Good morning from the newsroom of the Financial Times.

Today is Thursday, February 6th, and this is your FT news briefing.

H.S.B.C. is holding off on appointing a permanent head of the bank.

Energy executives in China are braced for a significant

fall in oil consumption because of the coronavirus, and Spotify has made another push

into podcasts and search for profits. But first, the US Senate has acquitted President

Donald Trump of both charges against him in the impeachment trial. The F.T.'s

U.S. managing editor, Peter Spiegel, explains how it unfolded and where things go from here.

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

Well, the one surprise, or maybe it wasn't a surprise, because he had been signaling that he was ready to buck the president for some time, was Mitt Romney, a big name in the Republican Party, a former presidential nominee of the Republican Party who stood up and give a very

an emotional speech was eight minutes on the Senate floor where he actually seemed to

break down basically saying he had to vote to convict the president because he felt

his conscience would not stand doing anything else.

That it was his constitutional responsibility.

He had found that the president had breached his oath of office and had abused his power.

And that was the big surprise of the day. No one else broke ranks. We saw Joe

Manchin who is the conservative Democrat from West Virginia had signaled he might go

with the Republicans to acquit. He stood with his party. So it was a 52 to 48 split.

There was only one senator who switched parties, which A, shows how

partisan Washington has become, but also the hold

that Donald Trump has on the Republican Party,

because there was no break in the House because there was no break in the House

...