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Some of the UK’s largest banks have agreed measures with the government to help struggling borrowers as they brace for a surge in late mortgage payments. The so-called forbearance measures, which were used during the 2008 financial crisis, are an attempt by banks including HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and NatWest to avoid repossessions and

China will remove quarantine requirements for inbound travellers from January 8 as the country dismantles the remnants of a zero-Covid regime that closed it off from the rest of the world for almost three years. The National Health Commission on Monday unveiled the move as part of a wider announcement that downgraded the country’s management

Hedge funds trading bonds and currencies are on track for their best year since the global financial crisis, boosted by the steep interest rate rises that have inflicted heavy losses on equity specialists and mainstream investors. So-called macro hedge funds, made famous by the likes of George Soros and Louis Bacon, endured a barren period

Apple’s business is under threat from a widespread coronavirus outbreak in China, with supply chain experts warning of a growing risk of months-long disruption to the production of iPhones. The US tech giant has had to contend with more than a month of chaos at its main assembler Foxconn’s megafactory in Zhengzhou, China, known as

The UK faces a fresh wave of strike action in the new year, as nurses, ambulance staff and rail workers prepare to walk out over pay. The PCS union, which represents striking civil servants including Border Force staff, on Friday warned industrial action would be ramped up even further if the government continued to refuse

Britain has joined the international criticism of Joe Biden’s massive US package of green subsidies, warning they are protectionist and will hit UK-based makers of electric vehicles, batteries and other renewables. Kemi Badenoch, the UK’s international trade secretary, has written to her US counterpart, Katherine Tai, to protest at the structure of the Biden administration’s

Two of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s closest associates have pleaded guilty to fraud and agreed to co-operate with US authorities investigating the collapse of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan said Wednesday. Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced the guilty pleas and criminal charges against

A congressional committee has voted to release Donald Trump’s previously confidential tax returns, in a move that could shed new light on the former president’s finances following a years-long legal stand-off. The House ways and means committee made the move on Tuesday after a closed-door meeting, just days before Republicans are due to regain control

A Russian court has ordered the seizure of a luxury hotel complex owned by billionaire Oleg Deripaska, one of the few oligarchs to have criticised President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, a sign of the pressure facing the country’s tycoons since the invasion. The legal dispute, following an initial claim brought by a science and

Britain is bracing itself for one of the most disruptive weeks of strike action in recent history after the government signalled its determination to face down the unions despite calls for pay negotiations from health leaders and some Conservative MPs. Nurses, ambulance workers, customs and immigration staff, postal and rail workers will all walk out

Chinese companies are reeling from a coronavirus wave that is immobilising workforces, threatening to close down factory production lines and bringing chaos to supply chains as truck drivers succumb to Covid-19, disruptions which analysts say will bring short-term pain but speed up China’s exit from pandemic isolation. The sudden U-turn on President Xi Jinping’s strict

David Cameron, Britain’s former prime minister, is returning to public life with a new job teaching politics at a university in the Gulf state of Abu Dhabi. Cameron will lecture students on “practising politics and government in the age of disruption” for a three-week course in January at the New York University Abu Dhabi. It

The Bank of England raised interest rates on Thursday by half a percentage point to 3.5 per cent, the highest level in 14 years, and warned that further tightening of monetary policy was likely. In a vote showing a majority on the central bank’s Monetary Policy Committee for “forceful” action against high inflation, six of

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is exploring plans to keep providing all British businesses with help for their energy bills once winter has passed, in what would be a break with current government policy to limit such aid to “vulnerable industries” after March. The potential change in the government’s support package for business, which several officials said

Sam Bankman-Fried has been accused of engineering “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history” as US prosecutors filed criminal charges against the founder of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. In an indictment unsealed on Tuesday, the US Department of Justice charged Bankman-Fried with eight counts including conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers and

Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested in the Bahamas at the request of US government prosecutors who have filed criminal charges against the disgraced crypto entrepreneur. Bahamian attorney-general Ryan Pinder said the country’s police force had taken Bankman-Fried into custody after receiving “formal notification” from the US government that it had filed criminal charges and was

US government scientists have made a breakthrough in the pursuit of limitless, zero-carbon power by achieving a net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the first time, according to three people with knowledge of preliminary results from a recent experiment. Physicists have since the 1950s sought to harness the fusion reaction that powers the

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

Jeremy Hunt will redraw the financial services rule book on Friday, including casting aside some safeguards designed to avoid a repeat of the 2008 crash, in an attempt to boost the City of London as a driver of growth. The chancellor will announce a package of more than 30 reforms in Edinburgh, arguing that many

Peru’s president Pedro Castillo was ousted by lawmakers on Wednesday after trying to shut down congress before a vote on his impeachment, bringing to a boil a long-simmering political crisis. Dina Boluarte, Castillo’s vice-president, was later sworn in as Peru’s first female president. “There has been an attempted coup d’état,” she said during a hastily