Hedge Funds & Private Equity
Keir Starmer, whose new government is under pressure on the economic front (bond markets are rebelling and Chancellor Rachel Reeves has come under more criticism) has broken cover on the U.K.’s AI strategy with an op-ed in the Financial Times, and public commentary. Some elements are a restatement of election…
I may well lose half of my readers with the next sentence but, whilst many of you were struggling in sub-zero temperatures I spent much of last week in the Caribbean. As the plane passed south over azure sea and white beaches I thought to myself that we were not…
While the US elections may be top of mind as you read this, there was another recent election that appears barely to have troubled the headlines. Last week, Japan announced a surprise snap election in which popular discontent with the governing LDP party following a widespread corruption scandal, twinned with…
A headline in last week’s Guardian caught my eye. It read ‘No-one will save you’ and detailed the bubbling awakening of a volcano near Grindavik in the south of Iceland. Granted that we were in the area, we drove down to have a look. My family didn’t share my ‘lava-lust’…
Saxony and Thuringia comprise 6mn people, only 8% of the German total, but elections in both states (Brandenburg is on the 22nd September) have, as we have highlighted in recent notes, heaped pressure on Olaf Scholz’ government. For the traffic light coalition, the results were awful – the government garnered…
September is my favorite month. There’s always a sense of energy, of dynamism, new beginnings rooted in memories of going back to school and university. For the markets, though, it’s September, not April, that is the cruelest month. The “September Effect” has always fascinated me, both for its persistence and…
The many consultations and Elysée visits (former presidents Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy visited early this week) that Emmanuel Macron is orchestrating are now becoming something of a public joke, and this continues to erode the credibility of the president. At the time of writing (Thursday) our view is that…
One month after the new Labour government has taken power, the country has been engulfed in riots – in the north and south – that are ostensibly driven by far-right groups, and at the same time Muslim youths in cities like Bolton. The riots were triggered by the murder of…
France and Paris in particular are enjoying the Olympics, which is turning out to be a triumph for France in terms of medals won and Paris as a city. Whether this translates into a boon for president Macron is much less clear – we ultimately think not. We expect few…
If I uttered the word plenum, you might think I was a surgeon or arcane barrister, and not a casual observer of Chinese politics. The ‘Plenum’ is held seven times during the five yearly policy making cycle that aims to set the long-term direction of the development of China by…
