News

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak has ruled out any Swiss-style alignment with EU laws in order to strike a trade deal with the bloc, instead promising that the existing Brexit arrangements could “deliver enormous benefits for the country”. Talking at the CBI annual conference in Birmingham on Monday, Sunak came under pressure to address two

Sam Bankman-Fried’s businesses owe more than $3bn to their largest creditors, according to court filings, as the cryptocurrency group’s huge bankruptcy process gets under way. The crypto exchange FTX and linked companies founded by Bankman-Fried filed a list of their 50 largest creditors on Sunday, all of which are customers and two of which are

The outcome of key UN climate talks hung on crunch negotiations over global warming targets on Saturday, after the EU made a dramatic threat to walk away from the fraught COP27 summit earlier in the day. National negotiators said that progress was being made on the previously deadlocked issue of “loss and damage” funding by

Britain is entering a “new era of higher taxation”, combined with strained public services and the longest stagnation in real wages for more than 200 years, two leading think-tanks said on Friday. Publishing their analyses of Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Resolution Foundation said the chancellor was dealing with

Jeremy Hunt, chancellor, confronted the fiscal “storm” battering Britain on Thursday, announcing £55bn of tax rises and spending cuts intended to restore the country’s reputation and shore up its frail balance sheet. Two months after Kwasi Kwarteng, Hunt’s predecessor, sparked market panic with a “mini” Budget that included £45bn of unfunded tax cuts, the chancellor’s

Elon Musk has given Twitter staff an ultimatum over their future at the social media platform, telling them to commit to an “extremely hardcore” working culture of long hours or receive three months of severance. In an email to staff, Musk told employees “we will need to be extremely hardcore” to build what he referred

The collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire has sparked a vast global investigation, with dozens of authorities circling the company as lawyers warn there could be 1mn creditors in its bankruptcy proceeding. FTX said in court filings it was in contact with US federal prosecutors, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission

CIA director Bill Burns has warned Russia against using nuclear weapons in the first known in-person meeting between senior officials of the two countries since President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Burns delivered his warning at a meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergei Naryshkin in Ankara, Turkey, on Monday, the US said. “He is conveying

UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt warned on Sunday that “everyone” will be paying more tax after his Autumn Statement, as he also said he was preparing significant cuts to public spending. Hunt is expected to set out tax rises and spending cuts worth about £55bn a year as he seeks to fill a gaping hole in

FTX is investigating abnormal transactions as analysts said hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets had been withdrawn, in a fresh blow to creditors of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire following its collapse into bankruptcy. The company’s general counsel Ryne Miller said on Saturday that FTX was “investigating abnormalities with wallet movements related to consolidation of

FTX has filed for bankruptcy protection in the US after it was unable to meet a torrent of withdrawals, marking a stunning collapse for Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire that was valued at $32bn just months ago. The filing in a federal court in Delaware on Friday includes FTX’s US entity, Bankman-Fried’s proprietary trading group Alameda

US stocks shot higher and Treasuries rallied on Thursday after October’s closely watched inflation data came in cooler than expected, setting the stage for smaller Federal Reserve rate rises. Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 added 4.1 per cent in early New York trading while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite jumped 5.7 per cent. In government bond

Control of the US Congress hung in the balance on Wednesday after Democrats put up an unexpectedly strong fight in the midterm elections, while Republicans insisted they were on course to take back at least the House of Representatives. Republicans notched up a string of convincing victories, particularly in Florida, where governor Ron DeSantis cruised

A plan by ministers to review or repeal all EU laws on the UK statute book by the end of 2023 has suffered another setback after the discovery of 1,400 additional pieces of legislation. Rishi Sunak has started backing away from his ambitious proposals to scrub Britain’s statute book of unwanted EU laws, by abandoning

Oil and gas producers have branded the UK one of the most “fiscally unstable” regimes in which to do business, as chancellor Jeremy Hunt examines a further increase in windfall taxes on fossil fuel companies. In a letter seen by the Financial Times, an industry group representing 20 British oil and gas companies — including top-10

US oil producers have raked in more than $200bn in profits since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as they cash in on a period of geopolitical turmoil that has shaken up the global energy market and sent prices soaring. Aggregate net income for publicly listed oil and gas companies operating in the US came to $200.24bn

Elon Musk has begun to slash Twitter’s 7,500-strong workforce as the social media platform’s new billionaire owner warned of a “massive drop in revenue” following his contentious $44bn buyout of the group. As Musk embarks on the cost-cutting cull, he claimed on Friday that Twitter “has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist

US jobs growth rose at an unexpectedly rapid clip in October, defying expectations for a larger slowdown as the historically tight labour market again showed resilience in the face of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive efforts to curb demand. The economy added 261,000 positions last month, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday,

The Bank of England has raised interest rates by 0.75 percentage points to 3 per cent in its most forceful act to tame inflation for 30 years but signalled that borrowing costs would not rise in the future by as much as markets expect. The pound fell 2 per cent against the dollar, which had

Grain shipments from Ukraine will resume on Wednesday after Russia agreed to rejoin a UN-backed initiative to allow exports via the Black Sea, ending a stand-off that threatened to reignite a global food crisis. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, had phoned his Turkish counterpart to say Moscow was