FirstFT: UK invites Saudi crown prince to visit London

By Editor On Jul 14, 2023

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The UK government has invited Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to London as Britain seeks to deepen its ties with the kingdom and lure investment from the oil-rich Gulf.

The schedule is still being finalised, but the visit is expected to take place in October or November, people briefed on the trip said, and would be the latest sign of western nations welcoming Prince Mohammed back into the fold five years after Saudi agents murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

A British official confirmed that the UK government had offered an invitation to the crown prince but said the precise logistics had not yet been agreed.

The UK has over the past few years sought to bolster ties with Saudi Arabia despite concerns over the kingdom’s human rights record as Britain looks to the Gulf for investment in the wake of Brexit.

Asked what would determine the timing of the visit, a UK government official said: “It’s more up to them, given we need them more than they need us.”

Here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today and over the weekend:

Results: JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, State Street and BlackRock all report second-quarter earnings.
Modi in Paris: Indian prime minister Narendra Modi will be French president Emmanuel Macron’s guest of honour at Bastille Day celebrations today. The countries agreed two big defence deals ahead of the visit.
Economic data: The University of Michigan publishes data on US economic sentiment.
Wimbledon: The singles and doubles finals for both women and men will be held this weekend. Put your SW19 Grand Slam knowledge to the test in this FT Globetrotter quiz.

Five more top stories

1. Exclusive: Rivals have hired at least 120 senior Credit Suisse investment bankers in recent months, an unexpectedly high rate of flight that could reduce the need for big redundancy packages for UBS, which completed the takeover of its ailing Swiss neighbour last month. Here are the banks that have poached from Credit Suisse.

2. Bridgewater’s investment chief Bob Prince has warned that the US inflation fight is far from over, and bets on a rapid series of interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve next year are premature. Read the FT’s full interview with Prince.

3. The Federal Trade Commission has launched a wide-ranging probe into OpenAI to look at whether people have been harmed by ChatGPT’s creation of false information. This is the first official investigation by US regulators into the harms posed by artificial intelligence chatbots. Here’s more on the FTC’s probe.

4. Exclusive: The EU is urgently calling on metal producers to explore making key chip inputs after China announced plans to curb exports of gallium and germanium, high-purity metals used in manufacturing semiconductors, solar cells and optic fibres. Here are the companies the bloc has approached.

5. European countries still pay only “lip service” to defence collaboration, according to Michael Schoellhorn, chief of Airbus Defence and Space. The head of one of the region’s largest manufacturers said that despite the war in Ukraine and political pep talks, there was still “too much fragmentation”. Read the full FT interview here.

How well did you keep up with the news this week? Take our quiz.

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Home ownership in Britain has become a hereditary privilege, writes chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch. Millennial home ownership continues to lag behind previous generations, but even more concerning is that those who do manage to get a home have increasingly had to depend on wealthy parents.

Take a break from the news

The British junk shop was the collective unconscious of a collapsed colonial empire, the fading traces of incredible wealth and the detritus of a Victorian mania for collecting and accumulating. This high-street staple provided a spectacle of the rare and the serendipitous — and made our interiors far more interesting than today’s, writes Edwin Heathcote.