China releases employees of US firm after two years

Good morning and welcome back to FirstFT. In today’s newsletter:

• China releases Mintz Group employees

• Indonesia’s central bank intervenes to ensure currency’s ‘stability’

• Trump’s crackdown on Big Law

Chinese authorities have released five employees of US due diligence firm Mintz Group from detention, two years after Xi Jinping’s administration cracked down on consultancies working with foreign multinationals.

“We understand that the Mintz Group Beijing employees who were detained, all Chinese nationals, have now all been released,” a spokesperson for the company told the FT.

The Mintz staff were detained by Beijing’s public security bureau following a raid on the company’s office in the Chinese capital in 2023. They were charged with engaging in activities outside the formal scope of the company’s business licence, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The Mintz detentions were part of a wave of investigations targeting the China operations of US consultancies and due diligence firms that alarmed foreign investors in the country.

The releases come as Xi courts foreign business leaders, including Apple’s Tim Cook and Pfizer’s Albert Bourla. Here’s more on Beijing’s move.

Here’s what else we’re keeping tabs on today:

Five more top stories

1. Indonesia’s rupiah fell to its weakest level against the US dollar since the Asian financial crisis of 1998 over mounting fears about the policies of President Prabowo Subianto and their impact on the fiscal position of south-east Asia’s largest economy. The country’s central bank told the FT yesterday that it had intervened in bond and currency markets to ensure the “stability” of the currency. Read more about Indonesia’s fiscal pressures.

2. The US said it has reached agreements with Ukraine and Russia for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, following talks with both parties in Saudi Arabia. But it remained unclear when the deal would be implemented — and the agreement fell well short of the Trump administration’s proposed 30-day ceasefire that was supported by Kyiv but rejected by Moscow.

3. Globalisation in its current form “may have now run its course”, said HSBC chair Sir Mark Tucker in his speech to the bank’s Global Investment Summit in Hong Kong yesterday. Tucker said trade tensions created uncertainty that posed a “serious potential risk to global growth” — but would lead to new opportunities and stronger economic ties between regional groups and trade blocs.

4. Donald Trump has sought to play down a scandal involving top officials who discussed sensitive US military operations in Yemen on a Signal group chat. The US president defended Mike Waltz, his national security adviser, after he accidentally shared with a journalist details of the recent American air strikes on Houthi rebels.

• Moody’s warns on US fiscal outlook: The credit rating group said Trump’s trade tariffs could hamper the country’s ability to cope with a growing debt pile and higher interest rates.

• Trump’s tariffs: The US president is considering a two-step approach to his new tariff regime, deploying rarely used powers to impose emergency duties while probes into trading partners are completed.

5. Qantas Airways has said it will start its “Project Sunrise” ultra long-haul flights in early 2027 as the Australian carrier bets on strong passenger demand for direct routes. The airline is expecting the delivery of 12 Airbus A350-1000 planes at the end of next year as it plans to offer customers some of the world’s longest flights.

• Australian budget announcement: The Labor government unveiled plans to cut taxes while increasing spending on energy subsidies, healthcare, education and defence.

The Big Read

A decade ago, China’s abundant supply of cheap labour and highly concentrated supply chains made it a dominant force in low-end manufacturing. But today the sector is vanishing amid overseas competition, a burgeoning trade war with the US and weak domestic demand. The result is a painful shift away from low-cost, labour-intensive production that could leave millions of older, lower-skilled workers in the lurch.

We’re also reading . . . 

• Chinese AI start-ups: The country’s top groups are re-evaluating their strategies as they race to remain competitive following DeepSeek’s success.

• ‘Scared to death’: America’s most powerful law firms are racing to safeguard their businesses from Trump’s crackdown on legal practices.

• Jair Bolsonaro interview: Brazil’s hard-right former president has called for “support from abroad” as the country’s Supreme Court decides whether to put him on trial.

Chart of the day

A Trump administration proposal to impose stiff levies on Chinese-made ships entering US ports is sowing panic in the country’s agriculture industry, with farmers saying the added cost threatens to upend exports of wheat, corn and soyabeans.

Take a break from the news . . . 

British Airways is hoping to regain its halo with a new first-class seat, writes John Gapper. It comes 25 years after the UK flag carrier introduced the first lie-flat business-class airline seat, an innovation that was revolutionary at the time.