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

A golden rule of defence is to strive to prevent declarer ruffing in dummy. However, sometimes, the timing of the ruff is consequential. Would the defender’s tempting offer have won you over? 

Bidding
Dealer: East
E/W Game

West’s jump to 3H was a pre-empt. Supporting your partner aggressively after an intervening take-out double is a perfect moment to barrage; after all, if you have a big fit, so do your opponents. South doubled again, striving to find a 4-4 spade fit but, when North suggested clubs, the retreat to 4D indicated four spades, five or six diamonds, and great strength. North prized his singleton heart and went to game.

West led 4♥; East won with K♥. East appreciated that a heart ruff could not be prevented, but he might be able to stop declarer from reaching dummy’s long club suit if he forces a heart ruff prematurely. So, East laid down A♥. What should declarer do? 

If South trumps on the table, he cannot draw all the trumps and get to dummy to enjoy his club winners. Instead, he must refuse the ruff, discarding a spade. Now, whatever East leads, South can win in hand, draw all the trumps, unblock ♣AK and finally enter dummy by overtaking 5♦ with dummy’s 6♦. On the club winners, all three spade losers can be discarded from hand. 

A HIGH-STREET favourite is being forced to shut for good after 50 years, leaving customers feeling concerned for their town centre.

Steffans Jewellers, Northampton, has been forced to close after being a ‘class’ town centre jewellers for 48 years.

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The store on Abington Square will be saying its final goodbyes on November 9, with owner Steffan Suter gutted to see it go.

He said: “I was hoping to make it 50 years in Northampton but the town’s retail environment isn’t as good as it used to be.”

Steffan founded the jewellers in 1974 at 24-years-old was able to expand into the shop next door after 18 months.

When Steffan’s son, Wes Suter, was just nine he also began working in his fathers shop and is also sad to see it go.

The family said they tried their best to support Northampton but their ideas were turned down when suggesting ways to make the town centre more appealing to visitors.

Loyal customers of the jewellers have flocked to Facebook to voice their concerns over another high-street store being forced to close.

One wrote: “Another good retail outlet leaves our town. Revamping the market square will never attract shoppers to the centre, the Council needs to find a way to attract retailers back into Northampton.”

Another added: “Sad another class shop closings for good. Yet another bit of old Northampton is going.”

A third user said: “I went into Northampton last week for the first time in years. It’s awful – people sleeping in doorways, all banks and building societies in Abington St apart from Bonmarche.

“And the ‘new’ market square is in my opinion a total waste of the millions it cost! The money would have been better spent on accommodation for those sleeping in doorways!”

Northampton town centre Business Improvement District Mark Mullen backed the town centre revamp.

He said: “There is huge positivity around the new Market Square and with work due to complete soon on Abington Street and Fish Street, plus the arrival of Stack, the beginnings of a bright new era for Northampton town centre are starting to emerge”.

Unfortunately, Steffans Jewellers isn’t the first retailers to close in Northampton, with many other shops struggling with the reduction in footfall in town centres.

Fashion giant Next is closing after arriving in 2015, as well as a huge branch of the DIY retailer Homebase.

TGI Friday’s declared it would be shutting in Northampton and filed bankruptcy earlier this month.

It’s now closing 35 location in the UK with more than 1,000 staff losing their jobs.

Another well loved chain that has closed its doors for the last time is The Body Shop.

The Northampton branch started out in Peacock Way in 1981 and has been a key part of the high-street’s history.

A spokesperson from West Northamptonshire Council said they are saddened to hear about the closure of Steffans and acknowledge the significant role it has played in Northampton’s history.

They added: “As a council, we are committed to creating a vibrant environment where businesses can grow and succeed.

“Supporting our small business community is a key priority for the council.”

Thankfully, The Suter family has decided to set up shop 20 miles down the road in Market Harborough.

They are planning on opening this store as father and son after after Steffans Jewellers closes.

The Sun has reached out for Northampton Council for a comment.

Why are retailers closing shops?

EMPTY shops have become an eyesore on many British high streets and are often symbolic of a town centre’s decline.

The Sun’s business editor Ashley Armstrong explains why so many retailers are shutting their doors.

In many cases, retailers are shutting stores because they are no longer the money-makers they once were because of the rise of online shopping.

Falling store sales and rising staff costs have made it even more expensive for shops to stay open. In some cases, retailers are shutting a store and reopening a new shop at the other end of a high street to reflect how a town has changed.

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The problem is that when a big shop closes, footfall falls across the local high street, which puts more shops at risk of closing.

Retail parks are increasingly popular with shoppers, who want to be able to get easy, free parking at a time when local councils have hiked parking charges in towns.

Many retailers including Next and Marks & Spencer have been shutting stores on the high street and taking bigger stores in better-performing retail parks instead.

Boss Stuart Machin recently said that when it relocated a tired store in Chesterfield to a new big store in a retail park half a mile away, its sales in the area rose by 103 per cent.

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In some cases, stores have been shut when a retailer goes bust, as in the case of Wilko, Debenhams Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Paperchase to name a few.

What’s increasingly common is when a chain goes bust a rival retailer or private equity firm snaps up the intellectual property rights so they can own the brand and sell it online.

They may go on to open a handful of stores if there is customer demand, but there are rarely ever as many stores or in the same places.

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The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter-point amid uncertainty about the outlook for the world’s largest economy following Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the US presidential election.

The unanimous decision lowered the target range to 4.5-4.75 per cent and marked a downshift in the pace from September’s half-point cut, which rate-setters made to stave off weakness in the US jobs market.

In a statement on Thursday, the Federal Open Market Committee said that the economy was expanding at a “solid pace” even as labour market conditions had “generally eased” compared with earlier in the year.

The FOMC continued to characterise inflation as “somewhat elevated”, affirming that the risks to achieving both low, stable inflation and a healthy jobs market were “roughly in balance”.

The Fed’s two-day meeting started on Wednesday, a day later than usual due to Tuesday’s US election, in which the Republicans trounced Democrats.

Trump has proposed sweeping tariffs, mass deportations of immigrants and extensive deregulation in addition to lower taxes for the wealthy and businesses.

While stock markets have soared on expectations of bigger corporate profits, economists say the president-elect’s plans risk not only higher inflation, but also slower growth.

Fed chair Jay Powell refused to be drawn on how the central bank would respond to the next administration, saying that it was too early to judge what the substance of the Trump government’s economic policies would be.

“We don’t guess, we don’t speculate, and we don’t assume,” Powell said at his post-meeting press conference.

In addition to clinching the White House, Republicans captured the Senate and could hold a majority of seats in the House of Representatives too.

While the US central bank is an independent institution, the president-elect lambasted rate-setters for not cutting borrowing costs swiftly enough during his first term.

Trump will have the opportunity to nominate a new chair once Powell’s term ends in May 2026, with only one other seat on the seven-seat board of governors coming up between now and the end of his second term.

Some of Trump’s advisers have called on the president-elect to ask Powell to step down early. When asked whether he would agree to do so, Powell emphatically said “no”. He added curtly that it was “not permitted under the law” for a new administration to dismiss him ahead of the end of his term.

The initial market reaction to the Fed decision was relatively muted, with the S&P 500 holding on to earlier gains of 0.6 per cent.

The policy-sensitive two-year yield on US Treasuries fell by 0.04 percentage points to 4.23 per cent after the announcement, while the benchmark 10-year yield was 0.06 percentage points lower at 4.36 per cent. Those moves marked a partial reversal of a sharp rise in the US government’s cost of borrowing a day earlier, as bonds sold off following Trump’s victory. 

Fed officials are debating how quickly to lower interest rates to a “neutral” setting that neither boosts nor suppresses demand, while keeping inflation steady at the central bank’s 2 per cent goal.

Powell stressed that the US’s economic health meant the right way for rate-setters to get to neutral was “carefully” and “patiently”.

“Nothing in the economic data suggests that the committee has any need to be in a hurry to get there,” he told reporters. “We are seeing strong economic activity. We are seeing ongoing strength in the labour market.”

Inflation has fallen dramatically since peaking at about 7 per cent and is now close to 2 per cent. The labour market has cooled off but stayed solid — defying expectations of a more substantive slowdown.

Economists said October’s jobs report, which showed employment growing by just 12,000 positions, was an aberration, reflecting distortions stemming from two hurricanes and labour strikes.

The Fed has opted against providing specific guidance about what will happen to rates next — saying it will act on the data.

Additional reporting by Harriet Clarfelt in New York

Standard Life has completed £250m pension buy-ins with the Halma Group Pension Plan and the Apollo Pension and Life Assurance Plan.

The bulk purchase annuity transactions, finalised in September, secure benefits for 2,200 members.

The trustees, sponsors and their advisers collaborated closely with Standard Life to meet both plans’ de-risking objectives and secure the buy-ins, significantly reducing risk exposure for the plans and their members.

LCP acted as the lead transaction adviser to the trustee, with investment advice from Mercer and legal advice from Squires Patton Boggs.

Standard Life BPA transaction manager, Joe Haswell, said: “By collaborating closely with the Trustees, sponsors and their respective advisers, we are pleased to provide a secure home for the benefits for over 2,000 members.

“The plans came to market with clear objectives and well-prepared data and benefits, which laid the groundwork for an effective outcome.

“The BPA market continues to be busy, and as the end of the year fast approaches, solid preparation like this remains key to the efficient production of quotes in a competitive market.”

LCP partner David Fink added: “By running the two buy-in processes together, this helped the Trustees secure attractive pricing for both plans quickly and efficiently in the busy market.

“The increased scale of the combined transaction also meant the plans were able to optimise the secondary market sale for the plans’ illiquid assets.”

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Two days after Rudy Giuliani hailed Donald Trump’s “victory for the ages”, a New York court gave the president-elect’s former lawyer a week to hand over a Mercedes-Benz and a collection of luxury watches he owes to two poll workers he defamed after Trump’s 2020 election defeat.

“I gather he was in Palm Beach . . . He can deliver the keys and tell [his creditors] where the car is,” Judge Lewis Liman told Giuliani’s lawyers, referring to the fact that journalists pictured the former New York mayor being driven in the 1980s convertible as he went to vote in Florida.

The 80-year-old’s appearance near Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday prompted an angry letter from plaintiffs, who said he was “flouting his obligations” to hand over the vehicle.

A visibly disgruntled Giuliani, who was forced to appear in court, protested that those with knowledge of the location of his assets had “virtually been tortured” by demands from the creditors. Liman responded: “You don’t have the right to exercise self help.”

Giuliani was last year ordered to pay $148mn to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who were hounded out of their home after being falsely accused of rigging the 2020 vote. He faces a host of other lawsuits, mostly stemming from his actions as a personal attorney for Trump, who still owes the former mayor millions of dollars in legal fees. 

Guiliani’s attempt to file for bankruptcy was dismissed earlier this year, due to his repeated failure to disclose his assets in full. Last month, Liman ordered him to hand over his Upper East Side apartment, a series of luxury watches, Yankees memorabilia and the blue Mercedes, which was once owned by actor Lauren Bacall.

Lawyers for Freeman and Moss said they had yet to take ownership of the assets, and asked the court for help. Giuliani’s lawyer, Kenneth Caruso, claimed he had not been given an address for the exchange, and attempted to argue that his client had “no control” over a storage facility in Ronkonkoma that housed some of the luxury items in question.

Caruso was given a dressing down by the judge for asking that one watch — purportedly bequeathed to Guiliani by his grandfather — should be exempt from the handover order.

“Oh come on,” Liman said, when Caruso said creditors had been “vindictive” in pursuing the watch. The judge said he had debtors in front of him who “run bodegas, who short their employees of minimum wages, and they have got items that are family heirlooms and the like, and if they owe a debt, they have to pay a debt”.

“The law is the law,” Liman added.

The judge also rejected Caruso’s argument that the Mercedes might be “worth less than $4,000” and thus exempt from seizure under New York law.

AIRLINE passengers could face in-flight food and drink shortages due to strike action by catering staff, a trade union warned.

Unite will ballot workers who provide meals, snacks and refreshments for flights from major airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Birmingham.

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The union warned potential walkouts, which would also affect Manchester, Bristol, Glasgow and London City Airport, were scheduled to hit the busy Christmas travel period.

It said travellers faced the prospect of “foodless fights” if its members at service provider dnata voted to down tools in a row over pay and conditions.

A Unite statement said: “Passengers at airports across the country are facing the prospect of having no onboard food or drink during long and short haul flights as dnata catering workers ballot for strike action.

“More than 700 dnata workers, providing food for airlines at Heathrow, Gatwick, Glasgow, London City, Stansted, Bristol, Manchester and Birmingham airports, are balloting for strike action.

“The production line, warehouse and delivery workers are angry at the company’s attempts to change their terms and conditions without consultation.”

It added: “If strikes go ahead, major airlines including easyJet, Ryanair, TUI, BA, Emirates, American Airlines and Air India will be impacted. “

The union’s general secretary Sharon Graham said: “dnata’s attempts to bypass its workers and force through damaging changes to terms and conditions will not be tolerated.

“Unite’s dnata members have their union’s full and unflinching support in fighting its underhand attempts to impose these plans.”

The statement accused the Dubai-based firm of refusing to consult with union representatives on issues including sick leave, staff holidays and shift rosters.

It added: “The industrial action ballot opened this week and will close on December 5, with strikes potentially being scheduled over the Christmas period.”

Unite national officer for aviation Balvinder Bir said: “Strikes would have a serious impact on major airlines at eight UK airports and will be entirely the fault of dnata.

“There is still time for industrial action to be avoided, but that will require dnata entering into meaningful negotiations with Unite about the changes it’s putting forward.”

A dnata Catering & Retail UK spokesperson said: “Despite our continuous efforts to reach a fair solution, Unite has rejected our reasonable proposals to enhance wages and conditions and initiated a ballot for industrial action.

“We have already implemented and paid a salary increase to our team to address cost-of-living pressures and recognise their contributions to the company. Our current, competitive offer is in line with market conditions, reflecting industry standards and comparable roles in the sector.

“We are surprised and disappointed by the union’s recent statement claiming we are changing terms and conditions without consultation, which is entirely inaccurate.

“We have consistently sought to engage in constructive discussions with the union throughout the negotiation process.

“We remain open to further dialogue and are committed to achieving an agreement that serves the interests of all parties and ensures the sustainability of our organisation.”

Experts always advise passengers to take their own food on planes, in case there is ever a last minute shortage.

Flight attendant Destanie Armstrong explained on her TikTok that she always packs two pots of noodles and asks staff for some hot water.

She said: “You can’t depend on these flights to have food and even if they do, a lot of the times the options aren’t food.”

However, plane food has changed since its its hey day.

Typical menus from the time included roast chicken with green salad and peaches with Melba sauce for dessert, along with cheese and a wine list.

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