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AstraZeneca China president under investigation

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Muhammad Yunus sitting in a chair with both hands raised

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In today’s newsletter:

  • Beijing probes AstraZeneca’s China boss

  • BYD’s quarterly sales beat Tesla for the first time

  • An interview with Bangladesh’s interim leader


Good morning. AstraZeneca’s China boss, one of the country’s most high-profile pharmaceutical executives, is under investigation by Beijing authorities.

The British drugmaker said yesterday that its China president Leon Wang was “co-operating with an ongoing investigation”. The statement did not clarify the nature of the probe.

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The pharmaceutical chief has been crucial to AstraZeneca’s fortunes in China, where it generated $5.9bn in revenues last year, making it the largest overseas drugmaker by sales in the country.

Yesterday’s statement comes after police in Shenzhen detained a handful of AstraZeneca employees last month over the possible infringement of data privacy laws and importing unlicensed medications. It is unclear if Wang’s investigation is related to those arrests.

Beijing has intensified an anti-corruption crackdown on pharmaceutical companies over the past year, even as the sector has been a bright spot in the country’s bid to attract foreign capital.

Eleanor Olcott, our technology correspondent in Beijing, has more details.

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Here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today:

  • Economic data: Hong Kong and Taiwan report advance third-quarter GDP. China’s official October manufacturing and non-manufacturing PMIs are due.

  • Japan monetary policy: The Bank of Japan announces its interest rate decision — investors are betting the central bank will hold rates steady.

  • Results: Samsung Electronics, Fujitsu, Panasonic, Apple and Shell report.

  • Holiday: Financial markets are closed in Singapore, Sri Lanka and Malaysia for Deepavali, also called Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights.

Five more top stories

1. China’s biggest electric vehicle maker BYD has posted higher quarterly revenues than US rival Tesla for the first time. The Warren Buffett-backed carmaker sold a record 1.1mn cars in the three-month period, but a bruising price war in the Chinese market dragged on its profitability. 

2. The EU is preparing to launch an investigation into Temu, the Chinese online shopping business, amid concerns that the ecommerce platform is failing to crack down on sales of illegal products. A recent survey that tested toys sold on Temu and other online platforms found that 80 per cent of the items were toxic or posed health hazards for children.

  • EU-China relations: EU tariffs of up to 45 per cent on Chinese electric vehicles came into force yesterday, sharply escalating the trade war between the 27-member bloc and Beijing over allegations of unfair industrial subsidies.

3. A Canadian official has accused India’s powerful home affairs minister Amit Shah of overseeing violence and threats towards Sikh separatist activists in the North American nation. David Morrison, Canada’s deputy foreign minister, told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that he had confirmed Shah’s identity and alleged involvement to The Washington Post. It is the most direct claim against a close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

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4. The US economy grew at an annualised rate of 2.8 per cent in the third quarter. The data is the latest sign that American consumers remain resilient and comes just days before they vote to elect the country’s new president.

5. Australia will invest up to A$18bn (US$12bn) in missile manufacturing, including making advanced guided missile systems in the country for the first time. The investment is part of an overhaul of Canberra’s defence strategy in response to China’s military build-up.

Interview: Muhammad Yunus

Muhammad Yunus sitting in a chair with both hands raised
A former economics professor and ‘banker to the poor’, Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 and was appointed interim leader of Bangladesh in August © Yousuf Tushar/FT

Speaking to the FT, Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus accused ousted authoritarian leader Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League of exhibiting “all the characteristics of fascism”, saying the party has “no place” for now in the country’s politics. Yunus’s comments make clear the 84-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate favours taking a hard line on Bangladesh’s oldest and biggest political party after Sheikh Hasina was toppled by a student-led revolt in August.

We’re also reading . . . 

  • The FT View: Japan’s political limbo comes at a time when its economic, demographic and security challenges have never been greater, the editorial board writes.

  • Apple Card: The tech giant’s credit card with Goldman Sachs is a cautionary tale for those seeking to reinvent retail finance, writes Brooke Masters.

  • Giant African rats: A furry investigator has boosted the ranks of those sniffing out contraband in the lucrative illegal wildlife trade.

Chart of the day

Samsung Electronics is struggling to hold on to its crown as the world’s top-selling smartphone maker. The Korean tech giant was the only one of the top five global smartphone makers to experience falling shipments in the third quarter of this year, losing market share to longtime US rival Apple and to Chinese contenders offering slick new foldable devices.

Bar chart of Market share, Q3 2024 (%) showing Top 5 smartphone makers

Take a break from the news

Age matters when it comes to boards, writes Anjli Raval. Just 5 per cent of directors within S&P 500 companies are under the age of 50, but companies should not be afraid to take a chance on youth, argues Raval.

A modern boardroom featuring a long table with red chairs and microphones, set against a large window offering a panoramic view of the city.
© Bloomberg

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Kamala Harris stakes closing election pitch on joy, warnings and women voters

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Kamala Harris stakes closing election pitch on joy, warnings and women voters

With only days to go until the election, Kamala Harris made a closing pitch to voters that sought to balance joyful optimism with dire warnings about the threat posed by her Republican opponent.

“We have an opportunity in this election to finally turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump, who spends full time trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other,” the Democratic vice-president told an estimated crowd of 12,000 at a park in downtown Atlanta on Saturday.

It is a message Harris has hammered home in the final stretch of a presidential campaign powered by surging support from women and younger voters that would have seemed improbable at the start of the year.

But Harris now has an even chance of becoming America’s first female president after a frenetic four months that started with a disastrous debate performance from Joe Biden that led him to step aside in favour of his vice-president.

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What followed was a mad-dash autumn of campaigning in which Harris has erased Trump’s polling lead and surpassed his fundraising advantage.

The Financial Times poll tracker now shows Harris leading the former Republican president nationally by just over one point.

Critically, the candidates are in a statistical tie in the seven swing states that are likely to determine the election. That has led many analysts to conclude the next US president could be decided by a few thousand voters in just a handful of states. Four years ago, Biden won Georgia’s 16 electoral college votes by a razor-thin margin of less than 12,000 votes.

Harris and her advisers insist they have the momentum heading into polling day and that undecided voters making their choice in the final days were breaking their way.

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“Every single one of our battleground states are absolutely in play,” said a senior Harris campaign official. “We continue to see multiple pathways to 270,” the official added, referring to the number of electoral college votes needed to win the White House.

Harris has criss-crossed the country in the final days of her campaign, hitting every swing state at least once.

On Thursday and Friday, Harris whipped through Nevada, Arizona and Wisconsin. On Saturday, she flew straight from Georgia to North Carolina. On Sunday, she is expected to run through Michigan before rounding out her last day of campaigning on Monday with three major rallies in Pennsylvania.

“We still have work to do,” Harris told the crowd in Atlanta. “But here’s the thing, we like hard work . . . and make no mistake, we will win.”

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Kamala Harris at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Saturday © Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images

The Harris campaign has for weeks sought to craft a message that paints an optimistic vision of America’s future and warns of what they see as the threat Trump — who is already casting doubt on the results of next week’s election — poses to US democracy.

Harris has made overtures to female voters by vowing to restore abortion access and protect reproductive freedoms that were stripped away after Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices helped overturn Roe vs Wade in 2022. She has extended an olive branch to centrist Republicans who are disillusioned with Trump, insisting she would put “country over party” as president.

Top Harris advisers maintain the strategy is working, in part because Trump has spent the final days of his own campaign wrestling with a backlash to racist and misogynistic remarks from speakers at his Madison Square Garden rally. He has courted controversy with a series of vulgar and incendiary comments, including musing over how anti-Trump former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney would react if she had “guns trained on her face” and “nine barrels shooting at her”.

By contrast, the mood at Harris rallies has been relentlessly upbeat, with live music and celebrity appearances serving as warm-up acts. At the campaign stop in Atlanta on Saturday, throngs of voters — including many women who showed up with their young children in tow — coloured home-made signs and assembled friendship bracelets to show their support for Harris.

On Saturday night, she made an unscheduled stop in the Democratic stronghold of New York City for an appearance on Saturday Night Live.

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“We are so ready for a fresh change,” said Phyllis Hernandez, a 63-year-old Atlanta voter. “We are not going to be taken back into the dark ages. We are moving forward with hope and joy.”

A senior Harris campaign official said their private polling showed Trump’s antics were undercutting his own support.

“We are winning battleground voters who have made up their minds in the last week, and we are winning them by double-digit margins,” the official said.

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“We have believed all along that there were still undecided voters here, and that the close of this race was really, really important, and we are seeing that to be the case.”

Harris aides were also buoyed by Gallup polling out this week showing Democrats had a 10-point advantage over Republicans when it came to energy, with 77 per cent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents saying they were more enthusiastic about voting this year than in previous years, compared with 67 per cent of Republicans.

Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Salem Civic Center in Virginia on Saturday © Hannah McKay/Reuters

If Harris wins on Tuesday, it could well be because of women. Her campaign cites data showing more women have submitted their ballots by mail or in-person ahead of election day than men. Polls have consistently shown women overwhelmingly back Harris, while a similar percentage of men support Trump.

Still, many presidential campaign veterans caution that opinion polling and early voting figures in the final days of such a tight race are not necessarily predictive.

“We are all in a dark tunnel. That is the reality,” said Bob Shrum, a longtime Democratic consultant who worked on Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign and John Kerry’s 2004 bid for the White House. “But there are some emerging signs that she is doing very well.”

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The Harris team maintains that their hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of spending on targeted advertising and a robust “ground game” — the vast network of campaign volunteers and party organisers across the country — will help them turn out enough voters on Tuesday to push Harris over the line.

The senior Harris official said the campaign had knocked on more than 13mn doors across the seven battleground states to date. The Gallup poll found 42 per cent of registered voters nationwide said they had been contacted by Harris’s campaign, compared with 35 per cent who said they had heard from the Trump team.

“She has done the work. She has laid out what people need to hear,” said Brandi Wyche, chair of the local Democratic party in DeKalb County, just outside of Atlanta, who has worked for months to rally support for Harris. “Now it is just about making sure to get people to the polls to elect her as our next president.”

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Additional reporting by James Politi and Steff Chávez in Washington

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TotalEnergies chief warns Donald Trump against cutting climate rules

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TotalEnergies’ chief executive has urged Donald Trump not to axe climate rules if he wins the election, warning that taking a “Wild West” approach to regulating fossil fuels would provoke a backlash against the oil industry.

Patrick Pouyanné told the Financial Times that if the former US president pressed ahead with pledges to tear up rules governing methane and other emissions it would torpedo the sector’s reputation and fuel opposition.

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“I prefer to have good regulations in the US, for example, in methane I prefer the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] to be stringent . . . I am not in favour of the Wild West,” he said.

“My view is that this will not help the industry, but on the contrary it will demonise, and then the dialogue will be even more antagonised.”

The comments from Pouyanné, whose France-based company is one of the biggest global oil producers, come as the industry considers the implications of a possible Trump victory over Kamala Harris in Tuesday’s US presidential election.

Trump has pledged to “rescind every one of Joe Biden’s industry-killing” regulations and withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement — steps he says will “unleash American energy”, which is already at record levels of production.

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The oil industry has been an important source of fundraising for the Republican candidate as many executives oppose environmental restrictions that they say will hinder investment. A handful have publicly endorsed him, including Harold Hamm, the billionaire founder of Continental Resources.

In private, however, many leaders have expressed reservations about Trump’s policies, including plans to impose punishing tariffs on imports and gut the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature climate legislation.

Even if he wins the presidency, much of Trump’s ability to enact his plans could be limited by Congress and the courts. Some industry leaders expressed scepticism that the regulatory bonfire would come to pass.

“I think there’s a very low likelihood the US becomes a Wild West of deregulation,” said Mike Wirth, chief executive of US supermajor Chevron.

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He told the FT: “Based on 42 years in this industry, I’ve seen regulation move in one direction. Sometimes it moves faster, sometimes it moves slower, but I don’t think that we’re at risk of some sort of chaotic outcome of a deregulatory period of time.”

Trump has been particularly scathing about the IRA, which he has dubbed the “green new scam”, vowing to rescind all unspent funds issued under it.

But oil companies including Chevron and US rivals ExxonMobil and Occidental Petroleum are tapping into the $370bn in green tax breaks and subsidies available through the legislation to support investments in technologies including hydrogen and carbon capture and do not want the law repealed.

Some executives are hoping the flow of the majority of IRA funds into Republican congressional districts would prompt Trump’s party to temper his ambitions to kill it.

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“There’s a lot in the IRA that’s helping to support projects across the country, which also helps to support economic growth and job growth,” Kathy Mikells, Exxon chief financial officer, told the FT. “That gives a lot of people a lot of incentive to stand behind the IRA.”

Biden’s regulatory agenda would be easier to unpick, however, including tough new rules and penalties forcing the industry to curb methane leaks.

Most larger oil companies are investing in new technology to limit emissions of the planet-warming gas and have backed global efforts to slash them by at least 30 per cent by 2030 from 2020 levels.

But many smaller operators are opposed to the rules, arguing they lack the financial firepower to adhere to them, and want Trump to repeal them — as he did with regulations introduced by Barack Obama during his first term.

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Pouyanné said such a move would leave the industry exposed to attacks by climate groups and give the industry “again a bad reputation”.

Oil companies had accepted environmental rules in the past covering greenhouse gas emissions, air and water quality and should do so again and face up to the challenge of climate change, he said.

In 2021 Total quit the American Petroleum Institute saying the French group’s climate policies — support for the Paris agreement and belief in carbon pricing — did not align with those of the industry lobby group.

“We can produce fossil fuels with lower emissions and we have the technology,” he said. “I count on my large and big US peers to convince the rest of the industry.”

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Four Seasons Hotel New York reopens this month

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Four Seasons Hotel New York reopens this month

Only a selection of rooms across multiple room categories will be available at the time of the reopening, with the full collection of suites becoming available to book in 2025.

Continue reading Four Seasons Hotel New York reopens this month at Business Traveller.

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BrewDog opens bar at Edinburgh Waverley Station

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BrewDog opens bar at Edinburgh Waverley Station

The 175-capacity venue, operated by SSP, serves up to 16 of the company’s craft beers as well as cocktails under its BrewDog Distilling Co Wonderland brand.

Continue reading BrewDog opens bar at Edinburgh Waverley Station at Business Traveller.

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Sunday Number 65: US Puzzle

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Sunday Number 65: US Puzzle

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Shock poll shows Harris leading Trump in Republican-leaning Iowa

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Shock poll shows Harris leading Trump in Republican-leaning Iowa

Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa survey suggests surging support among female voters is boosting Democrat

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