A new independent football regulator will have powers to vet owners, scrutinise club finances and block English teams from joining breakaway competitions, under plans to be unveiled on Thursday by the UK government. The body, which will be enshrined in law, will aim to put financial sustainability at the centre of men’s football by forcing
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Rishi Sunak was accused by the Labour party of being at the mercy of “malcontent” Tory MPs on Wednesday, as the prime minister’s efforts to land a Brexit deal on Northern Ireland hit further problems. Sunak had hoped to present a deal to reform Northern Ireland’s trading rules by now, but his allies admit he
The vast majority of Federal Reserve officials supported slowing the pace of US interest rate rises to 0.25 percentage points last month, according to an account of their most recent meeting that showed the central bank is still determined to bring inflation back to target. Heading into the meeting, some investors were concerned the minutes
Unison, the largest UK public sector union, on Wednesday announced further strike action by ambulance workers and other NHS staff after being cut out of pay talks between ministers and the Royal College of Nursing. The RCN, which had been planning to escalate industrial action next week with a 48 hour walk out, put strike
The World Bank is under mounting pressure. International threats to poverty — from global warming, the spread of disease and war — have become increasingly apparent over recent years. Meanwhile, global debt has surged, geopolitical rifts are denting co-operation, and estimates suggest $125tn of climate investment is needed by 2050 to meet net zero targets.
Vladimir Putin and Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, vowed to strengthen ties between their two countries despite “pressure from the international community” ahead of the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Wang’s visit to Moscow, the first by a senior Chinese official since Putin ordered the invasion last year, highlights the deepening relationship between
Philip Morris International has admitted it would “rather keep” its business in Russia than sell on stringent Kremlin terms, highlighting the challenges for companies trying to leave the country without taking a huge financial hit. Chief executive Jacek Olczak told the Financial Times the tobacco group, which sells Marlboro cigarettes outside the US, had been
If you seek proof of the malaise in British public life, the saga of a Conservative donor who helped facilitate a personal loan for the prime minister being appointed BBC chair, will do nicely. This is the kind of thing the UK rails against when it happens abroad. Yet while Richard Sharp’s middleman role, details
Citigroup has forecast that UK inflation will plunge from the current double-digit rates to close to 2 per cent by the end of this year as rapid falls in gas prices give Rishi Sunak’s government hope of solving some of its biggest economic challenges. Citi said on Wednesday that consumer price inflation was likely to
The writer is an FT contributing editor, the chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia, and fellow at IWM Vienna In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US, American pundits would plaintively ask: “Why do they hate us?” A year into Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, a variation on that question has
European and Asian stocks were hit with further declines on Wednesday after Wall Street suffered its worst day since December. The declines have been driven by stronger than expected economic data in the US and Europe, which has raised the prospect of central banks persisting with higher interest rates. Investors on Wednesday will look towards
Lloyds Banking Group has forecast the boost from UK interest rate rises will start to fall next year and has put aside more than expected for potential defaults, even as profits almost doubled in the fourth quarter of 2022. The lender announced statutory profits before tax of £1.8bn in the fourth quarter on Wednesday, up
It was in January that the comedy routine of Mr Makati began to change. His weekly Saturday night standup at the Memento Lounge in Lagos, Nigeria’s pulsing commercial capital, switched from gags about the daily hassles of living in Africa’s most populous nation to the practicalities of voting. “He was telling jokes about how to
The writer is an FT contributing editor and global chief economist at Kroll Quantitative easing has developed a certain resemblance to the Eagles’ “Hotel California” — you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. We should pay more attention to quantitative tightening, suggest former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram
Investors are betting the European Central Bank will raise interest rates to all-time highs, spurred on by the eurozone economy’s resilience and signs that inflation could prove tougher to rein in than expected. The Frankfurt-based central bank, widely seen as one of the world’s most dovish during its eight-year experiment with negative borrowing costs, is
Missing Chinese investment banker Bao Fan was preparing to move some of his fortune from China and Hong Kong to Singapore in the months leading up to his disappearance, according to four people with knowledge of his plans. The billionaire founder and chair of investment bank China Renaissance, who brokered some of China’s biggest tech
China and Russia agreed to oppose all forms of “unilateral bullying” and “promote democracy in international relations” during a meeting of Beijing’s top diplomat and Vladimir Putin’s security chief in Moscow on Tuesday, China’s state-run news service Xinhua said. The meeting between Wang Yi and Nikolai Patrushev came after the Chinese diplomat attended the Munich
UK prime minister Rishi Sunak is exploring a 5 per cent pay rise for public sector workers to end an escalating wave of strikes after the Treasury was given an unexpected £30bn windfall. In a sign of a change of mood after months of strife, the Royal College of Nursing on Tuesday called off a
A government review that gave the green light to Conservative anti-strike legislation has been condemned as “not fit for purpose” by an official panel of experts. The department for business on Tuesday published its “impact assessment” of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) bill. The measure, now going through parliament, is designed to curb the impact
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt woke up on Tuesday to much better UK public finances data than expected. Public borrowing remains high, but is £30bn lower than anticipated 10 months into the 2022-23 financial year. Improvements in the public finances are a double-edged sword for Hunt. He now has a £30bn windfall, according to data from the
Around the pandemic, a small corner of the business world had a Linda Evangelista moment. Except the supermodel came pretty cheap. Evangelista said in 1990 that elite catwalkers didn’t “wake up for less than $10,000 a day”. A small club of company bosses couldn’t rouse themselves without the chance of a future payout of £100mn.