You can usually tell when something big is about to hit the Newsroom by keeping track of who is on the phone. When you see journalists starting to duck into meeting rooms for phone calls, it can often mean a good story is brewing.

A couple of hours before the FT broke the news that BP’s chief executive, Bernard Looney, was resigning after a number of unreported relationships with colleagues, Paul Murphy, the FT’s investigations editor, waved over Tom Wilson, who is in charge of covering BP. Paul had a tip from a long-standing contact that Looney was on the way out. Tom double-sourced it and called the oil major’s press office for confirmation, but they had yet to hear the news.

In his analysis of the drama at BP, which we are publishing in FT Edit today, Tom looks at how the company is trying to steady the ship and whether Looney’s successor will stick with his attempts to tilt the company further towards renewables.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the newsroom, the phones on the tech desk were also ringing non-stop this week as Arm, the UK-based chip design company, launched its IPO on Nasdaq. While the shares were initially priced lower than they had been in a private sale a few weeks ago, in the end they rose around 25 per cent on their first day of trading. Now the company has to live up to its billing.

Coming up next week

With the weather finally cooling, join us next week for a collection of the FT’s best writing about running, from an A to Z of the finest city runs around the world to how to run up a skyscraper. And even if you have no intention of dusting off your trainers, you can read our writer’s account of his desolate, brutal attempt to complete a 268-mile mountain race from the comfort of your sofa and be glad it’s not you.

Our favourite pieces

This week’s most memorable quote, in my opinion, came in Henry Mance’s encounter with politician-turned-podcaster Rory Stewart: “I hadn’t really taken on board the fundamental truth, which is: modern British politics is almost exclusively about being incredibly loyal to the leader, until the moment when the MP stabs the leader in the back.” Read more about how Stewart “convalesced” from Westminster here.

Malcolm Moore (@malcolmmoore)
Editor, FT Edit

Two interviews kept me reading this week, both with visionaries in their own ways. After 15 years in political suburbia (if not outright wilderness), Tony Blair is back and, with Labour on the cusp of power, the party’s most successful leader has plenty to say. Then there was Gillian Tett’s illuminating lunch with Elon Musk’s biographer, Walter Isaacson, which shed new light on the complicated, conflicted tech titan.
Hannah Rock
Deputy editor, FT Edit (@HannahRockFT)

Helen Thomas made brilliant sense of the war waging between the European Union and China over electric vehicles. China is so much further ahead (check the impressive fact of the week below) than Europe though the demand for EVs is soaring. In a change from earlier this year with the US’s Inflation Reduction Act, now it’s the EU that is being called protectionist.
Caryn Wilson
US editor, FT Edit (@CarynAWilson)

Something to listen to

Behind the Money — Here’s part two of our mini-series on fallen Russian oligarch Sergei Leontiev. In the last episode Leontiev was keen to paint himself as anti-corruption, but was that true?

Unhedged — IPOs are cool again. This week Arm went public with much more interest than expected. Two other IPOs in the coming weeks will further test the appetite of the market.

FT Weekend podcast — She was a sensation in the 1990s but, after contracting Lyme disease, Shania Twain fell out of popular culture. This year she’s back on stage, and talks to the FT about returning to the limelight and how she writes songs.

Something to watch

On continents like Africa, a large swath of people, nearly 500mn, have no access to electricity. But a new financial structure with a solar power company devised by Citi bank could help bring power to millions.