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This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: Who will back Elon Musk? Marc FilippinoGood morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, April 20th, and this is your FT News Briefing. [MUSIC PLAYING] Elon Musk still wants to buy Twitter, but it’s not clear who will back his $43bn bid.

In a few years, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is hoping to be able to predict outbreaks like a forecaster might do the weather, following the launch of its new pandemic forecasting unit on Tuesday. But thanks to legal setbacks for the Biden administration, including a ruling earlier this week by a

17Capital, a financier to buyout groups, has raised $2.9bn for its first credit fund, which will lend money to private equity funds that want to juice returns by using more leverage to strike deals. The London-based investment firm, backed by Oaktree Capital, is already a pioneer in lending money to private equity funds by allowing

One thing to start: Elon Musk’s $43bn bid to take Twitter private is struggling to draw interest from institutions with the financial firepower to pull off such a large deal including Blackstone Group, Vista Equity Partners and Brookfield Asset Management in part due to concerns over whether the social media group can become more profitable.

Japan’s Ministry for Economy, Trade and Industry was on a high. It was June 2018 and Meti, as it is more commonly known, had just forced through the $18bn sale of Toshiba’s prized memory chip business to a private equity consortium. The deal appeared to justify the ministry’s billing as the creator of the nation’s

Gary Chen, co-founder of Raise Robotics, strides on stage at the University of California, Berkeley wearing a bright yellow hi-vis vest. The attention-grabbing outfit is his ploy to stand out to an audience of investors and convince them to hand over $2mn. If successful, he and his robots will continue on a journey that might

It sounded like a fair question. With sanctions against Russia likely to disrupt Germany’s energy supply, why, asked MP Marc Bernhard, couldn’t Berlin just restart its mothballed nuclear power stations? “If we reactivate the three plants that were switched off last December they could, together with the three that are still operating, replace all the

Rana Foroohar (Opinion, April 18) echoes US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen’s call for a new Bretton Woods framework based on shared values. The call comes as the west has shown incredible unity trying to help Ukraine defend its sovereignty and, by extension, the democratic values the west holds dear. The call to base international, economic

Janan Ganesh takes international relations theory to task (“No grand theory can explain the Ukraine crisis”, Opinion, April 13). But when debunking “realism” he makes two classic mistakes. The first one is to assume that state leaders must adhere to realism for that theory to make any sense. So Ganesh writes: “When Putin himself cites

Opening this month, hotelier Navid Mirtorabi’s elegant property, The Twenty Two, occupies a sunny corner of Grosvenor Square. While it is very much in Mayfair, in attitude and spirit The Twenty Two is decidedly – strategically – not of Mayfair.  “It used to be that there was a very eclectic crowd there,” explains Mirtorabi, whose hotel career comprises 10 years

Scientists are urging China to look for alternatives to its two homegrown Covid-19 vaccines to tackle its Omicron outbreak, amid mounting concerns about the jabs’ efficacy against the variant. The country is struggling with two problems as it faces its worst Covid-19 surge since the start of the pandemic: the sluggish take-up of booster doses

Ukraine plans to open a humanitarian corridor for civilians to leave Mariupol, the besieged south-eastern city where Russia this week began a bombing campaign targeting the city’s Azovstal steelworks. The government secured agreement on a corridor to bring civilians out of the city from 2pm, Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, said on Wednesday. “Given

In the vast expanses of sun-drenched north-west Australia, one of the most ambitious energy ventures in history is being planned as part of a pipeline of billion-dollar hydrogen projects across the country. The Asian Renewable Energy Hub is expected to cover 6,500 square kilometres in the Pilbara mining region with solar panels and wind turbines

Emmanuel Macron (Report, April 16) wants to end “abusive” executive pay through EU negotiations. There is a more effective way to end this travesty. In 1963, the top rate of income tax in the US was 91 per cent for “married filing jointly” incomes above $400,000 ($3.8mn in 2022 dollars). This effectively functioned as a

Honda’s carefully investigative and logical approach to electric vehicle production is a model that has stood the test of time (Report, April 13). Chief executive Toshihiro Mibe says Honda needs “to take into account multiple factors, such as the living environment and the penetration rate of renewable energy, rather than simply switching to electric vehicles”.

Robert Shrimsley has made a convincing case for Tory MPs to stand up for their principles or risk losing their reputation as well as their seats (“Johnson is dragging his party down”, Opinion, April 14). Unfortunately, it is symptomatic of the current illness of British politics that when the time comes to stand up and

Uber’s UK pension provider is to redraw its new workforce scheme within months of its launch after a union complained the lack of a sharia-compliant investment option effectively excluded much of the ride-hailing app’s Muslim-majority workforce. Auto-enrolment in a workplace pension scheme was one of the main practical benefits to drivers of Uber’s decision last

After retaining his world title in 2021, Magnus Carlsen declared that he was only interested in future challenges from much younger players. That comment highlighted the status of Alireza Firouzja, the ex-Iranian turned French prodigy. The 18-year-old jumped to world No2 last autumn and is now among the favourites for the eight-player Candidates at Madrid in

Blackstone has struck a $13bn deal to acquire one of the biggest portfolios of student housing in the US, extending a streak of real estate transactions that has already made the private equity company one of the biggest owners of inner-city apartment blocks and suburban homes. The purchase of American Campus Communities will give Blackstone

Disrupter of disrupters? Or swan song of the special purpose acquisition company? European investors are making that call over a deal involving music streaming service Deezer. The French group has reached terms with cash shell I2PO to list on Euronext Paris at a pre-money value of €1bn. Bringing together billionaires François-Henri Pinault and Leonard Blavatnik,