2023: the FT’s year in review

The horrific Hamas attack and Israel’s devastating response defined the year. Ukraine’s counteroffensive floundered. Inflation worries stalked financial markets before major central banks asserted control. A banking crisis was contained but Credit Suisse and Silicon Valley Bank were washed away. Artificial intelligence was feted and feared and the technology’s most prominent company was rattled by a battle for control. Here is our round-up of 2023.

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January

Lula beats Bolsonaro in Brazil

“Brazil is back,” roared leftist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva after winning the country’s presidency for a third time. But days after Lula’s inauguration in January, diehard supporters of his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro had also returned, storming the South American nation’s congress in a vivid illustration of how polarised the country has become. In his first week in office, Lula, whom Barack Obama once called “the most popular politician on Earth”, pushed to halt Amazon deforestation and make Brazil a green superpower. But his rebuke to the US for “encouraging” the war in Ukraine highlighted another of his cherished causes: that the developing world will not be pushed around by the west.

Michael Stott in London

• Kevin McCarthy wins US House Speakership on 15th round of voting

• Chief executive of South African utility Eskom revealed to have been poisoned

• Adani shares take $10.8bn hit after short seller Hindenburg bets against group

• Alphabet cuts 12,000 jobs amid Big Tech retreat

• Germany agrees to send tanks to Ukraine after months of negotiations

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February

Earthquake kills 60,000 in Turkey and Syria

Turkey’s strongman president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan faced a rare public rebuke over his government’s response to one of the deadliest earthquakes of the 21st century, which ravaged swaths of the country’s south on February 6. The quake, which killed nearly 51,000 people in Turkey and about 9,000 in northern Syria, struck just months before a pivotal election. But while civil engineers blamed shoddy construction practices and lacklustre building code enforcement for the vast scale of the destruction, Erdoğan ultimately clinched victory after his government unleashed a flood of stimulus measures.

Adam Samson in London

• Joe Biden orders military to shoot down Chinese spy balloon found floating over the US

• EU and UK strike Brexit deal on Northern Ireland after years of tensions

• Economist Kazuo Ueda unexpectedly appointed governor of the Bank of Japan

• Bola Tinubu wins closest Nigerian presidential election in decades

• Bao Fan, China’s top tech dealmaker and founder of China Renaissance, goes missing

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March

SVB and Credit Suisse collapse in banking crisis

The first domino to fall in the worst banking crisis since 2008 was San Diego-based crypto lender Silvergate, which said on March 8 it was winding down its operations in the face of turmoil in digital currency markets. The same day, trendy West Coast lender Silicon Valley Bank sold a chunk of its securities portfolio at a $1.8bn loss, after being caught by Federal Reserve interest rate hikes. Depositors then withdrew $42bn from SVB and on March 10 it was seized by the US government. With confidence dented across the sector, New York’s Signature Bank also fell. Meanwhile, in Europe, Credit Suisse’s equity and bonds were plunging in value, and the Swiss government secured a hastily negotiated deal with cross-town rival UBS, creating a bank whose assets exceed those of the country’s entire economy.

Joshua Franklin in New York

• Chinese President Xi Jinping meets Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Moscow

• Donald Trump indicted on criminal charges in New York relating to alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels

• Alibaba announces plan to split into six in radical overhaul of Chinese tech giant

• Chipmaker Arm and building group CRH shun London listings in favour of New York

• Beijing sets GDP target of 5 per cent, the lowest in three decades, in bid to drive recovery

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April

Trump is first former US president to be indicted

Donald Trump became the first former president to be indicted in US history, appearing in a Manhattan court to plead not guilty to the first batch of what would spiral into 91 criminal charges against him. The New York case is about falsifying business records, but Trump also faces a federal case in Florida tied to his mishandling of classified documents; another in Washington DC about his role in overturning the 2020 election result; and a case that accuses him of conspiring to do the same at the state level in Georgia. Yet despite the prospect of trials overshadowing his White House run next year, Trump remains the overwhelming favourite to win the Republican presidential nomination. He also has an edge over Joe Biden in head-to-head general election match-ups, both nationally and in the battleground states.

James Politi in Washington

• India to overtake China as world’s most populous country, UN says

• Fox agrees $787.5mn settlement in defamation case from voting machine maker Dominion

• EY scraps ‘Project Everest’ break-up plan after months of internal dissent

• Conflict breaks out in Sudan between the country’s military and a powerful paramilitary group

• UK regulator blocks Microsoft’s $75bn acquisition of games maker Activision Blizzard

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May

Hollywood writers strike over pay and AI

When Hollywood writers took to the picket lines in May, their loudest demand was to roll back the pay practices introduced by streaming pioneer Netflix. But within weeks, their focus had shifted to another disruptive threat: artificial intelligence. By July, the SAG-Aftra union representing 160,000 actors had joined the writers, and tensions between the unions and studio leaders soon boiled over, with work on films and TV shows grinding to a halt. But the strikes tapped into the energy of a growing US labour movement, and ultimately the unions secured significant pay increases and better royalties from streaming, as well as breaking new ground in US labour law over AI.

Christopher Grimes in Los Angeles

• White House reaches eleventh-hour deal with Republicans to avert catastrophic US debt default

• King Charles III’s coronation takes place in Westminster Abbey

• Putin claims capture of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut after one of the conflict’s bloodiest battles

• Recep Tayyip Erdoğan extends his rule into a third decade as he wins Turkey’s election

• PwC suspends nine partners over Australian tax leak scandal

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June

The fall of Crispin Odey

Odey Asset Management was one of the last bastions of a bygone era of the City of London. Established by Crispin Odey in 1991, the hedge fund was known for hiring “earls and girls”, while some fund managers brought shotguns to the office before heading off on weekend shooting trips. In June, the FT published an investigation detailing allegations of sexual assault and harassment from 13 women against Odey, engulfing the firm in crisis. Odey, who strenuously denied the allegations, was ejected, while banking partners cut ties with the firm. Odey faces an ongoing probe by the Financial Conduct Authority and a civil case from at least two of the women. Odey Asset Management is currently winding down.

Antonia Cundy and Madison Marriage in London

• Chinese government blames “health reasons” for foreign minister Qin Gang’s disappearance

• US coastguard says missing Titanic submersible imploded, killing all five on board

• Ukraine launches long-awaited counteroffensive with deployment of western tanks

• Sequoia announces plan to split off China arm of US venture capital giant

• Antony Blinken meets China’s foreign minister in Beijing in bid to reboot relations

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July

US inflation turns a corner

US inflation turned the corner in the summer — though policymakers were hesitant to acknowledge it. June’s data, published in July, showed a sharp decline to 3 per cent. It took until December for the Federal Reserve to admit that it may have finished its tightening campaign, following 11 rate rises that lifted the benchmark interest rate to a 22-year high of 5.25-5.5 per cent. Fed chair Jay Powell has now shifted the debate towards the timing and magnitude of rate cuts. Those expecting a bumpy descent say the central bank will need to withhold relief on borrowing costs until closer to the middle of 2024, while others see scope for a pivot as early as the first three months of the year.

Colby Smith in Washington

• Kremlin seizes Carlsberg and Danone assets in Russia

• Saudi Arabia launches push into football with multiple big-name signings

• Niger soldiers appear on television to announce coup in west African nation

• China’s economy falls into deflation for first time since early 2021

• Goldman Sachs posts lowest quarterly profit in three years amid deals and trading slowdown

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August

Russian warlord Prigozhin dies in plane crash

Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin’s private jet went down in a ball of flames weeks after Wagner, his mercenary group, staged an unsuccessful mutiny against Vladimir Putin. A former Kremlin caterer known as “Putin’s chef”, Prigozhin had urged the Russian president to intensify his invasion of Ukraine. His meteoric rise, backed by a 50,000-strong army of convicts, put him in direct conflict with Russia’s defence ministry, which he accused of incompetence and corruption. For months, Putin appeared to tolerate the dissension. “He made serious mistakes in his life. But he got results,” Putin later said. But after Prigozhin abandoned a march on Moscow in June, Russia’s first coup attempt in three decades, Wagner’s days were numbered. The military took over its lucrative operations in Africa and the Middle East. Russia never released a full inquest into the crash, although Putin suggested Prigozhin and his Wagner coterie had set off hand grenades while high on cocaine.

Max Seddon in Riga

• Xi dominates Brics summit as leaders endorse Beijing-led expansion

• Uber posts first operating profit after $31bn losses of since 2014

• US scientists achieve net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the second time

• Spain beat England 1-0 to become Women’s World Cup champions

• Huawei wows China with Mate 60 pro smartphone powered by its own processors

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September

Canada and India clash over killing of Sikh separatist

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau revealed that his country was investigating whether Indian “agents” were behind the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist, in a Vancouver suburb. India denounced the claim as “absurd” and expelled most of Ottawa’s diplomats from New Delhi. In November, the plot thickened when US prosecutors accused an unnamed Indian government official of orchestrating the killing of a second Sikh separatist, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, in a plot that was foiled. The incidents have raised the spectre of an India so confident in its own power that it might be carrying out targeted killings abroad. The allegation from the US received a different response, with Narendra Modi’s government promising to investigate and vowing to “take necessary follow-up action”.

John Reed in Delhi

• BP chief Bernard Looney resigns over failing to disclose past relationships with colleagues

• Arm’s shares jump by 25 per cent in its first day of trading on Nasdaq, valuing the chip designer at more than $65bn

• Azerbaijan seizes Nagorno-Karabakh, bringing a 30-year conflict with Armenia to an end

• US car workers launch historic strike against big three Detroit automakers

• Rupert Murdoch steps down as chair of Fox and News Corp at the age of 92

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October

Hamas attack on Israel triggers devastating conflict

The moment Hamas militants breached the security barriers around Gaza on October 7 and launched a dawn assault on southern Israel, they triggered a chain of devastating events that have reverberated across the volatile Middle East and beyond. About 1,200 people were killed in the attack and 240 civilians and soldiers were taken hostage, according to Israeli officials, making it the worst assault inside Israel since the state’s founding 75 years ago. Traumatised and enraged, Israel responded with a ferocious air and land assault on Hamas-controlled Gaza, killing more than 20,000 people in its relentless bombardment of the strip, according to Palestinian officials. More than 80 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3mn residents have been forced from their homes, while a catastrophic humanitarian crisis unfolds in the enclave as it endures severe shortages of food, water, fuel and medicine.

Andrew England in London

• Former Polish prime minister Donald Tusk wins enough seats in the country’s election to return by forming a coalition government

• India tells Canada to withdraw dozens of diplomatic staff amid rising tensions between the countries

• Toyota says it is close to being able to mass produce next-generation solid-state EV batteries

• Exxon and Chevron strike the largest oil deals in years, cementing their dominance in the market

• Country Garden, China’s biggest property developer, misses payment on dollar bond, sparking fears of default

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November

Altman ousted from OpenAI — and then returns

In a week that shook Silicon Valley, Sam Altman, the boss of the world’s most feted artificial intelligence company, was first ejected from his job, then reinstated, in a dramatic power struggle. OpenAI had previously enjoyed a stellar 2023, reaching a valuation of more than $80bn and launching the latest version of its powerful chatbot ChatGPT. The technology has been used to generate text, code and images indistinguishable from human creations. Altman’s shock ousting remains shrouded in mystery, with the board stating only that “he was not consistently candid”. But after pressure from investors including Microsoft and a staff revolt, Altman was reinstated and three of the four original board members were replaced.

Madhumita Murgia in London

• Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss drug Wegovy cut the risk of death by 18 per cent, a trial finds

• Joe Biden and Xi Jinping meet in effort to stabilise US-China relations

• Geert Wilders, the Dutch far-right leader, wins the most votes in parliamentary elections

• Germany’s top court rules that the government must obey a “debt brake” that limits spending

• Sam Bankman-Fried convicted of fraud over the collapse of crypto exchange FTX

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December

COP28 concludes with shaky climate deal

“The course correction that is needed has not been secured,” said Samoan delegate Anne Rasmussen, just minutes after COP28 president Sultan al-Jaber had banged his gavel to mark the end of the Dubai summit and promised the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era. Saudi Arabia’s determination to keep pumping oil had always threatened the chances of a deal to end new fossil fuel projects. So the pledge to at least begin a transition away from oil, gas and coal, reached in the early hours of December 13, was more than expected. But Rasmussen’s lament, delivered on behalf of small island states as the hottest year on record drew to a close, was met with both tears and a standing ovation. The next day, scientists concluded that the shaky deal may have put Jaber’s “north star” goal of keeping global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels out of reach. 

Kenza Bryan in London