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

Investors seeking returns from the buoyant American market are turning to European stocks which have significant US exposure but are trading at a discount to their transatlantic counterparts, equity investors say.

Groups such as UK defence group BAE Systems, France’s Schneider Electric and pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk are among the big European names that have risen sharply this year as investors hunt for cheaper, similar versions of top-performing US companies.

BAE has risen 17 per cent, Schneider is up 29 per cent and Novo Nordisk has gained 11 per cent.

“The fact you’re able to get these businesses at a lower valuation is being overlooked,” said Dev Chakrabarti, chief investment officer for concentrated global growth at AllianceBernstein, which holds positions in several Europe-based companies with large US exposure, including SAP.

“That’s a pricing inefficiency that we continue to exploit, and we do expect to get paid on that inefficiency,” Chakrabarti added.

Friday’s strong US jobs data strengthened investors’ expectations that America will pull off a so-called soft landing, in which inflation falls rapidly but it maintains robust growth and strong employment. However, sentiment for the outlook in Europe has been more negative, where business activity has slowed as inflation has fallen.

Dozens of large European companies generate the bulk of their sales in the US. Novo Nordisk, which makes the best-selling Ozempic and Wegovy weight-loss drugs, earns close to 60 per cent of its revenues from the US, while the market is nearly 50 per cent of defence giant BAE Systems’ turnover.

However Denmark’s Novo Nordisk, Europe’s largest company by market capitalisation, has trailed US competitor Eli Lilly, whose shares have soared 51 per cent this year.

Some investors argue this makes the European group the more attractive investment, as it trades at a price-to earnings ratio to December 2025 of 27 times, compared with 39 times for its US rival, according to data from FactSet.

Steven Smith, an equity investment director at Capital Group, said he saw opportunities in European pharmaceutical and semiconductor businesses, with these multinationals trading at discounts against their American peers.

“Where there’s a European and US equivalent, the former is trading at a valuation discount and we would say that’s an opportunity,” Smith added.

Phil Macartney, a European equities fund manager at Jupiter Asset Management, said it was picking companies such as data provider Experian, power group Schneider Electric and software maker SAP, which have both US exposure and were likely to benefit from further interest rate cuts. “The earnings power has remained with them,” he said.

Louise Dudley, a portfolio manager at Federated Hermes, said that pairing European companies’ improved governance — including workforce conditions and robust plans for the transition to net zero — with US exposure was one further advantage.

“A European-based company that meets these standards but has exposure to the US market as a growth driver is an attractive company,” Dudley added.

In July Goldman Sachs urged clients to build positions in about 45 European businesses with large US exposure to leverage higher growth, as the 12 month forward price-to-earnings ratio on its basket of selected stocks was at the time trading at its lowest level since the global financial crisis.

Sharon Bell, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, said: “European companies have always been very global. This isn’t unusual . . . what’s changed is the US has gone on a much bigger premium.”

The bank has since changed its rating to “no active recommendation” as stocks have risen. Even so, the basket — which includes Novo Nordisk, BAE Systems and Stellantis — remains below its longtime average.

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

Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro plans to issue the national budget by decree after lawmakers refused his proposed spending increases, his finance minister said — a move unprecedented since the current constitution was enacted more than three decades ago.

His government, the first from the left in Colombia’s modern history, had sought a 523tn peso ($126bn) budget for 2025, but a congressional committee rejected that last month and demanded lower spending. Some lawmakers accused Petro of seeking to bolster support with giveaways ahead of 2026 elections.

Petro and finance minister Ricardo Bonilla said in response that they would push the package through by decree, a manoeuvre permitted by Colombia’s constitution but not used since it was adopted in 1991.

“The rule is clear that if congress is unable to make a decision — and there was no debate — then the government can pass it by decree,” Bonilla told the Financial Times.

“The norm states that the budget is a government initiative and therefore it is the government that has all the power to make decisions,” he said. “But there is nothing extraordinary about that, nor is it true when people say that this is some kind of fiscal dictatorship.”

The government has until October 20 to secure next year’s budget through congress, which Bonilla said was impossible. Instead, the government will issue a budget decree between October 21 and December 30.

Any decree would probably be challenged in the constitutional court, Bonilla admitted. “There’s every possibility that [the decree] will be challenged and the court will have to decide, but the court has ruled [in favour of] decree power in the past and I don’t think it will change its opinion,” he said.

Petro, who in his youth belonged to an urban guerrilla group, took office in 2022 promising to overhaul the country’s orthodox economic model, which has been underpinned by public-private partnerships.

His pension reform was passed in June, but he has been widely frustrated by lawmakers rejecting proposals to expand the state’s role in the health system and tighten labour laws.

Petro has often painted policy setbacks as a “soft coup” by shady elites and opposition politicians, and has floated the possibility of drafting a new constitution.

His critics argue his threats over the budget indicate a desire to resist the country’s system of checks and balances. Mauricio Cárdenas, finance minister from 2012 to 2018, said Petro was emulating Mexico’s former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who used budgeted cash transfers to consolidate support.

“The government understands that one of the strategies that can be used to increase its support is by providing more cash transfers,” Cárdenas said, adding that Petro’s inability to work with congress represented a “failure”. “It shows weakness and that Petro is not willing to compromise.”

Bonilla said that while “every budget has political components”, opposition claims that the government wanted to influence the 2026 election “are without any sense”.

Petro has also bristled against the central bank, last week making an unusual call on its board to issue money to victims of Colombia’s decades-long, ongoing civil war.

Petro’s approval ratings have hovered around 35 per cent for months.

The budget dispute comes as Colombia’s economy struggles to regain momentum. Growth is forecast at a sluggish 1.7 per cent this year, and while inflation fell to an annual 6.1 per cent in August, it remains well above the government’s year-end target of 3 per cent. 

The peso has lost 9.76 per cent of its value against the dollar since June, while the central bank’s easing cycle is likely to keep pressure on the currency. 

The country’s fiscal deficit is expected to reach 5.6 per cent of GDP at the end of this year, while the government in June announced a 20tn pesos ($4.7bn) spending cut to comply with the fiscal rule, a policy overseen by an independent committee that is designed to prevent public finances from deteriorating.

The government has said it will push a tax reform through congress to raise $2.89bn for its proposed 2025 budget increase, in part by raising taxes on betting. If the budget were to be decreed but thrown out by the constitutional court, that would leave the government with a smaller 503tn pesos ($118.8bn) budget approved.

Political risk is hurting investor confidence, said Andrés Pardo, head of Latin America strategy at XP Investments.

“On one hand the budget issue sends negative signals to the markets over this inconsistent, erratic and unrealistic management of public finances,” Pardo said. “And on the other hand, the government is perpetuating a populist narrative of discrediting institutions.”

Bonilla blamed congress for the budget impasse. “This time, the problem is that congress did not want to negotiate,” he said.

BRITS have just hours left to tell HMRC if they need to register to make a Self Assessment tax return.

You must tell the tax office by today, October 5 if you need to complete a tax return and have not sent one before.

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The assessment is used by the government body to collect income tax.

This tax is usually deducted automatically from people’s wages, pensions and savings.

However, people and businesses with extra income must report it in a tax return.

It is worth noting that this is not the date you need to file your Self Assessment, just the date you need to register your intention to file.

If you are not sure whether you need to register you can complete a simple assessment on the gov.uk website.

It is particularly important to register this year especially if you sell clothes or other items on websites such as eBay or Vinted.

That is because since the beginning of 2024 firms like Vinted have to pass on customer data to HMRC if a user sells 30 or more items, or earns over £1,700, in a year.

While the reporting rules have changed, this is not a new tax.

Those who earn more than £1,000 outside their regular employment were already required to file a Self Assessment tax form with HMRC.

The deadline to submit the return for the 2023/24 tax year – and pay any tax you owe – is January 31, 2025 online.

But there’s an earlier deadline of October 31 this year if you file via post.

It is worth bearing in mind that HMRC will fine you £100 for failing to file your return by the deadline.

Then, a £10 daily fine applies every day you don’t submit your tax return.

When do I need to file a tax return?

It is not just online sellers who are required to fill out a tex return.

The rule applies to the following:

• Your income from self-employment was more than £1,000
• Earned more than £2,500 from renting out property
• You or your partner received high-income child benefits and either of you had an annual income of more than £60,000
• Received more than £2,500 in other untaxed income, for example from tips or commission
• Are limited company directors
• Are shareholders
• Are employees claiming expenses over £2,500
• Have an annual income over £100,000

You can register online via the GOV.UK website.

To register online you must log on to your business tax account on the HMRC website and select ‘Add a tax to your account to get online access to a tax, duty or scheme’.

If you do not already have sign in details, you’ll be able to create them when you sign in for the first time.

If you do not want to register online you must send a form to the following address: Self Assessment, HM Revenue and Customs,
BX9 1AN, United Kingdom.

After you submit your form you will then get a unique taxpayer reference code (UTR) and activation code from the HMRC.

It’s a 10-digit number and it might just be called a tax reference.

This tends to arrive in the post 15 days after you register for a tax return.

Upon receiving the UTR you can then file a Self Assessment tax return online via the GOV.UK website or by post.

If you file by post the deadline is October 31 2024.

However, if you file online you have up to January 31, 2025.

Check out our step-by-step guide on filling out a tax return here.

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

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

The year was 1970 and Johnny Cash wanted to perform a hangover lament called “Sunday Morning Coming Down” on his primetime television show. ABC network executives were nervous about a line in the song: “I’m wishin’, Lord, that I was stoned.” Couldn’t Mr Cash change “stoned” to “home”? No, Mr Cash would not. As the cameras rolled in the Nashville theatre and the Man in Black delivered the line, he looked up to the balcony where the song’s writer was sitting — Kris Kristofferson.

Kristofferson, who has died aged 88, broke the Nashville mould. Songs such as “Help Me Make It Through the Night” and “Me and Bobby McGee” brought emotional daring and depth to country music, better known for folksy sentimentality and conservatism. Rarely satisfied with his work, including a successful Hollywood side-career, he was less sure of his achievements than his admirers. They were effusive. According to one of his idols, Bob Dylan: “You can look at Nashville pre-Kris and post-Kris, because he changed everything.”

Born in Texas in 1936, Kristofferson grew up in an officer-class military family. He excelled at sports at his Californian high school and had two prizewinning essays published in The Atlantic magazine. In 1958, he won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford university to study English literature. There he fell hard for William Blake, from whom he learnt, in Kristofferson’s words, “if you buried your talent, sorrow and desperation would pursue you throughout life”.

He wrote most of a novel while in Britain: its rejection by a New York editor wounded him severely. He also recorded songs in London as Kris Carson, but the “Yank at Oxford”, as he was cornily promoted, came to naught. In 1960, he joined the US army as a helicopter pilot. To his parents’ anger, he left in 1965 to try his hand as a Nashville songwriter. With a young family to support, including medical bills for one of his children, he took an irregular variety of jobs, from oil-rig helicoptering to record-studio janitor. 

Country’s great maverick, Johnny Cash, became his mentor. He brought Kristofferson out to perform with him at the Newport folk festival in 1969 and wrote the sleeve notes for his protege’s self-titled debut album the following year. It featured “Me and Bobby McGee”, a beautifully tender elegy about parted hobo lovers, and “Help Me Make It Through the Night”, perhaps the most romantic song about a fleeting sexual encounter ever penned. 

Kristofferson could combine vivid characterisation, tantalising scenarios, deep feelings and philosophical epigrams within the brief compass of a song. “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose,” from “Me and Bobby McGee”, was worthy of Dylan. Other country songwriters shared his literary sophistication, such as Bobbie Gentry and Jimmy Webb. But Kristofferson was coloured by rock music and the counterculture too. The singer Merle Haggard called him “Nashville’s own hippie”.

His songs were covered by acts ranging from Frank Sinatra to Janis Joplin. His own recordings, sung in craggy drawl, made him a big star in the 1970s. Alongside the likes of Haggard and Cash, he represented “outlaw country”, a challenge to Nashville’s squaresville character. He and his second wife, the singer Rita Coolidge, were a golden couple who released a series of joint albums until their divorce in 1980.

Kristofferson’s good looks — bearded, tousle-haired, redolent of outdoor ruggedness and late nights indoors — attracted attention from Hollywood, home of the beautiful people. He brought a square-jawed charisma to films by Sam Peckinpah and Martin Scorsese. Music critics complained that acting was a distraction from music, a concern that niggled at him. A persistent sense of discontent (“that old familiar pain,” as he sang in “Best of All Possible Worlds”) fuelled the heavy drinking and infidelities that wrecked his first two marriages. 

He sobered up after hitting rock bottom on the set of A Star Is Born in 1976, a box office hit with Barbra Streisand in which he played the lead but hated making. Both his film and music careers headed south in the 1980s, but Kristofferson’s personal life reached a state of calm with marriage to his third wife Lisa Meyers in 1983 (who survives him, as do his eight children). He formed a supergroup, The Highwaymen, with fellow outlaws Cash, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings in 1985 and continued working as a solo artist up to 2021.

“Never’s just the echo of forever,” he declared in the song “Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends”. The laureate of the break-up song leaves behind an imperishable body of work.

A FLIGHT attendant has revealed the types of passenger he hates the most – and it happens before travellers even get on board.

“Gate lice” is the derogatory term give to those passengers who lurk around the airport gate well before it’s time to actually start boarding.

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It seems the phrase originated in a 2005 FlyerTalk discussion forum where one user coined the phrase to denote those who wait close to the gate so they can board as early as possible and ensure they get plenty of overhead bin space.

Brian Hart Hoffman, who was a flight attendant for eight years with US Airways and Alaska Airlines, told the Thrillist: “I absolutely hate gate lice.

“There is no need for it and it absolutely hinders the flow of boarding.”

He added those people who engage in this behaviour were making themselves “appear like [they] are more important than anyone else flying.”

Brian said that not only can gate lice delay take-off by stopping people from boarding but they can also prevent people from getting off the incoming flight.

He said: “Some of the dedicated ‘lice’ are in place and blocking things while the airplane is being deplaned from the inbound flight.”

Other experts agree with Brian’s point of view, saying that gate lice can cause delays to both people getting on or off a flight.

Flight attendant Rich Henderson, who is also the creator of Two Guys on a Plane said that gate lice sometimes also prevent the crew or cleaners from getting on a plane, also causing delays.

Samantha Facteau, a spokesperson for Delta Air Lines, said crowding the gate can make it difficult for those who need assistance to reach the gate and for those with mobility devices to get by.

Uncover Mental Health Counselling psychologist Kristie Tse said that “crowding the gate often stems from a mix of anxiety and a desire for control.”

She added: “Individuals may feel an overwhelming urge to secure their position, fearing they might miss out or face consequences if they don’t act quickly.

“This behaviour can indicate underlying insecurities or a lack of trust in the process.”

Frequent traveller Pip Davidson said that for him, anxiety is definitely a motivator as he gets stressed and is “hypersensitive” to crowds.

He said: “The actions and behaviour of a crowd [at the airport] can be overwhelming and trigger heightened anxiety that causes me to feel more alert and more worried.”

As a way to cope with this, he lingers by the gate before boarding.

Pip also noticed that his “gate anxiety” was triggered by other gate lice.

He said there was a “ripple effect” where numerous people start to head towards the gate.

Pip said that once one person started to head towards the gate, “that triggers another person to worry that they’re being cut in line, and that causes another person to have the same worry.”

SECRET CABIN CREW WORDS

Flight attendants have a special language they use to talk about passengers, including the ones they find attractive.

There are a number of other secret phrases used by pilots and cabin crew too, some serious and others less so.

• Cropdusting: If a passenger is being very rude and difficult, then it’s not unheard of for a flight attendant to break wind and ‘cropdust’ past the offender.
• Code Adam: This is used by airport staff to alert other staff of a missing child, in honour of Adam Walsh, a child who was abducted in a department store in 1981.
• 7500: If a pilot “squawks 7500” it means the plane has been hijacked, or a hijacking is a threat.
• Crosscheck: If you hear this phrase, usually made by senior cabin crew, it means that the emergency slides attached to each door have been deactivated.

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Welcome back. Ukraine has scaled back its war aims. Although it remains committed to recovering the lands seized by Russia over the past decade, it regrettably lacks the manpower, weaponry and western support to do it.

Ukraine’s new strategy — presented by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to US leaders last week — is to ask its allies to strengthen its hand, militarily and diplomatically, to bring Russia to the negotiating table. 

Western diplomats and increasingly Ukrainian officials have come round to the view that meaningful security guarantees could form the basis of a negotiated settlement in which Russian retains de facto, but not de jure, control of all or part of the Ukrainian territory it currently occupies. I’m at ben.hall@ft.com

Land for Nato membership

To be clear, neither Kyiv nor its supporters are proposing to recognise Russia sovereignty over the one-fifth of Ukrainian territory it has illegally grabbed since 2014. To do so would encourage further Russian aggression and severely undermine the international legal order.

What is envisaged is tacit acceptance that those lands should be regained through diplomatic means in the future. Even that, understandably, is a sensitive issue for Ukrainians, especially when presented as the basis of a compromise with Moscow. Ceding land to gain Nato membership may be the “only game in town”, as a western diplomat told us, but for Ukrainians it remains a taboo, in public at least.

What is being more openly discussed is the nature and timing of the security guarantees Ukraine will need to underpin a settlement.

In Washington Zelenskyy restated his pitch for accelerated membership of Nato.

The problem is the US is against moving beyond the agreed position of the alliance that Ukraine’s “future is in Nato”, that its accession is on an “irreversible path” and that it will be invited to join “when allies agree and conditions are met”. It fears that offering a mutual defence guarantee under the Nato treaty’s Article 5 before the war is over would simply draw in the US and its allies. 

But some of Ukraine’s allies say this need not be the case. “There are ways of solving that,” Jens Stoltenberg, the Norwegian who stood down as Nato secretary-general this week, told my colleague Henry Foy in a farewell Lunch with the FT interview.

Stoltenberg pointed out that the security guarantees that the US provides to Japan do not cover the Kuril Islands, four of which Japan claims as its own but which are controlled by Russia after being seized by the Soviet Union in 1945.

He also cited Germany, which joined Nato in 1955, despite being divided. Only West Germany was covered by the Nato umbrella. 

“When there is a will, there are ways to find the solution. But you need a line which defines where Article 5 is invoked, and Ukraine has to control all the territory until that border,” he said.

From Bonn to Kyiv

The West German model for Ukraine has been discussed in foreign policy circles for more than 18 months. 

Dan Fried, a former US assistant secretary of state for Europe, was one of the first to make the argument in this piece for Just Security. Kurt Volker, a former US ambassador to Nato and Donald Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, Stoltenberg’s predecessor Anders Fogh Rasmussen and FT contributing editor Ivan Krastev have made similar arguments.

The idea is also gaining traction in official circles. 

“I don’t think that full restoration of control over the entire territory is a prerequisite,” Petr Pavel, the Czech president and a former Nato general, told Novinky a Právo newspaper.

“If there is a demarcation, even an administrative border, then we can treat [that] as temporary and accept Ukraine into Nato in the territory it will control at that time,” Pavel said.

Most proponents acknowledge that Moscow would hate this idea. Sceptics fear it could provoke an escalation. Nato membership would guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty and allow it to pursue its western orientation, goals that Russian leader Vladimir Putin is determined to destroy.

Perhaps the most persuasive argument came from the US cold war historian Mary Sarotte in this piece for Foreign Affairs. 

Sarotte’s contention is that the terms of Nato membership can be adapted to suit individual circumstances. Norway pledged not to house a Nato base on its territory when it became a founding member. West Germany’s strategy was to make clear its borders were provisional. It had to tolerate division indefinitely but not accept it, and renounce the use of force to retake East Germany. 

Ukraine should, she wrote, define a military defensible border, agree to not permanently station troops or nuclear weapons on its territory unless threatened with attack, and renounce use of force beyond that border except in self-defence.

Nato membership under these terms would be presented to Moscow as a fait accompli, Sarotte added. But there would still be an implicit negotiation: “instead of a land-for-peace deal, the carrot would be no [Nato] infrastructure for peace”.

The bear does the poking

Other analysts argue West Germany is a bad parallel because its borders, though provisional, were recognised by both sides. In Ukraine they are being fought over every day.

Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, head of the German Council on Foreign Relations, told Foreign Policy’s Anchal Vohra last year “you have the potential of all kinds of problems emanating from the revisionism of both sides. For example, it will be up to Vladimir Putin to define Article 5, whether some of his poking falls below or above that threshold.’’ 

There is also the big question of whether the US, let alone its European allies, would be prepared to make the force commitments necessary to defend a Ukraine inside the alliance. While France has warmed to the idea of faster Ukraine Nato accession, German chancellor Olaf Scholz is firmly opposed, fearing his country could be drawn into another war against Russia.

In the US, the Biden administration has so far refused to budge on accelerating Kyiv’s membership. Would a Kamala Harris presidency treat it differently? Could Donald Trump imagine the West German model as part of his proposed “deal” to end the war? Could Zelenskyy sell it to his people?

There are many obstacles still on Kyiv’s Nato path. But the west patently lacks a strategy for Ukraine to prevail.

As Sarotte concludes, following the West German route “would be far preferable, for Ukraine and the alliance, than continuing to put off membership until Putin has given up his ambitions in Ukraine or until Russia has made a military breakthrough. This path would bring Ukraine closer to enduring security, freedom, and prosperity in the face of Russian isolation — in other words, towards victory.”

More on this topic

Russians do break: historical and cultural context for a prospective Ukrainian victory. For War on the Rocks, Ben Connable examines when and in what circumstances Russia might quit Ukraine

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