Orbán draws US support ahead of Hungary’s election

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Today is Tuesday, February 17th, and this is your FD News briefing. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio heaps praise on Hungary's Prime Minister. Oil investors want companies to get more ambitious with their growth plans. Plus, the vibe shift among the world's top business schools. I'm Josh Gabbard Doyle, and here's the news.

The US dollar is taking a bruising. Fund managers are betting against the value of the currency more strongly now than at any point in more than 10 years. Unpredictable U.S. policymaking has been taking a toll. A Bank of America survey published late last week showed funds positioning on the dollar was at its most negative since at least 2012. While some asset managers are selling off to reduce their exposure to the dollar, others are betting that the dollar will fall even further.

The greenback is down one point three percent this year against a basket of currencies and declined nine percent in twenty twenty five. now close to a four-year low. Washington has historically pursued a strong dollar policy, but some within the Trump administration have speculated that a weaker dollar could help support US manufacturing.

The US Secretary of State has said that the leadership of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is essential to U.S. interests. just two months before Hungary holds critical parliamentary elections. At a meeting in Budapest, Marco Rubio hailed a golden era of US Hungarian relations, and said the US government was deeply committed to the success of Orban.

Hungary's leader is pro Russia, anti Ukraine, and an avowed skeptic of the European Union. What was behind Rubio's visit, and will it affect the outcome of the upcoming election? Here to tell us more is Martin Dunai. Thanks for joining me, Martin. Good to be here. Just to start off, Marco Rubio comes, pays his visit to Victorban. What did they discuss? Well the two discussed a lot of things, including cooperation on energy and obviously the the war in Ukraine.

And Rubio gave a very, very clear political support to Orban less than two months before the election. Now Orban took the opportunity to gravely criticize Ukraine for interference uh in the Hungarian election, standing next to Rubio who had just endorsed him. So it was something that showed very clearly the preferences uh for the Hungarian leader at this point in time. Just give us some context, Martin. What's behind Trump and Rubio's support for Victor Orban?

It's going back many, many years, even before Trump first became president. Orban had a very unfriendly relationship with the Democrat, uh Obama led government. And especially Hillary Clinton, and that basically laid the foundation for an early and enthusiastic support for Trump. who Orban was, I think, the first European leader to endorse back in twenty sixteen.

That's where the relationship goes back to. And since then it's been unwavering in their positive assessment of each other. So when Trump won the presidency again, Orban hailed it as a new golden era of US Hungarian relations. Which Rubio repeated several times. Rubio had also just been at the Munich Security Conference and he gave this big speech talking about a renewed partnership between the US and Europe.

Then he goes and visits Orban, who is pretty out and out Euroskeptic. Is there a contradiction there from Rubio? I think Ruby has been consistent with the overall message of the Trump administration in that they want Europe to take care of business itself. They don't want the US to provide for Europe, so to speak. even though Rubio was probably articulating a much more diplomatic message, broadly speaking it was very similar to the message that the US has delivered.

for a long time to Europe. And Orban is sort of a special animal in in in in that relationship as well, because he has been extremely critical of European conduct as well, especially with regards to issues like migration, which is also one of the pet issues of the US administration. So ideologically they've been really close and uh to have a critical voice within Europe I think is something that Trump can really relate to.

What's been the response from European diplomats? Have they said anything about this uh show of support from Rubia? So the European Commission spokesperson, Paola Pino, reacted to Rubio's extremely friendly statements uh to Orban. She said It's up to the US government to decide whom they wish to support and why.

As you are well aware, we here in Europe have a different approach. It is not our habit to support or not specific candidates in the midst of an electoral campaign. So basically you could interpret this as the EU not taking kindly of Rubio endorsing Orban as strongly as he did, although it should not have come as a surprise after Trump several times before said he fully supports Orban.

We know that Orban is behind in polling for the upcoming election in Hungary. Do you think this endorsement from Rubio and from Trump will help him at all? I doubt it. The main issues that might decide the Hungarian elections are mostly domestic, domestic corruption. domestic services like healthcare, education, social services, transportation.

These are all issues that got home to most Hungarian voters that the opposition has been campaigning on very, very strongly. I think those will be the issues that decide the election, not foreign policy. The opinion polls that I have seen show a fairly decent lead for the opposition party, TISA, which is the first robust single challenger to Orban in the last sixteen years.

But Orban has also developed a very, very effective and well oiled campaign machine. There's also the fact that countries like Russia are extremely interested to keep Orban in power because Orban is by all accounts, the best ally that they could have hoped for in the European Union. So I I would not really read too much into the opposition's lead in the opinion polls. I would say overall, it's very difficult to tell.

Martin Dunai is the FT's Southeast Europe correspondent. Thanks, Martin. Thank you very much.

After years of cost cutting and shareholder payouts, investors aren't now pressing big oil executives to focus on growth. The transition away from fossil fuels is set to take longer than once expected, so shareholders want the oil majors, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, and Total Energies to build up new reserves and commit to future projects. Oil companies are pursuing growth by increasing exploration efforts, inking new access deals with oil-rich nations, and pursuing mergers and acquisitions.

For some, MBAs offer a fast track to the top of the professional ladder. For others, they're a professional risk and a waste of money. Every year the FT puts out a ranking of top MBA programs around the world. scoring them according to metrics such as salary after graduation, student satisfaction, and research output. The FT's Andrew Jack is in charge of compiling the leaderboard, which has some pretty big movers this year.

He joins me now from New York. Hi Andrew. Hi there, good to speak. Okay, before we get into the rankings, Andrew, just give me some context. You know, how are people feeling about MBA programs right now? We know postgraduate jobs are taking a bit of a hit. We've covered that on the show before. Is that affecting admissions at all?

Yeah, I mean I think the US in particular, given the the high costs of education tuition in general, certainly in the more elite private schools, is a factor. And then as you say, it comes against this backdrop of Big uncertainty.

traditionally this sort of pact that you might pay a lot, but your investment would pay off pretty well with great jobs afterwards. And we've really seen a lot of disruption and uncertainty, even in Silicon Valley. So that's creating a lot of uncertainty in the US and then actually the current administration and its sort of push against international students has created some uncertainties about whether

students notably from China and India want to come and study in the US at the moment. They're maybe applying instead to other places closer to home because of those political uncertainties. Yeah, there's an interesting sort of geopolitical picture here. Has it filtered through to tuition fees at all? This kind of shake-up? I think there's a lot of debate in the US, particularly where obviously tuition fees tend to be amongst the highest in the world, you know, there's wider debates around

student loans and the cost of those and the level of reimbursement. We've seen, at least anecdotally, quite a lot of a trend in the US at higher education in general towards maybe more people going to in state schools and the the big public schools as a place to actually sort of save some money. So certainly some of the elite A most expensive private schools are getting a bit of a hit. But I mean, I think, you know, the Harvards and the other elite Ivy League colleges are always going to get.

a significant number of very high quality applications. So when you get this sort of pressure, it's often the next tier down that suffers. So even if some of the more elite students decide they'd rather study elsewhere or or defer. The elite schools are then able to sort of give offers to those who would have otherwise been very strong candidates at the second tier universities. So those second and third tier ones get this sort of

trickle down effect that can be quite painful. Okay, I'm sure people are interested to hear about the list itself. What are some of the biggest changes in business school rankings? Well, this is the first time that MIT Sloan School of Management has actually ranked in top place. It's always been a key pretty highly ranked in the top sort of ten or so, but it actually surged through to first position.

this year. But then we see some very strong performers out of Europe, ISIAD, for example, the London Business School, HEC in Paris, for instance. And then increasingly the emergence of schools in other parts of the world, notably in Asia. So SIBS, which is a combined Chinese European school based in Shanghai, performs strongly. The Indian business schools and those in Singapore are also starting to to rise up the list.

Which reflects both some international students but also domestic or students in those regions pushing up and driving quality in schools in their own regions. You mentioned MIT Sloan topped the list for the first time ever. Why did it become number one?

Well amongst the key factors in our rankings include salary, three years postgraduating, and research expertise. And MIT scored pretty well on a lot of those. It's got one of the higher levels of salaries amongst alumni at around two hundred and uh forty four forty five thousand dollars. three years after graduating. So that's really helped to pull it up.

But of course MIT very much at the center of the tech revolution that we're seeing. And there's no question that we're talking more and more about artificial intelligence and expertise around some of the technical skills related and notably how you might apply AI in the workplace. That certainly reflects both it

technical and engineering, computer science skills historically. And the business school there is doing a lot with those other departments in the university. So I think that says something very much about how the wider job markets and the aspirations of students are evolving.

That's the FT's education editor, Andrew Jack. Thanks, Andrew. Thank you. You can read more on all of these stories for free when you click on the links in our show notes. This has been your daily FT news briefing. Check back tomorrow for the latest business news. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day, but what policy changes should investors be watching?

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