UBS executives have chosen EY for one of the world’s most lucrative banking audit contracts after deciding to retain the Big Four firm following its takeover of Credit Suisse. EY, which has been UBS’s external auditor since 1998, will audit the enlarged bank from 2024, according to people with knowledge of the decision. The size
News
Olaf Scholz came to power promising to alleviate Germany’s housing shortage by building 400,000 homes every year. But nearly halfway through his term, the chancellor’s failure to reach that goal weighs heavily on millions of Germans struggling with high inflation, unemployment and rising rents. Just 295,300 dwellings were built in Germany in 2022, well short
Global companies are accelerating their push to decouple China data in response to the country’s increasingly stringent data and anti-espionage laws, as relations between Washington and Beijing deteriorate. The drive for full localisation of data in China and separation of information technology systems from the rest of the world is happening as Beijing strengthens its
British MPs have criticised the country’s military procurement system, saying it is “well and truly broken” and puts troops in “harm’s way” just two days before the Ministry of Defence is due to publish its strategy for the UK’s armed forces. The war in Ukraine has exposed weaknesses in the British military, including depleted stockpiles
Mike Pence was booed by an audience of some 2,000 evangelical Christians in Iowa after the former US vice-president said it was in America’s interest to continue providing weapons and aid to Ukraine. The audience’s reaction to Pence, who is challenging Donald Trump for the party’s presidential nomination in 2024, underscored the sharp split among
Ben Wallace has announced he will soon quit as UK defence secretary after four years in the post, and will not stand in the general election which is due to take place by late next year. The 53-year former captain in the Scots Guards was first elected as an MP in 2005 for Lancaster and
The Pentagon’s annual funding bill is set to become the focus of a political showdown after Republicans inserted “anti-woke” social provisions into the legislation. The bill — known as the National Defense Authorization Act — is normally shielded from the most bitter partisan bickering and often passes with support from both political parties. But on
The writer is former special US envoy to Ukraine and former US ambassador to Nato It is sometimes difficult to appreciate the significance of major global changes while they are happening. Our analyses, instincts and actions are rooted in what we already know, not fully appreciating the new environment in which we find ourselves. We focus on
Elon Musk claimed on Friday that his new artificial intelligence company, xAI, could be trusted more than OpenAI and Google to build safe AI systems when computers become smarter than humans. However, discussing his AI plans on Twitter two days after launching the company, he did not shed light on how xAI’s work would differ
Hackers tied to Russia’s spy services have hijacked a Polish diplomat’s advertisement to sell his BMW, spreading malware in an attempt to infiltrate foreign embassies’ networks in Ukraine. The Kyiv-based diplomat emailed an advertisement about his 2011 BMW 5 series car to dozens of other embassies this spring. Within two weeks, the hackers had repurposed
A week after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner group’s mutiny failed in June, the warlord’s online media empire announced it would shut its doors and “depart the country’s news agenda”. But since then Prigozhin’s notorious troll army has kept up its frenetic posting rate online, while the former caterer has remained in Russia — even meeting Vladimir
It is really starting to feel like time for a lot of investors to take a deep breath, swallow their pride, and admit their grand theories about an impending stock market crash might be early. And by early, I mean wrong. All year, despite expectations to the contrary from pretty much every bank and prominent
Shares in State Street, the global custody bank, fell more than 10 per cent on Friday, the largest drop since the early days of the pandemic, after it warned that it was having to pay higher interest rates to customers to retain deposits. While other big banks are still reporting increases in the profit they
Last week, BBC director-general Tim Davie was preparing to launch a fresh start for the national broadcaster after months of turmoil. In April, Richard Sharp had resigned as chair of the BBC because of a perceived conflict of interest over his relationship with former prime minister Boris Johnson at the time he was appointed to
UK regulators have opened the door for Microsoft and Activision Blizzard to close their $75bn video games deal within as little as six weeks, as the companies scramble to restructure their agreement to satisfy competition concerns. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority on Friday said it would push back a July 18 deadline for it
Post Office officials risk imprisonment if they fail to hand over important documents to the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal, after its chair issued an ultimatum following a series of disclosure failures. Sir Wyn Williams, chair of the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, announced on Friday that requests for evidence from the state-owned
Joe Biden and the Democratic party raised $72mn in the second quarter to spend on the US president’s 2024 re-election campaign as they raced to gain an early financial edge over Republican rivals for the White House. The figures announced on Friday by the Biden campaign eclipsed the $35mn raised by former president Donald Trump
Three of the largest US banks reported a surge in profits from charging more for loans, as the Federal Reserve’s series of interest rate rises fattened their bottom lines. JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo collectively earned $49bn in net interest income in the second quarter, the difference between what the banks pay for deposits
Wealthy borrowers in the UK with large interest-only mortgages face a punishing jump in payments — leaving them potentially paying thousands of pounds a month more — as they come off fixed-rate deals in a rising interest rate environment. The focus of what MPs have dubbed the country’s “mortgage time bomb” has understandably been trained
JPMorgan Chase said earnings from its lending business would continue to increase this year on the back of higher interest rates as the largest US bank reported a jump in profits in the second quarter. The group said on Friday that net income had jumped 67 per cent year on year to $14.47bn, ahead of
Every schoolchild knows the dinosaurs of the Cretaceous era were wiped out by an asteroid. But now, it seems, we humans are the threat. The news that we have probably entered the Anthropocene — the first epoch to be defined by the overwhelming impact of humans on Earth’s vital systems — is deeply sobering. It’s