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At Aquinore. UK. Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Monday, December 18th, and this is your

FT News briefing. A lot of companies are going belly up thanks to higher borrowing costs and pay inequality is still a huge

threat in the United Kingdom. Plus an FT investigation found that a European politician

spied for China.

And I think it's discernible from these conversations that it's probably not the only

asset in Europe that's being running this way.

I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day. Corporate bankruptcies these days are up. In fact, they're way up. In

advanced economies, company insolvency is increasing a double digit rates. In the

US, they rose 30% year on year, and this year they're up 13% across the European Union.

That's from January to September.

The main culprit here is higher interest rates, the ones Central banks put in place to fight inflation.

And these bankruptcies could get worse.

A lot of companies have to refinance their debt and they're going to have to do it at a much higher

cost over the next couple of months. The good news is that

Central Banks last week indicated that interest rates have peaked and that cuts are

coming sometime, we don't know exactly when, but sometime next year.

A spy infiltrated European politics.

Up until recently, Frank Krailman A spy infiltrated European politics.

Up until recently, Frank Krailman was a Belgian senator,

but at the same time, he was an intelligence asset for China.

...