Bank of Japan ditches negative rates
FT News Briefing
Forhecz Topher
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2024
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Microsoft has hired the co-founder of Google’s DeepMind, the Bank of Japan raised interest rates for the first time since 2007, and leading European and UK artificial intelligence start-ups have been lobbied to move their headquarters to rival nations.
Mentioned in this podcast:
Microsoft hires DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman to run new consumer AI unit
Bank of Japan ends era of negative interest rates
Unilever to split off ice cream business and cut 7,500 jobs
Rival nations seek to poach top UK and European AI start-ups
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The FT News Briefing is produced by Fiona Symon, Sonja Hutson, Kasia Broussalian and Marc Filippino. Additional help by Sam Giovinco, Peter Barber, Michael Lello, David da Silva and Gavin Kallmann. Our engineer is Monica Lopez. Topher Forhecz is the FT’s executive producer. The FT’s global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. The show’s theme song is by Metaphor Music.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The UK's energy partner. |
| 0:06.0 | Learn more at equinore. |
| 0:10.0 | At Aquinore. UK. Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, March 20th, and this is your |
| 0:17.8 | F.T. News briefing. The Bank of Japan is finally leaving negative interest rates behind and |
| 0:25.0 | Microsoft has hired a big name in AI. |
| 0:29.0 | Plus, some countries are trying to coach Europe's AI startups. I'm Sonia Hudson and |
| 0:35.7 | here's the news you need to start your day. Microsoft has hired the co-founder of Google's Deep Mind. |
| 0:54.0 | Mustafa Suleiman will run a new consumer AI division |
| 0:58.0 | that'll bring together products like Bing and Co-Pilot. |
| 1:01.0 | It's the latest move by the tech giant to capitalize on the boom in |
| 1:05.6 | artificial intelligence and it's a race that Microsoft seems to be winning after |
| 1:10.4 | its huge investment in open AI. But antitrust regulators are on its heels. The US and the EU |
| 1:17.5 | have been looking into Microsoft as part of broader inquiries into AI investments. |
| 1:23.0 | The Bank of Japan has raised borrowing costs for the first time since 2007. |
| 1:35.6 | The BOJ pushed up rates to a range of 0 to 0.1 percent, finally getting out of negative |
| 1:42.2 | interest rates. |
| 1:43.0 | It's the end of one of the most controversial economic experiments in recent times. |
| 1:48.0 | And here to talk to me about it is the FT's Asia editor Robin Harding. Hey Robin. |
| 1:53.6 | Hi there. All right Robin let's start with the BOJ's decision to raise interest |
| 1:59.3 | rates. What was the reason behind it? Well, basically, it's because they think that inflation is on track |
| 2:06.2 | to be at their target, which is 2% at the end of next year. |
| 2:11.2 | And if inflation is on target, they think they think fine we don't need to have |
... |
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