Pieces that argue for a position, from every subject we cover. The argument is the author's own, and like everything we publish it is sourced and reviewed before it goes out.
25 articles
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Anthropic is preparing to go public, but is the market ready for its extraordinary cash flows, speculative financing and mountain of infrastructure commitments built in pursuit of ever more powerful AI? The US economy is now hoping Anthropic can eventually turn that promise into certainty, and the question is: how long will Wall Street wait?
6 min read
France’s bond revolt is starting to look less like a market wobble and more like a eurozone-style warning, as political paralysis, rising borrowing costs and a government with little incentive to shrink the debt pile threaten to drain investor confidence and leave the French economy paying the bill.
Some would describe the so-called "neoclouds" as the railways of the AI revolution that facilitate the steam-trains of the next most powerful chips to thunder across. However, are these AI infrastructure giants economically viable in the long term?
Digitisation transforms economies but its success ultimately depends on governing institutions. From India's UPI and Estonia's e-government to Britain's digital ID debate and China's surveillance infrastructure, which institutions are strong enough to keep it in check?
Buyout firms have spent $182bn on UK-listed companies this year while the London Stock Exchange struggles to replace them. Behind the takeover wave sits a tax-driven surge in exits, much of it firms selling to themselves.
The White House and major AI companies meet to finalize the Voluntary AI Framework. With all discussions happening behind closed doors, Americans are left in the dark about the future of artificial intelligence and their government.
Offshore law firms have already sold stakes to private equity. US Big Law is watching, waiting for someone else to go first. The legal industry's long immunity to outside capital is ending, but the terms remain deeply uncertain.
New Prime Minister Andy Burnham has big plans to decentralise his government from London, but how will he do this, and what difference could it make?
Democracy only works if the people inside it understand how it works, yet a postcode lottery in political education means most young people never get taught how it works at all.
Big tech is on track to spend up to $690 billion on AI infrastructure this year alone. History suggests the technology can still win even as many of today's financiers lose everything.
Silicon Valley wants to escape the power grids, water shortages and zoning laws throttling its data centres by launching them into orbit. But Low Earth Orbit is no frictionless void, and moving servers to space may just trade one crisis for another.
Global PE fundraising is rising but the number of funds closing is collapsing. The industry is not recovering. It is concentrating, and the zombie firm data suggests the structural shift is already irreversible for much of the market.
From rocketing IPOs to frothy market sentiment, at face value, today’s AI trade unmistakably mirrors the dot-com bubble – only this time the fallout could be far more destructive.
For the first time in two years, Britain is about to change Prime Minister, and not a single voter will go to the polls to make it happen. Here's what's unfolding, and why it matters.
Thoma Bravo's $5bn Medallia loss and EQT's £10.7bn Intertek acquisition tell the same story from opposite ends. Private equity's software bet has failed. The platform strategy is what comes next.
The new chairman of the world's most powerful central bank faces a problem his predecessor spent eight years navigating and never quite solved: inflation that won't obey. Only this time, the White House isn't demanding he fix it, it's cheering it on.
Active investors are clamouring for a piece of the biggest IPO to date, and passive investors don't have a choice but to take a slice. But what is everyone actually buying?
The value of a degree is under siege as generative AI threatens to turn academic achievement into a hollow commodity.
As AI disruption freezes software heavy buyout funds and retail capital retreats, a handful of firms are moving decisively in the opposite direction. The private equity market is splitting into winners and losers in real time.
Nigel Farage has reshaped British politics through “common sense” populism and the rise of Reform UK. But have his promises on immigration and the economy been kept, and what does his success reveal about British democracy?
Is the problem water companies, or the system meant to regulate them?