Category: News

Elon Musk has joined the elite club of social media barons after clinching a $44bn takeover of Twitter in the same week that investors wiped hundreds of billions of dollars from Big Tech valuations. Musk’s drawn-out acquisition of Twitter, which he launched in April but attempted to abort in July, has closed just as a…

Amazon issued bleak revenue forecasts for the remainder of the year, sending its stock price tumbling 20 per cent in after-hours trading on Thursday. The ecommerce and cloud group said it expected revenue of between $140bn-$148bn for the October to December period. Investors had been expecting more than $155bn, according to data from S&P Capital…

UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt has delayed the date for his long-awaited debt-cutting plan from October 31 to November 17, as calmer markets gave the government some economic breathing space. Rishi Sunak, the new prime minister, has cleared the way for painful cuts and tax rises to plug a fiscal hole of between £30bn and £40bn,…

Rishi Sunak on Tuesday became Britain’s third prime minister in the space of two months and immediately started to assemble a “unity cabinet” to tackle “the profound economic crisis” facing the country. Sunak, who was invited to form a government by King Charles on Tuesday morning, said he would prioritise “economic stability and confidence” but…

You are seeing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. This is most likely due to being offline or JavaScript being disabled in your browser. Rishi Sunak will on Tuesday enter Downing Street as Britain’s youngest prime minister in modern times and its first non-white leader, with a vow to get to grips with the “profound…

Boris Johnson on Sunday night pulled out of the race to become Britain’s next prime minister, after rivals claimed he would fail to reach the necessary threshold of 100 nominations from Tory MPs. After a day of frantic attempts by Johnson to bolster his support, he announced at 9pm that he was abandoning his bid…

Former UK chancellor Rishi Sunak is poised to formally enter the race to become Britain’s next prime minister after securing public backing from the 100 Tory MPs needed to enter the ballot. Sunak had 111 declared backers by Saturday evening; Conservative MPs had yet to decide whether to put former prime minister Boris Johnson on…

Investors and some Conservative MPs took fright on Friday as Boris Johnson considered running for a second stint as UK prime minister, with warnings that he risked triggering further political and economic chaos. Johnson’s allies are scrambling to secure the 100 nominations needed from Tory MPs to enter Monday’s ballot to replace Liz Truss, who…

Video: Liz Truss resigns as UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, former chancellor, has emerged as the early favourite to become Britain’s next prime minister, after Liz Truss terminated a 44-day premiership marked by economic and political turmoil. Truss’s resignation made her the shortest-serving prime minister in Britain’s history; her time in Number 10 will be…

Liz Truss’s UK government was plunged into complete disarray on Wednesday as Suella Braverman was forced to quit as home secretary and party discipline collapsed in the House of Commons. Many Tory MPs said the government was dying, as recriminations flew over Braverman’s ousting and Tory MPs openly rebelled over the government’s plans to resume…

Jeremy Hunt, the UK’s new chancellor, has called on his cabinet colleagues to cut spending across their departments as the government cast doubt on the future of the UK’s pensions “triple lock”. Hunt urged ministers to find savings at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, as he grappled with a budget shortfall that remains approximately £40bn,…

Jeremy Hunt, the new UK chancellor, on Monday ripped up Liz Truss’s economic policy, in a move that reassured markets but left the prime minister’s future hanging by a thread. Hunt scrapped two-thirds of the controversial £45bn of unfunded tax cuts announced by his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng and warned of “eye-wateringly difficult” decisions still to…

The UK’s new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has insisted that Prime Minister Liz Truss is still running the government after reports suggested he was preparing to scrap further parts of her “mini” Budget. Following Truss’s decision to sack her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng on Friday, senior Conservative MPs believe it is a matter of time before she…

Jeremy Hunt, the new UK chancellor, admitted taxes would have to rise and spending would have to be cut after prime minister Liz Truss failed to reassure markets with a U-turn on cutting corporation tax. In his first interviews since replacing Kwasi Kwarteng, who was sacked by the prime minister on Friday, Hunt buried the…

Liz Truss sacked her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and shredded her economic strategy on Friday, but her effort to salvage her premiership failed to win over financial markets and left Conservative MPs in a state of mutiny. In a Downing Street press conference lasting less than 10 minutes, Truss named Jeremy Hunt, former foreign secretary, as…

Liz Truss was on Thursday locked in discussions on a major U-turn on the government’s “mini” Budget, prompting a market rally amid expectations that a £43bn package of unfunded tax cuts is unravelling. Government insiders confirmed talks were taking place on whether to unwind parts of chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s fiscal statement, with speculation it could…

The Bank of England battled a renewed sell-off in UK government bonds on Wednesday after its vow to end its emergency gilt-buying programme unsettled markets already unnerved by the fiscal plans of prime minister Liz Truss. The central bank bought £4.4bn of gilts from investors, its biggest intervention since it entered the market last month…

The Bank of England has staged its second emergency intervention in as many days, as financial institutions step up calls for it to prolong its bond-buying programme to shore up the British pension system. The BoE widened its £65bn gilts purchasing programme to include inflation-linked bonds in its latest attempt to stem “fire sales” by…

A sell-off in UK government bonds pushed the country’s long-term borrowing costs to their highest point since the Bank of England stepped in to avert a financial market collapse, as new BoE and government measures failed to reassure investors. Monday’s fall in gilts came despite the BoE announcement earlier in the day of a new…

US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said the move by Opec+ to cut oil production was “unhelpful and unwise” for the global economy, particularly emerging markets already struggling with high energy prices. The Biden administration has been loudly critical of the decision by the oil cartel backed by Saudi Arabia and Russia this week, which took…