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We lead today with news that Russian oil tankers circumventing western sanctions are relying on insurance that appears impossible to claim against, according to leaked documents exposing the risks taken by Moscow’s “dark fleet”.

The cache of shipping files, seen by the Financial Times and the Danish media group Danwatch, reveals that a number of Russian vessels travelling from the Baltic are relying on insurance that can be easily voided in the event of a disaster.

Ingosstrakh, a Moscow-based insurer, provides coverage that is essential for its shipping clients to enter ports around the world. But the contractual fine print includes a “sanctions exclusion clause”, which would invalidate claims involving most tankers moving Russian oil.

The Russian dark fleet’s insurance arrangements with Ingosstrakh potentially expose coastal states in Europe and Asia to huge clean-up costs in the event of a spill. Read more from the cache of shipping files.

And here’s what I’m keeping tabs on today and over the weekend:

  • Economic data: The Bank of England publishes its Ipsos-conducted February Inflation Attitudes Survey and monthly insolvency figures today. France, Italy and Poland release inflation data for last month.

  • ECB: European Central Bank chief economist Philip Lane gives the guest lecture at Imperial College Business School in London.

  • Russian election: Vladimir Putin is expected to cruise to victory in elections this weekend, extending his 24-year rule until at least 2030.

  • Results: HelloFresh, Mercedes-Benz and Zurich Insurance Group have results today.

The FT and its research partner Statista are launching a project to identify the best companies to work for around the world. Nominate a “Best Employer” in the Asia-Pacific region with this simple online form (two minutes to complete). There’s more information here.

Five more top stories

1. Sir Keir Starmer has sought to reassure UK business leaders they will have a say in shaping Labour’s workers’ rights plans. The party leader has dispatched colleagues, including shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves and deputy leader Angela Rayner, to allay fears that Labour would rush into delivering radical labour market reforms if it wins the next general election. Read more about the opposition’s efforts.

2. Emmanuel Macron arrives in Berlin today for talks designed to repair a fractured Franco-German relationship marred by mutual recriminations over the war in Ukraine. Allies fear the row between the French president and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is undermining European unity at a critical juncture in Ukraine’s defence against Russia.

3. Only 10 per cent of the cash intended to regenerate areas under the UK’s levelling up programme has been spent so far, a parliamentary spending watchdog has warned. A report published by the House of Commons public accounts committee said the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities could not provide “any compelling examples of what had been delivered so far”.

4. MGX, a new state-funded Abu Dhabi investment company, is in talks to back OpenAI’s ambitious chip venture, in the latest effort by the United Arab Emirates to become a global powerbroker in artificial intelligence. The US start-up’s chief executive Sam Altman is seeking to launch a semiconductor business to reduce its dependence on Nvidia. Estimates from Altman and others of the cost have varied from hundreds of billions of dollars to as high as $7tn.

5. US institutions with private fund investments in China are struggling to get their cash out of the country as the regulatory environment tightens and geopolitical tensions mount. Four public pension plans with more than $4bn allocated to China-focused private equity funds told the Financial Times they were ready to delay redemptions from investments nearing the end of 10-year lifespans.

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

FT Magazine

Uber Eats worker Armin Samii
Uber Eats worker Armin Samii was sick of the algorithms that controlled his day © Ross Mantle

Tech-savvy Uber Eats cycle courier Armin Samii had become convinced its algorithm was underpaying him. After weeks of trying and failing to get a human at Uber to explain, he felt he had no choice but to take matters into his own hands, coding an auditing tool he called “UberCheats” and making it free to use by other couriers. His case shines light on the plight of workers whose livelihoods are increasingly controlled by AI.

We’re also reading . . . 

Chart of the day

From the postwar boom to the global financial crisis in 2008, gross domestic product per head in G7 countries rose by the decade. But for the past 15 years its growth has slowed in most of them. The primary culprit is lacklustre productivity, with average annual growth in GDP per hour worked in the G7 having dropped. Is the rich world stuck in an “upper-income trap”?

Line chart of Real GDP per capita (2011 purchasing power parity, $) showing Slowing G7 economies

Take a break from the news

A quarter of a century after their relationship ended, food writer Tim Hayward and his ex-wife went to dinner in London. So where did our resident glutton take the clean-living Californian to dine?

© Simon Bailly

Additional contributions from Benjamin Wilhelm

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