The new co-chief executive of Thames Water has defended her record when running industry regulator Ofwat, telling MPs she would not “apologise” for a period during which the company’s previous owners extracted hefty dividends. Cathryn Ross headed Ofwat between 2013 and 2017, a tenure that overlapped with Australian investment group Macquarie’s ownership of the troubled
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G7 countries have agreed a joint framework for providing long-term security pledges to Ukraine, a symbolic commitment that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said would help his country on its journey to becoming a Nato member. But the promises to sustain existing financial and military support to Kyiv, drawn up as a signal to Moscow that western
Do Conservatives still believe in capitalism? Or to put it less starkly, do they still have faith in their economic model? For decades, Tories were unified behind Thatcherite economics that preached free markets, private enterprise, lower taxes, fiscal prudence, deregulation and globalisation. Free trade was an unquestioned good. Oligarch money was welcome in London, China
It was often said that when Bill Clinton walked into a room, each person thought he noticed them in particular. Clinton was the ultimate retail politician: he liked people and they knew it. When Ron DeSantis shows up, even those who want to support him feel that he harbours a special dislike for them. Being
Andrew Bailey has called on UK banks to pass on higher interest rates to savers, as the Bank of England concluded that the country’s top eight lenders are sufficiently resilient to withstand a severe economic downturn. Speaking after the latest stress tests on banks’ capacity to weather potential catastrophes, the BoE governor said lenders were
The Bank of England’s latest financial stability report landed today, with the main conclusion that UK lenders are in decent shape. But there was a fascinating, more unnerving nugget buried in the report. The UK central bank reckons that one of the bigger vulnerabilities of the global financial system is a US hedge fund trade
UK estate agent Winkworth has warned profits will fall short of forecasts because of a slump in sales, sending shares in the group down 15 per cent in early trading. Rising mortgage rates pushed sales down 20 per cent compared with the first half of last year, Winkworth said. As a result, profits for this
Chip designer Arm is in talks to bring in Nvidia as an anchor investor, while the SoftBank-owned company presses ahead with plans for a New York listing as soon as September, several people briefed on the talks said. Nvidia, the world’s most valuable semiconductor company, was forced last year to abandon its planned $66bn acquisition
A defunct slide projector in an empty office and peeling paint in the employee canteen are among the few signs of the role that an industrial site in Buffalo once played in the rise and then fall of American manufacturing. The campus was first built in 1923 for General Motors. A faded poster that reads
The writer is a science commentator The deep sea is in danger of turning into an invisible wild west. On Sunday, a UN deadline for finalising regulations over deep-sea mining in international waters expired without agreement. The resulting limbo now gives countries the green light to apply for mining licences — and could spark an
7/11/2023, 11:09:07 PM What to watch in Asia today FT reporters Shinichi Ueno, former head of advertising agency ADK. Tokyo District Court is due to hand down a ruling on Wednesday over the Tokyo Olympics bribery scandal © Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg Events: In South Korea, the trial begins of former Samsung chip executive Choi Jin-seok, accused
Jeremy Hunt has ordered ministers to find over £2bn of savings to fund 6 per cent public sector pay rises this year, as he prepares to hold crunch talks with Rishi Sunak on the matter. The chancellor has warned that he will not borrow more money to fund pay rises for police officers, teachers, nurses
A federal judge denied the US competition regulator’s attempt to block Microsoft’s $75bn purchase of Activision Blizzard, ruling that the Federal Trade Commission had failed to show the deal would harm competition in the video game market. Shares in Activision rose more than 5 per cent. “The FTC has not shown it is likely to
We have moved into an era of global competition tempered by the need to co-operate and the fear of conflict. The main protagonists are the US and its allies on the one hand, and China and Russia on the other. Yet the rest of the world also matters. It contains two-thirds of the global population
With a large-scale war still ravaging the heart of Europe, leaders of Nato’s 31 member states meeting in Vilnius for their annual summit have one overriding task: to maintain and project unity. Kyiv has been seeking reassurances that Nato members remain committed to supplying it with the means to repel Russia’s aggression — and for
EU regulators are set to clear Broadcom’s $69bn acquisition of cloud software company VMware, leaving competition authorities in the UK and US as holdouts to finalising one of the biggest tech takeovers. The European Commission, the executive body of the EU, will say on Wednesday that it has accepted Broadcom’s concessions that VMware’s software will
China is crucial to Apple in two ways. First, for manufacturing; second, for sales. So far, the company has navigated the tit-for-tat tech fight between the US and China with remarkable success. But it has increased its dependence on the country in the process. Despite deteriorating US-China relations, Chinese sales are now almost half as
The writer is an FT contributing editor, the chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia, and fellow at IWM Vienna It was an unforgettable political spectacle. On February 21 2022, the eve of Russia’s full-fledged war on Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin presided over a televised meeting of Russia’s national security council. He asked the
The BBC has suspended its internal investigations into allegations that a top presenter paid a teenager for sexually explicit images while the police decide whether to pursue a criminal case. In his first public appearance since the crisis broke over the weekend, BBC director-general Tim Davie admitted on Tuesday that there were “clearly going to
Nato leaders are set to declare they are prepared for Ukraine to ultimately join the military alliance, in a carefully hedged statement that drew immediate condemnation from Kyiv for its lack of a firm timeframe. A draft of a summit communique under discussion on Tuesday pledges to “extend an invitation” to Ukraine to join the
European stocks rose on Tuesday, following the lead of Asian markets, as investors welcomed comments from Federal Reserve officials suggesting US interest rates may be nearing their peak. Europe’s region-wide Stoxx 600 gained 0.3 per cent in early trading, while France’s Cac 40 rose 0.5 per cent. They were helped by comments from Atlanta Fed