Big investors must adopt a tougher stance on balance sheet resilience

Measures to ease lockdown will be costly and difficult in practice, particularly in hospitality trade

Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate activist, opted to sail to the US from Europe this month, rather than catching a plane.  Her choice reflected a growing recognition that air travel carries a heavy cost to the environment. Sylvia Pfeifer, acting industry editor, discusses how airlines are responding to the challenge with Janina Conboye and Leslie Hook.

Contributors: Sylvia Pfeifer, acting industry editor, Janina Conboye, industry reporter, and Leslie Hook, environment correspondent, Producer: Fiona Symon

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Global warming is set to cause a significant rise in sea levels as the world's polar ice melts. The Netherlands is the best-protected delta in the world, with centuries of experience in holding back the floods. As climate change takes its toll, can Dutch expertise help save the world’s cities that are most at risk? Simon Kuper looked into this question for the FT's weekend magazine and he tells Esther Bintliff what he discovered. Read Simon's magazine article here

Contributors: Simon Kuper, FT columnist, and Esther Bintliff, FT Weekend Magazine deputy editor. Producer: Fiona Symon

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The FT News Briefing is a rundown of the global business stories you need to know for the coming day, from the newsroom of the Financial Times. If you enjoy it, subscribe to the FT News Briefing wherever you get your podcasts, or listen at FT.com/newsbriefing. 

Western governments pledged trillions of dollars in stimulus measures to limit the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday. The FT’s global business columnist Rana Foroohar explains what it could mean for Wall Street and Main Street. Plus, Impossible Foods raises $500m in a round that will help the US-plant based burger group to see through the economic upheaval caused by the current crisis, and Joe Biden solidifies his status as the frontrunner to take on Donald Trump in November.

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Fund managers and energy-hungry tech companies bankroll ‘solar-plus-storage’ projects

Rial to be changed to the toman after five decades of inflation

Recently sanctioned London-listed company seeks to simplify ownership structure

Japanese tech group’s splurge on its own shares is not enough to impress investors

S&P 500 gives back some of its earlier rally as US stimulus package attracts objections on Capitol Hill

Sharma signals tapering of scheme as Johnson prepares to announce road map out of lockdown

Rick Bright’s lawyers say federal investigators recommend he be reinstated during probe

Airlines and airports say 14-day isolation period would be a ‘death blow’ to industry

As corporate insolvencies soar and firms try to hang on to their cash as long as possible, expect to hear a lot more about trade credit insurance.

Light touch checks on UK borrowers raise fears of defaults on loans and fraud

Sportswear maker apologises but warns it cannot bear virus lockdown for long   

Legal marijuana producers also report spike in demand during lockdown 

Proxymity raises $20m in spinout from Citigroup as shareholder meetings go virtual

Hedge fund billionaire cites Silver Lake-backed company’s reliance on international travel

Billionaire investor hits winning bets in global macro after closing to external money

AMF chairman cites uncertainty around dividends and coming downgrades to credit ratings

It is an illusion to see victory for the former US vice-president as a geopolitical calendar reset

Alternative providers fear it will harm competition in market for loans to small business

North Dakota’s oil sector has ‘never been through a downturn like this’

Cardholders will receive 3 per cent cashback on fuel

1% cashback for mortgage customers with 123 account

Small businesses hope the fast-track credit scheme will be a lifeline

The default product of anxious idleness has been sidelined during pandemic

Cheap shale gas has fed an investment boom in products that often end up as waste. Has the petrochemicals industry miscalculated?

Your guide to the investment and business revolution you can’t afford to ignore

On the impossibility of future earnings.

What the experts are forecasting for next year

The Conservatives will not lightly give up their newly acquired working-class voters

Robert Shrimsley on why he’s braced for a return to the most dismal of decades

It seems foolish to imagine the UK will swiftly return to life as it was before Covid-19

Tech companies are getting so large that Russia is fast-tracking laws aimed at developing "digital sovereignty." How will these regulations affect tech companies looking to do business in the country?

Backblaze today announced that its B2 Cloud Storage service is now API-compatible with Amazon’s S3 storage service. Backblaze started as an affordable cloud backup service, but over the last few years, the company has also taken its storage expertise and launched the developer-centric B2 Cloud Storage service, which promises to be significantly cheaper than similar […]

China’s example suggests that life will not snap back to normal, strategists say

Government loans a start but not the end; Pendragon takes a pop at Lookers; insurers and honey badgers

Calastone reports record inflows throughout April after heavy redemptions in March

Many put a company’s economic recovery before ESG commitments in coronavirus crisis

Two-thirds of companies with lowly ratings from Moody’s were bought by PE groups

Race by machine tool makers to boost mask output underlines importance to economy

Electriphi, a provider of charging management and fleet monitoring software for electric vehicles, has joined the scrum of startups looking to provide services to the growing number of electric vehicle fleets in the U.S. The San Francisco-based company has just raised $3.5 million in seed funding from investors, including Wireframe Ventures, the Urban Innovation Fund […]

In a small suburb of Melbourne, two entrepreneurs are developing a technology that could mean big changes for the packaging industry. Stuart Gordon and Mark Appleford are the co-founders of Varden, a company that has developed a process to take the waste material from sugarcane and convert it into a paper-like packaging product with the […]

Tesla is aiming to ramp up “limited operations” at its factory in Fremont, Calif., a decision that puts the company and its CEO Elon Musk in direct conflict with a stay-at-home order in Alameda County. Update: On Friday, Alameda County health officials said the automaker was told not to reopen. Employees received two emails — […]

Hot startup Superhuman has been getting some backlash, as often happens when someone notices the precise methodology that a startup is using to enable a core feature. We’re well into stage 2 now when, inevitably, the backlash itself gets backlash. The nut of it is that people have been exposed to the idea that Superhuman […]

Burst Oral Care, a startup that sells an electric toothbrush boasting charcoal bristles and 33,000 sonic vibrations per minute, has raised a Series C of undisclosed size. Although we don’t know the amount of the round, the Series C was led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, and Burst says it more than doubled the valuation […]

Two young Australian innovators are ready to take their ventures to the next level after sharing in $20,000 in seed funding from PwC during a live pitching event held by the Foundation for Young Australians.

Backblaze today announced that its B2 Cloud Storage service is now API-compatible with Amazon’s S3 storage service. Backblaze started as an affordable cloud backup service, but over the last few years, the company has also taken its storage expertise and launched the developer-centric B2 Cloud Storage service, which promises to be significantly cheaper than similar […]