Australia’s competition commissioner is suing clothing retailer Lorna Jane over claims that its “anti-virus activewear” protected wearers against Covid-19. The legal action, which was lodged in Australia’s Federal Court on Monday, relates to claims made by Lorna Jane in July about its “groundbreaking technology LJ Shield”. Treating leggings, sports bras and other Lorna Jane products
Investing
Finding relief for student loan debt becomes even more pressing if you’re one of the millions who have lost their job—or are earning less—because of the pandemic. Here’s some good news: It’s easier than ever to get payment relief for student debt right now, no matter what type of loan you have. We’ll explain the
US lawmakers have reached a deal on a nearly $900bn economic stimulus package that includes more relief for small businesses and direct payments to American families suffering in the coronavirus pandemic. The deal — the second largest economic relief bill in US history after the $2.2tn Cares Act in March — breaks months of deadlock
Jude Webber Mexican business leaders hope this week to reach a deal with health authorities that would allow them to buy doses of Covid-19 vaccines in addition to those already ordered by the government to administer to their staff. Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has guaranteed free, universal access to Covid vaccines and the
If you borrowed money to pay for school, your first question might be how best to pay off your student loans. The short answer is that there’s no magic bullet, but there are definitely things you can do to make paying back education debt easier. Student loan debt reached an all-time high of 1.54 trillion
A growing number of EU countries including Germany, Italy, Belgium, Austria and the Netherlands moved over the weekend to halt travel from the UK because of its sharp rise in coronavirus cases, caused in part by a more infectious new strain. Germany, Italy and the Netherlands announced on Sunday that they were stopping flights from
The chief executive of Allianz, Europe’s largest insurance company, has called for stricter regulation of the areas where technology meets finance in the wake of the Wirecard scandal. Oliver Bäte said in an interview with the Financial Times that this year’s collapse of the German payments company, which at one point was Europe’s largest fintech,
After 10 years of continuous growth, world auto production saw a significant decline in 2019 with global production decreasing more than 5% for the year. In 2019, manufacturers produced approximately 92 million vehicles worldwide, including 67 million cars and 25 million commercial vehicles. The decline in automobile production continued well into 2020 as manufacturing shutdowns
India has recorded 10m Covid-19 cases, the second country after the US to reach the grim landmark, underscoring how strict containment measures have failed to stop the virus rampaging across its population of 1.4bn. The world’s second most populous nation achieved the unwanted record on Saturday after notching 25,000 cases daily over the past week,
Low interest rates have been a challenge for savers in much of Europe and the US ever since the financial crisis, tempting many to seek out investments that promise high returns. The natural desire to make money can blind investors to risk — or encourage them to put their savings into products that are not
In the 2019/2020 crop year, global sugar production was approximately 166.18 million metric tons, with 182 million metric tons expected for 2020/2021. Approximately 80% of the world’s sugar is produced from sugar cane in tropical and subtropical climates. The remaining 20% comes from sugar beets, which are grown mostly in the temperate zones of
Donald Trump has sought to play down the severity of a sweeping cyber attack on the US government and companies, one day after his own secretary of state said the “very significant effort” could be traced back to Russian actors. On Saturday morning, Mr Trump took to Twitter to claim the hack was “far greater
Lawmakers sparred over Republican plans to curb the Federal Reserve’s crisis lending powers over the weekend, as talks on a $900bn economic relief package came down to the line ahead of a Sunday night funding deadline. Members of Congress had originally set themselves a deadline of the end of the working week to strike a
For John Rogers, becoming a highly acclaimed investment manager is the realization of an ambition carried since he was a teenager. He started his own investment management firm within a few years of graduating from college. His firm, Ariel Investments, managed $11.4 billion as of December 2020, and its mutual fund has earned investors a
Signage stands on the building of a Public Storage facility in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Friday, April 21, 2017. David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images Elliott Associates sees a runway beneath Public Storage, and is pushing the self-storage company to boost investment and catch up to industry peers’ growth. The company is
The US will miss its target of distributing enough coronavirus vaccine to inoculate 20m people by the end of the year, a senior Washington official admitted on Saturday, after underestimating how long it would take to check doses once they were produced. Gustave Perna, the army officer in charge of the federal government’s vaccine distribution
Dave Brubeck Quartet’s 1959 Time Out album, which includes the popular hit “Take Five”, was the first jazz album to sell more than a million copies. It featured Paul Desmond’s airy, blues-laced alto sax pirouetting over Brubeck’s insistent piano vamps, and it still sounds cool today. At the time, the album’s odd-metre time signatures and
What Is a Real Estate Derivative? Real estate derivatives, sometimes referred to as property derivatives, are instruments that allow investors to gain exposure to the real estate asset class without having to actually own buildings. Instead, they replace the real property with the performance of a real estate return index. In this way, investors can invest
Robinhood’s quest to disrupt Wall Street with its sleek app and promise to “democratise” trading has itself been disrupted by a duo of US regulatory actions that highlight the tougher scrutiny the Silicon Valley broker faces. The broker agreed a $65m settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday over allegedly failing to deliver
One thing to start: The FT holds its third annual Business of Football Summit on February 17-18. Next year’s virtual event features Manchester United striker and food poverty campaigner Marcus Rashford, Fifa general secretary Fatma Samoura, player super-agent Jonathan Barnett, and many more. Check out the speakers and agenda here. Marcus Rashford at the FT
Along with institutional investors, trading exchanges are also coming for cryptocurrencies. Wednesday turned out to be a bonanza day for crypto after two major exchanges announced their plans to launch products tailored for crypto next year. Cboe Global Markets, Inc. (CBOE) said it will roll out data and trading products aimed at crypto investors starting
The US medicines regulator has authorised the use of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine on an emergency basis, making a second jab available and boosting supplies at a critical crunch point as several states complain they cannot secure enough shots. The second emergency use authorisation for a Covid-19 vaccine will mean that more than 5.9m Moderna shots
The Federal Reserve announced on Friday that it will allow the nation’s big banks to resume share buybacks in the first quarter of 2021 subject to certain rules and that the industry fared well in a second round of stress tests. Dividends will continue to be capped, the Fed said, and the sum total of
New powers that would allow the UK tax authority to force financial institutions to provide information about people’s assets without court approval are “flawed” and part of a trend of removing taxpayer protections, members of the House of Lords have said. In a report released on Saturday, the Lords economics affairs committee strongly criticised a
Yesterday’s Bitcoin (BTCUSD) price increase had a similar effect on the prices of investment products associated with cryptocurrencies. Most of them were hit with a pleasant initial jolt in prices as news of the cryptocurrency’s new price record price made its way to the markets. By the end of the day, some had shed their
Stanley Druckenmiller (L) and Paul Tudor Jones CNBC A herd of new, big investors are scooping up bitcoin this year as the price more than doubles. Investors who bought at least 1,000 bitcoins — worth roughly $23 million at Friday’s price — and have had an account open for less than a year, drove significant
Tesla shares set another record high on Friday ahead of their inclusion in the S&P 500 at the end of the day, an event that is set to prompt a frenzy of trading on Wall Street. The addition of Elon Musk’s electric car maker will necessitate $85.2bn of trades from investors that track the S&P
The writer is the author of ‘Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World’ It’s a surprise, but 2020 is not ending on a totally gloomy note. Perhaps it will be a V-shaped recovery after all, where V stands for vaccine. By holding out the promise of an imminent return to the “before
How Does FAFSA Work? It’s important for every family with college-bound members to know how FAFSA works. Families often dismiss the idea of applying for financial aid for college because they think they make too much money to qualify. But regardless of how much a family earns, they may be eligible for some form of
I can at least say this for 2020. It reminded me of what’s important in life: family, food and telly. Best of all, telly about food. I watched a lot of that. Nigella. Masterclass. Midnight Diner (on Netflix). I particularly relished Servant (on Apple TV+), the latest offering from M Night Shyamalan, which follows a