China to issue debt in London, oil will keep flowing and Singapore escapes technical recession

The daily briefing “FirstFT” from the Financial Times.

China is set to issue government debt in renminbi in London, picking the city as the first overseas financial centre in which to open a sovereign debt market as it ramps up efforts to popularise its currency.

The scheme is likely to be announced during a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to the UK next week and will be hailed as a breakthrough by the British government, which is preparing to give the Communist party leader a five-star welcome. (FT)

In the news

Ups and downs for JPMorgan The bank kicked off third-quarter earnings season for Wall Street with a rise in profits despite falling revenue, after being helped by a tax benefit in the period. Profits jumped to $6.8bn in the third quarter from $5.6bn a year ago, while revenues slipped to $23.5bn from $25.1bn. (FT)

Oil will keep flowing Higher output from Opec and a slowdown in world economic growth means the crude glut will persist through next year. The International Energy Agency said it expected a “marked slowdown” in oil demand growth as the stimulus from lower prices faded. (FT)

‘Day of rage’ in Israel Four attacks by Palestinians killed three Israeli Jews and wounded at least a dozen others in two hours on Tuesday morning. Violence has escalated in the past two weeks, alarming Israelis, but Tuesday’s was the most intense eruption so far. (NYT)

GE sells finance arm to Wells Fargo The move marks the conglomerate’s latest step in shrinking its finance arm as it seeks to generate about 75 per cent of profits from its industrial divisions. Terms were not disclosed but the businesses collectively have about $32bn in assets. (FT)

Reading Playboy for the articles After its website dispensed with nudity last year, Playboy saw its online traffic jump to about 16m unique users per month from about 4m. Now, the print edition is following suit. It will feature women in provocative poses but they will no longer be fully nude. (NYT)

And the Man Booker Prize goes to … Jamaican writer Marlon James for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings. Set in Jamaica and the US, the book focuses on the events surrounding the shooting of the singer Bob Marley in 1976 and is told in the voices of an eclectic cast of characters, including gangsters, politicians, hitmen, groupies and CIA agents. (FT)

It’s a big day for

Singapore , which avoided a technicial recession in the September quarter by the narrowest of margins. The island’s economy grew a seasonally adjusted 0.1 per cent in the three months ended September 30 from the previous quarter, slightly ahead of economists expectations for a 0.1 per cent contraction. (fastFT)

Read more about upcoming events this week.

Food for thought

Inside Isis Inc In an exclusive analysis, the FT follows the progress of a barrel of oil, Isis’s biggest single source of revenue, across Syria. See how the production system works, who is making money from it, and why it is so difficult to disrupt. (FT)

… And outside Isis Inc A group of bearded men posing for photos in the Swedish countryside were visited by police after passers-by mistook them for Isis terrorists. In reality, the men were part of a club for facial hair aficionados known as the Bearded Villains and they just happened to have a flag that bore some similarity to that of the militant group. (The Guardian)

New frontier, old foes In the second part of a new FT series on China’s Great Game, Tom Mitchell looks at how Beijing’s attempts to tame the energy-rich Xinjiang region may be stoking unrest from its ethnic Uighur population. (FT)

How school shootings catch on Malcolm Gladwell on the thoroughly American phenomenon, and why such massacres have spread since the Columbine attack in 1999. “What if the way to explain the school-shooting epidemic is to go back and use the Granovetterian model — to think of it as a slow-motion, ever-evolving riot, in which each new participant’s action makes sense in reaction to and in combination with those who came before?” (New Yorker)

The death and life of the great British pub Across the UK, pubs are being shuttered at an alarming rate as property developers transform neighbourhood locals into estate agents, betting shops and luxury flats. This is the story of how one London pub fought back. (The Guardian)

Video of the day

Blackphone in 90 seconds Sam Jones, defence editor, explains the debate behind the encryption mobile device and the challenges it faces. (FT)

This article is published in collaboration with FirstFT. 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: A man rides an escalator near Shanghai Tower (R, under construction), Jin Mao Tower (C) and the Shanghai World Financial Center (L) at the Pudong financial district in Shanghai. REUTERS/Carlos Barria.