Merkel and Hollande meet Putin, the dark arts of dealmaking and the Lad Bible goes large

The daily briefing “FirstFT” from the Financial Times.

Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande will head to Moscow to attempt to break the diplomatic deadlock over Ukraine. They flew into Kiev yesterday to discuss the new plan with Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko before heading to Russia. (FT)

The push follows Washington’s shift to consider arming Ukraine – a move that both Merkel and Hollande oppose – and alarm at the surge in fighting in eastern Ukraine.

In the news

Wolfgang Schauble and Yanis Varoufakis at a tense press briefing after they failed to find common ground on the vexed question of refinancing Athens when its bailout expires at the end of the month. (FT)

Twitter flies in spite of low user growth The microblogging platform beat expectations on earnings and income but its monthly active users only grew 1.4 per cent quarter on quarter in the final three months of 2014. Still, its shares jumped more than 11 per cent in after-hours trading. (FT)

Batista assets frozen A judge has frozen the assets of Brazil’s former richest man and his family to cover possible fines if he is found guilty in an insider trading trial. Eike Batista is alleged to have used Twitter to boost the share price of his oil company by encouraging his followers to invest even as he was secretly selling his own shares. (FT)

Verizon’s landline sale The biggest US carrier by subscribers will sell over $15bn of landline assets and mobile phone towers to reduce debt and raise cash for investments. It also plans to buyback $5bn worth of shares. (Reuters)

Signal dies for RadioShack The US electronics retailer filed for bankruptcy protection and said it will sell as many as 2,400 stores to an affiliate of its lender and largest shareholder Standard General, a hedge fund. As many as 1,750 of these stores will be run by wireless company Sprint. (Reuters)

It’s a big day for

The bitcoin elite who are all gathered at a secret Caribbean island for their equivalent of the Bilderberg conference, the secretive meeting of finance experts. Izabella Kaminska examines the recent problems with the blockchain and argues that bitcoin is evolving into a worse version of the current system. (FT)

US jobs Analysts expect the US non-farm payrolls report to show a net gain of 234,000 positions in January and for the unemployment rate to hold at 5.6 per cent. (FT)

Food for thought

Pfizer has searched far and wide for a big acquisition over the past year to find outlets for its £33bn cash pile. The FT looks at why Pfizer bought Hospira.

Why reasonable people are science sceptics Science is often counter intuitive and scientific thinking doesn’t come naturally. Shame really, since there’s never been more technology and science to understand. (National Geographic)

Gold rush Bloomberg looks into where Germany’s gold is physically kept and how gold is streaming out from the headquarters of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York back to owners.

The dark art of dealmaking James Palmer describes how visits to brothels became a key part of building trust in relationships and getting deals done for many in China. The culture has extended into people’s personal lives so that women visit psychologists to ask for help accepting their husbands’ cheating – seeing their failure to cope as a flaw in themselves. (ChinaFile)

Supplementary information Sales of dietary supplements are booming but there are serious doubts over the benefits. David McCandless visualised the scientific studies showing evidence of tangible health benefits when taken orally by an adult. (Wonkblog, Information is Beautiful)

The Scottish National party wants land reform to revive local rural communities hit by depopulation but critics say the plan smacks of class war and a further advance of an over-mighty state. (FT)

Video of the day

The Lad Bible goes large It’s one of the most popular websites among young British men, with more Facebook fans than BuzzFeed. The FT’s Henry Mance meets the twenty-somethings who run the site to understand what made it so popular. (FT)

This article is published in collaboration with The Financial Times. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: FirstFT is the Financial Times’ editors curated free daily email of the top global stories from the FT and the best of the rest of the web

Image: Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting. REUTERS/Mikhail Klimentyev.