Ft Big Read

Can remarkable science be turned into mass-market products, asks David Crow. Cell therapies to treat blood cancers offer hope to patients who have exhausted all other possibilities and are likely to get regulatory approval this year. But they are expensive and production is time consuming, says David. The process needs to be streamlined and capacity matched to demand  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Has the party ended for high-end housing developers, asks Judith Evans. After a five-year boom, they are feeling the chill as apartments in their gleaming towers stand empty, with many failing to sell despite offered discounts and gifts  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Rising house prices and stock market values are fuelling fears of an implosion like the one that dogged Tokyo for decades and President Xi Jinping has urged China's leadership to safeguard their country's financial security, say Leo Lewis, Tom Mitchell and Yuan Yang.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

President Michel Temer has been caught up in the latest bribery probe, centred on JBS, one of the country's biggest multinationals. A series of investigations since 2014 has exposed a system of patronage that is entrenched among the business and political elite but Joe Leahy and Andres Schipani say the culture is proving hard to change  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The run-up to Friday's polls has resounded with arguments over inequality and corruption in the deeply divided Islamic Republic, says Najmeh Bozorgmehr. And there is more at stake than who is to be president. The incumbent Hassan Rouhani or his hardline challenger Ebrahim Raisi could become the next supreme leader, says Najmeh  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The solace that the European establishment is drawing from the election of Emmanuel Macron as French president should not disguise the fact that the political extremes are still gaining ground in Europe - and the centre is still fragmenting. But Gideon Rachman argues that for all the tension around slow eurozone growth, security and migration, European voters have nevertheless demonstrated more resilience and calm than many pundits and politicians anticipated  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Companies and countries that displease Beijing can find state-backed consumer campaigns marshalled against them. James Kynge, the FT's emerging markets editor, asks south China correspondent Ben Bland how effective such sanctions are. You can read the full report on China's 'boycott diplomacy' on www.ft.com/  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The sport has only once been played in the summer Games but some now believe the wider exposure inclusion would give it is necessary for its survival, says Murad Ahmed. First, though, cricket modernisers must convince sceptics in India  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Vix index is known as Wall Street's 'fear gauge' and was once just a measure of market movements. But volatility has itself become a tradable asset and financial engineers have used the index to create high-risk products and strategies that can act as siren calls to unwary investors, says Robin Wigglesworth  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Chocolate has been a Swiss national industry for almost 200 years but aggressive pricing and a shift to healthier snacks are forcing confectioners like Lindt and Nestlé to adapt, says Ralph Atkins. Focusing on premium brands and fighting the increasingly popular craft chocolatiers on their own territory are just two of the strategies the traditional groups are turning to, Ralph says  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Since John Elkann inherited the Exor business six years ago he has changed its strategy, diversifying away from the car industry and from its Italian homeland, say Sarah Gordon and Rachel Sanderson. But the relocation of the group's HQ to the Netherlands and heavy investment by the owner of the Fiat and Ferrari brands in the US have been controversial  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Supplies of traditionally popular species have become so depleted through overfishing that commercial fleets — especially the Chinese — are trawling further from home, deeper and wider in the oceans, says Lucy Hornby. This has led to clashes as they impinge on local hunting grounds halfway across the world, Lucy says  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Donald Trump’s protectionist rhetoric, tax plans and threatened wall have battered the peso but hopes for an economic bounceback have grown as Mexicans adjust to the volatility, says Jude Webber. Confidence is rising south of the border despite the storm unleashed by the White House, Jude says  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Marking the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome while Britain tussles with its exit highlights the fractures in unity on the Continent, says Philip Stephens. The global environment is very different now from that of 1957 — but national solutions are not the answer to the problems individual member states face  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The reformist Argentine Francis is encountering opposition from those who claim his zeal threatens Catholic Church unity, says James Politi. The Pope enjoys very high popularity, but his critics are becoming bolder  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken the opportunity provided by the failed coup in 2016 to further his societal engineering. And the forthcoming referendum in April could give him power beyond the scope of even the country's founder Ataturk, says Mehul Srivastava  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Warren Buffett and 3G were taken aback by the harsh rejection of the takeover offer they had backed but people close to the Anglo-Dutch group say the deal made no financial or strategic sense for them. Arash Massoudi and James Fontanella-Khan tell a tale of miscalculation and culture divide  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The scale of remuneration for CEOs has caused anger and triggered debate about the effectiveness of how it's structured and whether it's time to rein in their huge increases, says Patrick Jenkins in his Big Read report for the FT's Runaway Pay series. Here, Christopher Grimes talks to Patrick and John Gapper about how executive pay became so out of proportion to average wages and what changes we are likely to see  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

High hopes that new immunotherapy drugs would prove to have benefits over toxic chemotherapy were dashed by large-scale trials, says David Crow. Pharmaceutical groups are now working on combinations of the immunotherapies and using them with chemo, but some pharma groups have suffered big losses and Wall Street has become sceptical  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The $580bn relationship between Mexico and the US is vulnerable as the new American president picks his targets, say Jude Webber, Shawn Donnan and John Paul Rathbone. But Enrique Peña Nieto does have some negotiating leverage  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.