First global banker back in Abu Dhabi: Goldman Sachs on what's really happening

Billionaire John Caudwell on Labour, AI and his fears for the younger generation

Billionaire John Caudwell built Phones4u into one of Britain's biggest mobile phone retailers before selling it for almost £1.5 billion in 2006. He has since committed to giving 70 per cent of his wealth to charity. In a special edition of The Inside Brief recorded at his estate in the South of France, Mr Caudwell speaks to Manus Cranny with characteristic directness about British politics, the economy, AI and what drives him. Mr Caudwell says he switched his support to Labour before the 2024 general election for two reasons: the Conservatives had made a hash of things for so long that he had lost confidence in them, and Labour was pushing hard on GDP growth and support for business. He had meetings with Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Prime Minister Keir Starmer, but failed to influence them. The two Labour budgets since, he argues, have been business-unfriendly and counterproductive. Soaking the rich, he says, ultimately drags the economy down and makes the poor worse off in the long term, because the wealth needed to fund public services is not being created. On Andy Burnham, the man tipped to succeed Mr Starmer as prime minister, Mr Caudwell warns against further instability and the risk of a bigger shift to the left. On Nigel Farage and Reform, currently ahead in the polls, he agrees with much of their economic thinking but says he cannot support a party he regards as climate sceptic, and one he fears could bring the kind of divisiveness he associates with the current US administration. On AI, Mr Caudwell says it is both terrifying and exciting. He uses ChatGPT, argues with it and says he always wins. But he warns of a tsunami of young unemployed people as AI replaces jobs, and he worries about a generation growing up unable to tell what is real from what is fabricated. On wealth creation, his advice to the next generation is straightforward: it has to be internet-based, it has to have a worldwide application, and you need ambition, drive, passion, resilience, commercial intellect and, if you want to build at scale, leadership. The conversation was recorded at Domaine de la Belle Etoile, the estate surrounding Le Provencal, the French Riviera hotel Mr Caudwell bought in 2014 and has spent more than a decade restoring. Apartments at the former hotel are priced from £4 million to £40 million.

Former NSA chief Tim Haugh on Iran, UAE targets and future of AI warfare

In this special episode of The Inside Brief with Manus Cranny, former US National Security Agency chief Tim Haugh joins us in London to talk about the cyber dimensions of the Iran war and regional escalation, including an attack on the UAE's nuclear power plant. Mr Haugh argues that the US is seeking conditions for a political settlement focused on freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and the removal of enriched uranium from Iran, while Tehran aims to apply pressure through attacks on regional infrastructure. He says meaningful pressure would likely require Islamic Revolutionary guard Corps-focused targets, though few may compel compromise. After US President Donald Trump’s Beijing visit, Mr Haugh says the level of Chinese support for Iran remains unclear. He also says Iran’s capacity has likely degraded and resembles criminal opportunism, while artificial intelligence is accelerating the discovery of vulnerabilities and driving investment needs, alongside new physical defence priorities for data centres.

Mervyn King warns UK leadership hopefuls: Bond markets cannot be ignored

Bond markets are sending signals that politicians are struggling to read. Former Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King joins The Inside Brief with Manus Cranny from London to make sense of them, drawing on a 22-year career at the institution and a decade as governor during some of the most turbulent periods in modern financial history. On the current state of UK gilt markets and rising long-term yields, Mr King argues that a 10-year bond yield of 5 per cent is not unusual in itself. What concerns him more is the deep political reluctance across major economies to put public debt on a sustainable path. The choice, he says, is straightforward: either cut spending or raise taxes. On the oil shock, Mr King warns that the impact on inflation will be very different depending on whether the Middle East conflict lasts weeks, months or longer, and that central banks cannot yet know how much of it they can afford to look through. He draws on his own experience at the Bank of England after the financial crisis, when the institution looked through the biggest devaluation of sterling since the Second World War, and explains the conditions under which those judgments on interest rates were made. In the conversation, Mr King also reflects on the City of London, the closeness of relationships between the world's major central banks, and the charity he cofounded in 2005, Chance to Shine, which has brought cricket into state schools and reached eight million children.

Veon chief on the Iran war, frontier markets and why AI will create superheroes

The Iran war has put pressure on businesses headquartered in the UAE, but Kaan Terzioglu, chief executive of Dubai-based multinational telecommunication and digital services company Veon is not among those pulling back. Speaking to The Inside Brief with Manus Cranny from the company's Dubai offices, Mr Terzioglu says he is a hundred per cent sure Dubai will come out of this even stronger, and that the ability to access capital and talent is not at risk. Veon operates across some of the world's most challenging frontier markets, from Pakistan and Bangladesh to Ukraine and Kazakhstan, serving half a billion people across its telecoms and digital services platforms. Mr Terzioglu describes Veon not as a mobile operator but as a consumer and enterprise services company which happens to have a telecom licence. Today, 75 per cent of the business comes from traditional telecom services, growing at seven to eight per cent year-on-year. The remaining 25 per cent, covering banking, entertainment, healthcare and ride hailing, grows at 60 per cent year-on-year. Mr Terzioglu expects digital services revenue to exceed telecom revenue within three years. On the Iran war, Mr Terzioglu draws on experience managing a business through the Russia-Ukraine conflict, when 70 per cent of Veon's revenue came from a war zone overnight. The company had 19,000 people in Russia and 4,000 in Ukraine and had to make a defining choice. They chose Ukraine and exited Russia, losing half the business. Today, Veon is still growing and profitable in Ukraine. On AI, Veon is building sovereign large language models in local languages including Bangla, Urdu, Punjabi, Kazakh and Ukrainian, working with governments to access trainable data and taking around nine months to build each core model. Mr Terzioglu's ambition is not cost cutting but augmentation. He calls AI the recipe for becoming a superhero and says that those who are late to adapt risk being left behind. During the conversation, Mr Terzioglu also shared some personal reflections. Growing up in Istanbul during the hyperinflationary environment of the 1970s and 1980s, trading Deutsche marks on the black market, taught Mr Terzioglu one fundamental rule for operating in frontier markets: pricing control.

First global banker back in Abu Dhabi: Goldman Sachs on what's really happening

Goldman Sachs has just reported one of its strongest and most profitable quarters on record, with more than $17 billion in revenue. But with the Iran war reshaping the region and global recession risk rising, what are the world's leading investment banks actually thinking? Anthony Gutman, co-chief executive of Goldman Sachs International and co-head of investment banking, joins Manus Cranny on The Inside Brief from Abu Dhabi, as one of the first senior international bankers to visit the UAE since the Iran conflict began. In this episode, Mr Gutman shares what he found in 24 hours of back-to-back client meetings with sovereign wealth funds and corporate clients: not conversations about the macro, but requests for deal lists. Mr Gutman addresses the disconnect between outside perceptions of the UAE and the reality on the ground, the question of long-term reputational impact on the region and why he believes damage will be limited if the conflict is resolved quickly. He also spoke about the UAE's response to the conflict, saying leadership has done “a phenomenal job dealing with the safety and security of their people”, and that the country remains a place where people want to do business, bring their families and feel secure. Despite the conflict, Goldman's advisory backlog remains close to record levels, with more than 20 deals of $10 billion or more executed in the first quarter alone. On the global economy, Mr Gutman explains why Goldman's economists have set out a range of scenarios, base case to extreme, each correlated with how long the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, and why the Q2 earnings season will be the defining moment. Mr Gutman also speaks about AI and its role in driving the current M&A super cycle, how clients are learning to distinguish signal from noise in a volatile world, and what it actually takes to earn and keep a relationship at the highest levels of global finance.