Since Britain’s exit from the EU in 2020, special trading rules for Northern Ireland have been the source of rancour and division. The so-called Northern Ireland protocol was poorly negotiated, then partially disowned, then nearly overridden by the UK, threatening a trade war with the EU. Reforms to the protocol agreed by Prime Minister Rishi
News
British scientists on Monday welcomed the prospect of the UK’s long delayed re-entry into Horizon Europe, the EU’s €96bn science programme, following the deal between the two sides over post-Brexit trading rules for Northern Ireland. At a press conference setting out the “Windsor framework”, Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president, described the accord as
Rishi Sunak has much to gain from securing today’s deal with the EU over the Northern Ireland protocol. There are serious policy wins available as a result: a less confrontational relationship with the bloc during a time in which the democracies of Europe face an existential threat in the shape of Vladimir Putin, Britain’s possible
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, leader of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, has said he would take time to study the new Brexit trade deal announced by UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Monday. The reaction of the region’s main unionist party to the reforms of the so-called Northern
A heart attack, a handwritten note and 1,000 shipping containers full of unknown material — the details of one of London’s biggest commodity fraud cases read like a thriller. Singapore-based trading house Trafigura has accused metals tycoon Prateek Gupta and his companies of selling it fake nickel cargoes worth hundreds of millions of dollars, in
UK prime minister Rishi Sunak is to claim he has negotiated “fundamental” changes to EU rules for Northern Ireland trade, as Brexiters hit out at a planned meeting between the European Commission president and King Charles. In a bid to end the row that has overshadowed UK ties with the EU since Brexit three years
Rishi Sunak’s hopes of selling his Northern Ireland deal to his party were given a boost on Monday when a senior Eurosceptic Conservative MP said the UK prime minister had “done very well” in negotiations with Brussels. Jacob Rees-Mogg, former business secretary, gave a cautious welcome to the outline agreement to overhaul Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit
For only the second time in Goldman Sachs’ 154-year history, investors will gather on Tuesday to ponder the future of a Wall Street giant that seems to have lost its way. The bank whose dominance was once so assured it gained notoriety as the “Vampire Squid” is now more of a damp squib. A nosedive
If home is where the heart is, then the UK’s broken rental market often feels like an exercise in romantic rejection. For many years, being a renter in the UK has meant feeling abandoned, unwanted and unloved by policymakers and the public. But for users of flat-sharing apps and websites, the sensation of being spurned
The UK energy regulator Ofgem has lowered the energy price cap by almost £1,000 for a typical home, but consumers will still end up with higher bills from April as the government reduces subsidies to households. The price cap, which governs the amount paid for gas and electricity bills for typical usage, will fall to
Good morning. Rishi Sunak hopes to unveil a deal between the UK and the EU to reform the Northern Ireland protocol and end the simmering disputes between the UK, the EU and the US. But no matter what happens, he faces a backlash from within his party. Some thoughts on how he is trying to
European shares bounced back at the opening on Monday after Friday’s downturn, as investors wait to assess the latest batch of economic data and the next moves of key central banks. The region-wide Stoxx 600 was up 0.95 per cent. Germany’s Dax and the French Cac 40 rose 1.1 per cent, while London’s FTSE 100
The head of UniCredit’s remuneration committee resigned following unsubstantiated allegations of leaking from the board, just weeks ahead of the proposal of a new pay package for chief executive Andrea Orcel, raising questions about corporate governance at the Italian lender. Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia — the former chief executive of UK lender Virgin Money who joined
It was three days after Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine that the EU realised that it too must go to war. At an emergency meeting, Josep Borrell, the EU’s chief diplomat, made the case to anxious foreign ministers from the bloc’s 27 member states that it was the moment to do something previously considered impossible:
The world of ETF academia is a rarefied one. But the spats it hosts are no less heated than those in the better known field of macroeconomics. This month, a paper by a quartet of academics from three business schools — Columbia, Chicago Booth and Pennsylvania — set off a row about the niche issue
The writer is chair of Rockefeller International The recent surge in tech stocks has true believers buzzing that the downturn of late last year is over and the boom of the past decade is back. But the opposite case is more likely. This surge had all the hallmarks of an echo bubble — a brief
Major US employers from fast-food chains to arms manufacturers are reporting a dramatic improvement in hiring conditions despite official data showing unemployment at its lowest level for decades. Senior executives across a host of S&P 500 companies gave optimistic updates on the labour market in recent quarterly earnings reports. Their commentary could reassure investors concerned
The majority of FTSE 250 bosses believe that UK-listed companies are vulnerable to foreign takeovers this year amid growing expectations that M&A activity will pick up as economic conditions improve. British broker Numis found that “compressed” valuations meant that corporates were increasingly focused on their own vulnerability in the eventuality of a bid, according to
Andrew Griffith, City of London minister, has raised concerns that flagship reforms to stop consumers being ripped off by financial services companies could damage the sector and trigger a wave of spurious law suits, putting him on a collision course with the UK’s chief financial regulator. Griffith has criticised the consumer duty, a key measure
If you are reading this in the northern hemisphere — and subscribe to meteorological definition of the seasons — the good news is that we are rapidly heading into spring. And like the promise of warmer and longer days (not to mention daffodils for St David’s Day on Wednesday), there is some reason for cheer
The UK economic outlook for this year has improved, with analysts forecasting a smaller contraction in output than they had previously because of falling energy prices and better than anticipated business and consumer sentiment. In December and January, economists expected gross domestic product to drop 1 per cent this year, according to data from Consensus