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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

So which sort of giant are we talking about in Mark Rosenblatt’s new play? The Big Friendly type or something altogether more unpleasant? Very much that latter, as it turns out. This astonishingly good writing debut by the longtime director focuses on the fallout from a 1983 book review penned by Roald Dahl, the children’s author — played here, sensationally well, by John Lithgow.

The book, God Cried, was an account of the Israeli army’s siege of West Beirut in 1982; Dahl’s review was riddled with antisemitism, conflating the actions of the state of Israel with the will of the Jewish people. The play opens as Dahl is visited by his publishers (both of whom happen to be Jewish) for a tense lunch and pressed to retract or apologise. Eventually, after appearing — highly reluctantly — to concede some ground, Dahl doubles down by giving an interview to the New Statesman that is even more offensive.

The lunch is imagined; the interview comments, however, are verbatim. And Rosenblatt, in this terrific staging by Nicholas Hytner, carves his way nimbly through a thorny thicket of arguments about the interplay between prejudice and political viewpoint, between the artist and the art. Given the current conflict in the Middle East, the drama could not feel more timely.  

Rosenblatt is not unsympathetic towards Dahl, making plain his despair over the suffering of Palestinian children and touching on his personal tragedy (Dahl’s son was brain damaged in a car accident). But he also gives an unflinching account of the author’s blatant antisemitism and capacity for vicious behaviour. It’s a nuanced portrait, intent on unpicking the cognitive dissonance and blurred lines that can allow racism to flourish.

To begin with, Dahl comes over simply as irascible, grumbling about his painful back, the placements of Quentin Blake’s illustrations for his forthcoming book, The Witches, and the noise of the house renovations his fiancée, Felicity Crosland, has introduced. She and Dahl’s UK publisher Tom Maschler — Rachael Stirling and Elliot Levey, both brilliantly subtle — tiptoe around him, trying to impress on him the impact his views could have on his sales. But Dahl’s little digs at Maschler, a Holocaust survivor, suggest something nastier than backache. And when the representative of the American publishers arrives — Jessie Stone, a fictitious character — things become really ugly.

Romola Garai is great as Stone, still and clenched as Dahl pushes and needles her, until she suddenly lets rip in a blazing speech. In contrast, Levey’s Maschler remains emollient, reluctant to be drawn into the argument, but finally snapping at Dahl’s awful description of him as a “house Jew”.

And at the heart is Lithgow, quite superb as Dahl, rolling from avuncular charm to petulance to cruel sarcasm. Around him, Bob Crowley’s design sets a dining room table adrift in a sea of ladders and plastic sheeting: a room, like the grim issues raised in the play, unfinished.

★★★★☆

To November 16, royalcourttheatre.com

Welcome back.

Beijing’s answer to the World Bank is backing a wave of renminbi bond borrowing by developing countries, Joseph Cotterill and I reported this morning. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is looking to capitalise on falling interest rates by supporting more issuance of so-called “panda bonds”, a move that comes after Beijing announced new rules for renminbi debt issuance by foreign entities in 2022.

For today’s newsletter, I took a broader look at how the AIIB has emerged as a key player in overseas development and the largest financing partner of the US-dominated World Bank. Here’s what that means for sustainability.

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Beijing-backed development bank on growth spurt

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has grown rapidly since its launch in 2016. It is capitalised at $100bn, with China committing about 30 per cent of the funds and holding 27 per cent of voting power. At 110 members, AIIB is the world’s second-biggest multilateral development bank. While other G7 countries such as Germany and France are members, the US is not.

But the AIIB is invested alongside the Washington-based World Bank in projects ranging from power plants to railways across central Asia — keeping the US-China balance of power in the region in alignment.

AIIB president Jin Liqun said the bank planned to continue expanding its presence across Latin America and Africa. “We define infrastructure in a very liberal manner,” he told me in an interview, including digital skills and healthcare. For now, though, its primary focus remained in Asia.

AIIB’s existing projects

Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are major exporters of natural gas, and their steppes make large areas well-suited to wind energy. Yet, while they are rich in natural resources, Soviet-era grid infrastructure has strained power systems in central Asia, causing blackouts and potentially deterring foreign investment, as researcher Anna Jordanová has detailed.

In 2019, AIIB approved a $47mn loan for a 100 megawatt wind farm in Kazakhstan, the country where Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road infrastructure investment spree in 2013. The country is a major exporter of coal, oil, and gas, with total energy production that is more than double its domestic demand, as of 2018. Yet, Kazakhstan has endured frequent power outages, which have sparked unrest.

In 2020, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), whose largest capital contributor is the US, announced that it would also provide a $25mn loan for the project, which is based in a country often seen as the focus of the “new Great Game” between Russia and the US, writes Maximilian Hess, a political risk analyst.

China and the US are not the only investors vying to invest in energy infrastructure in countries with geopolitical significance. Gulf countries have also become major investors and developers in the region. AIIB has signed multiple loan agreements in Uzbekistan with Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy investment vehicle. Masdar is also building the region’s largest wind farm.

AIIB has supported a string of gas power plants in Uzbekistan, including $100mn in funding to a plant developed by ACWA Power, the Saudi national champion, and a €225mn loan last year. The investments, however, have drawn criticism from civil society groups, such as Germany-based Urgewald, which argued that the AIIB’s lending to fossil fuels “undermines the credibility of its climate and social policies”.

Asked about its investments in gas, Jin said: “We do not rule out gas, but we focus on renewables.

“If we finance a gas project, we should [see] a clear correlation between the gas project and phasing out coal-fired power,” he said. Growing energy demand in many emerging markets should be viewed as a positive development, Jin added, since it was partly the result of poverty reduction efforts.

Pain points

The AIIB and the World Bank’s extensive co-financing arrangements don’t necessarily indicate that it is a tension-free relationship — nor that every project advertised as sustainable is up to that billing, as the fossil fuel financing shows.

As the bank’s profile has grown, so too have concerns about its investments — especially following feedback from local communities.

A report last year by Amsterdam-based campaign group Recourse raised issues with AIIB’s accountability mechanism, noting that “in seven years, with 233 projects funded and over $44bn spent, the AIIB has yet to accept a single complaint from people adversely affected by its investments”.

The report highlighted one rejected complaint from critics of a gas power plant in Bangladesh, which received $60mn from AIIB. The complainants alleged that “middlemen” acquired the land for the plant “with intimidation and coercion, and at lower than market rates”.

The AIIB is also attempting to distinguish itself from the Belt and Road Initiative, which peaked in 2016 and saddled many countries with debt in return.

“The Belt Road Initiative was proposed by China, more or less at the same time as AIIB,” Jin said. “[But] these two different initiatives work by different governance and practice. Multilateral development banks like ours . . . we work like our peer institutions, such as the World Bank, and EBRD.

“Quite a lot of countries are grappling with debt problems. The big issue is, how could we help these countries attract external capital inflows without creating debt problems? Our answer is, we need to push for productive investment,” Jin said.

These issues will have to be tackled in the years ahead, but the collaboration by US- and China-led official sector financial institutions in some of the world’s most geopolitically contested regions may indicate that funding for international development will continue in spite of the increasingly antagonistic relationship between the world’s biggest economies.

Smart read

All the attention is on China’s cleantech manufacturing capacity. But Beijing is also exporting a “tsunami” of investment in renewable energy and transport electrification projects, Edward White and William Sandlund report.

The already fractious relationship between the Personal Finance Society (PFS) and the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) has been ‘blown apart’ again.

The CII announced yesterday (1 October) that its chief executive Matthew Hill and three other executives – Trevor Edwards, Mathew Mallett and Gill White – have been appointed to the PFS board.

The move has further increased tensions between members of the PFS and its parent body, the CII.

The debacle started with the ‘Christmas coup’ in December 2022, when the CII imposed its own directors on the PFS board in a highly controversial move.

At the time, the CII said it took action due to “serious and significant” governance failures at the PFS.

The PFS immediately hit back, slamming the CFII’s decision, with former PFS president Sarah Lord condemning the CII’s “aggressive” behaviour.

She also described the move as “disingenuous” and said it had been done without prior consent or warning.

Caroline Stuart resigned from her roles as PFS president and member director of the PFS board on 5 January 2023, saying the pressure was affecting her health.

There were also a series of resignations and appointments in the 12 months that followed.

Last year, the PFS and CII appeared to have resolved the dispute and both parties said they were working together.

However, this week the CII took action to flood the PFS board with its members once again.

In a statement, campaign group Our PFS, set up to ‘save’ the body following the Christmas coup of 2022, blasted the CII’s actions.

“It has been around a year since the last actions of ourpfs.co.uk, with a general feeling that issues between CII and PFS were in the process of being resolved,” it said.

“Unfortunately, this has been blown wide open again thanks to incredibly questionable actions taken by the Chartered Insurance Institute on 1 October 2024.

“OurPFS is urgently investigating and will be writing out with more details as soon as they are known.

“October 2024 may well turn out to be the month that defines the future of our professional body.”

Money Marketing has contacted representatives of the PFS for a comment.

Shortly after Israel’s assassination of Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last Friday, Iran’s top political and military leaders gathered to discuss how Tehran should respond.

For weeks after the surprise election of reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian in July, Iranian politicians had been publicly pushing a message of restraint even as Israel increased its attacks on Hizbollah, the Islamic republic’s most important proxy.

But after Nasrallah’s killing it was Iran’s military leaders, bent on revenge and fearful the republic was looking increasingly weak, who won the day at the Supreme National Security Council meeting on Monday, said an Iranian official. With little warning, Iran on Tuesday fired about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, pushing the arch foes closer than ever to the full-blown direct conflict Tehran has been insisting it wants to avoid.

“Nasrallah’s assassination was the last straw and Iran has come to the conclusion the Israelis are not going to stop; they are taking harsher measures and now they are going to attack and invade part of Lebanon,” an Iranian official told the Financial Times. “The military commanders persuaded [the council] that if Iran does not [retaliate], it will lose its supporters and it will badly damage its reputation.”

In doing so, the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose prime aim is ensuring the survival of the republic, has taken a huge risk. He has so far backed Pezeshkian’s overtures to the west in the belief that it is in Iran’s interests to resolve its years-long nuclear stand-off with the US and European powers in a bid to ease sanctions on the crippled economy, say Iranian analysts.

After a suspected Israeli attack killed Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh hours after Pezeshkian’s inauguration in Tehran in July, the regime held back from retaliating despite the humiliating security breach.

Iranian officials said the new president urged restraint, with Iranian politicians wary of falling into what they described as Israel’s “trap”. The belief is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to drag the republic into a direct conflict with Israel and the US, and scupper the slim chances of any détente with the west.

But in the weeks since, Israel drastically stepped up its assault on Hizbollah, killing Nasrallah — a close confidant of Khamenei — and other senior commanders, launching waves of intense air strikes on Lebanon and on Tuesday sending troops into the Arab state’s south.

“Hizbollah was the front line of Iran’s defence and if Iran doesn’t protect that line nobody . . . will trust Iran,” the Iranian official said. “[Pezeshkian] is under a lot of pressure, because what the Americans promised him turned out to be wrong, therefore they cannot trust anyone now.”

Major General Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of Iran’s Armed Forces, said on Wednesday that Tehran endured “a very difficult period of restraint” that lasted nearly two months. But the Islamic republic concluded that the US had given a “green light” to Netanyahu to escalate, with Iran’s top general saying the situation was “no longer bearable”.

Pezeshkian too spoke of the frustrations after Nasrallah’s assassination.

“The claims made by the leaders of the US and European countries, who promised a ceasefire [to end the war in Gaza] in exchange for Iran not responding to the assassination of Haniyeh, were entirely false,” Pezeshkian told a cabinet meeting on Sunday. “Giving such criminals more time will only embolden them to commit further atrocities.”

The Islamic republic is braced for a response, halting all flights in and out of Iran on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In April, when Iran launched its first direct strike against Israel from Iranian soil, Tehran clearly telegraphed the strike. It sent drones that gave Israel, the US and its allies hours to prepare their defences. This time, the barrage was just ballistic missiles — Iranian media also said “hypersonic” missiles — which travel far faster, giving Israel and its partners a much shorter response time.

Iran claimed that 90 per cent of the missiles had hit their targets, most of which were military facilities in or around Tel Aviv. Video footage suggested one missile may have exploded at or near the headquarters of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service.

But an Israeli security official said most of the missiles that Iran fired were intercepted by the air defences of Israel, the US and its allies.

Netanyahu has vowed to retaliate, saying “Iran made a big mistake tonight — and it will pay for it”.

Tehran still hopes the situation can be contained. In April, Israel responded to Iran’s first assault by firing missiles at an air base near Iranian city of Isfahan, which is also close to one of the republic’s main nuclear facilities, but neither side escalated further.

Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said in a social media post on Wednesday that Tehran’s “action is concluded unless the Israeli regime decides to invite further retaliation”. “In that scenario, our response will be stronger and more powerful,” he said.

For a regime that has long touted its domestically produced missile and drone capabilities, as well as the might of its proxies such as Hizbollah, as powerful deterrents against Israel, the recent weeks of Israeli assaults have been humiliating.

Israel has displayed its military superiority and showed that its intelligence agencies have penetrated deep into Hizbollah and the Islamic republic, with the assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran and the attack on the Lebanese movement’s communications devices last month.

Since Hamas’s October 7 attack ignited the regional hostilities, Israel has also killed at least 19 Revolutionary Guards officers, mostly in strikes on Syria. One senior commander, Abbas Nilforoushan, was killed alongside Nasrallah in Israel’s strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut on Friday.

The escalation has been a boon for Iran’s hardliners, who were humiliated by Pezeshkian’s election victory. They have seized the moment to criticise the reformist president, his senior diplomats and advisers for acquiescing to US pressure and urging restraint.

Although all key foreign policy decisions are ultimately determined by Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards, analysts believe presidents and diplomats can influence the leader’s decisions.

“This misguided optimism must end, and the reformists are to blame for trusting the US once again,” said Hamid-Reza Taraghi, a prominent hardline politician. “It’s meaningless to talk about peace. Peace with who? A rabid dog?”

He criticised reformist leaders for “downgrading the promise of ‘hard revenge’ against Israel [following Haniyeh’s assassination] to merely hoping Israel would accept a ceasefire”.

Pezeshkian’s push to drive a reformist agenda, particularly his attempt to engage with the west, which many US and European diplomats were always sceptical of, has suffered a severe blow.

“Pezeshkian is under a lot of pressure himself, and therefore he can’t argue any more and persuade the military leaders not to take any action,” the Iranian official said.

MARTIN Lewis has issued a warning for customers of a major high street bank.

Santander has cut the rate on its easy-access savings account by 1.1%.

1

The account paid 5.2% interest when it first launched, but was cut to 4.20% in May and has now been reduced to 4%.

This means customers will get 4% interest on balances between £1 and £250,000.

It applies to customers who have a Santander’s Easy Access Saver Limited Edition (Issue 3).

The deal is no longer open to new customers.

When the deal fist launched last September, it was one of the most competitive on the market.

However, experts from the Martin Lewis MoneySavingExpert blog are urging customers to think twice.

They said: “You can easily beat this new rate by switching elsewhere – which you’re allowed to do without penalty.

The blog stated that even though this account has a 12-month term the rate is variable.

This means that savers are not locked into this account and do not have to stick with it.

They explained: “This account works in a slightly unusual way – it initially had a 12-month term, but the rate wasn’t fixed for this period

“Instead, what happens at the end of the term – which has since been extended by 10 months – is that the account ‘matures’ and your money is transferred to one of Santander’s other easy-access accounts with a much lower interest rate.”

“You can ditch and switch,” they added.

The MoneySavingBlog named two saving accounts for customers which offer higher interest.

These include:

Trading 212’s Cash ISA

This is a type of savings account which offers tax free interest on savings up to £20,000.

There is not mimiumn you have to pay in to receive the interest.

You must be at least 18-years old to open this type of savings account.

Trading 212’s deal offers savers 5.1% AER Variable on customers savings.

An AER Variable rate means that your rate is not guaranteed and that it can change over time.

On this deal, savers can withdraw their cash at anytime without any impact on their savings rate.

The interest is also paid daily.

If you want to read more about ISA’s check out our article here.

Oxbury saving account offer

This bank is offering an AER interest rate of 4.76%.

However, the interest will only on balances above £25,000 and up to £500,000.

It is also worth noting that if your balance falls below £25,000 after opening the account, you will not receive interest on the balance.

You will only receive interest on balances above £500,000, where those balances have resulted from interest being accrued to the account.

Unlike Trading 212’s Cash ISA, where interest is paid daily, here it is only paid one a month.

What other options are available for savers?

There are several types of savings accounts available to customers, so you need to make sure you select one that suits your circumstances.

Easy-access accounts and regular savings accounts, which allow greater flexibility when it comes to withdrawing your cash, but they tend to offer slightly lower interest rates.

If you’re happy to leave your cash in your account for longer then you can consider a fixed-bond or notice savings account.

Before opening a new savings account it’s always worth having a browse on price comparison websites.

Moneyfactscompare, Compare the Market, Go Compare and MoneySupermarket will help save you time and show you the best rates available.

These sites let you tailor your searches to an account type that suits you.