011 Modello 3

Founder who blamed $300mn fraud on head injury sentenced to prison

Judge accepts injury contributed to Christine Hunsicker’s crime as he sentences her to five years in prison

What is Bessent doing with the $32tn Treasury market — and will it work?

US Treasury secretary has made a high-stakes bet he can beat back soaring borrowing costs

UK consumer confidence rises to highest level for two years

Good weather and the ‘Burnham bounce’ brought on by a new prime minister continued to have a positive effect in August

FirstFT: Scott Bessent’s intervention to prop up US market fails to soothe investors

Also in this newsletter: Loan to Guggenheim Partners falls to distressed territory and North Korea fires barrage of ballistic missiles

Cosy crime drama Ludwig doubles down on the quirk

David Mitchell and Anna Maxwell Martin are an engaging central pairing in the second series of the BBC show

Walmart shares tumble as sales growth slows to six-year low

Retailer to use almost $2.9bn in tariff refunds to deliver price cuts for squeezed American consumers

Heatwaves and waterways

How climate change is hurting Germany’s economy

Tory peer’s free speech group urged Vance to lobby UK government

Free Speech Union called on vice-president to focus on censorship at time of Starmer visit to US last year

Guggenheim loan trades in distressed territory after investor call

Chief executive Mark Walter’s business empire has come under pressure amid probe into his insurance holdings

Quant funds rocked as Treasury boosts buybacks and Moderna shares leap

Tumultuous session puts further pressure on momentum trades that have been unsettled since AI-related stock sell-off

Brazilian municipalities join BHP and Vale dam collapse payout scheme

Nineteen authorities reach agreement over 2015 disaster in blow to English High Court class action

Today’s China could learn from Jiang and Zhu

History might have been different had collegial, liberalising leadership continued

The US Treasury is buying long bonds, but not very many

Speaking loudly but wielding a teeny-tiny stick

Nvidia looks well placed to benefit from the next stage of the AI boom

The world’s biggest chip company is using its balance sheet to seed new markets and a new business model

Stripe bets that an AI world still needs middlemen

Payments company’s purchase of OpenRouter makes strategic sense

Monte dei Paschi readies twin takeover bids for Banca Generali and Banco BPM

Plan would create an Italian banking group with a combined market valuation of about €70bn

US long-term bonds slide as Bessent intervention fails to soothe investors

Yield on 30-year Treasuries rises despite move to ‘at least double’ purchases of securities

Meet Gregory Fenelon, the (self-declared) $14bn man

He has big stakes. We have big questions.

On Time by Jim Al-Khalili — at the border of science and philosophy

An attempt to reconcile the experience of time with physics comes up against the limits of what we know

Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder reboot a 1980s slasher in ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’; Road Runner’s foe takes on his other nemesis in ‘Coyote vs Acme’; Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton light up family drama ‘& Sons’; Anthony Bourdain’s early years relived in ‘Tony’; dinosaurs run ram