Category: News

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…

BlockFi has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, making the crypto lender backed by Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm the latest casualty of the fallout from the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange. The filing marks an unravelling several months in the making for New Jersey-based BlockFi, led by chief executive Zac Prince, which was valued…

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 of green subsidies as they seek to head off a transatlantic trade war. Brussels and Washington have set up a taskforce to address the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and its “buy American” provisions,…

Net migration to the UK rose to a record high of more than half a million people in the year to June 2022, according to figures published by the Office for National Statistics on Thursday. The surge in long-term arrivals to the UK was driven by a post-pandemic rebound in international study and by inflows…

The UK Supreme Court has ruled that the Scottish government does not have the legal authority to hold an independence referendum without agreement from Westminster, scuppering Edinburgh’s plan to hold a vote next year. The ruling cuts off the legal route for Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, to unilaterally hold a rerun of the 2014…

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…

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…

The UN climate summit has agreed to establish a historic fund to pay for climate-related damage in poorer countries after working beyond sunrise in Egypt on Sunday, but backed down on greater cuts to greenhouse gas emissions and an end to fossil fuel use. Almost 200 countries at the summit achieved a breakthrough for a…

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…

Jeremy Hunt pushed back on Friday against criticism that his £55bn fiscal squeeze unfairly targets middle earners, as new data indicated that UK workers will endure the longest period of wage stagnation for almost two centuries. Hunt’s Autumn Statement on Thursday included £30bn of spending cuts and £25bn of tax rises in a bid to…

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…

The UK’s rate of inflation hit a fresh 41-year high in October, accelerating to 11.1 per cent on the back of rising energy and food prices. The Office for National Statistics said the rate rose from 10.1 per cent in September, putting inflation at its highest level since October 1981. Economists polled by Reuters had…

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…

Joe Biden criticised China’s “increasingly aggressive” actions towards Taiwan in his first in-person meeting as president with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, amid mounting tensions between the two powers. Following the meeting in Bali on Monday, the White House said Biden and Xi “spoke candidly” about a range of global issues, and that the US…

Sam Bankman-Fried’s main international FTX exchange held just $900mn in easily sellable assets against $9bn of liabilities the day before it collapsed into bankruptcy, according to investment materials seen by the Financial Times. The largest portion of those liquid assets listed on a FTX international balance sheet dated Thursday was $470mn of Robinhood shares owned…

US stocks roared ahead on Thursday in their strongest day in more than two and a half years, with investors emboldened by inflation data that showed decelerating increases in consumer prices and set the stage for a slower pace of interest rate rises by the Federal Reserve. Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index gained 5.5…

Binance will abandon its deal to rescue Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX cryptocurrency exchange, citing concerns about its business practices and investigations by US financial regulators. The move comes a day after Binance, one of the world’s largest crypto trading venues, tentatively agreed to buy FTX after it suffered a liquidity crunch. “As a result of corporate…

The digital assets industry has been shaken by the near-collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, one of the largest crypto exchanges, which clinched a rescue deal with arch-rival Binance after a surge in customer withdrawals sparked a liquidity crisis. Binance chief executive Changpeng “CZ” Zhao wrote on Twitter that FTX had “asked for our help”, adding:…