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

Ares Management has agreed to pay up to $5.2bn to buy the international arm of real estate investment manager GLP Capital Partners, in one of the largest combinations in the private investment industry in recent years.

The deal will add $44bn in assets to Ares’s business — taking it towards its goal of managing more than $750bn by 2028 — and extend it beyond its core credit franchise. It also puts Ares much closer in size to its larger peers, including Blackstone, Apollo Global Management and KKR.

The takeover of GLP Capital’s international business, which excludes its funds in Greater China, will nearly double Ares’s investment business in the property sector, giving it large real estate holdings in Japan and Europe.

Ares chief executive Michael Arougheti told the Financial Times the deal would make it one of the three largest investors in industrial real estate, putting it behind Blackstone and Prologis. The Los Angeles-based group managed just under $450bn at the end of June.

Top executives at Ares, led by billionaire Arougheti — who is also a co-owner of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team — have turned to takeovers to expand the private investment business, which has more than doubled in size since the end of 2020.

In 2021 it bought secondaries investor Landmark Partners for $1.1bn, which was followed closely by the buyout of US real estate investment firm Black Creek. Then in 2023 it purchased Asia-focused private equity group Crescent Point Capital.

Ares will pay $1.8bn in cash for the business known as GCP and fund the remainder of the $3.7bn purchase price with its own shares. It has also agreed to a long-term incentive plan with GCP’s top leaders, which could lift the payouts they receive by a further $1.5bn through 2027. Ares may choose to pay the majority of that with stock.

Arougheti said Ares was drawn to the deal as the Federal Reserve was cutting interest rates and demand for data centres continued to explode.

“We are able to come into the deal having underwritten property values in a higher interest rate environment,” Arougheti said. “As interest rates come down . . . you should see an improvement in economics. We’re buying in at the right time.”

The groundswell in the data centre business has unleashed a race by some of the largest money managers. Ares’s investment comes a day after rival credit investment shop Blue Owl announced it had agreed to buy IPI Partners, an investor in data centre infrastructure with $10.5bn under management, for $1bn. Last month BlackRock partnered with Microsoft on a $30bn artificial intelligence investment fund to help finance data centres.

“This market is so massive in terms of the data centre demand,” Arougheti said. “There is still a significant undersupply of capital to meet that demand.”

TENS of thousands of struggling energy customers can have their bills wiped and get a host of energy-saving gadgets this winter.

EDF Energy, one of the country’s largest energy firms, will offer fresh support to those facing fuel poverty this winter.

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The supplier will invest £29 million in a range of initiatives, including debt matching and write offs, as well as providing free energy-saving gadgets.

Debt matching allows struggling customers to get part of their balance wiped.

For instance, if a customer pays £100, EDF Energy will pay off £100, too, effectively wiping half the amount owed and getting them back on track sooner.

British Gas also offers a similar scheme for hard-up customers.

EDF could also write off debts completely on a case-by-case basis.

Other customers could be offered free energy-saving gadgets if they contact the supplier as well.

To get the support you’ll first be referred to one of EDF’s charity partners: Citizens Advice Plymouth, Income Max, and Charis Grants.

Last winter, EDF helped 65,000 customers with support, including debt advice, Income maximisation, energy efficiency advice, debt clearance and financial assistance payments.

Its Warm Winter shop also helped 1,000 customers with electric goods such as kettles, air fryers and slow cookers.

To be eligible, a customer must be fuel poor or at risk of fuel poverty and have known vulnerabilities in the household.

EDF says its team will identify eligible customers and refer them for extra support from Income Max and Plymouth Citizens Advice.

These partner firms will then recommend customers and support them with an application for debt relief.

EDF says that any decision is made based on many factors, including the value of debt, its age, and customers’ repayment behaviour.

Philippe Commaret, managing director of customers at EDF, said: “Whilst the Ofgem price cap has reduced in three of the last four quarters, an October rise of 10% will have a significant impact on those who are already struggling. 

“We are doing all we can to reduce bills, however, to make a real long-term difference, we believe a social tariff is still needed.

“Only through meaningful Government and industry-wide intervention, paired with better data matching, such as a single cross-sector Priority Services Register, will affordability improve for those most in need.”

To find out more about the help, visit edfenergy.com/about/support-for-customers.

What should I do if I fall into debt?

You should contact your supplier as early as possible to let them know if you’re struggling.

Energy debts are priority debts, which means there can be more severe consequences to not paying than with other types of debt.

Failing to engage with your supplier about your debt could also see them apply for a court warrant to forcibly install a prepayment meter in your home.

Once you’ve contacted your supplier about your debt problems, ask for an affordable repayment plan.

Your supplier should work with you to figure out a sensible amount you can pay towards your debts each month.

Your supplier may also allow you to apply for an energy grant.

These could be delivered as energy credits to help cover your debt, or your supplier might agree to wipe your outstanding balance.

Ask your supplier what’s on offer and how to apply.

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

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

Lights in their various forms – suspended from the ceiling, freestanding or sitting on a surface – have transformed how society moves, sleeps, communicates and more. Unsurprisingly, then, artists are often rethinking how we approach lamps and chandeliers, making them occupy a space between object and art. 

Sadie Coles channelled this in her group show in Mayfair, Shine On, this spring, which included works by Gelitin, Isa Genzken, Urs Fisher and Sarah Lucas. Many of these electric pieces radiated humour and playfulness. “We had a painting of a light store by Alex Da Corte that inspired the show,” says the gallerist. “It reminded me of the lamp shops on the King’s Road and how jolly they always look. We are wired to associate light with warmth, joy, spirituality, transcendence; sometimes also with cosy domesticity, or as a setter of louche atmospheres.” There is, she thinks, “a lot of possibility for experiment and interpretation”. 

We are wired to associate light with warmth

In Coles’s show, artist Anicka Yi’s hanging illuminated kelp sculptures looked like the cocoon cousins of Isamu Noguchi lanterns, containing animatronic insects spinning like moths. “Beneath the shimmering green and gold light, each textured kelp surface reveals a narrative of an embattled oceanic existence,” Yi says. “The scratches and scars adorning the kelp sculptures mirror human history – a journey that began in the ocean and now faces the potential of an untimely return due to rising sea levels.”

Japanese ceramicist Takuro Kuwata also references Noguchi, specifically his Akari lamps. He was among 24 artists commissioned for Loewe’s presentation at Salone del Mobile. “I thought about making a lamp that I’ve never seen before,” says Kuwata. “I took inspiration from the techniques of Japanese tea ceremonies.” His “stone explosion” series was made with Ozeki, a company that has produced paper lanterns since 1891. “It is interesting to make the distance between art and life closer by being functional,” he says.

Amsterdam-based duo Drift have taken light to an increasingly operatic level, incorporating drones and choreographed robotics into their work. Their breakthrough was Fragile Future, an installation made from LED-dotted dandelions that glow through a network of bronze wires. They appear to cluster organically on floors, walls and ceilings. “Light is such a beautiful way of translating energy,” says Drift’s Ralph Nauta. “You create a sense of something coming to life. It’s an energy that you can react to.” 

Spanish artist Nacho Carbonell’s functional, textured light sculptures range from freestanding lights resembling glowing trees to sprawling ceiling pieces like Big Cocoon Chandelier, which is on permanent display at Ladbroke Hall in west London. These creations are organic in both shape and material. “I grew up on the Mediterranean,” says Carbonell of his inspiration. “You always need to be able to shelter yourself from the heavy sun. There’s something inside this protected shape – a glimmering light through the leaves.”

Light, since it affects us both physiologically and emotionally, is the perfect art medium. These artists are using it to continually surprise us: just think of Sarah Lucas’s light in Shine On, a chaotic amalgam made up of buckets, clothes hangers and bulbs. The results are otherworldly. 

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

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

Near the beginning of the Australian writer Charlotte Wood’s novel, the unnamed narrator says: “Nobody will read this but me. Even so, I imagine there are things I’m leaving out.” It’s a teasing line for Wood — who has published seven novels, beginning with Pieces of a Girl (1999) — to give to her narrator, and it acquired an extra layer of irony after Stone Yard Devotional was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, promising an even wider audience for the novel.

Following the death of her mother, the narrator, who works in species conservation, leaves Sydney and goes to stay for a month at a convent in rural New South Wales, near where she grew up. She finds life there “shockingly peaceful” and initially struggles to adjust. But she becomes fascinated by the nuns’ devotion and the apparent simplicity of their existence.

The second part of the novel, which comprises the bulk, is set four years later. The narrator has gone to live at the convent, although without officially taking orders. She has left her job and her husband and, while she withholds the details of their separation, she believes: “Everyone here has hurt someone by coming.”

She throws herself into convent routines: cooking, gardening and praying, even though she remains agnostic and under no illusions about what she calls “the savagery of the Catholic Church”. Two events prove disruptive. The first is a plague of mice, which Wood describes in skin-crawling detail that gets at existential anxiety about dirt and decay; one night, a man sees so many mice crossing a road at once that they resemble “a wide river of silver water, flowing steadily. . .”

The other event, which happens at the same time as the plague, is the arrival of Helen Parry, an aloof yet charismatic nun who is returning from Bangkok with the recently discovered bones of a murdered woman who once lived at the convent. The victim’s bones make for a troubling spectre, lying in a coffin in their own room as the nuns await permission from the authorities to bury them.

But the narrator is also unnerved by Helen’s presence. The two women were at school together, and the narrator remembers Helen as a downtrodden child, neglected by her mother, bullied by other children; she recalls joining in a brutal pile-on when Helen was beaten by her classmates. The narrator contemplates forgiveness repeatedly, calling it “serious work, beyond the reach of occasion or rhetoric”, and Wood keeps the reader hanging on to see if Helen and the narrator will reach a reckoning, whether there will be forgiveness or even acknowledgment of their shared past.

This is a transfixing novel about the way childhood events, be they seismic or seemingly banal, can haunt us in adulthood. Wood pares back her narrator’s life and language to explore fundamental questions of loss, suffering and how we coexist with other people, other species and the environment, with a power and precision that means it will resonate with readers long after this year’s Booker Prize has been awarded.

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood Hodder & Stoughton £16.99, 320 pages

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