Good morning from the Financial Times.
Today is Thursday, February 12th, and this is your FT News Briefing.
Jess Staley appears to have been closer to Jeffrey Epstein than he said, and the latest US jobs report was red hot.
We're going to dig into the numbers.
Plus, Bangladesh goes to the polls today in its most important election in decades.
I'm Mark Filippino, and here's the news you need to start your day.
We have more revelations on the high profile names connected to Jeffrey Epstein, this time former Barclays CEO, Jess Staley.
Newly released documents from the U.S.
Department of Justice appear to contradict testimony he gave about his involvement with the late convicted sex offender.
The documents show Staley was named as a trustee of Epstein's estate up until at least 2015.
But he told a UK court last year that he had declined a request from Epstein to take up that position.
This testimony was part of Staley's effort to overturn a lifetime ban from the Financial Conduct Authority.
The FCA barred him over his ties to Epstein.
A lawyer for Staley did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The FCA declined to comment.
Staley has maintained that he and Epstein had a quote close professional relationship, but they were not friends and that he was not aware of Epstein's activities.
We got some unexpected news about the U.S. jobs market yesterday.
The economy added 130,000 jobs in January.
That was almost double what economists expected.
But the number of jobs added over the course of the last year has been revised down.
Here to explain what this says about the U.S. economy is the FT's Miles McCormick.
Hi, Miles.
Hey, Mark.
All right, so let's start with this blockbuster number, 130,000 new jobs in January.
How big of a deal is that?
Yeah, so it's pretty significant.
I mean, as you say, it's like way bigger than what the markets had been expecting.
This is the biggest increase in jobs numbers for over a year.
It suggests that the US labor market is doing better than a lot of economists had feared.
We had kind of a barrage of negative reports over the last week or two that were kind of suggesting that Sacking people was increasing.
Job openings were going down.
Unemployment claims were going up.
This report seems to fly in the face of all that and suggest the US labor market seems pretty stable.
Okay, so it's, like you said, stable.
But what about this downward revision of the jobs added last year that I mentioned?
It was a huge downgrade.
Yeah, it was pretty, pretty chunky.
So the Bureau of Labor Statistics does this every year, where they'll kind of do an annual revision of the numbers they've put out, based on kind of a more complete set of data that they have in front of them.
The size of those revisions has been increasing big time lately.
So what they did this week was they said that, rather than getting about 49000 new positions a month over the course of 2025, we had about 15000 new positions a month, which is obviously significantly less and suggests fairly kind of wide, weak job growth over the course of the past year.
So yeah, that's a bit of a counterweight to the kind of bumper January figure.
Miles, why was there such a discrepancy between estimates and the actual numbers?
It certainly raised some eyebrows in the markets, not least because there's kind of this increasing gulf between some of the private figures that are being put out there and the official numbers.
We know that the US statistics agencies have been kind of chronically underfunded.
Lost a lot of resources over the last while.
Their response rates are going down.
So the accuracy of the numbers they've put out have been called into question.
That said, there's no genuine kind of accusations that the numbers are being fiddled or anything like that.
Just perhaps that this data that was once considered the gold standard of statistics may not be as accurate perhaps, as it once was.
How did markets react to these two very different pieces of news about the jobs market?
So markets were pretty enthused by it all.
I mean, I suppose that latter piece that we discussed, the revisions, had been pretty widely expected.
What was a big surprise to markets was how good the January number was.
So, as a result, traders appear to have dialed back their expectations of any further interest rate cuts in the near term.
And yeah, the expectation is that this kind of reinforces Fed Chair Jay Powell's assertion that The market has stabilized.
And, broadly speaking, economists are not now expecting a cut for as long as he remains chair of the Federal Reserve.
And his term is due to come to an end in May.
That's the FT's U.S. economics correspondent, Miles McCormick.
Thanks, Miles.
Thanks, Mark.
Bangladesh is holding its first election since 2024's mass uprising.
That uprising toppled former leader Sheikh Hasina, and it's widely expected that today's vote will usher in a new period for the South Asian country.
The FT's Andres Shipani is in Bangladesh covering the election, and he joins me now.
Hi, Andres.
Hello, how are you?
Yeah, not bad.
So, Andres, previous elections in Bangladesh were not considered free or fair.
Is this one going to be different?
Well, people are billing these elections among the most consequential since Bangladesh independence from Pakistan in 1971.
And even the co-taker leader Muhammad Yunus has held them as a historic break with the past.
To millions of Bangladeshis.
This will be the first chance in a long time to actually participate in a credible vote.
This week I met with the executive director of Transparency International here in Dhaka and he told me that, compared to most recent elections, this one is expected to be freer and fairer.
But obviously the big tests lie in how they handle ballots and the vote count.
Who are the main contenders and what are their positions?
Well, you have to keep in mind that the Awami League, which had run the country for the past 15 years, until the revolution in August 2024, was barred from all political activities.
So they are out of this race.
That leaves the Awami League's historical arch rival, which is the Bangladesh National Party, which is now led by Tariq Rahman, who is the heir to one of the country's leading political dynasties.
And he's running on a platform of what he says is Bangladesh first.
I don't know if that echoes something in other continents, but it is essentially a pro-market party.
And basically the BNP is facing a coalition of 11 mainly Islamist parties that are led by one party called Jamaat Islami, which has seen rising support in recent weeks.
The party is led by Emir Shafiq al-Rahman, and he has been trying to present Jamaat as a clean, moral alternative, guided by Islamic values, to the BNP, which is a secular party.
And he has tried quite hard to soften the party's image as utterly conservative by stressing governance anti-corruption, social justice.
But for example, he said, women should work no more than five hours a day.
Prioritize family responsibilities.
There's also that side.
What are the top priorities for whoever wins, Andres?
Well, I think the main thing is to restore democratic order.
And then a lot of the challenges will hang on implementing some of the reforms that the caretaker government of Mohammed Yunus started and are also in a referendum at the ballot box this week, which include term limits for the prime minister.
Another challenge will be to rehabilitate an economy with inflation stuck at more than 8%.
And then let's see how a trade deal with the U.S. pans out.
This week, the US and Bangladesh signed an agreement providing for a 19 tariff on all exports to the US and a zero rate for garments made in Bangladesh with US material, which will have big implications for the garment sector, which is one of the main drivers of Bangladesh's economy.
And this is seen as a very big win for Bangladesh and may even give it an edge over competitors like India.
Andres Shipani is the FT's South Asia correspondent.
Thanks so much, Andres.
Thank you very much, Mark.
Before we go, I wanted to let you know that the latest season of the FT podcast, Tectonic, is out.
This season explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping intimacy.
Stick around after the show to hear a trailer and we'll have a link in the show notes to the season.
This has been your daily FT news briefing.
Check back tomorrow for the latest business news.
Could you fall in love with an AI chatbot?
Hi, I'm Sarah.
The second that she got the name, that she became Sarah, I realized how easy it was to be intimate with an AI companion.
I'm Christina Criddle, and I write about artificial intelligence for the Financial Times.
In a new season of Tectonic, I explore how people are turning to AI for friendship, for therapy and even for love.
I was like, isn't he so sweet and endearing?
And I was just like, yeah, I love him.
I feel in love with him.
I'll be speaking to people who've had transformative emotional experiences with chatbots, hearing about the positive things, but also how this technology can go so wrong.
When I look at these chatbots and I see what it's doing to our children, I realize that this was the incarnation of evil.
It basically ripped my heart apart, the same as if it was someone who'd been gaslighting me, lying to me, saying I loved you, but I didn't.
This thing has me thinking I'm about to get killed.
Like, I literally thought I was done, like that they were going to come get me.
What role, if any, should AI play in our emotional lives?
Artificial Intimacy, a new season of Tectonic from the Financial Times, begins on February the 11th.
Find it wherever you get your podcasts.
