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Good morning from the newsroom of the Financial Times. Today is Thursday

December 13th and this is your FT news briefing. Today we'll be looking at

what's next for Theresa May as leader of the UK Conservative Party, signs of a thaw in US-China

trade tensions boosting Wall Street, and Tencent Music's first day on the New York Stock Exchange.

Then the F.T.'s Claire Jones is here to prepare us for the European Central Bank

meeting today, and she'll tell us what to expect from the end of a controversial stimulus plan.

I'm Eric Kruffy, and here's the news you need to start your day.

I'm Henry Mans, a political correspondent at the Financial Times in London.

The big drama today was a ballot of no confidence in Theresa May as leader of the Conservative

Party.

I will contest that vote with everything I've got.

That had been triggered on Tuesday by 48 of her MPs writing in and saying they had no

confidence in her. No one really thought that the rebels could build up momentum.

So the question was how many people would vote against her in the

end 117 of her MPs voted against her. Is that the Parliamentary Party does

have confidence.

And that was actually towards the upper end of expectations. So she emerges from this as a slightly weakened Prime Minister,

still without the votes in Parliament to get her Brexit deal through.

Following this ballot we now need to get on with the job of delivering Brexit for the British people

and building a better future for this country.

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