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The European parliament is at the centre of a spreading corruption scandal after Belgian police seized €600,000 in cash and detained two MEPs as part of an international investigation into claims that football World Cup host Qatar sought to buy influence. A Belgian judge charged four unnamed people on Sunday with “participation in a criminal

Blackstone has warned of the risk of delays to the launch of a new private equity fund designed for wealthy individuals, as it copes with heavy investor withdrawals at two other funds in real estate and credit aimed at a similar clientele. The New York-based investment manager has been preparing to open a fund called

Jeremy Hunt has warned trade unions not to jeopardise Britain’s recovery, saying that high pay demands will hit the fight against inflation and harm the workers they are trying to protect. In an interview with the Financial Times, the UK chancellor did not deny that ministers had blocked a potential 10 per cent pay offer

ExxonMobil will expand its share buyback programme to $50bn as the US supermajor defies a political backlash by handing investors the profits from surging oil and gas prices. Exxon said it would spend $50bn in the three years to 2024 buying back its own shares, an increase from the current $30bn programme that was due

The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund will become a more vocal shareholder and plans to vote against companies that fail to set a net zero target, overpay their top leaders, or do not have sufficiently diverse boards. Nicolai Tangen, chief executive of the $1.3tn Norwegian oil fund, told the Financial Times’ Global Boardroom event that

Rishi Sunak is under pressure from Tory MPs to accelerate new strike-busting legislation, as Britain faces the biggest wave of industrial action since the tail-end of Margaret Thatcher’s government. More than 1mn days will be lost to strike action in December — the worst disruption in any month since July 1989 — based on unions’

A traffic jam of oil tankers has built up in Turkish waters after western powers launched a “price cap” targeting Russian oil and as authorities in Ankara demanded insurers promise that any vessels navigating its straits were fully covered. Under EU sanctions which came into effect on Monday, tankers loading Russian crude oil are barred

The EU must “simplify and adapt” its rules on state aid to counteract the competitive effects of the US’s new $369bn climate package, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Sunday. Europe should “adjust our own rules to make it easier for public investments”, von der Leyen said in her first public response

Alameda Research was allowed to exceed normal borrowing limits on the FTX exchange since its early days, Sam Bankman-Fried has said, in a concession that illustrates how the former billionaire’s trading shop enjoyed preferential treatment over clients years before the 2022 crypto crisis. In an interview with the Financial Times, the 30-year-old described the outsized

EU member states have agreed to implement a $60 ceiling on global purchases of Russian oil after Poland dropped its objections to the long-debated deal aimed at denting the Kremlin’s fossil-fuel revenues. Warsaw had delayed agreement on the cap after demanding a lower ceiling to further erode Moscow’s income. Its backing means the bloc will

Blackstone has limited withdrawals from its $125bn real estate investment fund following a surge in redemption requests, as investors clamour to get their hands on cash and concerns grow about the long-term health of the commercial property market. The private equity group approved only 43 per cent of redemption requests in its Blackstone Real Estate

Elon Musk is under renewed pressure from the US and EU over his ownership of Twitter, as regulators clamp down on the billionaire’s push to transform the social network into a freewheeling haven of free speech. The European Commission on Wednesday threatened Musk with a ban unless Twitter abides by strict content moderation rules, as

The head of British Gas-owner Centrica has warned that more UK retail energy suppliers will probably go bust this winter, with some who are “struggling for cash” already likely to be trading while technically insolvent. Chris O’Shea, head of Britain’s biggest energy supplier, said some of the larger UK energy providers were also at risk

Christine Lagarde has warned that the European Central Bank “is not done” raising interest rates, saying inflation “still has a way to go”. Her comments came after a sharp fall in European wholesale energy prices combined with an easing of supply chain bottlenecks encouraged hopes that eurozone inflation was slowing. US inflation also fell in

Protests in Shanghai escalated on Sunday evening as police struggled to disperse large crowds who gathered in the city, part of a nationwide movement that poses one of the most brazen challenges to the Chinese Communist party’s authority in decades. The unrest began on Saturday night and centred on a road named after the Chinese

Elon Musk’s tumultuous reign at Twitter has led to a damaging rift with top brands and marketers, with the social media company’s $5bn-a-year advertising business hit by tensions over content moderation and resources. Multiple top advertising agencies and media buyers told the Financial Times that nearly all of the big brands they represent have paused

EU ministers say that time is running out to resolve the worsening dispute with the US over Washington’s $369bn in green subsidies as they seek to head off a transatlantic trade war. Brussels and Washington have set up a task force to address the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and its “buy American”

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia’s new strategy to destroy Ukraine’s infrastructure and plunge it into darkness would not weaken the country’s resolve to liberate all occupied land, describing the conflict as a “war of strength and resilience”. Pushing back against western fears of escalation, Ukraine’s president insisted there would be no lasting resolution to the war

The EU will demand that derivatives traders use accounts at clearing houses in the bloc for some of their transactions, as part of plans to take a share of the €115tn market processed through the City of London. Banks dealing with large quantities of contracts that are deemed “systemic” by regulators would have to clear

The UK economy is set to be the worst performer in the G20 bar Russia over the next two years, the OECD said on Tuesday, underlining the lasting impact of high energy prices on Europe as a whole. The OECD said in its latest economic forecasts that UK gross domestic product would fall 0.4 per