Middle Britain is braced for an onslaught on its household finances. The Bank of England has projected that 1mn UK households face paying £500 or more extra a month as they roll off fixed-rate mortgage deals between now and 2026. Average mortgage rates have hit a 15-year high, surpassing levels seen in the aftermath of
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Citigroup’s profits fell more than a third last quarter, hit by slower corporate spending, a dearth of deals and a costly round of lay-offs. The New York-based bank reported $2.9bn in net income, down from $4.5bn in the same period last year. Revenues dipped 1 per cent to $19.4bn in a quarter marked by mounting
Long before we meet, the Lunch with the FT recipe has been heavily tweaked. Instead, I’m joining Delia Smith — groundbreaking TV cook, bestselling author, football club owner — for dinner. We are booked in at Delia’s, the restaurant inside Carrow Road stadium, home of Norwich City Football Club. It only opens on Friday and
The dollar steadied on Friday following a string of declines, but remained on course for its worst week since November after lower than expected US inflation caused traders to rein in their bets on further interest rate rises from the Federal Reserve. European stocks dipped on Friday following muted gains in Asia, as traders looked
BlackRock reported a jump in profits in the second quarter as rebounding markets and rising inflows pushed assets under management at the world’s largest money manager to $9.4tn. The New-York based group reported $1.4bn in net income, a rise of 27 per cent over the same period last year, as a handful of major tech
Finland has hit back at claims aired at a Nato summit that Ukraine has failed to show gratitude for western support, saying aid should not be regarded as charity. Finnish foreign minister Elina Valtonen said in an interview that “we in the west need to understand that obviously, this is not charity because Ukraine is
Rivals have poached at least 120 senior Credit Suisse investment bankers in recent months, reducing the need for big redundancy packages for UBS, which completed the takeover of its ailing Swiss neighbour in June. Deutsche Bank has hired about 40 former Credit Suisse bankers globally, while Jefferies has brought on at least 25 and Santander more
Chinese property developer Shimao Group Holdings paid Rmb24bn ($3.3bn) in 2017 for land earmarked for a prestige commercial project that would be dominated by a 500-metre-tall skyscraper, with commanding views of Shenzhen. The price was a record at the time for the fast-growing southern city that borders Hong Kong, but six years on, those plans
Jo Riley is charging ahead — the brisk pace of a busy headteacher. The small heels of her ankle boots clip the echoing corridors of her school. Once in her office, with its higgledy-piggledy piles of papers, decorated with postcards of book covers, photos of pupils and family, Riley’s demeanour softens as she admits to
The rules of the game for making the transition from youth to adulthood in the UK are — by and large — that if you work hard and get a good job with a solid salary, you’ll be able to pay your way to a decent standard of living. Socialising, holidays, somewhere to rent: if
Vienna, a city synonymous with shady Cold War intrigue, has once again become the espionage capital of Europe after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and Austria’s government seems in no rush to change that. After an explosion in undercover activity, the country’s three largest opposition parties in spring jointly backed legislative changes to finally criminalise
Receive free Women in business updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Women in business news every morning. The UK parliamentary watchdog that scrutinises top financial bodies has launched an inquiry into sexism in the City of London, five years after it said multiple barriers were holding back gender
Vladimir Putin has said the Wagner group refused his offer to continue fighting in Ukraine under their regular commander, indicating the paramilitaries will no longer take part in Russia’s invasion of the country. Putin told Russian newspaper Kommersant on Thursday that he had offered Wagner “several employment options”. The deal, according to Putin, would have
Retail investment platforms are being probed by regulators over the profits generated on customers’ cash, ahead of the introduction of a new consumer duty which will force firms to offer investors “fair value”. The Financial Conduct Authority on Thursday wrote to 39 investment platforms and self-invested personal pension (Sipp) providers asking for details on “client
Anyone trying to assess the prospects of electric vehicle maker Rivian has a paradox to contend with. The more cash investors throw at the company (and they have thrown a lot), the better its chances of surviving the shake-out that is hitting EV start-ups. But it also seems that the more cash investors come up
The risks posed by artificially intelligent chatbots are being officially investigated by US regulators for the first time after the Federal Trade Commission launched a wide-ranging probe into ChatGPT maker OpenAI. In a letter sent to the Microsoft-backed company, the FTC said it would look at whether people have been harmed by the AI chatbot
Fund manager Nick Train has said that UK equities are “abysmally” out of favour with investors and could remain “frustratingly cheap for a very long time”. Train, who is one of the UK’s best-known fund managers and runs the £4.4bn Lindsell Train UK Equity fund, said that UK valuations far below other developed markets did
The writer is chair of Marks and Spencer When Margaret Thatcher came to power, she recognised that, for free enterprise to succeed, ordinary people needed to feel they had a stake in society. A million council house tenants were enabled to buy their own homes and, when our nationalised industries were privatised, large allocations were
Thousands of UK employers are expected to see “significant” cuts to the insurance levy they pay to the corporate pension rescue scheme, as the body passed the threshold of becoming better funded than the plans it protects for the first time. The Pension Protection Fund’s war chest grew to £12.1bn as of March this year,
The writer is founder of Sifted, an FT-backed site about European start-ups The promise of artificial intelligence is that it will transform productivity. Nowhere is that needed more than in healthcare. With ageing populations, tight spending constraints and overstretched medical staff in many health systems, a productivity revolution cannot arrive quickly enough. As Dr Margaret
Rishi Sunak on Thursday accepted in full the recommendations of independent pay review bodies to give key public sector workers wage rises of about 6.5 per cent, telling trade unions to call off strikes now. The prime minister agreed the awards for 2023-24 after talks with chancellor Jeremy Hunt, when he was reassured they could