FirstFT: Fujitsu won UK contracts worth billions despite Post Office scandal

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The UK government awarded billions of pounds of contracts involving Fujitsu on Rishi Sunak’s watch after the Japanese company’s software was found to be at fault in the Post Office scandal in a landmark 2019 court ruling.

Government procurement records show Fujitsu was involved in £4.9bn of solo and joint public-sector contracts after the December 2019 ruling, including £3.6bn during Sunak’s time as chancellor and now prime minister.

Fujitsu provided the Horizon IT system at the heart of the biggest miscarriage of justice in modern British history and a growing political storm over the failure of successive governments to resolve the scandal.

Yesterday, former Post Office boss Paula Vennells relinquished a CBE awarded by the Conservatives in 2019 as ministers said they were looking at exonerating hundreds of wrongly prosecuted sub-postmasters en masse. Here’s what comes next.

Here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today:

• Davos: The World Economic Forum publishes its Global Risks Report ahead of its annual meeting in Switzerland, which starts on Monday. Join the FT as it provides on-the-ground analysis and expert insight from Davos.

• War in Ukraine: The Nato-Ukraine Council convenes in Brussels, with Kyiv seeking commitments to help fend off Russian air attacks, Ukraine’s foreign minister told Politico.

• UK politics: Levelling up secretary Michael Gove appears before MPs in an evidence session on the government’s freeports and investment zones policy.

• Companies: Bang & Olufsen reports second-quarter results. Greggs, The Gym Group, Hunting, Nichols, Persimmon and J Sainsbury all have trading updates.

Five more top stories

1. Boeing’s chief executive acknowledged “our mistake” after the mid-flight mishap involving one of its 737 Max planes at a company-wide safety meeting yesterday. The National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating the incident, and no cause has been determined. Here’s more from Dave Calhoun’s remarks to employees.

• Explainer: The blowout on the Alaska Airlines flight follows two deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019 involving the 737 Max, Boeing’s most popular plane. Here’s what went wrong.

2. Exclusive: Chinese companies are resorting to repurposing Nvidia gaming chips to develop artificial intelligence tools after Washington blocked US exports of high-performance processors in October. Thousands of gaming graphics cards are being stripped of their core components in factories and workshops every month, before being installed on new circuit boards. Qianer Liu has more details on the rough workaround.

3. Launches of funds claiming environmental, social or governance attributes have plunged in the past six months, with just six new funds citing ESG factors compared with 55 in the first half of 2023 and an annual average of almost 100 between 2020 and 2022. Here’s why the label has lost its popularity.

4. Security fears have reduced container shipments through the Suez Canal, with the number of vessels at the mouth of the Red Sea on their way to or from the waterway down 90 per cent in the first week of this month compared with the start of last year. The data from Clarksons, a London-based shipping services company, shows the scale of disruption to world trade by attacks on ships by Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Here are more findings.

5. A federal appeals court has appeared sceptical of Donald Trump’s argument that he is immune from criminal prosecution for allegedly attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election while serving in the White House. The former president attended the oral argument before the three-judge panel in Washington yesterday, just days before the start of the US presidential primary process. Here’s what the judges had to say.

The Big Read

Covid-19 shutdowns turbocharged internet clothing sales and sent shares in online-only retailers such as Asos, Boohoo and Sosandar soaring. But after the pandemic, shoppers in the UK and elsewhere have fallen back in love with in-store shopping while online players have had to grapple with stiff logistical challenges, mounting competition from ultra-cheap Asian rivals and soaring costs.

We’re also reading . . . 

• ‘Baby Macron’: Gabriel Attal, France’s youngest-ever prime minister and protégé of the president, faces stiff challenges in his new role, including a resurgent far right.

• IPOs: Large initial public offerings have outperformed the wider stock market over the past year, fuelling hopes of a revival for new listings.

• Liberalism: Freedom is under threat in the west and elsewhere, but it must be defended, writes Martin Wolf.

• AI ‘death calculator’: A Danish algorithm can now predict the premature end to a person’s life more accurately than actuarial tables used by insurers, writes Anjana Ahuja. Could this be a good thing?

Chart of the day

Just after 4pm in Washington, a post on the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s official X account sent the price of bitcoin swinging. But the post, which declared that the regulator had granted “approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges”, was false and later deleted. Here’s what happened.

Take a break from the news

London is chock full of activity, from its plethora of parks and bike lanes to boutique fitness classes and offbeat public tennis courts. Check out FT Globetrotter’s guide on where to run, cycle, swim and more in the UK capital.

Additional contributions from Benjamin Wilhelm and Gordon Smith