Aurelia Butler

Russia is returning some troops to their bases after military exercises were completed, the defence ministry said on Tuesday, signalling some de-escalation of the military build-up on Ukraine’s eastern border.European equities and US stock futures rose while the oil price fell on news that units from Russia’s southern and western military districts were heading back to base following the completion of drills.“The units of the southern and western military districts, which have completed their tasks, have already started loading on to rail and road transport and will start moving to their military garrisons today. Individual units will march on their own as part of military columns,” said Igor Konashenkov, defence ministry spokesman. Yesterday, the US had damped hopes that Moscow wanted to find a diplomatic route out of the Ukraine crisis.German chancellor Olaf Scholz, who is due to speak with Russian president Vladimir Putin today after meeting Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday, stressed that Ukraine’s Nato membership was “not on the agenda”, a potential attempt to assuage Moscow’s security concerns. Scholz should go into the meeting with clear goals and messages, writes our editorial board.News in-depth: US intelligence has shared fresh claims of a Moscow coup plot for Ukraine. Global Insight: Neighbouring Poland has begun mending fences with Washington and Brussels over its judicial reforms and clampdown on independent media.Share your thoughts on Ukraine-Russia with me at [email protected]. They may be featured in a future edition of the newsletter. Thanks for reading FirstFT Americas — YaseminFive more stories in the news1. Buyout groups’ pay ‘dwarfs’ investment bankers Top private equity groups set aside more than twice as much to pay each employee last month — $2mn including benefits — than leading investment banks, according to calculations by the Financial Times, underscoring a shift towards the less regulated corner of Wall Street.“It’s a different landscape than five or 10 years ago, when the banks were rocking and rolling” — Alan Johnson, Johnson Associates2. Donald Trump’s accountant says financial statements should ‘no longer be relied upon’ The US general counsel of Mazars has told the Trump Organization it no longer stood behind a decade of financial statements it helped prepare for the former president. The letter was included in a court filing by the New York attorney-general Letitia James.3. TikTok poaches Big Tech content moderators The short-form video app owned by China’s ByteDance has poached hundreds of content moderators in Europe from outsourcing companies that serve social media rivals such as Facebook, as it seeks to tackle harmful content.More on social media: Texas is suing Facebook parent Meta for billions of dollars, accusing it of harvesting and exploiting citizens’ biometric data through its since-shut facial recognition system without proper consent.4. Warren Buffett bought stake in Activision weeks before Microsoft deal Berkshire Hathaway purchased a nearly $1bn stake in Activision Blizzard in the fourth quarter of 2021, weeks before the video game maker agreed to sell itself to Microsoft for $75bn. The investment stood out in a quarter in which the sprawling industrials conglomerate made relatively minor adjustments to its holdings.5. Glencore sets aside $1.5bn to settle UK, US and Brazil probes Glencore expects to resolve bribery and corruption investigations in the three countries this year and has set aside $1.5bn to cover potential fines and costs. News of the provision came as the London-listed miner and commodity trader announced record earnings and said it would return $4bn to shareholders.Coronavirus digestTop US banking regulators flagged mounting vulnerabilities across a number of sectors hardest hit by the pandemic, warning that risks associated with the leveraged loan market are still “high”.US growth and stimulus measures drove record remittances to Mexico and northern Central American countries last year, rising more than 25 per cent.The Canadian province of Ontario will end its proof of inoculation requirement at public venues, while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has invoked emergency powers to quell anti-vaccine requirement protests.Hong Kong will set aside up to 10,000 hotel rooms to isolate Covid-19 patients as medical facilities get overwhelmed. French spirits maker Pernod Ricard has asked top executives to temporarily relocate outside the city as authorities tighten restrictions.Almost £1.4bn of cheap debt issued by the Bank of England to help big UK companies survive has not been repaid, with the scheme to close next month.The day aheadEconomic data US releases the producer price index for January, which is projected to have notched another large monthly gain. The Senate banking committee is expected to vote on Federal Reserve nominees.Corporate earnings Accommodation specialist Airbnb, games platform Roblox and entertainment group ViacomCBS report quarterly results. Dubai trade talks Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, will speak with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates, about doubling bilateral trade on the sidelines of the Expo 2020 world fair.What else we’re reading Democratic donors cross party lines Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger received donations from thousands of grassroots supporters who helped fund Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, according to FT analysis. The data reveal how Democrats are willing to back Republican lawmakers that have broken with Donald Trump over the January 6 riots.Emerging markets: all risk and few rewards? The difference between the pace of growth in developing and advanced economies is set to narrow to its lowest level this century, raising a problem for emerging market investors who seek greater yields and markedly quicker growth. Is it still worth it?

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Why the infancy of NFTs may last a long time Measured in financial terms, the market looks big: about $24bn worth of non-fungible tokens have been traded to date, according to Cryptoslam.io. Yet when you count users instead of dollars, the NFT world is tiny, writes the FT’s global tech correspondent Tim Bradshaw.You can’t hide from the jerks at work Never mind hybrid versus working from home, the real issue is how you feel about the people you will have to spend time with. Are co-workers: a) great because you can bounce ideas as you head to a well-ventilated, sanitised bar for drinks? b) an inevitability to be tolerated? Or c) total jerks? French election polls The country will vote over two rounds in April on whether to give Emmanuel Macron a second five-year term or entrust a different candidate with the presidency, in an unpredictable election that could mark a shift to the right in French politics. View our tracker here.FoodFood is both personal and universal, so River Café owner Ruth Rogers does not have to work hard to get her celebrity subjects to open up on her podcast River Café Table 4 for conversations that are intimate, revealing and real. Read Fiona Sturges’ review here.

Ruth Rogers, chef and owner of the River Café’ More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House will announce on Tuesday a new task force to promote use of construction materials with lower lifecycle emissions as it works to speed U.S. government purchases of greener products.The move comes after President Joe Biden said in December that the government, which buys goods and services worth more than $650 billion each year, planned to cut its emissions by 65% by 2030, on the path to net zero emissions by 2050.The multi-agency “Buy Clean Task Force” is being set up to help “create markets for low carbon materials,” by the Council on Environmental Quality and White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy, an administration official told reporters.It will recommend ways to boost federal purchases of clean building materials and identify materials, such as steel and concrete, as well as pollutants to prioritise for consideration in federal government purchases.Construction is a significant source of global C02 emissions. Production of cement, the main ingredient of concrete, accounted for 7% of global CO2 emissions in 2019, the International Energy Agency estimates.The General Services Administration, the government’s landlord, will issue information requests on Tuesday focused on concrete and asphalt as it writes national low-carbon standards for Land Port of Entry projects.The Transportation Department will also unveil new efforts to boost use of low-carbon materials in federal projects.In his December executive order https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/12/08/executive-order-on-catalyzing-clean-energy-industries-and-jobs-through-federal-sustainability, Biden said the government, as the nation’s “single largest land owner, energy consumer and employer,” can transform “how we build, buy and manage electricity, vehicles, buildings and other operations to be clean and sustainable.”He also aims to end government purchases of gas-powered vehicles by 2035. The federal government will seek to consume electricity only from carbon-free and non-polluting sources on a net annual basis by 2030.The White House urged the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) this month to reconsider a plan to buy a new multibillion-dollar fleet of primarily gasoline-powered delivery vehicles.The agency has said it does not plan to buy significantly more EVs without additional government funding. More

US producer prices are expected to have notched another large monthly gain, reinforcing the Federal Reserve’s case to more rapidly remove the policy accommodation it has provided since the early days of the pandemic. The producer price index, tracking the prices that businesses receive for their goods and services, is projected to have jumped 0.5 per cent in January, more than double the monthly pace registered the previous period, according to economists polled by Bloomberg.That is scheduled to translate to an annual increase of 9.1 per cent, a decline from December’s 9.7 per cent surge but still historically elevated. Last year was the largest calendar-year increase in wholesale inflation since the data were first compiled in 2010.The data will be published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at 8:30am Eastern Time on Tuesday. Once volatile items such as food and energy are stripped out, so-called core producer prices are expected to have increased at a more moderate clip of 0.4 per cent between December and January, or 7.8 per cent on a year-over-year basis. In December, those prices were 0.5 per cent higher month-on-month, or 8.3 per cent higher compared to the same time last year.The new data come on the heels of an alarming inflation report, which last week showed US consumer prices climbing at the fastest annual pace in 40 years, at 7.5 per cent. High inflation has been an obstacle for President Joe Biden’s economic agenda as well as the Fed.Investors have increased bets that the central bank will respond forcefully in an attempt to tame inflation, with some speculating at one point the Fed would convene an unscheduled meeting to raise interest rates prior to the next planned gathering in mid-March. However, the Fed is highly unlikely to make such a move given it typically reserves emergency adjustments for acute crises.An increasing number of Wall Street economists have also pencilled in a half-point interest rate rise next month, although market pricing suggests traders broadly expect the central bank to stick to its typical cadence and deliver roughly seven quarter-point increases this year.Fed officials appear split on how exactly to proceed after March, with Mary Daly, president of the San Francisco branch, on Sunday advocating for the central bank to be “measured” in its approach. James Bullard, president of the St Louis Fed and a voting member on the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, on Sunday reiterated his call for a more rapid withdrawal of policy support and backed a 1 percentage point increase in the federal funds rate by July. The Fed has maintained its benchmark interest rate at a range of 0 to 0.25 per cent since 2020. More

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The accounting firm that handled Donald Trump’s company’s financial statements dropped it as a client and said it could no longer stand behind a decade of statements, a court filing showed on Monday.Mazars USA, in a Feb. 9 letter made public on Monday, told the Trump Organization, the former president’s New York-based real estate business, that its financial statements for 2011 through 2020 should no longer be relied on.The disclosure was made as part of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil investigation into the Trump Organization, which could result in financial penalties. That probe partially overlaps a criminal investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney, which James joined in May, into the company’s practices.Mazars said it had based its conclusion on a January filing by the New York attorney general, its own investigation and information from internal and external sources. “While we have not concluded that the various financial statements, as a whole, contain material discrepancies, based upon the totality of the circumstances we believe our advice to you to no longer rely upon those financial statements is appropriate,” Mazars said in the letter addressed to the chief legal officer at the Trump Organization, Alan Garten.In the letter, filed in New York state court, Mazars said that it had “performed its work in accordance with professional standards.”The accounting firm also said it would no longer work for the Trump Organization. New York state’s attorney general has accused the Trump Organization of repeatedly misrepresenting the value of its assets to obtain financial benefits.A Trump Organization spokesperson said in a statement the company is “disappointed that Mazars has chosen to part ways.” But the spokesperson added the letter confirms that “Mazars’ work was performed in accordance with all applicable accounting standards and principles” and that the statements of financial condition “do not contain any material discrepancies.” The New York attorney general filed the Mazars letter in support of its efforts to compel the production of outstanding documents from Trump and his company as well as testimony by him and two of his adult children, Donald Trump Jr. And Ivanka Trump.In a memorandum also filed on Monday, the attorney general noted media reports that Trump had destroyed documents covered by the Presidential Records Act and wants him to supply a sworn statement on whether the files produced for her probe are complete and how they may have been destroyed and by whom.Trump has decried the probe as political. In Monday’s filing, James’ office said the accounting firm’s statement and actions further supported the legitimacy of the investigation.James has been investigating whether the Trumps inflated real estate values to obtain bank loans, and reduced values to lower tax bills. In one example, she said Trump’s annual financial statements said an apartment he personally owned in Trump Tower was 30,000 square feet(2,787 square meters), when it was in fact a third that size.Neither Trump nor his children have been accused of criminal wrongdoing. More