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Chipmaker Qualcomm approached its struggling rival Intel about a potential takeover in recent days, according to two people familiar with the matter. 

A deal is far from certain and no formal offer has been made, according to people with knowledge of the approach. A person close to Qualcomm said the chipmaker would only pursue a friendly deal, and people with knowledge of Intel’s thinking said the company harbours concerns that a deal would be stymied by antitrust regulators. 

A full takeover of Intel would top Microsoft’s $69bn acquisition of Activision as the largest technology deal in history. Intel’s market capitalisation was $93bn on Friday after its share price jumped 8 per cent following an initial report on Qualcomm’s approach by The Wall Street Journal. 

Once the world’s largest chipmaker, Intel’s years-long fall from grace has accelerated in recent months. The company lost nearly $30bn in market value in August after a disastrous earnings report in which chief executive Pat Gelsinger announced 15,000 job cuts and scrapped its dividend.

Intel’s share price has declined 50 per cent since the start of this year, putting the company on the defensive about the risk of approaches from potential bidders and the threat of hostile shareholders.

Intel is working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to evaluate Qualcomm’s approach, people with knowledge of the matter said. For several months investment bankers from Morgan Stanley have been advising it on how to defend itself from activist investors, a move previously reported by CNBC.

Intel is considering a wide range of asset sales, people familiar with the company’s thinking said.

Qualcomm raised the possibility of a full takeover of Intel after exploring an acquisition of several Intel assets, people familiar with the matter said, confirming an earlier report by Reuters.

Unlike Intel, Qualcomm does not build its own chips and instead outsources production to outside manufacturers. Qualcomm, which has a $188bn market capitalisation, is working with investment bank Evercore to evaluate its approach to Intel.

It is unclear how it would fund a wholesale takeover of Intel, or whether it would divest assets as part of a takeover. A deal is likely to face intense antitrust scrutiny and political concerns over national security. 

Should a deal go forward, it would be pitched to US regulators as a bid to strengthen American chipmakers in their race to compete with Chinese manufacturers, according to people familiar with the matter.

The people cautioned that a lengthy acquisition process could cause the chipmakers to fall behind foreign rivals, a concern that may scuttle a deal.

Intel and Goldman Sachs declined to comment. Morgan Stanley, Evercore and Qualcomm did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

The approach adds to mounting pressure on Gelsinger, who was appointed in 2021 and is three years into a five-year turnaround plan to transform Intel into a chip manufacturer that rivals industry leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. 

The company has hit several stumbling blocks along the way: high profile executives have departed, including industry veteran Lip-Bu Tan who left the company’s board. Intel has also lagged rivals Nvidia and AMD in sales of artificial intelligence chips to data centres.

Intel shareholders would probably balk at a sale to Qualcomm, analysts at Citi argued in a note published on Friday. They said Intel should instead exit its semiconductor manufacturing business “as we believe the company has a very small chance of becoming a profitable leading-edge foundry”. 

Takeover talks are “almost too silly to comment on”, they wrote.

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When Tupperware filed for bankruptcy this week, it put me in mind of a friend who recently asked me to return their biscuit container. No drama there. Man is born free, and if you’ve exercised that freedom to become the sort of man who’d ask for a used tissue back, well that’s none of my business.

The issue was that they asked me without warning, as we stood in the kitchen post-dinner party saying our goodbyes. And so I was forced to open The Cupboard — you know the one — and shatter the thin veneer of sophistication I had spent the evening polishing. Was theirs the container that now bore a tomato stain in the shape of Australia? The one stacked at the bottom of a gravity-defying reverse pyramid? A protracted search confirmed my suspicion that it was in fact the one now home to the laundry pegs. 

If I were to apportion blame for the embarrassment felt in that moment, I would lay it at the feet of Brownie Wise. In the late 1940s, in Florida, Wise started hosting home sale parties to shift Tupperware. She did it to combat technology resistance: viewed in a catalogue or in-store, people thought Earl Tupper’s newly patented containers would smell bad and be hard to seal. 

But the parties, which became Tupperware’s most successful venture, sold more than pliable plastic: a vision of colour-coordinated cupboard harmony. “No unsightly half-used packages!” promised one ad, which showed a fridge in which even the milk was stored in matching pastel. Tupperware would satisfy “the woman’s demand for beauty” somewhere she’d not previously known she demanded it: her leftover lasagne. 

In seeking bankruptcy protection, the company cited a “challenging macroeconomic environment” and consumers moving away from direct sales. One thing they could not cite was waning interest in beautifying hidden parts of the home.

“Smart” storage solutions are a booming sector, driven by influencers who demo ingenious solutions to household “problems” on their social channels: lazy Susans to organise condiments, mini peg rails to hang crisp packets on. On TikTok, there’s a whole sub-genre of “restock videos” in which people decant bathroom, cleaning or fridge products from the custom-designed packaging they were sold in into aesthetically harmonious containers.

Like their party-hosting foremothers, these influencers are icons of a particular sort of empowerment. They have found a way to build status (and in some cases small fortunes) within the domestic sphere. But the rest of us should protect our chaos cupboards at all costs. Storage is the backstage area of the home and it doesn’t need to look “nice” any more than a sock drawer does. 

How could it, when the forces of progress conspire against any attempt at order? Every month brings with it new takeaway containers that it would be a shame to waste, every Christmas a stocking full of beeswax food wraps and silicon bowl lids, every pickling project a new Mason jar. The “tupperware” most people own comes from a hundred knock-off brands, and it is an everyday miracle of engineering that not a single one of them can fit another’s lid. 

I got a lesson in how to embrace this anarchy with style last week, when I spent the day in Angela Hartnett’s kitchen. Hartnett, a brilliant, successful and somewhat chaotic chef, revealed that when the tyranny of mismatched leftovers threatens to overwhelm her she a hosts a “freezer party” and invites the neighbours to help her consume the mystery contents of every zip-lock bag and deli container that’s been playing Jenga in the cold store. There are no grand promises that she’ll do “better” next time — she simply waits for the chaos to build again to breaking point. 

To put it in terms a Utah momfluencer would appreciate, it’s time to give up on ever finding that missing lid and #blessthismess instead. 

harriet.fitchlittle@ft.com

As part of this weekend’s business lunch issue of the magazine, we asked FT staff and contributors for their favourite places to eat in and around the City, and which table they like to sit at. From hallowed institutions to secret gardens, here are their top picks.

For tradition

Arlington

It’s as if Le Caprice, formerly on this site, never left. Both the old and new restaurants are excellent for business. Perhaps it’s because it’s not easy to get a table, and there’s a cachet to having a good position, or because you’ll bump into well known business or celebrity faces, or simply that you’ll always have a delicious meal.

Nearest station: Green Park

Where to sit: Past the bar, second table on the right near the window (if you can get past the restaurant’s official policy of not reserving specific tables)

— James Max, Rich People’s Problems columnist

Sweetings

Where better for a business lunch than a City stalwart that only opens on weekdays at lunchtime? Sweetings has been serving seafood to London’s bankers and brokers for well over a century. On a recent visit I ended up sat with a septuagenarian property investor who has been a regular for 50 years. After a few hours there you may lose track of which decade you are in, particularly if you order their signature drink, the Black Velvet, a heady mix of Guinness and champagne served in a pewter tankard. Stick to one if you need to return to the office afterwards, trust me.

Nearest station: Mansion House

Where to sit: There are no reservations at Sweetings. Sit where you’re told to

— Robert Smith, corporate finance editor

Wiltons

For a couple of decades, I was too intimidated to enter Wiltons. I would pass the entrance fairly often on my way to and from The Economist’s old offices, and see red-faced men in double-breasted suits tumbling out after a long lunch. But when I finally dared to cross the threshold, it quickly became apparent to me that this was the ideal spot for a business lunch. The tables are widely spaced and the surrounding conversation rarely seems to rise above a polite murmur. The menu and wine list are agreeably predictable. Also, it’s expensive, so it’s really best if somebody else is picking up the tab. The red-faced old men no longer intimidate me. Perhaps I have become one myself?

Nearest station: Green Park

Where to sit: A booth in the main room

— Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator

Otto’s 

Don’t come to Otto’s when it’s summer or if you’re doing dry January or if you’re pressed for time. Come when the days are drawing in, when you have a voracious appetite and you’re up for a lengthy lunch. Then sink into the red velvet banquettes (inspired by legendary Parisian establishment Maxim’s) and enjoy the best example of classic French dining this side of the Channel. Otto’s is most famous for its Canard à la Presse, a duck extravaganza spread out over three courses, and served, if you’re lucky, by owner Otto Tepasse. The restaurant commands a loyal following of local business people and lawyers, and is thankfully off the tourist track.

Nearest station: Chancery Lane

Where to sit: When asked, director Elin Hansen sent a breakdown of how she matchmakes every table. Table 1 is the “establishment table”; table 5 for lovers; table 4 for young people and table 9 for meetings

— Harriet Agnew, asset management editor

The Delaunay

Noisy enough not to be easily overheard, but not so noisy you cannot be heard at all, this is the owners’ successful attempt to reapply the formula that made sister restaurant, The Wolseley, Piccadilly’s business-breakfast venue of choice. The Delaunay’s catchment area of Fleet Street, the Inns of Court and the City and an undemanding menu of mittel-European comfort food means it is usually full for lunch. Later, the networking and business gossip is leavened with pre- and post-theatre chat from the Covent Garden crowd.

Nearest station: Covent Garden

Where to sit: A booth near the window on the western side

— Andrew Hill, senior business writer

For food

Luca

My favourite spot for a business lunch is Luca, an Italian restaurant near Farringdon. The set menu in the bar area is the best value in a London Michelin-starred restaurant (£32 for two courses, £38 for three). The area is quickly becoming the hotspot destination for quality restaurants in the City. Nearby, Bouchon Racine has perfect lighting, good vibes and elegant food. Something about it just hits the spot. Best of all, you’ll never run into someone you know at either.

Nearest station: Farringdon

Where to sit: Co-founder Daniel Willis says the best seat in the bar is the middle booth, table 103

— Arash Massoudi, finance and markets editor

Hawksmoor Guildhall

Red meat is very much on the menu at Hawksmoor Guildhall, the subterranean oak-panelled steakhouse that has become a City institution since opening in 2011. Its old-world charm is a big hit with foreign bankers, with low lighting, brown leather chairs and a well-stocked cocktail bar. And of course its famed steaks. More affordable deals are also available. A three-course meal is offered at lunchtime or early evening for £33. An ice-cold Shaky Pete’s, an ale and gin cocktail mixed with lemon juice and ginger, is well worth a try.

Nearest station: Bank

Where to sit: Hawksmoor co-founder Huw Gott says his favourite tables across the London restaurants are table 45 at Wood Wharf (for two) and table 43 at Air Street (for four)

— Owen Walker, European banking correspondent

St John Smithfield

I stopped doing business lunches in 2008. Just the thought of being away from my desk for three hours in the middle of the day gives me indigestion. In the event I really, really like someone, however, I will concede to a meeting at St John, where I will expect my guest to share a Welsh rarebit and a big blousy green salad. The leaves are nightmarishly tricky to eat, hence the lunch will be a test of our relationship. Will you still love me when we fail to discuss any pressing professional matters whatsoever and I am covered in vinaigrette and bits of lettuce? That, my friend, is someone I can work with.

Nearest station: Farringdon

Where to sit: The bar, never the restaurant. (There are no reservations, but head chef Jonathan Whittle says he likes the tables to the side of the bar best)

— Jo Ellison, HTSI editor and FT Weekend deputy editor

BiBi

Hidden away in a pocket of Mayfair, this tiny restaurant packs a punch. Small plates, British produce and Indian-inspired dishes, but not as you know them. Best for one-on-one meetings, secret squirrel conversations or for those who like eating at the counter. It’s fine dining without the fustiness and business friendly without the suit-and-tie vibe. It’s hard to imagine any bad choices on the à la carte or tasting menus, with chaat and grilled selections that surprise and delight.

Nearest station: Marble Arch

Best seat: A booth

— Anjli Raval, management editor

For privacy

Cloth

I look for somewhere that’s buzzy but where you can talk without being overheard at the next table, which rules out most of London’s fancy but cramped restaurants. My new favourite lunch spot, if wine is involved, is Cloth on Cloth Fair. I have never liked the steely, shiny side of the City, and this is a nod to its far more ancient roots, a wine bar with amazing bottles and very good food (including proper non-aubergine-based choices for veggies like me) in an old townhouse in Smithfield.

Nearest station: Barbican

Where to sit: Director Joe Haynes says table 21 is the house favourite — near the entrance, next to the window

— Isabel Berwick, Working It host and editor

Kerridge’s Bar & Grill

Admittedly, the Embankment is not prime business lunch territory. But the upside is that the grand dining room at Kerridge’s Bar & Grill tends to be a discreet place to meet. The leather banquettes and club chairs even have half screens rising above them for further privacy. This is the place to go when you do not wish to be disturbed or overheard. The food is both precise and premium.

Nearest station: Embankment

Where to sit: The restaurant declined to give numbers, but said that the best tables are two six-seaters referred to internally as the “Robi Walters tables”

— Malcolm Moore, energy editor

Toklas

Toklas has everything. Unfussy, tasty food served briskly. A Sydney-standard outdoor terrace. Well spaced tables, all the better for ears-only chat. And best of all, it’s down a side street, in a weird looking building, well off the beaten biz lunch track, so you will be very unlucky to bump into anyone you know. If you want to go cheap and cheerful, there’s also a Toklas bakery and café a few doors down.

Nearest station: Temple

Best seat: Maître d’ Alcides Gauto says the booths under the Wolfgang Tillmans are popular with regulars

— Pilita Clark, business columnist

Garden Café

I often want to meet people somewhere that will put them at ease. In a quiet, fairly random pocket of London, the Garden Café at the Garden Museum does just that. It is unpretentious, perhaps because it doesn’t need to manifest an identity when it somehow pulls off a restaurant, museum café, church graveyard and courtyard garden all at once. The food (modern British and European) is simple and exquisite. It is served in an airy yet intimate hideaway of copper-cladding, glass walls and lush planting. Best of all, most people don’t know it’s there.

Nearest station: Lambeth North

Where to sit: The red tables in the courtyard garden

— Antonia Cundy, special investigations reporter

For convenience

Enoteca da Luca

If you work in the City, the trio of Enoteca da Luca modern Italian restaurants are the ideal spot for an understated get-together. My favourite is the compact Watling Street site, all smart banquettes and exposed brick, just round the corner from FT HQ. The Basinghall Street outpost, a short walk away near the Guildhall, has a similar vibe. Insurance workers in and around the Lloyd’s quarter can take advantage of a delightful outdoor terrace at the larger Devonshire Square site. The restaurants have slightly different menus, but all excel at a range of modern Italian classics, both tapas-style and full-size, with an excellent Italian wine list to boot.

Nearest station: Mansion House

Where to sit: At Watling Street, the cosy table in the rear left corner, table 18, is best for two

— Patrick Jenkins, deputy editor

Taberna Etrusca

I love Italy and particularly love Italian food, which, at its most enjoyable, is appetising, varied and unpretentious. So it is my good fortune that within a few minutes of the FT’s office in Friday Street is the Taberna Etrusca, dating from 1967, located in Bow Churchyard, run by Italians and styled as a classically Italian trattoria. Its food is also classically Italian, indeed Tuscan. I normally have an antipasto or pasta. If I am feeling greedy, I have both. I rarely have a secondo (main course). I like to finish my meal with vanilla gelato affogato — a gelato with espresso poured on top. Service is excellent and friendly.

Nearest station: St Paul’s

Where to sit: The outdoor area, which you can enter from the back

— Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator

For novelty

Stem + Stem

A relatively new restaurant and florist tucked away down Bow Lane, in the heart of the City. Unlike many traditional business lunch haunts, the restaurant is light and airy and adorned with hanging plants and flowers, creating a little oasis of calm in the bustling financial district. The restaurant is small and intimate, but there is enough space between tables, helping to ensure a degree of privacy. It offers a decent wine list for those meetings that involve a tipple. 

Nearest station: Mansion House 

Where to sit: Near the window looking out over Bow Lane, table 3 or 4 (the latter has a better view) 

— Emma Dunkley, asset management reporter 

Beigel Bake

I’ve always found that high-tone people don’t mind being taken to low-tone places. They feel a little edgy, a little free. Some of the most successful business lunches I’ve had were over salt-beef bagels (yes to pickles and mustard) from the bagel shop on Brick Lane with the white sign (not the yellow). One starched tablecloth is much like another, but a claggy hunk of cheesecake to follow your bagel — that’s memorable. 

Nearest station: Shoreditch High St

Where to sit: A park bench. There are several pocket parks in a five minute radius

— Josh Spero, associate arts editor

What’s your favourite business lunch restaurant in London? Let us know by leaving a comment below. Best table suggestions encouraged!

My first boss was one of the world’s greatest lunchers. Editor of a magazine about the film, television, advertising and music video industries in the 1990s, a decade when you could have a perfectly respectable career in the audiovisual world without ever troubling to produce anything, she was a legend in Soho. She would take me to lunch at the boozy hidey-hole Andrew Edmunds, the vast and chrome-sparkly Terence Conran megalopolis Mezzo or the perfect institution Vasco & Piero’s Pavilion. Everywhere we went, she would be warmly welcomed, air kissed and visited by industry luminaries from the surrounding tables. As we staggered back to the office, I’d feel inducted into a way of life.

She taught me many things about journalism, but the most important thing she taught me about working life was that relationships endure and relationships created over lunch endure for decades. Work in television halted between 1pm and 3pm, and being able to secure a table at Sheekey’s or The Ivy between these hours was something to boast of unironically. Name-dropping the proposed restaurant was a way to secure a meeting. An opening glass of champagne and a half bottle of Chablis was standard. With hindsight it’s less of a mystery why so many working relationships were, er, problematic.

Thus, starting out, I most often found myself the junior partner in meals with the most celebrated and self-mythologised lunchers — men in media. These were invariably booked through assistants who hinted at the unimaginable glamour of their fixed reservation at a top-flight restaurant (“He lunches on Wednesdays, will Nobu in four weeks suit?”). I had no complaints. I was paid £13,500 in my first job in 1995, but no one would blink if I filed an expense claim for an £80 lunch. My answer to the conspiratorial question, “Shall we have a look at the pudding menu?” was always “Yes”, because then I could skip the expense of dinner. The media men of the 1990s stole my cigarettes and taught me how to drink at lunch (I did once have to go and lie down in the sick bay after a three-hour spectacular). I learnt it was important I fight to pick up the tab (flattering to one’s senior), occasionally give in graciously (“my turn next time”), pass on as much gossip as I pick up, fair trade being no robbery, and always ask about the wife and kids. Of course, it was a ridiculously inefficient way to do business. In a sense, that was part of it. My skin still prickles with mortification remembering the time I kept the controller of BBC1 waiting because I was stuck in traffic and he had to eat soup alone. The shame!

When men talk nostalgically about the golden days of lunching, the well-brought up now remember to caveat it with a reminder that they were, of course, a terrible boy’s club. But they only remember the lunches they were present at. At the turn of the millennium, all over the media, women breaking through glass ceilings were eyeing how the men were doing it, and it’s fair to say we rose to the challenge.

I was lucky enough to be part of girl gangs who had boxes at the races and the dogs, went gambling at the Ritz casino, took private rooms at Nobu and the River Cafe and special tables at The Wolseley or The Ivy. Events at which eight or 10 of us, from cabinet ministers to newspaper editors to TV channel bosses and mega TV producers, would prove women bond just as successfully over vast amounts of booze and jollity, and absolutely behave just as badly. I can recall public singing, an incident where two fierce egos challenged each other to an arm wrestle, someone demonstrating how you’d add sign language to porn to comply with new regulation and the destruction of a rather beautiful hat.

We were loud, but we were few. It was not until I moved to New York in the 2010s that I realised women networking over lunch was a global game. A PR as kind as she was mighty organised a welcome lunch at Michael’s, a media powerhouse restaurant in Manhattan of such stature that network presidents had regular tables and the front desk would tweet daily lists of the execs and celebs who had crossed the threshold. She invited only women. I was the editor of a yet-to-launch website, and I couldn’t understand why anyone would come, but we all ended up in Page Six, New York’s reigning gossip column, so someone knew what they were doing. The guests brought gifts of Diane Von Furstenberg scarves and recommendations of eyebrow groomers. This was a serious step up from our “feminine” traditions in London of lovely, handwritten thank-you notes on arty postcards, and the fact we’d actually remembered the names of each other’s children.

In New York, I recognised that I was being admitted to a set where the rules were subtly different. Contact building was about rapid intimacy accelerated by expenditure but not necessarily on dining. A journalist once invited me for lunch but led with “I know you live near me and have a daughter about the same age as mine, why don’t we take you both for mani-pedis?” Now that’s a fresh take on a life-work balance.

Do we blame the internet or the budgets for the slowing down of the lunch invitations? In a sense, the internet separated the advertising from the media and as the revenues went programmatic, so did the contacts. Those who inducted me are now very sadly starting to leave for the great never-ending lunch. Let’s be honest, it’s not a lifestyle associated with longevity.

All that was left were the sorts of lunches I wouldn’t have been seen dead at back in the day: the ones that sold tickets, beginning with the words “Women in”, often run by a brave senior woman in an organisation full of men, trying to facsimile the clubs to which they weren’t invited. The problem with these lunches wasn’t their intentions, but the lack of spontaneity in execution. There’s little opportunity to bond in a speed networking event. And, in truth, the few actual powerful women in any given industry had no availability between work events and family.

This is not to deny the benefits of more formal networking. The rules of entry to the informal kind are opaque and excluding, and I can’t pretend that my girl gang was any more thoughtful about our various privileges than our male counterparts. I remember taking some younger colleagues out for lunch at a fancy Edinburgh restaurant to hear their hopes and dreams, hoping to show them that I thought them important, but realised immediately it was way too formal and I risked doing the opposite. It’s undeniably healthier that young women can now express ambition through application for mentorships and paid trainee schemes. I will never, though, get over my fundamental disapproval of a po-faced event where, after one glass of warm white wine, everyone exchanges a business card.

When I invite people to lunch now, they are pleased but baffled. I feel slightly as if I’ve sent a coachman round with a calling card. These brutal days of computerised booking schedules and automated emails are of course more efficient and more democratic, but the clout, ladies! The sheer clout of wandering into a “famed eatery in London’s West End” to be greeted by a glass of champagne and “Congratulations on your promotion.” You would never feel you were in the wrong club and neither would your lunch guest.

Except, except! Perhaps there is still another way. On a recent trip to Manhattan, where everything happens first, a former colleague and expert networker announced that lunch and Midtown and power restaurants are back, along with everything ’90s. The personal connection, the intimate confessional bonding, the sense of order in a chaotic world established by a maître d’ knowing your name and which table you like, an antidote to anonymity and social media socialising. How thrilling and relieving.

My advice for women who would like to participate in this throwback trend is as it was handed down to me by my foresisters. Consolidate your expense account spending. Blow your budget in one or two restaurants and those restaurants will repay your loyalty. Invite people out. These days you can split the bill, but nothing says “I enjoyed this and we’re doing it again” like “You can do next time.” Make your own gang. Invite someone from your world and get a pal to do likewise. Do not underestimate the power of a small sin, be it pudding or booze or being slightly late back to work, and always, always, order chips for the table.

It’s unlikely that I’ll be a leading light in this hopeful new wave. True networking should be for your twenties when all lies ahead and you can still tolerate alcohol before 6pm. But if you’re lucky, not only will you learn so much more about your job, you’ll gain a bit of life too.

My best ever lunch started perfectly straightforwardly with a senior TV executive I barely knew. Somehow, at 5pm, it was still going on, as the staff around us began relaying the tables for dinner service, pausing only to reassure us that though life must go on around us, they didn’t want us to feel we should take a hint. “We love that you’re still here,” they egged us on. It finished at 7.30pm when she revealed she had to go to a dinner with Rupert Murdoch. She remains my closest friend and godmother to my child, but we lunch on our own time these days.

Janine Gibson is FT Weekend editor

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An innovative new funding mechanism championed by former UK prime minister Gordon Brown is to provide $1.5bn in low-cost loans to improve education in poorer countries around the world.

The International Finance Facility for Education (Iffed) is set to launch what it described as the largest one-off investment in decades to improve inadequate schooling in response to global education budget cuts.

The initial $1.5bn has been raised through support from governments including the UK, Sweden and Canada, and from philanthropic and corporate backers, who will offer guarantees to underwrite a programme to disburse new loans and grants through leading multilateral financial institutions.

Iffed has signed a first agreement with the Asian Development Bank, and is set to authorise an initial disbursement in 2024 of over $100mn. It has approved 10 Asian countries as being eligible for financing, including Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

Discussions are advancing with other backers and intermediaries including the African Development Bank and the World Bank.

Many lower- and middle-income countries have cut their education budgets in recent years, and the World Bank has warned of low levels of basic numeracy and literacy — notably in Africa — compounded by further “learning loss” driven by pandemic-era school closures.

An estimated 250mn school-age children are currently not in class, with 800mn of the world’s 2bn children set to leave education without any secondary qualifications. 

International aid is dominated by health projects, while education represents just a small fraction and countries often struggle to demonstrate short-term returns to donors.

Brown, the UN’s global education envoy, told the Financial Times that the “groundbreaking innovation” in international development finance had been years in the making. He spoke after Iffed received an AAA rating from credit agency Moody’s and was graded AA+ by S&P.

Under the programme, multilateral banks lend money to governments of lower- and middle-income countries at a very low interest rate. This is in exchange for commitments to invest the money alongside existing domestic spending on credible national education programmes. 

“People traditionally think of international development in terms of grants or loans,” Brown said. “I think the transformative innovation here is to think not just of guarantees, but how you can leverage guarantees to create the kinds of resources that will never be created in the near future through loans and grants alone.”

He added: “It is shocking that nearly half of all the children on our planet still have no formal schooling. But that can begin to be consigned to history.”

Brown said the model had the capacity to become the “third arm for the development agenda” and was a “vehicle that should be more widely used” across other areas of public policy, such as health.

Donor backing will help to ensure that the new bonds issued by the multilaterals have a high credit rating. So far Canada, Sweden and the UK have committed $342mn in guarantees and paid-in capital and $100mn in grants.

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The price of fuel for nuclear reactors has surged much faster than that of raw uranium since the start of 2022, in a sign of the bottlenecks that have built up in the west following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Enriched uranium has more than tripled in price to $176 per separative work unit — the standard measure of the effort required to separate isotopes of uranium — since the start of 2022, according to UxC, a data provider.

Demand for uranium has been driven by a revival in atomic power. However, Russia plays a significant role in the multi-stage process of turning mined uranium into the fuel for a nuclear reactor. This includes converting yellowcake — uranium concentrate — into uranium hexafluoride gas, enriching it to increase the concentration of the type of uranium used for fission, and then turning the enriched uranium into pellets that go into reactors.

Uranium hexafluoride has jumped fourfold in price to $68 per kg in the same period, indicating that conversion is the biggest bottleneck in the nuclear fuel supply chain, analysts said. In contrast, uranium ore has only doubled in price.

“The conversion and enrichment prices are reflecting a much bigger supply squeeze due to the Russia-Ukraine war and other factors,” said Jonathan Hinze, chief executive of UxC.

“Uranium alone does not tell the whole story when it comes to price impacts in the nuclear fuel supply chain.”

Russia controls 22 per cent of global uranium conversion capacity and 44 per cent of enrichment capacity. Those services are out of bounds for some western utilities following a US ban on Russian uranium, although waivers are allowed until the end of 2027.

France, US, Canada and China are the other countries besides Russia that are home to large-scale conversion sites.

The US government said this week that it is closely tracking whether imports of uranium from China are providing a back door for Russian material, after bumper exports in May when the ban was introduced.

The UK used to contribute to global conversion capacity via the Springfields site but conversion services halted in 2014, while France’s plant has faced delays in getting to full capacity.

“The conversion market is very, very tight for the simple reason that existing facilities are in care and maintenance,” said Grant Isaac, chief financial officer at Cameco, the world’s second-largest uranium producer, on an earnings call.

“Because of the delays in getting all of the conversion-producing centres up to full production in the western world . . . conversion has a very good tail of strength for the next little while.”

While higher nuclear fuel prices are likely to hit the profitability of power companies, the bigger issue is making sure there is enough investment in mines, conversion and enrichment to meet demand from extensions to existing reactors’ lifetime and new ones.

Nuclear fuel companies such as France’s Orano and British-Dutch-German owned Urenco have committed to boosting enrichment capacity, but so far no one has committed to building new conversion capacity in the west.

Nicolas Maes, chief executive of Orano, said at an industry conference this month that investments needed in conversion and enrichment were “massive” compared with the size of the relevant companies.

He compared Orano’s annual revenues of almost €5bn to the €1.7bn needed to expand its enrichment capacity in southern France by more than 30 per cent.

Johnathan Chavers, director of nuclear fuel and analysis at Southern Nuclear, which operates eight nuclear plants in the US, said at the same conference that utilities and the nuclear fuel suppliers were unwilling to make “big bets” due to a “chicken and egg problem”.

Power plant operators are reluctant to sign long-term supply agreements unless the facilities are being built, giving certainty over expected delivery times for nuclear fuel, yet suppliers balk at making big investments without such deals to underwrite them, he said.