Serbia’s strongman leader voted out

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0:33Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Monday, October 26th, and this is your FT News Briefing. Serbia's longtime leader concedes defeat in a dramatic election. And American voters are worried about corruption. Plus, why is Toyota trying to build life-size robots? I'm Josh Gabor-Dwion, and here's the news you need to start your day.

1:08Aleksandr Vucic, who's led Serbia for the past 14 years, was ousted in the country's parliamentary elections last night. He lost out to the grassroots student-less party, which has led a two-year-long protest against his right-wing government. The demonstrations had focused mainly on corruption and Vucic's consolidation of power. The Serbian nationalist had been president until last month when he called an election in an attempt to swap the presidency for the prime minister's office. In a speech on Sunday night, Vucic said that student list had won up to 140 of the 250 seats in parliament, although final results were yet to be tallied.

1:50Now let's turn to a different election, the U.S. midterms, where rising prices, data centers, and corruption have emerged as some of the big campaign issues. A new FT poll found that that last one, corruption, has become a surprisingly crucial issue for voters across the spectrum. Eva Xiao joins me now to discuss. Hi, Eva. Hey, thanks so much for having me here. Sure thing. I mean, Eva, tell me about this polling. What did it show? So one of the big takeaways from this poll is just how many voters across independents, Democrats, and even a surprisingly large chunk of people who voted for Trump in 2024 are concerned about corruption, self-dealing, or conflicts of interest.

2:32about 69 % of all registered voters that we surveyed, and almost 50 % of those who actually voted for Trump in 2024 said that they were very or somewhat concerned about corruption, self-dealing, or conflicts of interest. And actually amongst independents who are a really important voter group, the number was 71.8%, which was pretty striking. Yeah, I think it is striking. At the same time, voters are obviously very concerned about affordability. And Eva, in your reporting, you note that voters are seeing a kind of link between affordability and this corruption issue. How so? Yeah, so I think it's really kind of the contrast that voters are seeing maybe between their quality of life and the benefits that people in power are receiving.

3:19So, you know, widely reported, and FT also investigated this, the Trump family made more than a billion dollars in crypto profits during the second presidency. And you can imagine seeing that and seeing corporate donors maybe get government contracts or some benefits from policies, seeing supporters of Trump get pardoned, and then kind of realizing like, oh, I'm losing subsidies to my health care, the premiums have gotten up, gas is expensive, the economy's not doing well. And that kind of contrast, I think, is really irritating and upsetting to a lot of voters. We should say that in response to this polling, the White House said Trump had launched, quote, a war on fraud across the entire federal government and denied that there were any conflicts of interest in the administration.

4:03But Eva, the results of this poll, is that a sign that the Democrats' messaging during this midterm cycle has gone through to voters? Obviously, the Democrats have seized on this messaging, but I think that there's actually kind of a broader cynicism about change, especially like with the economy. So we had asked questions about, you know, who's most responsible for rising prices. A lot of people said Trump or Republicans. But, you know, when we asked, what do you think will happen if Democrats take control of Congress? There wasn't a huge majority across any bucket, which was like, they're going to rise faster than now.

4:41They're going to rise more slowly or they'll stay about the same or fall. Like basically, to me that signals some kind of cynicism and resignation about the system in general. I do think that broadly, there's just a lot of anger, rightly so, about things of this nature. It really touches a nerve. Okay, so it sounds like there's a lack of faith that either party can address these issues. What does that tell us going into the midterm elections, which are now just over a week away? I think that it was a strong indication for me of this rise of populism. And I think when we look at how worried voters are, Republicans, independents, Democrats are about corruption.

5:22You know, we followed the rise of Democratic socialists with, you know, more left-wing part of the Democrats. And you see MAGA. We can also think about, you know, Occupy, Wall Street back in the day, also like the Tea Party and how there have been these kind of parallel developments. And so for me, like all of this is really striking as we think about these different branches of both parties growing and how actually a lot of these core concerns are very similar. Eva Xiao is a senior data journalist at the FT. Thanks, Eva. Thank you so much.

6:01a top Deloitte boss has gotten a very big pay rise Richard Houston who leads Deloitte's Europe Middle East and Africa business saw his pay increase by almost half last year to over 7 million pounds and that pay bump happened while the London-based consultancy was making deep job cuts it axed a thousand people from its UK staff it also reduced the number of shares it awards to new equity partners. That's according to people familiar with the matter. It's all happening while the consulting industry is grappling with a major shakeup. Many of their clients are opting to use artificial intelligence instead of, well, consultants.

6:41So big firms like Deloitte have been trying to pivot and reinvent themselves.

6:50Toyota, the world's largest car manufacturer, is moving into humanoid robots. The Japanese company is modernizing its production line to compete with Tesla and some of the leading Chinese robotics companies. The FT's Harry Dempsey has been looking into whether Toyota can be a contender in the robot race. Hi, Harry. Hey. Okay, so why is Toyota making this big push into humanoid robots? car makers are very good at producing things at scale and i think humanoid robots appear to be a very good fit for car makers to diversify their revenues toyota it certainly is looking to prove that it can do what tesla has done in terms of not just producing cars but also saying to investors like look we can actually go out here into new sexy areas that aren't just automobiles and so i I think for Toyota, this is an area where they feel that they have an edge on Tesla to try and do that and really commercialize these humanoid robots.

7:51And what kind of steps has Toyota actually been taking to commercialize? So Toyota had a video that went viral earlier this year of a robot playing basketball called the Q7, which dribbled around the court and shot the basketball into the hoop. And then it has also signaled that it will be introducing the Ely humanoid robot onto its production lines. And they plan to sort of really ramp up the level of investment and modernize their factories from 2028 onwards. We can't forget, Toyota has a huge training ground for these robots to deploy them, see if they work, improve the margins and bring down the cost on its existing auto production already.

8:33And Toyota has signaled that, you know, it doesn't just want to do this at its own factories. It also wants to put them into suppliers, factories too, to help bring down the costs through the supply chain. And so from there, they're saying, look, we can actually go out here and create a new division for Toyota that will create serious revenues. Harry, is Toyota late to the life-size robot party? I mean, Toyota is late in announcing its intentions to sort of push into this arena and make investors aware that it has these business plans. But it has been quietly working on more advanced robotics for a long, long time, you know, which obviously started from more industrial robots to help automate some of their production.

9:17But in terms of the actual humanoid robot, to say whether someone's behind or not is pretty tricky at this stage because as of now, the humanoid robot market doesn't actually exist. The battle is from here on. All right. Given the market doesn't exist, what's the response been like from investors and the industry as a whole in terms of Toyota's move here? So I think Toyota has been famous for making lots of big strategic bets. I mean, it's a company that's hugely profitable and so it can. But whether all those bets have paid off in the past is questionable or yet to be seen. So we've seen the same thing with hydrogen, where they brought out the Mirai, and that has not really taken off in the market.

9:58It's also touted its technological expertise in solid state batteries, but we've really yet to see them hit the market. So is this just another thing that Toyota is promising big on? And I think the big question mark for investors is Toyota has been quite behind on AI and its ability to produce cars with more sophisticated software platforms. And obviously, that would be integral to a humanoid robot. So I think that's the big area where it's less clear that Toyota has everything it needs in-house to become a superstar in this arena. Harry Dempsey is Tokyo correspondent for the Financial Times covering corporate Japan.

10:37Thanks, Harry. Thank you.

10:43Before we go, a Venezuelan opposition leader has returned to the country after months in exile. Maria Corina Machado left Venezuela last year to collect her Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, and she hasn't been back since. Her return to Venezuela could present a challenge for the Trump administration's policy there after the U.S. removed former President Nicolas Maduro chose not to install Machado. She's now likely to use her presence in the country to push for new elections. You can read more on Machado's return and all of the other stories from today's episode for free when you click the links in our show notes.

11:17This has been your daily FT News briefing. Check back tomorrow for the latest news.

11:50We'll be right back. people. Banks win and francs win. Lenders win and so do Linda's. When you build credit scores the right way, everybody wins. Get started at VantageScore.com. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. But what policy changes should investors be watching? Washington Wise is an original podcast from Charles Schwab that unpacks the stories making news in Washington right now and how they may affect your finances and portfolio. Listen at schwapp.com slash Washington Wise.