Monday 22/09/25

UK, Canada and Australia recognise Palestine as an independent state (Financial Times, George Parker and James Shotter) highlights a major development as the three countries, who have traditionally been allies of Israel, have decided to formally recognise the state of Palestine amid claims that genocide is being committed in Gaza. The decision to recognise Palestine has been strongly criticised by Israel and the US. These countries are the latest to join France and a number of others who have moved to formally recognise a Palestinian state, the biggest change in the number of recognitions for over ten years. * SO WHAT? * This is a particularly significant move for Starmer given the UK’s role in the creation of Israel after WW2. The Palestianian foreign minister said that this brought Palestinians “closer to sovereignty and independence” while Israel’s foreign ministry dismissed it as “nothing but a reward for jihadist Hamas”. It’s moot as to whether this change in heart is actually going to do anything, particularly given America’s ongoing support.

Trump’s H-1B visa fee to hit US employers with $14bn annual bill (Financial Times, Rafe Rosner-Uddin, Stephanie Stacey and Joe Miller) highlights a major kerfuffle caused by the president as he suddenly announced a $100,000 application fee for the H-1B foreign worker visa for new employees to enter the country. Initially, it wasn’t clear that this would apply to new applicants starting from the next visa lottery in February onwards and Companies rush to issue emergency guidance after Trump launches H-1B visa fee (Financial Times, Joe Miller, Andres Schipani, Rafe Rosner-Uddin, Akila Quinio and Ilya Gridneff) shows that companies like Amazon and Microsoft initially issued emergency guidance to employees telling current H-1B holders not to leave the country and those currently overseas to return to the US immediately. * SO WHAT? * The idea of this is to force companies to think very hard about employing non-Americans. Will the $100,000 Visa Fee Help U.S. Workers? Economists Aren’t So Sure (Wall Street Journal, Justin Lahart) suggests that having skilled foreign workers benefits American workers by prompting innovation and even helping productivity. Tech companies will surely suffer particularly badly with the implementation of this policy and it will be an absolute gift to other tech hubs like Toronto and Vancouver. Surely it also gives yet another reason for companies to reconsider their commitment to doing business in America.

Efforts to clamp down on dissenting voices seem to be continuing apace. Pentagon places restrictions on reporters in return for access (Financial Times, Antoine Gara) shows that the US defence department is forcing journalists to promise not to publish unauthorised information in return for granting them continued access to the Pentagon. Reporters who don’t sign the pledge will lose physical access. Then in US firms monitor employees’ social media after Charlie Kirk killing (The Times, Louisa Clarence-Smith) we see that bosses in corporate America are increasingly examining employees’ social media posts for any potential reputational damage. Employees’ online activity is increasingly being focused on – something that has gained more traction in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s killing. * SO WHAT? * Journalists claim that

independence is paramount and employees have already been suspended or fired for negative social media posts about Kirk’s death. Surely it’s not too much of a stretch to think that companies will be searching social media for all sorts of things now, to make sure that their name is not associated with anything that doesn’t line up with their values.

Wealth tax would be deadly for French economy, says Europe’s richest man (The Guardian, Jasper Jolly) is kind of an amusing story that’s in all the papers this morning as it quotes one of the world’s richest men, LVMH owner Bernard Arnault, as whinging about a potential wealth tax in France. He said it would be an “offensive, which is deadly for our economy” whilst protesting that he was “certainly the largest individual taxpayer and one of the largest professional taxpayers through the companies I run”. I don’t think he’s going to get much in the way of sympathy particularly at a time when the French government is trying to scrape together money to pay down its debts. * SO WHAT? * The idea of a 2% wealth tax on fortunes worth over €100m has been gathering pace since professor Gabriel Zucman at the Paris School of Economics proposed it. He argues that this could help to ease France’s strained finances because he reckons it could raise up to €20bn. Others have said it would only raise €5bn if it results in the ultra-wealthy quitting France altogether. The drama continues…

Back home, UK government approves second runway at Gatwick airport (Financial Times, George Parker and Peter Campbell) shows that the government approved plans to build a second runway at Gatwick yesterday evening. The plan is that planes could be taking off from there by the end of this decade. * SO WHAT? * This is all part of a general push by the government to go forward with big infrastructure projects in order to boost economic growth. There will be pressure now to approve a third runway at Heathrow…

Then in Keir Starmer set to unveil digital ID scheme (Financial Times, Anna Gross and Jim Pickard) we see that the PM is going ahead with the introduction of digital IDs, with a potential announcement to this effect at the party conference this month. The idea behind this is to reduce illegal migration. Previous attempts to introduce this have been tried, and they’ve failed. This is still in the early stages though…

Meanwhile, Miliband poised for U-turn on North Sea drilling ban (Daily Telegraph, Matt Oliver) signals that there could be a major U-turn afoot as there are rumours that the energy secretary’s about to pull back on his pre-election pledge not to “issue new licences to explore new fields”. * SO WHAT? * There has been growing criticism of the government’s stance on the North Sea and it has ignored warnings about the effects of its continued 78% tax on oil and gas profits. Ineos recently pulled out all of its investments in the North Sea in response to all this and Trump said last week that the UK should make the most of its North Sea assets. A phased pull-back on its stance on North Sea assets would not be outrageous given the current climate…

Chinese tech stocks surge past Nasdaq on the back of AI advance (Financial Times, William Sandlund) highlights the fact that the Hang Seng Tech index of the biggest 30 Hong Kong-listed tech companies have shot up in value by 41% in the year-to-date versus the 17% increase in the NASDAQ over the same time period. This is an impressive rebound after a tough few years of regulatory crackdowns and a sluggish economy. * SO WHAT? * I would have thought that the DeepSeek shock earlier this year will have had at least something to do with this as American tech companies, lulled into a false sense of superiority, got the surprise of their lives when they heard that the Chinese upstart had developed a model that wasn’t all that far off the American equivalents in terms of performance – but cost way less to develop. It also seems now that technical advances are being made all the time in both the standard of chips being made by

domestic producers as well as the equipment that makes them. The technology gap between the Americans and Chinese is narrowing all the time!

Then in Murdochs and Michael Dell part of TikTok buyer group, says Trump (Financial Times, Antoine Gara, Anna Nicolaou and James Fontanella-Khan) we see that more details are being released about who’s making up the consortium of companies bidding to buy TikTok in the US from ByteDance. Oracle’s founder, Larry Ellison, will also be part of the group. The inclusion of the Murdochs is quite interesting given the recent frosty relations with the White House being caused by the Wall Street Journal publishing an article about a dodgy birthday card he allegedly sent to Epstein. TikTok negotiations are continuing…

Premium economy lifts airline profit more than passengers (Financial Times, Lex) highlights how useful premium economy has been to airlines, which explains why airlines around the world have been revamping and expanding these sections. Delta, American Airlines and British Airways are among the airlines to have expanded – or plan to expand – these sections. The idea is also expanding outside full-service carriers as well given what a positive effect this can have on profits. When you consider that business class can sometimes be more than quadruple the price of economy, paying a bit more for some extra legroom and a few other perks may not seem so bad.

Then in Disruption continues at Heathrow, Brussels and Berlin airports after cyber-attack (The Guardian, Jasper Jolly) we see that the hacking attack perpetrated on Heathrow and Berlin airports over the weekend is still having repercussions. * SO WHAT? * What is going on with hacking at the moment?!? Either it’s happening more frequently or the hacking is getting better. I wonder whether AI, blockchain and digitised biometric IDs can be combined to eradicate this kind of thing?? Cyber security names should surely be doing well out of all this…

In a quick scoot around some of today’s other interesting stories, Gulf royalty say now is the time to buy London property (The Times, Tom Howard) shows that Dubai-based developer, Arada, which is owned by Middle Eastern royalty, has just bought a 75% stake in the builder Regal, signalling a move into London’s residential market. It said that it wants to triple Regal’s pipeline over the next three years! Arada has built thousands of flats and villas in Dubai and Sharjah and is about to begin construction in Sydney. * SO WHAT? * The company said that it is coming in at the bottom of the market – so is it really, or is this just a case of the company talking its own book??

Then in Zoopla sinks to loss in ‘challenging market’ after writedown (The Times, Tom Howard) we see that the property website has fallen to a loss thanks to “challenging market conditions” and the writing down of the value of the Yourkeys business it bought four years ago to serve property developers. * SO WHAT? * This performance does not compare well with the much bigger arch-rival Rightmove, which generated over twice Zoopla’s ANNUAL revenue in the first half of 2025 alone!

I’m a big fan of tiramisu. However, I didn’t realise that Italians like this option…🤣🤣🤣