Aurelia Butler

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The world’s largest publicly listed oil tanker company is refusing new contracts to sail into the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz following Israel’s attack on Iran, its chief executive has said.The decision by Lars Barstad of Frontline is an early sign of the widespread disruption to global shipping patterns expected as a result of the outbreak of conflict early on Friday.The concerns are focused on movements through the Hormuz Strait, the narrow stretch of water between Iran and Oman that links the Gulf and the Arabian Sea.About a quarter of global oil supplies and a third of liquefied natural gas production move through the strait. It is also an important conduit for container ships going to and from the regional hub at Jebel Ali in Dubai.Barstad said that “extremely few” owners, including Frontline, were accepting charters to enter the region.“We’re not contracting to go into the Gulf,” Barstad said. “That’s not happening now.”Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.Other maritime security experts agreed shipowners were reluctant to use the vulnerable waterway.Barstad added that the company had multiple vessels already in the Gulf that would sail out through Hormuz, with tightened security and in convoys with international naval escorts.But he said: “Trade is going to become more inefficient and, of course, security has a price.”Iran could cause significant disruption to shipping sailing through the strait. Tehran could also encourage Yemen’s Houthis, whom it backs, to step up attacks on international shipping using the Red Sea.In April 2024, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards seized the MSC Aries near the Strait of Hormuz and forced the crew to sail it into Iranian waters. The container ship was owned by Gortal Shipping, a finance company affiliated with Zodiac Maritime, a company controlled by Israel’s Ofer family. Houthi attacks, starting in late 2023, have forced many large shipping companies to avoid the normal Asia to Europe route via the Suez Canal and instead sail round the Cape of Good Hope.Insurance brokers on Friday said that rates on cargoes shipped through the Red Sea had jumped 20 per cent.The sharp rise in the cost of cover against drone and missile strikes, piracy and related perils in the Red Sea reflected an increased threat of attacks on commercial vessels by Houthi rebels, said a broker familiar with the market. Israel earlier this week struck targets in the port city of Hodeidah, in Houthi-controlled Yemen.Peter Sand, chief analyst at supply chain information company Xeneta, said the growing conflict made it less likely container ships would make a large-scale return to their normal route.Container shipping companies — which transport mostly manufactured goods — have been particularly reluctant to sail through the Red Sea.Sand added that there would be “inevitable disruption and port congestion” if shipping lines decided to stop using Jebel Ali as a hub and started using less well-equipped ports outside the Gulf.Iran might impose a “de facto closure” of the Strait of Hormuz, Sand said.However, Barstad did not believe that Iran would shut the waterway entirely due to the country’s reliance on oil revenues. “They have no interest in disrupting their own piggy bank,” Barstad said.Iran might, however, have trouble producing its normal oil volumes following the attack, he added. That might force oil importers dependent on Iran — such as China — to look elsewhere for supplies, to the benefit of mainstream tanker operators such as Frontline.To avoid international sanctions, Iran’s exports move on a “dark fleet” of ships not compliant with international shipping rules. However, the buyers would need to source crude from compliant sources transported on compliant ships, Barstad said.Frontline’s shares rose 7.5 per cent in New York on Friday.This article has been amended after publication to clarify the ownership of the MSC Aries More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Lower energy prices have been a rare bright spot for US consumers dealing with heightened inflation. After Israel’s strike on Iranian targets, that may well reverse. The Iran shock presents two risks to the price of oil, which rose 8 per cent to $74 a barrel on Friday morning, a sizeable jump for a single day. The first is that, in the context of the rising hostilities, Iran’s current crude exports, which have already been softening, could fall further. That, in itself, would not be insurmountable. Iranian oil exports amounted to 1.7mn barrels a day in May according to Bernstein, a broker, less than 2 per cent of global consumption. More meaningfully, Opec — of which Iran is a founding member — has already announced a series of monthly production increases totalling almost 960,000 barrels a day to the end of June. Analysts expect that Opec will gradually release a total of 2.2mn barrels a day back into the market by reversing previous cuts. These are rough numbers, and timing matters. But seen in this light, a reduction of Iranian exports would merely rebalance an oversupplied market. A reasonable assumption might then be that oil could return to somewhere between the $75 a barrel at which it started 2025 and its $80 a barrel average for 2024, dependent on how long the disruption lasts. The second and much bigger risk to oil supply would be disruption to tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. A fifth of global oil consumption flows through this narrow waterway flanked by Iran, as well as Qatari exports of liquefied natural gas. That would be an entirely different kettle of fish, though its impact is hard to assess. JPMorgan analysts, for reference, estimate that in a severe outcome, oil prices could surge as high as $130 a barrel. That would spell trouble for consumers — American ones, in particular. Falling petrol prices have helped keep a lid on US inflation, which rose 2.4 per cent in the 12 months to the end of May. Should oil reach $120 a barrel, that alone would add 1.7 percentage points to consumer price inflation, JPMorgan estimates. These are what ifs, for now. Iran has never closed off the Strait of Hormuz, despite repeated threats. It would be practically hard to do so. Israel has good reason to spare the country’s oil infrastructure, given US President Donald Trump’s interest in low oil prices. In early US trading on Friday, stocks of oil producers such as ExxonMobil rose, but consumer-related companies such as retailer Target and coffee chain Starbucks were down only slightly.But more uncertainty will surely creep into prices and forecasts. Oil powers the global economy, and higher inflation makes it hard for central banks to cut interest rates. Growth expectations have already been thwacked. If this new conflict drives oil prices higher, it would hit them even harder. [email protected] More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The writer is president of Queens’ College, Cambridge, and an adviser to Allianz and GramercyIsrael’s latest attack on Iran constitutes a bad shock for the global economy at an already fragile time. It raises risks for both growth and inflation, just as the flexibility in the fiscal and monetary tools that can be deployed in response has become limited. How serious the adverse effects prove to be will depend on the magnitude and duration of Israel’s unilateral attack and the retaliation that it triggers. But given the already high level of uncertainty, markets are responding negatively.Oil prices are trading more than 5 per cent higher to about $70 a barrel. That is still down from January peaks of around $82 a barrel and investors will be keen to see how the Opec+ responds. But prices have been going up in recent weeks, intensifying the stagflationary winds blowing through the global economy. Stock markets have slipped, pricing in even higher uncertainty regarding economic activity, with increased risk that consumers and producers become even more hesitant.Earlier this month, the World Bank projected a slowdown in global growth to 2.3 per cent in 2025, nearly half a percentage point lower than the rate expected at the start of the year. While it did not expect a global recession, it warned that, if forecasts for the next two years materialise, average global growth in the first seven years of the 2020s will be the slowest of any decade since the 1960s. And this was assuming an average oil price of $66 a barrel for 2025 and $61 next year amid a broader decline in commodity prices. Central banks will now need to intensify their vigilance regarding inflationary pressures that have yet to be confidently contained. This makes it less likely that earlier and larger interest rate cuts will be triggered in response to any slowdown. Meanwhile, any fiscal response would come at a time of still-high interest rates and great investor sensitivity to deficits and debt. Budgets risk further pressures from lower tax collection and higher spending claims.Such potential negative economic and financial effects are particularly relevant for the UK. This week’s Spending Review has highlighted not only the importance of economic growth but also the risk that already pressured households face a meaningful chance of heavier taxation in the October budget. This offsets the benefit from further Bank of England rate cuts, which are now even less certain.  The global economy also faces the risk of negative indirect effects. With time, the uncertainty arising from this new upheaval in the Middle East may well be seen as adding to the ongoing erosion of the US-led global economic order — further energising the forces of economic fragmentation. This will in turn encourage countries to trust less in the collective mechanisms of stability, pushing them instead to pursue measures to ensure greater self-resilience within their own borders. Ultimately, the efficiency of the global economy will be undermined.It will also not go unnoticed that the two most significant global financial benchmarks, US Treasuries and the dollar, had a relatively muted initial response to the Israeli attack. Both rallied a little but neither experienced the type of “haven gains” that historical experience would lead us to expect. This also matters longer term.Due to the lengthy influence of the US over the global economy and its long period of economic exceptionalism, much of the rest of the world is “overweight” the dollar and American assets in general. The more the US role at the centre of the global order is diminished, the greater the incentive for countries to reduce this overweight.Whichever way you look at it in terms of economic and financial effects, this new development in the Middle East is bad news at a bad time. It reminds economies and markets that they have to deal with an increasingly unstable set of political and geopolitical factors. And it encourages a gradual migration from the existing economic architecture to one involving greater fragmentation and a higher risk of financial instability. More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Now where were we? In my last Skin in the Game column I said three issues were making me especially nervous at the moment. “Which way the dollar is heading and ditto for inflation and rates globally.”I only covered the first of these, but I recommend reading my lovely colleague Katie Martin this week to understand why all portfolio managers are struggling with the dollar. (I’ve forgiven her for live blogging the Miami underwater joke that got me fired.)So providing total war isn’t about to erupt in the Middle East, it’s on to inflation and bond prices — the latter being the inverse of yields. But hang on a minute, I hear some readers cry. You have written before that “investors needn’t lose sleep over rates”. And the same for inflation.Indeed I have. Let me quickly summarise what I said for those who missed it. Pull up a long-run chart of any equity market and it correlates not a jot with bond yields. Stocks love rising rates as much as falling ones.In theory, why shouldn’t they? The mistake people make when supposing yields up equals stocks down is that they forget that a higher discount rate usually reflects stronger demand and hence revenues need lifting as well.In valuation models the two cancel each other out. Likewise, most income and balance sheet items are real items, therefore inflation shouldn’t change the worth of the company much either, except in nominal terms.But such things are not what I had in mind when I wrote that inflation and bond yields are worrying me. It’s more existential. If the world is fine, with stocks rebounding since April, tariffs yet to feed through to prices, and short-term rates steady, why have gold and bitcoin rallied?I don’t like it. Similarly, the long end of the yield curve in countries from the US and Japan to Germany and Australia — that is, for example the rate at which their governments can borrow money over 30 years — has begun to drift upwards.To me it feels as if investors are saying: “We are fine with the outlook for the global economy as well as for companies and bonds now. It’s just the entire underpinnings of modern capitalism and finance we are concerned about.”Not only is it individuals and institutions who are hoarding such assets they hope will withstand a crisis. Central banks are forklifting a fifth of world’s production of gold into their vaults each year — twice as much as a decade ago.Not everyone is saying armageddonoutofhere, of course. If they were, asset prices would be tanking across the world. And the fact is these fears relate quite specifically, it seems to me, to soaring levels of sovereign debt.For those worried about the solvency of governments, or who reckon fiat money’s time has come, it makes sense to buy gold and bitcoin — even if in the short run you’re bullish on equities or think artificial intelligence will boost productivity.And, of course, everyone with a retirement pot always needs to remember how important it is to factor in inflation when making investment decisions. But what I’m saying is that some investors are clearly preparing for an inflation megabomb. As one analyst I follow recommended this week: “Sixty per cent of your portfolio should be in assets that if they fell on your foot it would hurt. The rest should be in equities.”This is your textbook “end of days” allocation. Lots of real assets such as gold, wine and classic cars — as well as a chunk in equities for the income or in case everything turns out fine after all. You can even get a bruise from a bitcoin wallet if you drop it from high enough.I’m not sure this is the right way to go for most of us, however. For many readers, your biggest asset will be your home. Bricks and mortar are a fabulous hedge against inflation (and state malfunction) as third world residents know too well.What is more, you’re betting against a downward trend in 30-year bond yields that has lasted decades until recently. Sure they have popped in the US as successive administrations lost control of spending. And it’s hard to believe yields in Germany are now 3 per cent. From the summer of 2019 they struggled to be positive for two and half years!Sure, there are reasons why “normalised” yields may be higher than they have been in the recent past — as I wrote a month ago. But for me at least, the strongest forces in the world — demographics, technology and competition — still remain huge dampers on prices.Plus, I have faith that the discipline that bond (and equity) markets bring to government behaviour (as we have already seen with Donald Trump and tariffs) will temper excesses way before they become major crises.What does all this mean for my portfolio? It has done extremely well since April after switching Treasuries into stocks and I am happy running this for a while yet. My chosen equity markets remain cheap on a price-to-book basis and don’t forget that book values — that is balance sheets — rise with inflation too, as do company revenues.The only concern I have, if I’m being logical, is that if governments do start minding their finances and spend less, as I hope above, this will feed through to weaker earnings, all else being equal. Lower deficits equal lower profits, according to the so-called Kalecki-Levy identity in economics.But, frankly, I would have to see pretty firm evidence that politicians have got on top of welfare expenditure before worrying about that happening. There’s more chance my wife reads this and decides to sell her own gold jewellery.  The author is a former portfolio manager. Email: [email protected]; X: @stuartkirk__ More

This article is an on-site version of our Europe Express newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every weekday and fortnightly on Saturday morning. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here, or explore all FT newslettersGood morning. Europe is waking up to a fresh crisis in the Middle East after Israel attacked Iranian military commanders and nuclear sites in a series of air strikes. Tel Aviv says it is trying to stop the Islamic regime’s nuclear programme before it is too late.Meanwhile in Brussels the European Commission’s powerful competition arm is blocking demands to subsidise the production of clean energy technologies, flaring tensions between officials policing state aid and those working on climate and energy.Today, Laura assesses the sorry state of Schengen on its 40th birthday, and our competition correspondent hears a demand for Brussels to use more tools against Chinese online retailers.Checking inEurope’s borderless Schengen area is turning forty this weekend and in the middle of a midlife crisis, writes Laura Dubois.Context: The Schengen agreement was signed on June 14 1985 between Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany, allowing free travel among those countries. The Schengen area now ›includes 29 countries, with Bulgaria and Romania joining most recently.But 11 countries, including founding members Germany, France and the Netherlands, have reinstated checks along their borders in a bid to curb irregular migration and other security threats — some of them renewing them continuously over years.Germany most recently announced it would further intensify controls, rejecting asylum seekers at its border without assessing their claims — something a Berlin court has deemed illegal.Germany’s justice minister Stefanie Hubig yesterday said that the interior ministry would provide a more comprehensive justification for the checks to keep them going. “This has been announced,” she said.But the measures have deeply upset Germany’s neighbours. “Internal border controls disrupt the common cross-border life that has developed over decades . . . we fully support the Schengen agreement and firmly reject internal border checks within the EU,” Luxembourg’s home affairs minister Léon Gloden told the Financial Times. Poland’s Europe minister Adam Szłapka said: “Schengen and the free movement of people . . . it’s one of the greatest achievement of the European Union. And we need to do [everything] to keep it.”Szłapka added that attempts to change the system due to a “political situation” were “always a step in the wrong direction.”Yesterday, EU justice ministers jointly pledged to “defend the unfettered free movement of persons . . . by ensuring that the reintroduction of internal border controls remains a measure of last resort.”It also states that countries should take “all appropriate measures . . . with respect to external border management, secondary movements, migration, the return of those illegally staying” as well as other threats.To further paper over the cracks, Gloden, together with his Polish counterpart and EU commissioners Magnus Brunner and Henna Virkkunen, yesterday held a ceremony in the Luxembourg village of Schengen where the agreement was signed.“Keeping Schengen going and growing is made possible only by building a finely tuned support system with strong police co-operation and effective border protection,” said Brunner, who is responsible for home affairs.But the commission will have to decide how to exactly tune the system, and assess whether the continuous renewal of checks is justified.Chart du jour: Let me staySome content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.Airbnb has blamed “overtourism” in Europe on the hotel industry, responding to criticism that its service is leading to overcrowding in holiday hotspots.Packing it inThe EU should make more aggressive use of its trade defence instruments against Chinese online retailers such as Temu and Shein, as the companies are likely to divert their trade flows away from the US towards Europe, the head of a leading French ecommerce company tells Barbara Moens. Context: The EU is cracking down on low-cost imports from online retailers, for example by suggesting a €2 fee on small packages entering the bloc. More than nine out of 10 packages imported to the EU come from China.The European Commission has previously warned about an increase in the number of unsafe goods available on the EU market, as well as a rise in complaints by European retailers against unfair competition. Now, the uncertainty about US tariffs on Chinese goods is further raising the pressure, said Thomas Métivier, CEO of ecommerce platform Cdiscount.Métivier said that Chinese retailers who shift their focus from the US to Europe “are not playing by the rules” if they flood the market with extremely cheap goods. “When they are shipping products from China with a value that is lower than the cost of shipping, then you don’t need a five-year investigation. There is a clear dumping strategy,” Métivier said. He said this tactic could pose a “big threat for ecommerce but also for brick and mortar retail. We already see it in the fashion industry for example and the reaction must be determined and swift”. The proposed fee on parcels will come too late to stop the current trend, Métivier said. Instead, he urged the commission to use its existing trade defence arsenal and step up anti-dumping and anti-subsidies measures.What to watch today EU home affairs ministers meet in Luxembourg.Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte, officials and business representatives attend Bilderberg conference in Stockholm.Now read theseAntónio Costa: Strengthening EU defence won’t undermine the transatlantic alliance but revitalise US relations, the EU council president writes in the FT.Back on track: Germany is planning to prioritise its faulty railway network in its €500bn infrastructure fund designed to revive its stagnant economy.Art Basel: The FT’s guide to this year’s fair, including interviews with Grażyna Kulczyk and Frida Orupabo, and how to behave at a gallery dinner.Recommended newsletters for you Free Lunch — Your guide to the global economic policy debate. Sign up hereThe State of Britain — Peter Foster’s guide to the UK’s economy, trade and investment in a changing world. Sign up hereAre you enjoying Europe Express? Sign up here to have it delivered straight to your inbox every workday at 7am CET and on Saturdays at noon CET. Do tell us what you think, we love to hear from you: [email protected]. Keep up with the latest European stories @FT Europe More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Back in 1857, the Bank of Austria loaded 10mn ounces of silver on to a train and dispatched it to Hamburg. The reason? The city’s banks were about to collapse, having run out of reserves.So Austria sent that “silver train” to provide liquidity. And 30 years later the French central bank did the same with a boat of gold, during Britain’s Barings crisis.Might such aid be needed again, in a 21st-century dollar form? It is a question now being quietly mulled among European and Asian central bankers, in relation to the once-arcane issue of central bank dollar swap lines. Investors should pay close attention.The reason is that these swap lines have been considered a core pillar of the global financial system in recent decades, since they have enabled major Asian and European central banks to get dollars from the US Federal Reserve in a crisis. This is crucially important because in times of market stress there is usually a “dash for cash” — that is, a scramble for dollars, given the greenback’s role as a reserve currency. However, non-US entities cannot print those dollars, and so may not be able to meet demand. Thus during the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed activated some $583bn in swap lines for non-US central banks, to enable dollars to flow to commercial banks. It did the same during the Eurozone crisis and then provided $450bn during the Covid pandemic in 2020 — a move that quelled financial contagion, according to the Richmond Fed.But doubts are now creeping in about the reliability of that safety net. After all, the administration of US President Donald Trump seems determined to reset the global financial and economic order and to put American interests first. JD Vance, the vice-president, has observed that he “just hate[s] bailing Europe out”. Deals with allies, in other words, no longer seem sacred. Just look at this week’s revelation that the Pentagon is reviewing its submarine pact with the UK and Australia. Fed officials, for their part, vehemently deny that the dollar swaps system could echo this submarine tale. Indeed Jay Powell, Fed chair, stressed its merits during a speech in Chicago in April. But what worries some outside the US is what might happen when Powell leaves in 2026. The Fed currently has permanent dollar swap facilities with five central banks (in the Eurozone, Switzerland, Japan, Britain and Canada) and it previously created temporary facilities for nine others, including Australia, Brazil and Denmark, that have expired.It is unclear whether those latter facilities would be restored in a crunch — and, if so, at what “price”. If the Fed offered swaps to the Danish central bank, say, would Trump demand concessions on Greenland? It is also unclear whether Washington might attach conditions to the permanent swap lines. After all, Scott Bessent, Treasury secretary, views finance, military, trade and tech issues as being deeply entwined.Then there is Congress, which has ultimate authority over the Fed. After the 2008 crisis, there was some bipartisan congressional criticism of the swaps line, which Fed officials mostly quelled by noting that a global financial panic would have hurt America. But this criticism could easily return, particularly given Trump’s protectionist and populist instincts. Hence the need for Europe to ponder that 1857 “silver train”. Last month Luis de Guindos, European Central Bank vice-president, insisted that the ECB remained confident the Fed would retain the swap lines. But it recently emerged that the ECB has asked its banks to report vulnerabilities around their dollar exposures. And an article published by the influential CEPR think-tank has now called for non-US central banks to create a mutual pact to prepare for a worst-case scenario. The idea would be for 14 central banks to use their estimated $1.9tn dollar holdings to extend liquidity to each other, if the Fed retreated, in co-ordination with the Bank for International Settlements. No central banker has publicly backed this idea. But some tell me that many contingency plans are being discussed. And in the meantime, they are quietly taking other defensive steps, such as raising their purchases of gold, and, in the case of smaller countries, cutting swap deals with China.“There is debate about the Kindleberger trap,” one tells me, referring to the economist Charles Kindleberger’s warning that turbulence erupts when a dominant geopolitical power loses the ability or desire to support a reserve currency, without its ascendant rival stepping into the breach. (This is what happened in the interwar years before sterling was replaced by the dollar.) We are emphatically not at such a Kindleberger moment now — and we must hope it never comes. But the key point is this: unless the White House clearly supports Powell’s comments about the need to preserve dollar swap lines, unease will grow. So let us all trust that Bessent, as a financial history buff, recognises this, and acts. If not the price of gold will keep on [email protected] More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.A $35bn US semiconductor industry merger is being delayed by Beijing’s antitrust regulator, after Donald Trump tightened chip export controls against China in a move that exacerbated trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.China’s State Administration for Market Regulation has postponed its approval of the proposed deal between Synopsys, a maker of chip design tools, and engineering software developer Ansys, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.The transaction between the American groups, which has received the blessing of authorities in the US and Europe, had already entered the last stage of SAMR’s approval process and was expected to be completed by the end of this month, said the people.The delay comes as Washington moved to ban chip design software sales by US companies, including Synopsys, to China in late May. That decision has contributed to the complexity of China’s approval process for this deal, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.The person added that approval, while taking longer than expected, could still come through if Synopsys were able to submit solutions that addressed the Chinese regulator’s concerns.However, another person with knowledge of the matter said SAMR’s approval process had recently been prolonged from its original 180-day schedule due to the complexity of the deal itself, rather than being directly linked with the ongoing trade war.On the company’s latest earnings call on May 28, Synopsys chief executive Sassine Ghazi said the company was “working cooperatively and actively negotiating with SAMR to secure China regulatory clearance”, and that it expected to close the deal “in the first half of this year”.The deal agreement includes a January 15 2026 “drop dead clause”, according to company filings.Synopsys declined to comment. Ansys did not respond to a request for comment. A call made to SAMR outside regular working hours was not answered.The move comes amid US-China trade talks. This week, Trump said the two sides had reached an agreement in London to reinstate the trade war truce reached in Geneva in May, when the US and China significantly cut the high level of tariffs they had imposed on each other.A senior White House official said this week that Trump could ease controls on technology exports to China if Beijing agreed to speed up shipments of rare earths.There have also been signs of a potential loosening of the US ban on selling chip design tools. Synopsys, which earlier stopped all sales to Chinese clients, has restarted selling intellectual property and hardware, while so-called electronic design automation-related software tools are still restricted, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.Silicon Valley-based Synopsys’s tools and intellectual property are used by chipmakers including Nvidia and Intel to help design and test their processors.The semiconductor designer has grown in recent years as Big Tech companies including Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon strive to create more of their own chips, in particular to handle artificial intelligence systems in the cloud.Ansys, which is based in Pennsylvania and has its origins in structural analysis tools, makes engineering simulation software used in industries from cars and construction to healthcare and defence.Additional reporting by Michael Acton in San Francisco and Ivan Levingston in London More

Canada is fast-tracking development of a critical minerals reserve over indigenous opposition to generate much-needed revenue in response to US President Donald Trump’s devastating tariffs.Trump is a “wake-up call” for the country to kick start its economy and developing the Ring of Fire” project in the far north of Ontario is “a top priority”, the province’s premier Doug Ford told the Financial Times. Ring of Fire “has more critical minerals than anywhere else in the world”, Ford said. “Our goal is to get things going in 24 months and seeing progress, building roads, and getting the transportation up there.”The deposit, about 1,000km north of Toronto, was discovered in 2008 and covers roughly 5,000 square kilometres. Named for its crescent shape and geological formation it contains vast quantities of minerals, including nickel, copper and platinum elements. But its location on lands belonging to First Nations tribes, as well as the huge costs and environmental risks involved in developing the region have delayed its progress.Indigenous groups, along with environmental and civil liberties organisations, fear the provincial government is using the tariff threat as a pretext for pushing through the project without proper consultation. Indigenous groups fear the province is using the US tariff threat as a pretext for pushing through the project without proper consultation More