now, what would he think?
Not being arrogant: “I’m proud
of you. Since day one you’ve been
positive.” People don’t change.
When I was 20, I was just like I
am today. My slogan is “I love this
game” and I love my life.
Which object that you’ve lost do
you wish you still had?
I’m not attached to material items.
What is the greatest challenge of
our time?
To be united and to help each
other. Not to judge each other. To
destroy racism. If we all connected,
we would save ourselves and save
the planet.
Do you believe in an afterlife?
Some people say you go to heaven.
I say I am living in heaven now in
my life. In my personal opinion, it’s
difficult to think that, after death,
there’s nothing. But I don’t want to
think about it, I just want to enjoy
right now.
If you had to rate your satisfaction
with your life so far, out of 10,
what would you score?
Twenty!
Interview by Hester Lacey.
DANNY KASIRYE
“I Love This Game”, Patrice Evra’s
autobiography, is published later
this year by Simon & Schuster
 ROBERT SHRIMSLEY
THE NATIONAL CONVERSATION
Passport control: now
at a high street near you
A
fternoon sir, vaccine
passport please. Thank
you. And, er, what’s the
purpose of your visit to
this Tesco? Business or pleasure?
A bit of both, very good. If you
have time you should definitely
check out the poultry aisle. It’s
very popular with visitors.
“And where have you travelled
from today? Hawthorne Avenue,
that’s just round the corner,
isn’t it? Are you at the playing
fields end or nearer the pizzeria?
Yes, I drove down it once.
Very nice part of the world.
“So just a few more questions.
Are you carrying any fresh produce
with you? No, excellent, and nothing
anyone gave you to bring into the
store? Like Covid, for example.
“What’s that sir? Yes I can
only apologise if it seems a bit
cumbersome but these new Covid
passports are what is going to help
us protect the NHS and save lives.
We do have plans for biometric
vaccine passports before too long,
where you’ll be able to scan your
eye and walk straight in. When will
that be ready? By 2029 apparently.”
I am sure we are all psyched
for the arrival of Covid passports,
especially if we can get them in dark
blue like we used to have before
we joined the European Union.
OK, we will probably not need our
vaccine passports when travelling
to the fresh fish and molluscs
section of our local supermarkets.
The early targets are nightclubs
and bars, so the likely questions
will be whether you are on the
pull or just there to get mullered.
Immunisation certificates
are back in vogue among some
ministers as England plans its full
reopening. Suddenly alarmed at
the risk he is taking, Boris Johnson
is urging others to fill in the gaps
in his own policy. Businesses
are being nudged to consider
introducing a form of ID cards
so that he does not have to.
8 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021
ILLUSTRATION BY LUCAS VARELA
I do wonder, however, if
ministers have really thought
through these vaccine passports.
For a start there is the small issue of
enforcement. Is the hard-pressed
hospitality industry really about to
hire a staff the size of the UK Border
Force to ensure all may safely booze
in Wetherspoons? Indeed, since the
government is now in the process
of removing legal requirements,
how many establishments are
going to spend money on door
staff so they can limit their own
trade? Might they not reasonably
argue that the government’s new
creed of personal responsibility
means those who are not happy
with the risk can stay home?
There will be, I suppose, a
small market for Covid-secure
establishments and good luck
to them. Many might feel easier
returning to the cinema if they
know the person next to them has
been double-jabbed. There are
venues I’d be uneasy visiting soon –
badly ventilated comedy clubs for
one – and if enough people feel the
same way then perhaps they will
decide to take this step. But broadly
this is one idea that can work
only with a compulsion to which
the government is ideologically
opposed. While it holds open the
FT Globetrotter has launched a brand new guide to Singapore, celebrating the joys of
the Garden City with expert advice on eating and drinking, exercise, cultural activities
and much more. We’re looking for your best Singapore tips too. Submit them at
ft.com/globetrotter/singapore
threat of legislation (once all adults
are vaccinated), it is running scared
of its own MPs and other lockdown
antagonists who already think
they are Braveheart because they
once tweeted against face masks.
There is an argument for using
immunisation certification to
cajole people into getting vaccinated
even though not everyone can.
But a government that cannot
even bring itself to mandate
masks on buses is not one which
will find that degree of coercion
easy. And many will be rightly
uneasy about what would become
a halfway house towards ID cards.
Personally, I am still
uncomfortable with domestic
Covid passports, though I can see
their utility. But that is a separate
point. Such a step would be a major
societal shift. So if ministers think
this is the right policy they should
have the guts to enact it themselves,
rather than relying on others to take
their unpopular decisions for them.
Or perhaps we can look forward to
the new voluntary approach at UK
borders. “Can I see your passport
sir? It’s up to you entirely. No? Well,
no matter, welcome to Britain.”
robert.shrimsley@ft.com
@robertshrimsley
Reply
Simon Schama on America’s
history wars (July 10/11) was a
great article on how the extreme
right (and, to be fair, extreme left)
set out to rewrite history to justify
their political views.
Ted via FT.com
@paul_abrahams July 10
Simon Schama is just outstanding
in today’s FT. ‘History is the search
for truth in all its complexity’
Terrific article (Rana Foroohar’s
“Jane Jacobs changed the way we
see cities”, July 10/11). The problem
is cities and city planners hate low-
rise, intimate neighbourhoods, even
though residents love them. Places
like Brooklyn or Greenwich Village
are not efficient. They occupy a lot
of valuable ground space. Cities
love building mid- and high-rise
vertical gated communities with
gyms, daycare centres, espresso
lounges etc. Residents of these
gilded ghettos in the sky have no
need to go out and mingle with their
neighbours. Enjoy Brooklyn while
you can, Rana. Another Robert
Moses is lurking in the bowels of
Quiz answers The link was lanes of various kinds 1. Arm pit 2. Mungo Park 3. Sons and Lovers 4. Penny Black 5. Red brick universities 6. Memory
city hall and I don’t see another Jane
7. White Hart 8. The sea 9. Fast & Furious (or The Fast and the Furious) 10. Cotton gin Picture quiz The National + Rosa Parks = National parks
Jacobs ready to lead the opposition.
NDR-Boston via FT.com
Robert Shrimsley, I share your
despair (“Living with Covid after
the grand reopening”, July 10/11).
By all means lift restrictions but for
heaven’s sake be selective. Measures
that offer significant benefit for
little cost/inconvenience should be
maintained. It’s not rocket science.
Bangkok Billy via FT.com
Re “The internet wants to watch
you eat” (July 10/11). Mukbangs
seem bizarre when you hear about
them but totally work in practice
– I think human beings get deep
subconscious satisfaction out of
the experience of eating together,
even when your dinner partner is
being beamed to you virtually from
a million miles away or when they
are nothing more than a recording.
Dolores Ibarruri via FT.com
To contribute
Please email magazineletters@ft.com. Include
a daytime telephone number and full address
(not for publication). Letters may be edited.

T E C H
W O R L
B Y H E L E N WA R R E L L
Time for AI to pull
up a chair to the
negotiating table
S
cience fiction has sparked
decades of debate about
whether future wars will
be made more deadly by
weaponised artificial intelligence.
Yet, in the real world, AI is already
being harnessed to broker peace.
This idea first emerged four years
ago when members of a UN team
asked how technology could be
used to survey residents of conflict
zones about what they wanted from
peace agreements. Asking people’s
views is important because peace
deals and ceasefires are more likely
to last if they reflect the views of the
whole population, rather than just a
few negotiators. But polling people
face to face is difficult in a country
at war: security requirements
make it complex, expensive and
time-consuming.
A New York start-up, Remesh,
may have found a solution – an
AI-assisted poll that can reach more
than 1,000 people, engaging them
in real-time conversations about
the changes they want to see.
The polls were trialled in Libya
in October ahead of a permanent
ceasefire that ended nearly a
decade of instability. The dates of
the discussions were publicised
on social media and interested
participants were invited to access
Remesh’s platform anonymously
from their mobile or computer.
During each dialogue, respondents
were asked their priorities for
reunifying the country, stabilising
the economy and improving
living conditions.
To the organisers’ surprise, the
initiative attracted such attention
that one of the mass polls was
broadcast live on a Libyan news
10
D being like “talking to a collective
ILLUSTRATION BY PÂTÉ
channel, with commentators in the
studio discussing the responses.
“The most important part of it
was that people felt engaged,” says
Jean El Alam, an official at the UN
mission in Libya. “We brought
these findings to the [peacemaking]
dialogue table and said, this is
what your people truly want – not
what you’re saying or you think
they want… This added to the
transparency of the process. It gives
it more credibility.” The resulting
ceasefire deal, though fragile, has
held so far. Further dialogues are
planned as the peace talks progress.
Beyond the UN negotiating table,
AI-powered polling platforms are
already helping to build consensus
on more everyday disagreements.
Taiwan has used Pol.is, an open-
source technology developed in
Seattle, to reach popular agreement
on how to regulate Uber, the taxi-
hailing app. And local government
associations in the US and Canada
have used Ethelo, another survey
tool, to poll communities on
topics such as town planning and
transport pricing.
Andrew Konya, co-founder
of Remesh, says running the
dialogues has been described as
superintelligence”. To a journalist
who asks questions for a living, this
was an enticing prospect.
Remesh put together a mini-
poll of 80 Americans, drawn from
a variety of backgrounds. Over the
course of 45 minutes, I asked them
about the US’s place in the world,
and whether its international
reputation was rising or falling
(55 per cent said the latter). The
system grouped replies with similar
meanings and asked respondents
to agree or disagree with selected
statements on a spectrum of views.
At any point, I could ask the system
to analyse responses according
to a breakdown of age, gender or
political affiliation.
The breakthrough was ditching
my planned script and adapting
my questions to the answers
I was receiving. When several
participants said they thought
the US should use its power and
influence responsibly, I asked
what this meant. “Accepting equal
footing in the international scene
instead of acting like an overgrown
bully,” came one reply that was
highly rated by fellow respondents.
Online polling tools have
obvious pitfalls. They rely on
participants having access both
to good internet and functioning
devices. There is also the risk that
without the highest levels of cyber
security, these survey platforms are
‘We brought these findings vulnerable to hacking.
to the dialogue table and Still, Katharina Höne, an
expert in the use of technology
said, this is what your for diplomacy at the non-profit
people truly want – not DiploFoundation, believes these
what you’re saying or systems have promise. As they
you think they want’ develop, she suggests they could be
helpful in combating the political
and ideological divisions that
flourish during online interactions.
“We have social media tools
which seem to amplify social echo
chambers… and focus on scandal
and outrage, and on the other hand
we have the potential to build tools
that allow us to have conversations
in a different way,” she says.
“Digital technology can come down
on both sides, fuelling conflict
potentially, but contributing to
overcoming it too.”
Helen Warrell is the FT’s defence
and security editor
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021

TIM HARFORD
THE UNDERCOVER ECONOMIST
How to vaccinate
the world
more quickly
W
ith more than half the
UK population fully
vaccinated and the
UK government just
a little too eager to declare victory,
spare a thought for Cameroon. With
a population about half the size of
England, Cameroon has – according
to Our World in Data – administered
just 160,000 doses of vaccine. On
a typical day, the UK manages that
many before lunch.
I have a certain romantic
attachment to Cameroon, but the
west African nation is not alone
in lacking vaccines. More than six
months into the global vaccination
campaign, fewer than a quarter
of people around the world have
received even a single dose of a
vaccine. It is no wonder that more
people have already died of Covid
in 2021 than died from the disease
in 2020.
So what can be done? There
has been much talk about vaccine
equity, but the main problem is
not vaccine hoarding or price-
gouging. It is that manufacturers
can’t make doses fast enough.
(If they could, then India, a huge
vaccine producer, would have fully
vaccinated more than 5 or 6 per
cent of its population by now.)
Global production has been
impressive and accelerating:
according to Airfinity, a life sciences
analytics company, the billion-
dose production mark was hit only
on April 12. A billion more were
produced by May 26 and the third
billion by June 22. That’s good.
But we need 11 billion doses to fully
vaccinate 70 per cent of the world,
which may not happen until 2022.
Recently, however, some
momentum has built up behind an
idea that sounds almost childishly
simple: if we reduce the dose size,
we can vaccinate more people from
each vial of vaccine. Why not give
people half doses? What about
quarter doses? With quarter doses,
we could have already vaccinated
the world’s adult population.
The idea seems absurd – you can’t
get drunk more cheaply by diluting
12
ILLUSTRATION BY ANNA WRAY
your beer – but it all depends on
how effective lower doses might be.
Five years ago, faced with a yellow-
fever outbreak and a shortage of
vaccines in the Democratic Republic
of Congo, seven million people
received one-fifth of a dose each.
The strategy, endorsed by the WHO,
seems to have worked.
Alex Tabarrok, a professor at
George Mason University, has been
pushing the idea of alternative
dosing regimes for several months.
Recently, he and other researchers,
including vaccine market specialist
and Nobel laureate economist
Michael Kremer, released a working
paper exploring the issue. At the
same time, a letter advocating
trials of fractional doses, written by
epidemiologists Benjamin Cowling
and Wey Wen Lim and a virus
evolution specialist Sarah Cobey, has
been published in Nature Medicine.
What evidence is there low-
dose vaccinations might also work
for Covid? From full-scale clinical
trials, not much – although there
was the serendipitous discovery
that the Oxford/AstraZeneca
vaccine seemed to work better
when the first injection consisted
of a half dose.
But there is plenty of data on
the antibody levels that people
produce in response to small doses,
and, according to a recent paper in
Nature Medicine by David Khoury
and colleagues, those antibodies are
strongly correlated with real-world
protection against Covid.
As Kremer and his colleagues
observe, if antibody levels really
are a good measure of protection,
then the mRNA vaccines
(BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna)
may protect as well as the highly
effective AstraZeneca vaccine
even if they are deployed at two-
thirds, 50 per cent or even 25 per
cent strength. A recent preliminary
report yet to be properly reviewed
also finds that a two-dose course
of Moderna’s vaccine at 25 per cent
strength produces an antibody
response comparable with that of
a case of Covid. A trial is under way
in Belgium exploring alternative
doses of the Pfizer vaccine,
while Moderna has said it is also
investigating lower doses.
The concept of a standard or
full dose is fuzzier than one might
imagine. These vaccines were
developed at great speed, with a
focus on effectiveness that meant
erring towards high doses. Melissa
Moore, a chief scientific officer at
Moderna, has acknowledged this.
It is plausible that we will come
to regard the current doses as
needlessly high.
The idea seems absurd –
you can’t get drunk
more cheaply by diluting
your beer
This isn’t to say that we should
abandon the standard doses, which
have been tried and tested in large
clinical trials. But it does suggest
that we should test alternatives
immediately. Is there a downside?
If low-dose vaccines don’t work
as well as studies of antibodies
suggest, that is a problem that
booster shots should be able to fix.
More worrying is the prospect
that a large pool of low-dosed
people might push the virus to
evolve towards vaccine resistance.
Cobey acknowledges that risk but
argues that if fractional doses help
to reduce the number of infected
people, that gives the virus fewer
opportunities to mutate. Dangerous
mutations might be reduced, rather
than increased – it is unclear.
What is clear is that millions of
lives might be saved if fractional
dose vaccines are proved to work
well. There is a lesson to be learnt
here. While the production and
testing of these vaccines has been
little short of miraculous, next
time we can do better. We should
run more trials, earlier, to produce
evidence on a wider variety of
questions than “Are they safe?”
and “Do they work?”
Such trials are expensive; the
understanding they produce is
worth paying for.
FRAN MONKS
Tim Harford’s new book is
“How to Make the World Add Up”
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021
 A D ECAD E AG O, A
32 YEAR OLD WITH
A RIFLE AN D A
P I STO L TURNED
THIS P E AC E F U L
N O R W E G I A N
ISLAN D I NTO
H ELL ON EARTH .
THIS IS A STO RY
ABOUT S U R V I VA L
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREA GJESTVANG WORDS BY RICHARD MILNE

14
15
 N
orway’s capital was quieter than usual
on July 22 2011, a wet Friday during the
summer holidays. At 3.25pm a bomb
hidden inside a van exploded outside the
prime minister’s office, shattering the
nation’s peace and setting in motion an
afternoon of scarcely believable terror. By the end of the day, 77
people had been murdered. Most of them were teenagers.
The attacks, the deadliest violence in Norway since the second
world war, were carried out by 32-year-old Anders Behring Brei-
vik. He began in Oslo’s government quarter where, dressed as a
police officer, he left the homemade bomb of about 950kg. Nine
minutes after he walked away, the
device detonated, destroying the
facade of not just the tower block
housing the prime minister’s office
but several other ministries and the
country’s best-selling newspaper
VG. Most workers were on holiday,
buteightpeoplediedinthebombing.
“The whole building was shaking.
I was in the middle of this extreme
chaos,” says Andrea Gjestvang, a
photographer and VG picture editor.
“I was just really, really scared.” (A
portfolio of Gjestvang’s work contin-
ues on the following pages.)
As shock and confusion gripped
Oslo, Breivik drove 40km north-
west out of the capital to the small
island of Utoya in Tyrifjorden lake.
Each year, the island played host to
a summer camp for AUF, the youth
organisation of the ruling centre-left
Labourparty.Hundredsofteenagers
as young as 14 flocked there from all
over Norway for a mixture of social-
ising, camping and earnest political
debate. Some were politically engaged; many were tagging along
with friends. On July 21, culture minister Anniken Huitfeldt had
sent a text message to the head of the AUF on Utoya saying, “I
wish I were you.”
Armed with a pistol and rifle, Breivik presented himself as a
policeman who had come to the island to check all was OK after
the bombing. He began moving around Utoya methodically kill-
ing victims. Some he told he’d been sent to help before shooting
them.Othersheshotastheypretended tobe dead. “You aregoing
to die today, Marxists,” he reportedly yelled.
Twice Breivik called police to surrender. But their response
was chaotic and plagued by mistakes. Crucial information wasn’t
shared between departments. At one point, heavily armed police
tried to use a boat that was too small to reach the island and had
to turn back because it started to sink. By the time police reached
Breivik, he had killed 69 people on Utoya. More than 500 sur-
vived, many by swimming into the frigid water of Tyrifjorden
where they were picked up by boating locals and tourists.
16
Many assumed the attacks were perpetrated by Islamic fun-
damentalists. Discovering that Breivik was Norwegian, that he
was “one of us” – as the title of journalist Asne Seierstad’s book
on the attacks called it – was a shock. Prime Minister Jens Stolten-
berg captured the national mood in a speech in Oslo cathedral two
days after the attack, saying that Norway would never give up on
its values. “Our response is more democracy, more openness and
more humanity,” he said. He endorsed the comments of an AUF
memberwhohadsaid,“Ifonemancancreatethatmuchhate,you
can only imagine how much love we as a togetherness can create.”
Breivik’s criminal trial began in April 2012. He was initially
diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, before a second evalua-
tion judged he suffered from narcissistic personality disorder.
He calmly described to the court how he killed 77 people, and
saidhisoriginalplanhadbeentobeheadGroHarlemBrundtland,
the former Labour prime minister who left Utoya shortly before
he arrived. In August 2012, Breivik was given the maximum
sentence allowed – 21 years – with the possibility of indefinite
extension. Since then, he has been kept in isolation, receiving
visits only from a chaplain and, before her death, his mother.
“22 juli”, as the attacks are known in Norway, has become as
infamous a date as 9/11 is in the US. Due to the tight-knit nature of
this country and the wide geographical spread the victims came
from, one newspaper estimated as many as one in four Norwe-
gians knew somebody affected. “We were not prepared at all,”
says Huitfeldt, a former leader of the AUF and Labour minister.
“Wecouldnotimaginesomethingsohorriblecouldhappeninour
peaceful little country.”
Seierstad, best known for her books chronicling everyday life
inwarzonesincludingKabulandBaghdad,saysthattheimpactof
July22wasdifferentfrom9/11.“September11changedtheworld.
It changed my life. It changed American society. It changed our
way of flying, geopolitics. July 22, it didn’t even change Norway,”
she says. “Yes, we have this wound and we have to recover and it
will never be as it used to be. But what has changed?”
Securityhasbeentightenedaround government buildingsand
parliament, but she argues little else is different. Many Norwe-
gianstrytoblockoutthememoryoftheattacksandsome,wishing
todenyhiminfamy,refusetorefertoBreivikbyname,callinghim
just “the terrorist”. The 10th anniversary has refocused attention
on the place of the tragedy in the national consciousness. Some
feel that while Norway handled the
immediate aftermath well, it has
struggled recently.
Parts of the government quarter
in the heart of Oslo stand unrepaired
amid an ongoing dispute about how
to rebuild. A striking memorial at
Utoya, featuring a section of rock
removed from the island to create
a symbolic “gash” on the landscape,
was abandoned in 2017 after public
outcry. Opposition from neighbour-
ing communities on the lake led to a
courtbattlethatfurthertraumatised
many of the victims’ families. A new
memorial on the island will still be
under construction after the anni-
versary passes.
“Everyone has underestimated
the symbolic power of this wound.
It’s a sign that we are not healed,”
says Gjestvang. She adds that the
original proposal was potent for how
it captured suffering. “It is painful. We have to face it.”
Huitfeldt says the lack of a memorial is “unbelievable”, but
points to the controversies in New York over a 9/11 memorial,
which opened on the 10th anniversary of those attacks. “People
aremoreunitedinthebeginning,andthentheystart todisagree.”
Seierstad is less sure, arguing there is little with which to com-
pare such a large national trauma. “I don’t say it has been smooth.
But in the whole, Norway has done the right things,” she says,
pointing to the government’s response and the openness of the
trial, which acted as “both catharsis and a fact-finding mission”.
A national commission revealed serious shortfalls with Nor-
way’s emergency preparedness. But it was most scathing about
the police, arguing that they could have prevented the bombing
and arrested Breivik earlier in the day. Norway’s head of police,
who had been best man at Stoltenberg’s wedding, was forced to
resign. Seierstad is similarly highly critical of the police, noting
that as Breivik shot dead on average about one person every
minute during his massacre, a delay of 20 minutes cost many
P
lives. “We were like a failed state that day,” she says.
erhaps the area where Norway has most struggled
to process the attacks is the most surprising: pol-
itics. Breivik was explicit in targeting the Labour
party and its youth organisation, claiming they
were guilty of encouraging multiculturalism and
helping Muslims “take over” Norway and west-
ern Europe. “The aim of the attacks was to give a symbol to the
people. The Labour party has betrayed the country and the
people,” Breivik said during his first court appearance, accord-
ing to the judge. “They paid the price for that yesterday.”
Breivik had been a member of the nationalist, anti-immigra-
tion Progress party, which has long been defined by its opposition
to Labour. But Breivik left Progress well before the attacks, and
Labour officials have resolutely refused to pin any blame on the
party itself. “It’s just unfair to give them responsibility for what
occurred. In a political debate that is more polarised than before,
they can’t be held responsible for his conduct,” says Huitfeldt.
But she adds, “His ideas don’t come from nowhere. They come
from somewhere. All of us have to take responsibility.”
Siv Jensen, then Progress party leader, used the phrase “sneak
Islamisation” in 2009 to describe the situation in Norway. Seier-
stad says she believes “there is a link between Progress and
[Breivik]”. She says her research shows that Progress stopped
talking to the future murderer “not because he was too extreme
but because he was stupid”. She says the party never truly
acknowledged its ties to Breivik and that “we as a society have
never made them”.
Jensen wrote in the Wall Street
Journal in 2011 that Progress was
“embarrassed, disgusted and truly
sad” Breivik was once a member. She
added that he left the party in 2006
and appeared “to have undergone an
extreme radicalisation since then”,
with his actions and beliefs “totally
contrary to our policies and values”.
Parliamentary elections are set for September, with opinion
polls pointing to a return to government for the Labour party for
the first time since 2013. The country has had a centre-right coa-
lition for the past eight years, including Progress for more than
six years. The party faced controversy after Sylvi Listhaug, then
the justice minister, said that Labour thought “terrorists’ rights
are more important than the nation’s security” before it finally
left government early last year.
Since then, Labour and AUF officials have argued more and
more that Breivik’s ideas did not grow in a vacuum. Asmund
Aukrust, a survivor of July 22, told the FT in 2018, “I think we [as
a country] have not processed what really happened on July 22.
Now we need to discuss what was behind the attack.”
Huitfeldt says part of the issue was that Stoltenberg and others
framed the attacks as “an attack on our nation”, rather than one
targeting the Labour party, in a successful attempt to unite the
country. But a side effect, she feels, is that the AUF and Labour
party were often not acknowledged as victims. “Because we
were accused of taking advantage of the situation, we almost feel
guilty when we talk about it. When they accused us of playing
the so-called Utoya card, it is difficult to have a political debate
on the causes of extremist thought,” she says. Still, some suggest
Labourhavetriedtoexploitthecircumstances.“It’simpossibleto
take advantage of the situation. But then you are accused of doing
so. It’s something we can’t argue against. You are accused of being
too emotional, your ideas don’t count,” Huitfeldt adds.
Some of the survivors face online hate, receiving comments
such as “you should have been shot”. Seierstad compares such
internet trolling with the denial by some that the Sandy Hook
school shootings in the US took place. She says, “We don’t live in a
vacuum.Everythingthatexistsinothercountriesexistsheretoo.”
As the anniversary approaches, discussing the attacks’ legacy
has become more natural. But while debate about Utoya may be
opening up, many wonder how well Norway is addressing the
issues underlying rightwing extremism. In 2019, Philip Man-
shaus, a 21-year-old Norwegian, shot his stepsister to death and
then opened fire in an Islamic centre near Oslo (fortunately no
one at the mosque was killed). Meanwhile, for all the furore over
Listhaug’s comments, she has since become leader of Progress.
Ten years ago, as news of the bombing began circulating, ini-
tial speculation centred on Islamist terrorism. Seierstad says that
if that had been the case it would have been “easier and much
harder” for Norway to deal with. “The fact isthat he was one of us.
Where do you put the blame? It is of course him. But is it also a bit
us? Is there something we have done to inspire him?”
Richard Milne is the FT’s Nordic bureau chief
17
 SURVIVORS THEN
Photojournalist Andrea Gjestvang has been following the lives of July 22 victims, making
portraits and interviewing many of them over the past 10 years. Norway has struggled with the
meaning of the attacks. This difficulty is at the core of Gjestvang’s work, which asks survivors
what they would tell themselves in hindsight. Some have no answers.

CECILIE HERLOVSEN, 17 EIRIN KRISTIN KJAER, 20 ALEKSANDER SANDBERG, 16 TORJE HANSSEN, 14

Herlovsen hid with her best friend Andrine. She was shot in the shoulder,
chin and arm, which was later amputated. Andrine died. “I am actively
working to get out of what I call the Utoya prison,” says Herlovsen. “But
because of the physical injuries, I believe that I will never be completely free.
Even though I am strong, it is still difficult to survive everyday.” (She is
photographed on the cover, aged 25.)
While trying to protect younger campers, Kjaer was shot in the stomach,
arm, right knee and armpit. “As a person who has been shot four times,” she
says, “I am doing very well. There is nothing my body can’t do. I have had
experiences that most other people do not have. It provides an insight that I
take with me in my political involvement. I learnt a lot about myself. Not least
to enjoy life while having it.”
Sandberg hid under a sofa in the island’s school house. Along with 46 others,
he stayed in the building until police arrived. “What I want the most is a
completely normal life,” he says. “I want to get married, start a family, have a
house, a car and a dog. To be in a job I enjoy. It doesn’t need to be something
ambitious. I want to experience life for what it’s worth.”
Hanssen was the youngest person to attend the camp. He hid with his
brother Viljar and others. When Viljar was shot, Hanssen tried to swim away
and was later rescued by boat. “I always knew that darkness is life-giving,” he
says. “I have been obsessed with pain and death, the fact that one can die at
any time. I do not think about the future and I do not need ambitions to
succeed. I’m already enjoying myself.”

YLVA SCHWENKE, 15 NATIA CHKHETIANI, 23 HANNE HESTO NESS, 20 INA LIBAK, 22

Schwenke was hiding when she was shot in the shoulder, stomach and both
thighs. “My main struggles in life now are common 20-year-olds’ problems. I
stress about existential questions, such as not knowing where I am in life and
where I am going. It feels a little small,” she says. “If I go through difficult
times, I tend to say to myself: you could have died as a 14-year-old. The
alternative could be to not exist at all.”
Chkhetiani is from Kutaisi in Georgia and was invited as an international guest
by the AUF with her best friend, who was killed in the attack. “I have used a lot
of energy to distance myself from everything that is connected with July 22,
including political and social involvement. But,” she says, “you cannot escape
your experiences with silence.”
Ness was in the café when she was shot. She was hit in the left arm.
A bullet shattered her finger and another severely damaged her neck
vertebrae. Her best friend died on her lap. “The first years after Utoya I was
scared for my life,” she says. “I was intimidated by uniforms and loud noises.
Now I am afraid of losing those I love the most, since I lost my best friend on
the island.”
After surviving the attack, Libak became the head of the AUF between 2018
and 2020. “As the leader, it was my job to give other people hope. Therefore
I had to feel good myself, to deal with everything we had experienced,” she
says. “It is a great responsibility for a young person. I have a lot of good
things in my life. But I sometimes feel that July 22 has given me earnestness
and depth. I have become both lighter and a little darker.”

18 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021 19

 AND NOW
Do not lose faith in yourself.
You are good enough. Skilled
enough. Strong enough. Dare to
be vulnerable and sad when you
need it, because what you have
experienced is so incomprehensible
and painful. Live in the moment and
do not think about everything that
did not become as you planned.
20
EIRIN KRISTIN KJAER, 29
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021
ALEKSANDER SANDBERG, 25
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021
You will reach further than it
might feel like right now. Maybe it
seems hopeless, but it is not over.
Everything you do from now on
will be a personal achievement; to
pass the exam, get your driver’s
licence, buy an apartment and be
in a long-term relationship. Even if
you believe that none of this is going
to happen.
21
 TORJE HANSSEN, 23

22 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021 23

 YLVA SCHWENKE, 24 HANNE HESTO NESS, 29

You will meet an incredible number

of nice people. You will take the
chances you are offered and you will
travel, work and get a bachelors
degree. Remember that there is
not one way to deal with trauma,
and that you should not have a bad
conscience if you feel happy.
When you get the terrorist
attack more at a distance, you will
get annoyed with little things in the
same way as you did before. But that
doesn’t mean you have forgotten
about it, you just remember it in a
different way.

NATIA CHKHETIANI, 33 INA LIBAK, 31

You cannot change what happened

on Utoya by escaping from
everything and everyone who
reminds you of that day. July 22 will Be kind to yourself, what you have
be with you no matter where you been through is big and painful.
are – in Georgia or in Norway. You It is allowed to feel that it is
will realise that what happened difficult. Fortunately, the picture
was not a natural disaster, but a will gradually expand, it feels very
PANOS PICTURES

hateful act. Your openness and present now, but eventually it will
your commitment, like everyone become a smaller part of the big
else’s, count in the fight to prevent life. Good things are waiting for you
something similar from happening. in the future.

24 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021 25

 A
Andrew Lloyd Webber has invested his heart, soul and £60m into

L A BOU R
a glorious restoration of London’s oldest theatre. And Cinderella, his

OF
latest musical, is finally about to open. So why isn’t he a happier man?

LOV E
Henry Mance reports. Photography by Silvana Trevale

26 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021 FT.COM/MAGAZINE AUGUST 10/11 2019 27

 Left: inside Andrew
Lloyd Webber’s newly
renovated Theatre Royal
Drury Lane in Covent
Garden, London
Previous page: Lloyd
Webber in the theatre’s
Grand Saloon in June
A
ndrew Lloyd Webber
should be in jail. Sort of.
The multimillionaire
composer promised that
if the government didn’t
allow his latest musical,
Cinderella, to open at full
capacity in June, he would
go ahead anyway. To hell with the handcuffs.
It put theatre, one of the overlooked casualties
of the pandemic, on Britain’s political agenda. Pri-
vately, though, Lloyd Webber soon received legal
advice “that every member of the company, every
member of the cast, every member of the audience
could be fined £500 each”. He bowed to reality.
Cinderella would not go to the ball immediately.
The incident illustrates two things about Lloyd
Webber, whose scores for Cats, The Phantom of the
Opera andEvita havehelpedtocreateafortuneesti-
mated at more than £500m.
The first is his absolute love for theatre. At 73,
he is half-man, half-archive. Listening to him, you
get used to nodding along to lines such as: “‘Say a
Prayer for Me Tonight’ was Eliza’s song going to the
ball in My Fair Lady, and became a big song in Gigi.”
He struggles with people who do not share this
passion. Between 1997 and 2017, he sat in the
House of Lords as a Conservative peer, but says, “I
don’t feel like a Conservative at the moment… I just
can’t support a government that has so little time
for the arts.” His threat of civil disobedience was
in “desperation and frustration”, he says, after cul-
ture secretary “Oliver Dowden said to me one day,
‘Unfortunately, the government thinks that thea-
tre is nice to have but not essential.’”
The second lesson is his style of negotiation.
It’s been 50 years since the first major staging of
a musical by Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice,
Jesus Christ Superstar, on Broadway. In that time,
he has become accustomed to getting his way, or
at least making clear what that way is. “When he
sees his vision going off beam, his way of getting
it back on beam is getting pretty cross about it,”
says Madeleine, his third wife. “Quiet negotiation
doesn’t really happen.”
The lyricist Don Black recalled Lloyd Webber
saying 15 minutes before a performance of Sunset
Boulevard: “I think I have time for one more tan-
trum.”LloydWebberhimselfadmittedtobehaving
“appallinglyintheatres becauseof bad sound more
times than I care to mention”. He is often known as
“ALW”, and he is certainly an ALW unto himself.
Actors, producers, investors, politicians – he con-
fronts them all.
The single-mindedness that has made Lloyd
Webber successful has also often made him
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021
unloved. He sees himself as a champion for the
industry, but the industry doesn’t always feel
the same way. It’s not just the critics, who have
frequently looked down on his work, despite its
echoes of Puccini and Prokofiev. “He’s been rich
and successful for 50 years. That does something
to a man,” says one fellow theatre entrepreneur.
“He’s greedy.”
Thanks to The Book of Mormon and Hamilton,
musicals are cool again. Lloyd Webber, the man
who globalised the musical, is not. His music is a
rite of passage for school players, the accompa-
niment to car trips, the ultimate family theatre
treat. Yet powerful male artist-cum-visionaries are
now sometimes viewed with suspicion. And like
the poet John Betjeman, whom he admires, Lloyd
Webber has upheld a vision of traditional English-
ness, and in the process become both a snob and a
target for snobs.
Which brings us to Theatre Royal Drury Lane,
Britain’s oldest theatre site still in use. Lloyd
Webber bought it in 2000; he has now spent £60m
to revive it. You could buy several other West End
theatres for that amount of money. This is a project
so grand, so permanent, that it will give him a vic-
tory over the naysayers.
“I don’t think anybody’s done anything of this
scale to a theatre of this kind for years and years,”
he says. “It’s been a labour of love.” The only recent
comparison is the £50m renovation of the Royal
Opera House, financed by 15 philanthropists.
When we meet in early July, Drury Lane’s resto-
ration is almost finished. Lloyd Webber peers past
me into the saloon. “I’m just seeing what things I
don’t like.” His eyes alight on a sofa in a side room,
with its back to the doorway. “That sofa makes a
barrier. It makes me say, I don’t want to go back
there.” A compromise is soon found.
For all his professional bluntness, Lloyd Webber
can be emotionally evasive. When we are seated in
what used to be a fire escape and is now the down-
stairs brasserie,I ask whetherhe hopes DruryLane
will endure even more than his shows. “It’s not
really for me…” he begins, coyly.
Madeleine, his partner in the theatre restora-
tion, is blunter: “In years to come, when people say,
‘What on earth did Andrew Lloyd Webber do with
all his money?’ This is where it is.”
Lloyd Webber first came to Drury Lane in 1958,
aged nine, to see The Tempest with John Gielgud; he
was back months later for My Fair Lady. Music had
already entered his life: his mother thrust a violin
on to him aged three. His father was a composer.
Lloyd Webber wrote his first musical at 13. He
dropped out of Oxford, where he had won a history
‘I’m not having bloody hoardings…
When you’ve got a theatre that’s a work of art,
you want the theatre to be the star’
scholarship, to collaborate with the slightly older
Rice. They wrote a song for Elvis Presley. Lloyd
Webber collaborated with Plácido Domingo. His
musichasbeensungbyBarbraStreisand,Madonna
and Taylor Swift. He won an Oscar (for Evita) and
had, in Phantom, one of the highest-earning enter-
tainment productions of all time. He even wrote
the UK a decent Eurovision song in 2009.
His most memorable songs – Joseph and the
Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’s “Any Dream Will
Do”, Cats’ “Memory”, Evita’s “Don’t Cry for Me
Argentina” – are overtly sentimental. But is the
man? “I probably would err on the side of being a
romantic, even though I might be a rock romantic,”
he insists. Madeleine offers an alibi: “Any of those
[RichardRodgers]musicals,Iwon’tsitnexttohim,
because he just cries all the way through them!”
His love for theatre has been rivalled by his love
for architecture and art, especially pre-Raphaelite
painting. He bought up country homes and West
End theatres, and made them his own.
A playhouse has stood at Drury Lane since 1663.
LloydWebber’saimistoreturn ittothegrandeurof
its 1812 reincarnation, with less social segregation.
It is a statement of marble pillars and stone floors,
a rebuttal to those who see the West End as synon-
ymous with cramped seats and collapsing ceilings.
Although conceived well before the pandemic, it
could become a Phoenix-like symbol of theatre-
land’s rebirth.
Lloyd Webber says he wants to “prove wrong”
twopeople,nomatterthateachhasbeendeadforat
least two decades. The first is Robert Nesbitt, once
the king of variety, who said that Drury Lane was
cold. “[Nesbitt said:] ‘When you’ve half an audi-
ence, the London Palladium is half full, but The
Lane is half empty’. It’s stayed with me all my life.”
The other is Gielgud, who, Lloyd Webber says,
lamentedonthelastnightofTheTempestthatDrury
LanehadbeenlosttoUSmusicals.The1812theatre
was declared on its opening night by Lord Byron to
be a “shrine for Shakespeare”. Lloyd Webber says
he’d “love to see Shakespeare come back here”
– although paradoxically he’s renting it out to Dis-
ney’s Frozen the Musical for the foreseeable future.
He has commissioned and installed eight large oil
paintings by the artist Maria Kreyn representing
Shakespeare plays. He has also included a young
version of himself in a new grisaille artwork along-
side his hero, Rodgers.
Storerooms have been ripped out, staircases
unboxed. “With a Greek Revival building, the one
thingyoudon’twanttodoistoclutterit,”saysLloyd
Webber. Neon advertising has been torn from the
facadeand relocatedtothebuildingnextdoor.“I’m
not having bloody hoardings… When you’ve got ▶
29
 ◀ a theatre that’s an architectural work of art,
you want the theatre to be the star and the show
will follow from that.”
The stage has been extended and the circle has
beenbroughtforward,increasingtheintimacy.The
circle itself can be dismantled in sections, allowing
the theatre to play in the round. “It could be done in
theoryin24hours,let’sgiveit48.”Hetakesalookat
thefixturesinstalledforFrozen,andgrimacesatthe
clutter. “It’s very inconsiderate putting on a show.”
I mention that Cameron Mackintosh, his collab-
orator-cum-rival, once added a few extra boxes to
the Gielgud theatre to maximise revenues. “You
don’t want to do that,” he says. “I’ve gone the other
way.” Drury Lane’s capacity has slimmed from
2,250 to just under 1,900.
The project has faced various disasters since
work began in January 2019: a contractor going
bust, a radiator flooding the dressing room, a
warehouse fire destroying furniture. Restaurateur
Richard Caring agreed a 15-year concession but
pulled out after the pandemic. At least “it hasn’t
burnt down yet like [Richard Brinsley] Sheri-
dan”, says Lloyd Webber, referring to the fire that
destroyed the theatre in 1809, when the famous
playwright co-owned it.
He insists that he ploughs all the profits from
his seven theatres, which sold 2.3 million tickets
a year pre-pandemic, back into the buildings. (His
separate licensing business paid him £14m in roy-
alties in 2019 and made £7m in pre-tax profit.) The
refurb has been financed through a mix of borrow-
ing and his own funds (after personal experience,
he is contemptuous of private equity). Kreyn, the
artist, likens him to a Renaissance patron.
“We’re lucky in the West End that three of the
four major theatre owners are private,” says Lloyd
Webber. “There’s me, there’s Cameron Mackintosh
and there’s Nica Burns and Max Weitzenhoffer.
I don’t regard the theatre as a business – I regard
theatre ownership as custodianship.”
In fact, his and Madeleine’s desire is for more
than a theatre, with afternoon teas served upstairs,
lunches downstairs and a Cecil Beaton-themed bar
by the foyer. Compare that to Broadway, he says,
where “the theatres have tiny front of houses. Even
thequeuesforthemen’sloosaresuchthattheysend
a lot of people across the road to the café opposite.”
At Drury Lane, people should be lured in
whether or not they have tickets, whether or not
there is even a show in the main auditorium. “The
most important thing is that this place is alive,
and people feel that they can just come here and
that there’s always new work going on. Otherwise,
it’s just a great big mausoleum in the middle of
Covent Garden.”
Right: Lloyd Webber
with his wife, Madeleine:
‘With a Greek Revival
building, the last
thing you want to
do is clutter it’
30
‘Do we mention the other lowest of the low
moments?’ says Madeleine. ‘The Cats film.
I’ve never seen Andrew so upset’
L
loyd Webber has history with
pandemics. In 1979, his then
father-in-law – who he sus-
pects may have worked for MI6
– came to him very depressed.
“He said [a new disease] was
goingto wipeoutahugeamount
of the world’s population…
He said it will manifest itself in America, proba-
bly through San Francisco or something... I didn’t
think anything of it, apart from, oh God, he’s obvi-
ously having a rough day.”
Madeleinesaysshededucedfromatextmessage
fromaseniorscientistinFebruary2020thatthings
were bad with Covid. Despite his connections,
LloydWebber feels neglectedby those in power.He
was anti-Brexit, Madeleine was pro. Perhaps min-
isters think theatre is a leftwing preserve? “They
hadawonderfulopportunitytoshowtheToriesdid
care about theatre... But they’ve sure as hell made
it a leftwing preserve forever.”
He says his theatres have been losing £1m a
month, and that any further delays would lead him
to close Cinderella in London “and do it somewhere
else”, costing the UK tax revenues. Les Misérables,
Cats and Phantom have each “grossed 10 times what
[the biggest-grossing movie] Avatar’s done… Chan-
cellorsdon’tseethis.‘Oh,wemustsubsidisethefilm
industry’.Theatre’sirrelevant–anicethingtohave.
“My economic lesson to Rishi [Sunak] would be:
why do you think the then head of Disney [Michael
Eisner] came to see me about setting up a thea-
tre division? Answer: because he realised he could
make far more money exploiting The Lion King in
the theatre than he ever could out of an animated
film in the cinema.”
Yet such hits don’t come easily. Lloyd Web-
ber’s last new one was arguably Phantom in 1986.
A great musical is a symbiosis of score, lyrics, story
and choreography. “It doesn’t happen that often.
It hasn’t happened to me that often,” he says, giving
the last word its royal pronunciation, closer to how
most English people say “orphan”.
He lost two years to prostate cancer and two
to back problems. At one point, illness prevented
him from going and looking at buildings: “That’s
my therapy – looking at architecture.” He contem-
plated Dignitas. “When you’re living with pain all
the time, you do get very low.” He was struggling
when Love Never Dies opened in 2010, and on mor-
phine through the musical Stephen Ward in 2013.
“Luckily, I’m fine now. School of Rock was the first
show I’d been really on top of for a long time.”
“Do we mention the other lowest of the low
moments?” says Madeleine. “The Cats film. I’ve
never seen Andrew so upset.” He had sold the rights
and was sidelined. “I’ve never known anything so
ghastly. It was disgraceful, the whole process,” he
says. “I actually wrote a letter to the head of Univer-
sal Pictures, Donna Langley, which I didn’t even get
[a response to] and I said, ‘This will be a car crash
beyond belief if you don’t listen to me.’”
HeblamesthedirectorTomHooper.“You’vegot
to have somebody who understands the rhythm of
music… I had right of approval over some of the
musical elements. But they really rode roughshod
over everything.” Things were so bad that he had to
console himself by buying a Havanese puppy.
Meanwhile Madeleine, 15 years younger than
him with a background running a horse-breeding
business, had become “a bit frustrated on some of
thesubjectshewaswritingabout,whichwereinher-
ently uncommercial”. She pursued Paramount
for the theatre rights to the film School of Rock.
“Ithought,we’vejustgottogethimbacktohisreally
fun days of Joseph and some of the rock operas.”
Cinderella is in that vein, with a modern twist
that the fairy godmother is now an evil plastic sur-
geon. “I’m always restless and looking for projects.
I really want to get on and do the next one,” says
Lloyd Webber. “I don’t really analyse. I just like
writingmusicals.”AfterHamilton,couldBritishhis-
torygenerateamusical?“Well,Ididn’tclockHenry
VIII, which others have done extremely well… I’ve
always thought historical musicals are tricky.”
Lloyd Webber’s work does not have an obvious
moral like Hamilton. He dramatised parts of the
Bible, but is an agnostic. He lionised Eva Perón,
but is a conservative. Perhaps the real lesson of his
work is his desire to have it all, over and over again.
Hecravestheapprovalthatonlyapackedaudience
can bestow.
Some lean into it: Madeleine joined her husband
on the Drury Lane renovation because if you don’t
work with him, you might not see him. Some tire of
it: Rice is temperamentally different. “We haven’t
written together since 1976,” says Lloyd Webber.
“I’d have loved to do another show with him. But
I think now we have really moved on.” He assures
me their relationship is “perfectly fine”, which, it
occurs to me, is not a standard he would normally
regard as acceptable.
Even sitting in his own theatre, with his own
selection of overtures playing in the background,
Lloyd Webbercannot quite seem to relax. He has to
dash to another of his seven theatres for a meeting.
Itwas Ricewho described a 17-year-old LloydWeb-
ber’s contradictions: “awkward and confident…
innovative and derivative… generous and self-
centred”. You could add one more to the mix:
Andrew Lloyd Webber is desperate to leave a good
impression, but only on his own terms.
Henry Mance is the FT’s chief features writer
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021
FT.COM/MAGAZINE AUGUST 10/11 2019 31
 ‘THIS IS
ABOUT
TELLING
THEIR
STORIES
WITH
FOOD’

In Leeds, six young women who fled

Eritrea as children recreate the recipes
they grew up with. Polly Russell joins
the feast and hears how Habesha
cooking connects them with their
culture. Photography by Maryam Wahid

Above: Elsa Asmara

holds a dish of her
gomen besiga – meat
and spinach stew –
with injera flatbreads

32 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021 33

 W
inta Habtestion
is standing
in front of a
large food
processor at
the Herd Farm
activity centre near Leeds in the
north of England. She has tipped
a mound of hilbet, a paste made
from water mixed with ground
fava beans and lentils, into the
bowl and is wrestling with the
processor’s paddle. The mixer
shows no sign of life so Habtestion,
a slight young woman with a
gentle demeanour and carefully
braided hair, yanks the bowl
out, plonks it down on the work
table and starts beating the thick,
gloopy mixture with her hand.
Tenacity and resourcefulness,
minor and major, mark out
Habtestion and the five other
young Eritrean women who are
spending the day at Herd Farm.
Each of them left home as a child
and, after years of travel and trial,
entered the UK as unaccompanied
minors seeking asylum.
Aged 18 to 20, the women
are taking part in a food project
co-conceived by Louise Sidibe, their
social worker and the city’s lead for
unaccompanied asylum-seeking
children, and the British Library.
“Food is just food,” she says. “It’s
like a window into their world, a
way we can find out about young
people, and it’s non-judgmental.”
The UN has estimated that
10 per cent of Eritrea’s population
of 6.5 million are now refugees
because of the repressive regime of
dictator Isaias Afwerki. Prospects
for children in Eritrea are grim,
with limited education, forced
and termless military service
and restricted employment
prospects. The young women
gathered at Herd Farm represent
a small part of a steady number
of children fleeing the country.
Over three Saturdays in May,
Habtestion and her companions
cooked Habesha recipes, a cuisine
common to Eritrea and Ethiopia.
These have been used to create a
cookery book in partnership with
the British Library to share with
carers and friends. They also made
screenprint tablecloths and worked
with a photographer to improve
their food photography skills.
The deeper purpose, though,
stems from Sidibe’s compassion and
fierce ambition for these women.
“I’ve worked in this field for 15
years and seen young people arrive
really traumatised, and then we see
them through a journey to become
valuable citizens, getting jobs
and going to university,” she says.
34
“When we got the opportunity to
work with the library I just thought
this was amazing – an opportunity
to show them and others they
are part of British society.”
Early in the project, the
library’s curator for Ethiopic
and Ethiopian collections, Eyob ‘There is no democracy.
Derillo, beams in from London.
Since all the young women You don’t have enough
involved are Orthodox Christians,
Derillo shows them 17th-century to live on, you can be
manuscripts that shed light on
the dietary rules they follow
conscripted into the
today, including regular fasting. army and if you complain
Thahmina Begum, a freelance you will be killed’
community worker, is the project’s
co-ordinator. Wearing funky MONALISA SHISHAY, BELOW
checked trousers, black-and-white
brogues and a dark green headscarf,
she sets up a table for screenprinting
while we wait for the women to
arrive. “Because of social distancing
we can only have three in the
kitchen at once, so half the group
will cook in the morning and make
lunch while the others do art and
photography and then they’ll swap,”
she says, like someone accustomed
to creating order out of chaos.
Like Sidibe, Begum has an
underlying vision for the food
project: “The key thing is for these
women to be recognised for who
they are and for their voices to be
amplified. This project is about
celebrating their skills and telling
their stories through food.”
Habtestion and her friend
Elsa Asmara arrive first, bringing
traditional costumes and bags of
injera, a fermented sour bread like
a pancake, made with teff flour,
which they have bought from
a shop catering to the Eritrean
community in Leeds. They have
been firm friends ever since they
were placed at the same foster
home three years ago. “People
think we’re twins. Well, sisters
at least!” laughs Asmara.
The remaining four women –
Monalisa Shishay, Millen Asmerom,
Winta Gebrekidan and Ruta
Yemane – soon arrive, followed
by Sidibe, a slight, elegant woman
wearing a black and yellow print
dress and a huge smile. To judge
by their squeals of delight, the
women plainly adore her. She
Clockwise from above:
is fierce, funny and committed. Monalisa Shishay; Millen
“I am really passionate about Asmerom and Winta
the rights and opportunities for Gebrekidan; Winta Habtestion
young people,” says Sidibe. “I am prepares hilbet, a creamy
a bit of a rogue and if something dip made from ground
doesn’t fit into the box, we have to fava beans and lentils
change the box for young people.”
Habtestion, Asmara and Shishay
are first in the kitchen. They chop
onions, chilli and garlic with a speed
and precision a professional ▶
35

Clockwise from above:
Ruta Yemane at work
in the kitchen; Asmara
wearing traditional
Habesha kemis; doro
wat, a rich chicken
stew served with
boiled egg; hilbet dip
Facing page:
Winta Habtestion
◀ chef would be proud to possess.
Chisel-cheeked Shishay fills a
plastic bowl with onions, grabs
a knife and board, sits down at a
table and sets about her work. She
is cooking zigni, a rich stew made
with small pieces of meat, berbere
(mixed spice), tomatoes and vast
amounts of onion. For half a kilo
of lamb, she works through 12
onions, never once shedding a tear.
Zigni reminds Shishay of her
home in Eritrea, of her mother
and five siblings, whom she left
when she was 13. “I learnt to cook
watching my mum, sitting at the
table with my sisters and brother,”
she says. “She is such a good cook,
so hardworking and she never
shows us when she’s upset.”
There is plenty to be upset
about. Shishay’s father left the
family home just before Shishay,
and his whereabouts are unknown.
36
Two of her siblings are in different
refugee camps in Ethiopia.
Shishay, meanwhile, is now safely
living with carers she describes
unprompted as “the best”, yet
thousands of miles away in the UK.
“There is no democracy in my
country,” she says. “You don’t
have enough to live on, you can be
conscripted into the army and if
you complain you will be killed.”
Before arriving in the UK, Shishay
spent months in Libya, held in
an illegal warehouse containing
hundreds of other refugees, waiting
in limbo for money to fund her
journey onwards. “I was 15 in Libya
and I was very sick and stressed,”
she says quietly. “I lost lots of
people there, lots of friends died
because of the food, the conditions.”
By contrast, zigni conjures good
memories of home. “When my
mum cooked zigni, we would sit
with her and watch. This is my
traditional food I grew up with so
I love it,” she says, scraping the
mountain of chopped tomatoes
into a bowl and moving towards
the stove to start cooking.
Asmara, meanwhile, is at
the cooker, stirring a large pan
containing gomen besiga (lamb
and spinach stew) and dictating
the recipe to Begum who has
the challenging role of being the
project’s recipe-scribe. The air is
heady with the scent of ginger, garlic
and spice, and lunch, though only
an hour away, feels a long way off.
Asmara also grew up in a village
and has memories of cooking
with her mum. “I started washing
onions and cooking with her when
I was little until she trusted me
on my own,” she says. She too left
home aged 13 and embarked on
a journey that took her through
Ethiopia, Sudan, Libya, Italy,
Switzerland and France. It ended
when she hid in a lorry that by
chance was driven to Leeds.
It is almost impossible to imagine
how a person of 13 can make the
journey from Eritrea to Europe
on their own. “They leave because
they are scared and they just set off
moving wherever they can, as fast
as they can,” explains Carl Pollard,
Asmara and Habtestion’s former
foster carer. “We have this belief
here that migrants think, ‘Let’s go
to the UK because it’s good.’ But
they are running away, they are
not running towards something…
For every girl that turns up here,
there are hundreds who didn’t have
the luck to get somewhere safe.”
Today, Asmara radiates energy
and warmth, chatting and laughing
with the others while confidently
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021
‘It reminds me of being
home and all eating
together. It’s happy but
also sad’
ELSA ASMARA, LEFT
wielding kitchen utensils. She
has, she tells me, a face that is
always smiling. “When I have to
look serious for ID cards they say,
‘Please stop laughing,’ but I’m not
laughing, I just have a happy face.”
This is a far cry from the girl
who arrived in the UK in the back
of a lorry three years ago. “I’ll
never forget the day she came and
sat on my sofa with a carrier bag
with all her belongings, making
herself small, without eye contact
and hardly any English,” recalls
Sharon Pearson, Pollard’s partner,
choking up. “The change in Elsa
since she arrived is incredible.
She’s an incredibly strong
person, a really smart cookie.”
Asmara and Habtestion are
now studying health and social
care at college and have moved
into flats of their own round the
corner from their former foster
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021
home. “They’ve kept their keys,”
explains Pollard. “They are part
of the family so they can always
come home, just like our kids.”
It is close to one o’clock when
Asmara tips the gomen besiga
into a chafing dish to keep warm.
There is a final scramble to get
everything ready. Habtestion’s
hilbet has been hand-beaten
to a smooth, creamy paste.
“This is really hard to make,
that’s why I chose it,” she says
laughing and rubbing her
aching arm. “Even women in
our country don’t know how to
make this because it’s so hard.”
She adds copious amounts of
garlic and chilli to the mixture.
It is served alongside a thick,
rich, spiced tomato sauce called
silsee. “This is my favourite food,
we eat it when we’re fasting,” she
says, tipping the mixtures into
two bowls. (When the women
fast for religious reasons, they are
prohibited from eating meat, dairy
and eggs, so they make vegan
versions of this dish.) “It reminds
me of being home and all eating
together. It’s happy but also sad.”
Across the kitchen Shishay
adds her zigni to the tray with
a garnish of green chillies and
Asmara unwraps the bag of
injera and places them on a
serving plate. Following the
young women’s lead, we cover
the bottom of a plate with injera,
then let Begum portion out the
gomen besiga, zigni, hilbet and
the doro wat, a rich chicken stew
made with berbere, butter and
tomato served with boiled egg.
Quiet descends on the room
for the first time all day. We
eat with our hands, using the
injera to scoop up the food and
mop any sauces. The food tastes
familiar and unexpected, made
of memories and love, rich with
spice and the deep intensity
of onion, garlic and chilli.
Second helpings served,
the women disappear. When
they return, their T-shirts,
headscarves, trainers and jeans
have been replaced by their
Habesha kemis, traditional formal
dress worn for celebrations.
Watching them laughing and
posing for the photographer,
I am reminded of something
Shishay said earlier: “I want to do
this project to tell people about
my culture so they know about
Eritrea, because if people don’t
know what it is, it’s like the world
doesn’t know who I am.”
Polly Russell is a curator at the
British Library; @PollyRussell1
37
 Old bread, sardine

C
and tomato salad
ut this page out and take Light lunch for two or
1 — Toast the bread or
it with you on your next fancy starter for four
leave it in the sunshine or
self-catering holiday: this an oven to dry out.
• 4 thick slices of
is rented-accommodation
old bread
cooking at its best. It’s a • 2 large plum tomatoes 2 — Halve the two plum
dish to whip up when the • 1 large garlic clove, tomatoes and grate them
“fully equipped kitchen” peeled and minced on a coarse grater (cut
advertised online turns out • 2 tbs olive oil side first) over a bowl until
• Salt and freshly ground you are left with the skin
to be a wonky pan, tiny chopping board, blunt in your hand. Discard the
black pepper
Ikea knife, impossibly small oven and a hob that skin and mix the minced
• 250g selection of fancy
seems to work but never heats up. It is a dish for tomatoes, small or large garlic and one tablespoon
when the cupboard consists of strawberry jam, • ½ small red onion or of the olive oil into the
peanut butter and three pots of black pepper left shallot, peeled and tomatoes. Season with a
by previous incumbents. thinly sliced little salt and pepper and
mix to combine.
No complicated shopping is required. You • 2 tins of sardines in
olive oil
aren’t going to buy anything that needs a fridge 3 — Spoon the grated
• A couple of sprigs of
or excessive handling. And you needn’t venture fresh oregano or tomato all over the
further than the shop on the beach that sells lilos, ½ tsp dried oregano toasted bread and
bug repellent and local booze, as well as bread then sit the slices of
in various stages of freshness, tinned goods, bread back in the bowl
containing the remains
sprouting onions and tomatoes on the verge of of the tomato purée.
turning into sauce.
It is the perfect dish to make after a day 4 — Cut the remaining
of sunshine. Whether you’ve been scaling a fancy tomatoes into all
mountain or lying beside a pool, the holiday sun shapes and sizes and

Easy does it whets the appetite for something salty and filling mix with the thin slices of
red onion. Add the
but not too rich. It also stifles the will to spend oregano leaves from a
any meaningful time in the kitchen. You want the couple of sprigs (or the
nourishment in as few moves as possible. dry oregano) and top the
If you are somewhere hot, just slice the bread soaked bread slices.
and leave it out to dry. If not, simply toast it
5 — Add the tinned
quickly. If your temporary kitchen has a grater,
sardines and the
that’s great. But you can also crush the tomatoes remaining olive oil.
with your hands to make the pulp before soaking Sprinkle some more salt
the bread in it. If there are herbs growing outside, and pepper and mix to
lucky you. If not, you will still have a delicious combine.
little meal in no time. The chunks of tomatoey
bread make a sweet base, while the sardines plus
more tomatoes give the salad body and taste. The
onions and garlic bring sharpness and crunch.
Fortunately, this also works splendidly at
home, especially if you splurge on fancy sardines,
designer tomatoes and sourdough from some
chi-chi bakery. Even if you aren’t poolside, you
deserve holiday food.

Photography by Patricia Niven By Itamar Srulovich. Recipe by Sarit Packer

38 FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021

 Jancis
Robinson
Wine
The right altitude
N
ayan Gowda, 50, is a
winemaking gun for
hire. Although he took to
making wine only in his
mid-thirties, after working as a
chef at The Ivy in Covent Garden,
he has already made it in Australia,
New Zealand, Germany, France,
Hungary, Ukraine, South Africa,
Norway, Chile, Kazakhstan and,
most recently, Bolivia, where he
has created two vintages during
the pandemic and overcome some
of the biggest challenges any wine
producer could face.
Bolivia is home to some of the
world’s highest vineyards, but
the most remarkable aspect of
Gowda’s work is not altitude but the
200-year-old vines themselves.
In the Cinti Valley, they do not grow
in neat rows on trellises, nor as low
bushes, but clamber, undisciplined,
up trees.
The most essential bit of vineyard
equipment is a ladder. Vines, whose
natural instinct is to climb, could
easily grow six metres tall without
humans poised to interfere. The
main job during the pruning season,
when first the trees and then the
vines must be trimmed, is to cut
down the highest growth so that the
part of the vine that produces fruit
is reachable – by ladder.
Gowda was recruited by María
José Granier, who belongs to a
family of more conventional wine
producers in Bolivia. She was
alerted to the unique qualities of the
arboreal vines of the Cinti Valley
by Dutch Master of Wine Cees
van Casteren who, pre-pandemic,
visited Bolivia frequently as
part of a Dutch government
development programme.
The Granier family make the sort
of big, beefy reds that have been
favoured by Bolivian wine drinkers
historically. Yet María José wanted
to produce something different.
The idea of rescuing heritage vines
and providing a livelihood for local
subsistence farmers also appealed
to her and she was determined that
her and Gowda’s wines, called Jardin
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021
As imagined by Leon Edler
Oculto (hidden garden), should
be pitched at a premium price, the
equivalent of $15 a bottle in Bolivia,
10 times the cost of the most basic
wine available.
These tree-climbing vines come
in three varieties, adding to the 54
that Gowda had previously vinified.
The Moscatel is the same as the
Muscat of Alexandria grown in
southern Spain, while the two red
wine grapes are Negra Criolla (the
same as Chile’s País and California’s
Mission) and a local speciality
named after the Bolivian town of
Vischoqueña. Until the arrival of
Granier and Gowda, these grapes
were primarily distilled into the
country’s favourite spirit singani
or disappeared into blends with
the international varieties that
are planted in Bolivia’s more
conventional vineyards, many of
them near the town of Tarija.
At 2,300m, the Cinti valley
is twice as high as the European
mainland’s highest vineyard in
the Alps. To get there involves a
beautiful but perilous drive across
two mountain ranges from the
Tarija winery that has loaned space
to the Jardin Oculto project. Just as
the grapes for Gowda’s first vintage
in 2020 reached peak ripeness,
there were storms so fierce that the
country shut down. Harvest had to
be delayed. While Gowda feels the
2020 grapes were a little riper than
ideal, the three 2020 wines I tasted
were genuinely thrilling.
Perhaps the most unusual was
a still white wine made from the
local Vischoqueña grape. They had
meant to make a sparkling wine,
though realised it would have to
be a little less fizzy than sparkling
wines drunk elsewhere. That’s
because, at altitudes such as the
capital La Paz’s 3,640m, wine would
gush inconveniently unless they
reduced the pressure in the bottle.
They also understood they would
have to leave the sediment in the
bottle because, in Bolivia, there is
none of the disgorging equipment
that leaves champagne crystal clear.
But with Covid, the border with
‘Bolivia has some of the Argentina was closed and their
world’s highest vineyards, order of the sturdy bottles needed
for sparkling wine never arrived.
but the most remarkable It meant Gowda had to turn his base
aspect of Gowda’s work is wine for fizz into a still wine. And
the 200-year-old vines’ he seems to have achieved this with
aplomb. The 2020 Blanc de Noirs
has proved so popular with Bolivia’s
better-heeled wine drinkers that
he has made it again in 2021. “I just
have to remember what I did. We’re
learning every time we open a
bottle,” he confesses. He describes
himself as “addicted to learning”,
which is what drew him to Bolivia.
The other two 2020s comprise a
white from the Moscatel grapes ▶
41
 ◀ and a very pale, dry Negra
Criolla. The Moscatel is a pungent,
dry white with some Burgundian
features (María José instructed
Gowda that it “shouldn’t taste like
a Moscatel”). The Negra Criolla
is much more sophisticated than
many of the new-wave light reds
produced today from its cousin
País on the other side of the Andes
in Chile. I picked up a pepper note
in this wine and apparently this
particular vineyard (if vineyard
is the right word for such a
wilderness) is full of the pink-
peppercorn trees known as Schinus
molle. One of the two additional
vineyards they sourced fruit from
this year is called Los Membrillos
because it is full of wild quince trees,
which have a predictable effect on
the grape juice.
They made only 5,000 bottles in
2020 – with some difficulty because
Gowda dislocated his shoulder –
and have not increased production
in 2021 since they haven’t yet been
able to develop export markets.
They are also stymied by a chronic
lack of equipment. All Gowda had
access to while winemaking was
a hydrometer, a thermometer, a
pump, two hoses and a few small
tanks. The wines can boast of being
unfined and unfiltered for entirely
practical reasons. The sort of
analysis required for international
trade is virtually impossible as there
are no accredited labs in Bolivia
and, besides, any chemicals needed
are tightly controlled because, I am
told, they are often assumed to be
used for drug production. Sampling
the grapes, vital in deciding when
42
to pick, is hampered by the wide
variation in height off the ground.
The sugar content of grapes across
the bunches from low to high can
vary by up to 2 per cent in terms of
potential alcohol levels.
Temperature control is a luxury
that Gowda doesn’t have. But the
truck transporting the grapes
parks overnight in the mountains
at 3,400m, so that fruit picked in
temperatures of 25C arrives having
been cooled naturally to 8C.
Throughout his Bolivian
adventures Gowda has kept his
social media followers enthralled
with tales of sneaking into the
winery during the pandemic
to check on the progress of his
ferments, equipment shortages,
electricity outages and quarantines.
His recent return to the UK from
Bolivia entailed 10 days in the
Gatwick Four Points hotel, where he
savoured a care package sent by one
of his more avid online followers.
What next? He really wanted
to help out a friend with a
vineyard in Bhutan which is
at about the same elevation as
Cinti Valley, but winemaking
is on hold there because of the
pandemic. Meanwhile, he has
persuaded his doctor parents to
return to India from Derbyshire.
Perhaps he could offer a helping
hand to the developing Indian
wine industry?
Tasting notes on the wines,
available only in Bolivia for now, on
Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com.
More columns at ft.com/
jancis-robinson
MY CLASSIC COCKTAIL
ANDREW MACLEOD
Italian Hugo –
Elderflower and
Prosecco Spritz
• 30ml gin
• 30ml elderflower
cordial
• 50ml prosecco
• 60ml soda
• 6 large mint leaves
1 – Fill your large
Aperol-style wine
glass with ice and add
in all the ingredients
in the glass (including
The Hugo, with its alluring mix of mint leaves).
elderflower, fresh mint and prosecco,
is summer heaven in a glass. It evokes 2 – Stir gently with a
idyllic memories of warm evenings bar spoon, using an
when I was travelling around Italy before up-and-down motion,
launching Emilia’s. and add more ice
It was the idea of an Italian barman if necessary.
named Roland Gruber. He almost called it
Otto, but Hugo is a better fit for an aperitivo
with a sparkling crispness like a breeze on
a hot night.
Gruber created it while working in the
tiny village of Naturno in South Tyrol. It was
in the mid-2000s and he was looking for an
alternative to the ubiquitous Aperol Spritz.
But then the Hugo isn’t just a drink. It is now
part of the Italian aperitivo, the hour before
dinner when the sun sets and the chatter
rises. Salute!
DREAMSTIME
Andrew Macleod is restaurateur/founder of
Emilia’s Crafted Pasta
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021
 Restaurants
Tim Hayward
NOBLE ROT’S SOHO OUTPOST (LEFT) AND WHOLE ROAST CHICKEN WITH RICE PILAF. PHOTOGRAPHY BY JUAN TRUJILLO ANDRADES
Noble Rot Soho,
London
P
eople kept asking me where
I really wanted to go when
things reopened. I demurred
a fair bit in what I felt was
quite a professional way, but I have
to be honest. It was always going to
be Noble Rot. The original in Lamb’s
Conduit Street was a firm favourite,
and The Gay Hussar is such an
important building in restaurant
history that diners over 65 can
probably use their National Trust
membership card there.
It was right at the beginning of
lockdown when the Noble Rot team
announced they were taking over
the Hussar, and I had to watch,
gnawing my nails to the bone and
hoping they’d survive the exercise of
renovation when all their customers
were banged up in isolation and
Soho looked as lively as Chernobyl.
So going for lunch at the new
Noble Rot Soho was my reward
to myself for getting through the
weirdest year of a restaurant critic’s
life. I invited one of my favourite
dining partners, skipped breakfast
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021
and pushed through the swing
doors like a washed-up leftie Liberal
gunslinger, lookin’ fer trouble with
the Fleet Street Mob and Ol’ Ma
Bloomsbury an’ her Publishin’ Gals.
You have to love what they’ve
done to the place. It’s got better loos
now and a modern kitchen, but
everything else, though it’s been
stripped back to the brickwork, has
been rebuilt so much in the spirit of
Old Soho, it feels like it hasn’t been
touched for about a century.
We started with choux buns,
piped full of duck liver parfait, with
a sweet glaze and a pool of Tokaji
jelly. I could’ve proclaimed this was
the best thing to have passed my lips
in 18 months. I could’ve pointed out
the witty reference to the Hussar’s
Hungarian heritage. Instead, I let
my eyes roll into the back of my
head and visualised a three-foot-
high, savoury croquembouche.
Palourde clams were steamed
in a bouillon of sherry and speck.
Executive chef Stephen Harris
(The Sportsman) and head chef
Alex Jackson (ex-Sardine) have the
refinement to know that a broth
for shellfish should have the same
salinity as seawater. They have the
taste to add the richness of pork and
the blinding genius to add a handful
of sweet fresh peas. Occasionally, a
pea would come pleasingly to rest
on the flesh of a clam like a viridian
pearl. (Yes, I know. Fortunately, it’s
a hundred metres from the offices of
Private Eye, so I was able to file that
one to Pseuds Corner in person.)
Robert Carrier’s pâté aux herbes
is a right little belter. It’s based on
finely ground pork but flavoured
with great handfuls of herbs and
dyed green with spinach. This would
have looked great in four-colour
separations in House Beautiful
magazine in 1978, but these days
we’re a little less used to green pork.
Actually, it tastes as light, fresh and
fragrant as Nigel Slater’s window
box and delicate enough to pile
thick on toasted sourdough.
There’s a good choice of mains,
but I’d have had to hand in my gun
and my foodie badge if I hadn’t gone
for the big performance piece of
whole roast chicken, fresh morels
and vin jaune. It serves two or three
people, so you can see why I’d
radioed for backup. The bird is juicy
throughout, with skin crisped, and
dismembered into a cream, wine
and mushroom sauce. There is a
pilaf of preternaturally airy basmati
rice to help you deal with this
unction, because, apparently, it’s
rude to ask for it in a pint mug.
Don’t, whatever you do, eat
all the chicken, because you
need space for dessert. “Ricotta
panna cotta” sounds suspiciously
tautologous, but the texture can
only be described as dreamy, and
‘It tastes as light, fresh and a topping of cherries poached in
fragrant as Nigel Slater’s pastis can’t really be described at
window box and delicate all. You could probably sing it if you
were one of the Vatican’s remaining
enough to pile thick on secret castrati. If you find yourself
toasted sourdough’ emotionally unprepared for that
degree of sublimity, there’s always
túrós palacsinta, a cheese-stuffed
Hungarian pancake with a sour
cherry sauce that will have you
chanting traditional drinking songs
and swigging pálinka from a flagon.
I’ve left it to the end to remind
you that Noble Rot, as the name
suggests, is principally about wine.
They have a staggering cellar way
beyond my pay grade to comment
Noble Rot Soho on. What I can say is that if the food
2 Greek Street, is this good, the wine must be out of
London W1D 4NB
this world.
noblerot.co.uk
Starters £4-£14
Mains £25-£35 tim.hayward@ft.com
Dessert £8-£12 @TimHayward
43
 Games

A Round on the Links The Crossword

by James Walton No 548. Set by Aldhelm
5. What phrase was 1 2 3 4 5 6
coined in 1943 by
Edgar Peers, referring 7 00 00 00 00 00 00 8 00 9
to British universities
founded in the 10 11
19th and early 20th
00 00 00
centuries?
6. In computing, 12 13
what does the “M”
00 00 00 00 00 00 00
stand for in both RAM
and ROM (below)?
14 15 00 16
7. What common pub
name comes from 00 00 00 00 17 00 00 00 00

the emblem used by

18 19 00 20 21
Richard II (left)?
8. What did James 00 00 00 00 22 00 00 00

Joyce describe
as “snotgreen” 23 24 25
and Homer as
00 00 00 00 00 00 00
“wine-dark”?
9. Vin Diesel plays 26 27
Dominic Toretto
00 00 00 00 00 00 00
in which movie
All the answers here 1799 bestseller Travels franchise?
are linked in some way. in the Interior Districts 28
10. Which 1793
Once you’ve spotted of Africa?
invention by
the connection, any The Across clues are straightforward, while the Down clues are cryptic.
3. Paul Morel is Eli Whitney
you didn’t know the
the main character transformed the
first time around ACROSS DOWN 15 Relieved duodenal
in which novel by economy of the
should become easier. 1 Hairless (4, 2, 1, 4) 2 Leaders of Afghan troubles (8)
DH Lawrence? American South?
10 Entity (5) state industries are 17 Bolt for jet
4. What measured 11 Large dog (5, 4) not from Afghanistan, climbing before
1. In the human body,
3/4in x 7/8in, had 12 Lover of good food for example (5) having landed (4, 4)
what’s the common
two star-like designs and drink (3, 6) 3 Really liking being 19 This evening before
name for the axilla?
at the top and 13 Obliterate (5) an investigator (7) 10, roughly (7)
2. Which Scottish became valid for use 14 Salon (6) 4 Sailing around, I 21 Bargained and
explorer wrote the on May 6 1840? 16 Wicked person, missed out indicator (6) held out without one
malefactor (4-4) 5 I have to cater getting two grand (7)
18 Explanation, differently, at first, to 22 Currency fixed
answer (8) be imaginative (8) after exercise gets
The Picture Round 20 Excitement (6) 6 Cereal, most top marks (6)
by James Walton 23 Two (5) of loaf and meat 25 Presses for clubs’
24 Young bird (9) dished out (7) restraint (5)
Who or what do these pictures add up to? 26 Protective 7 Balancing of
kitchen item (4, 5) battalions is tricky Solution to Crossword No 547
27 Impression, without head of S W I T C H A I G N O R A N T

appearance (5) infantry (13) W

E
A
R
D
E
A
C
U
T
A
A
A
P
A
R
O
O
A
F
P
U
A
S
L
I
A
O
E
N
GETTY IMAGES; DREAMSTIME

28 Equalise, 8 French leader takes E A N A T A A A D A L A B A D

+ =
T A T T E R S A S T E R I L E
homogenise (11) aeroplane initially to P A I A R A T A A A N A A A R
E A C H A C O S M E T I C A A
Italy for pasta (8) A A A A A A N A A A A A H A I
A A L I Q U E U R S A F A W N
9 Maybe forecaster C A A A U A S A I A P A C A F

encountered odd bits R

O
E
A
G
O
R
A
O
T
U
A
P
R
A
A
T
A
E
A
A
T
C
A
H
A
E
A
R
A

of rain and goes left C

U
O
A
N
E
D
A
I
N
T
A
I
M
O
A
N
A
A
A
I
N
N
A
C
H
U
A
R
E
Answers page 8 too, perhaps (13) S H R U G G E D A H A Z A R D

FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021 45

 GILLIAN TETT
PARTING SHOT
I adore Venice
without the crowds.
Is it here to stay?
A
few days ago, I took a
break during a work trip
to Venice and went jogging
through the city’s rabbit
warren of narrow alleyways.
When I got to the famous arched
Rialto Bridge, spanning the Grand
Canal, I could barely believe my
luck at the apparently clear route
ahead. On my previous work trip
to Venice a decade ago, I’d found
it hard to run here as the streets
were crammed with people.
No wonder: this tiny city received
an estimated 25 million visitors in
2019. But in spring 2020 the tourists
disappeared. And while they are
now slowly returning – with last
weekend’s G20 meeting intended
to show that Venice is ready for
business – those Byzantine alleys
are still mainly empty.
For now, the city looks like an
enchanted movie set. Even the
Piazza San Marco feels peaceful
(although the church bells pealed
out after Italy beat England in
the Euro 2020 final on Sunday).
But this quieter version of
Venice also raises a question
that will resonate widely over
the months ahead: what does a
return to “normal” really mean?
Should a post-pandemic world
go back to its pre-Covid state, or
retain some aspects of how life
has been transformed?
I initially recoiled with horror at
the strictures of Covid-19 lockdown
and craved a return to my pre-
pandemic existence. But as the
months passed, I realised I was not
just adjusting to this new “normal”
but relishing aspects of it (albeit in
a guilty way, since plenty of others
were having a very tough time).
Having experienced life without
constant jet lag and excess social
commitments, I am not sure I want
that old “normal” back in full.
The same issue is playing out
in Venice but with far more
contentious consequences. Before
2020, Venetian residents had
absolutely no idea what it would
be like to live in their beautiful city
without crowds. But the lockdown
46
ILLUSTRATION BY SHONAGH RAE
– which was particularly draconian
here in the spring of last year,
limiting residents to a radius 200m
from their homes – has given them a
taste of something completely new.
In their book, Venice Deserted,
which presents a visual record of
this time, French photographers
Danielle and Luc Carton, who have
lived in the city since 2005, observe,
“The experience was shocking in
a psychological sense… Stepping
outside our house engendered
a curious mix of feelings:
uncontrollable anxiety… and
exceptional moments of serenity.”
The city’s birds were given
complete freedom and the canals
lay empty and mirror-smooth.
Indeed, the lagoon became so
pristine and pollution-free that
octopi and dolphins were spotted
in the Grand Canal.
The experience appears to have
left some Venetians, especially
among the elderly, reluctant to let
the crowds return as before. What
once seemed normal now feels
strange. “During the restrictions,
every major city saw something that
hopefully we’ll only ever see once in
a lifetime – the deserted city,” says
Philippe Donnet, CEO of Generali,
the insurance group headquartered
in Venice. “We shouldn’t forget the
very important lessons it told us
about respecting the environment
and living a balanced life.”
As a result, the city’s leaders are
now putting more emphasis on
ideas that Donnet and others
started tossing around in late 2019,
about making Venice a “world
sustainability capital”. Plans include
diversifying its economic base with
measures to attract artists and tech
entrepreneurs, rather than just
relying on tourism.
The hope is that this could entice
back young families forced out by
the lack of accommodation (with
so much of it lost to tourism). Some
residents want to limit crowds by
charging entry fees, to ensure that
only a small group of high-spending
visitors come. And the Italian
government has just announced
that vessels weighing more than
25,000 tonnes will be barred from
the lagoon from August 1.
In many ways, this is entirely
sensible. Cruise ships appear
to have caused environmental
damage to Venice, and the city
The lagoon became is under so much pressure from
so pristine and pollution- climate change – and visitors –
that Unesco was threatening to
free that octopi and classify it as an endangered site
dolphins were spotted unless it took action.
in the Grand Canal But the rub is that many local
workers and businesses depend
on those tourists and want them
to return in as large numbers
as possible, particularly after
losing so much income last year.
Indeed, the mayor of Venice, Luigi
Brugnaro, is so keen to rebuild the
economy that back in April he was
openly supporting the return of
cruise ships to the city, telling the Il
Fatto Quotidiano newspaper that he
thought it was “a good solution for a
few years, until the government
decides to build a port outside the
lagoon – which I think is absurd”.
So, the fight will almost certainly
intensify. What this story shows is
that when a community suddenly
experiences something that was
previously unimaginable, it is not
that simple to recreate the previous
“normality”, least of all when the
interests of elites and non-elites
are not aligned. Personally, I adore
the peace of Venice and wish it could
be permanent. But not if that peace
comes at others’ expense.
gillian.tett@ft.com @gilliantett
FT.COM/MAGAZINE JULY 17/18 2021