Every segment on interest rates must, by the laws of television news, involve two sets of people: a family worried or relieved about their mortgage, and a saver expressing the opposite emotion. No one is happy now. Soaring mortgage rates are hurting those rolling off fixed-rate teaser deals, about 2.4mn households by the end of
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For years Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group has been the main vehicle of Russia’s power projection in Africa, engaging in military, mining and propaganda activities across the continent from Libya and Sudan to Mali and Mozambique. If Moscow is able to follow through on its threat to disband Wagner after Prigozhin’s aborted mutiny in Russia, the
PwC has told its 25,000 UK staff to expect smaller pay rises and bonuses if not freezes this year because of “challenging” market conditions despite industry calls to catch up with stubbornly high inflation. The firm’s junior auditors were told on webcast last week that the pay band for one cohort would be frozen while
Russian money trapped in Europe’s financial system is expected to throw off interest worth several billion euros a year. The problem: there is no agreement on what to do with it. The European Commission has promised detailed proposals within weeks to divert the proceeds to support rebuilding Ukraine, part of a longstanding effort to make
Two Russian S-300 missiles struck the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on Tuesday evening, killing two people and destroying a popular pizzeria and shopping centre, according to regional authorities. One missile struck near Hotel Kramatorsk, turning Ria Pizza and other businesses into rubble, videos posted by local officials and residents on Telegram showed. Ihor Klymenko,
Thames Water has announced its chief executive Sarah Bentley was stepping down with immediate effect, as the UK’s largest water utility struggles to transform its record on pollution and leaks. The abrupt exit follows criticism from regulator Ofwat over its record on sewage pollution amid increasing public anger over the sector’s environmental record. Bentley and
When the US talks, the world listens. It is, after all, the world’s most influential power. This is not due only to its size and wealth, but also to the potency of its alliances and its central role in creating the institutions and principles of today’s order. It played the decisive part in creating the
UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt on Tuesday rejected claims that talks over British membership of the EU’s Horizon science programme have stalled, insisting that London’s participation would be the “optimal outcome”. Speaking during a visit to Brussels, Hunt said talks over the exact terms of UK membership of the €95.5bn programme were “becoming more crunchy” as
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will have food companies, energy suppliers and banks in his sights when he meets regulators on Wednesday to discuss ways to address the cost of living crisis. Hunt will ask Britain’s key watchdogs whether there is evidence of price gouging by companies and if so what they intend to do about it
The Conservative party has signalled it will not investigate groping allegations made against one of the candidates seeking the Tory nomination for London mayor. Daniel Korski, who is on the three-person shortlist to run as the party’s hopeful in the capital’s mayoral race next spring, has flatly denied groping a television producer 10 years ago
Russia dropped charges against participants in the Wagner paramilitary force’s armed insurrection and said the group had agreed to hand over its weaponry. The announcements on Tuesday came in the wake of the deal between the Kremlin and Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and appeared to mark progress towards resolving the stand-off. The FSB, Russia’s main
When warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin’s fighters were marching on Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, an arch propagandist who is editor of the state news network RT, was curiously silent. Simonyan — once one of Prigozhin’s biggest cheerleaders in the Russian elite — later explained she had been on a cruise down the Volga river filming a culture documentary
The most populous nation on Earth does not need a great power patron. For much of the cold war India was non-aligned — “at best”, some in Washington would say with bitterness. Its present leader has ideas about concentrated power, about religion and the state, that break somewhat with the Federalist Papers. There is nothing
European stocks fell on Tuesday, as the European Central Bank signalled that interest rates would need to rise further in order to stamp out sticky inflation. Europe’s region-wide Stoxx 600 index gave up its early-morning gains to trade 0.2 per cent lower, while Germany’s Dax was down 0.1 per cent and London’s FTSE 100 was
UK payments group Wise has reported annual profits more than tripled as it benefited from rising interest rates and expects the trend to continue, sending its shares up almost 20 per cent. The fintech, whose listing in 2021 was hailed as a rare triumph for the London market, said its interest income from customers’ cash
China’s premier Li Qiang has criticised a western push to limit trade and business ties with the country and promoted international economic co-operation in a speech that described de-risking as a “false proposition”. “Governments should not over-reach themselves, still less stretch the concept of risk or turn it into an ideological tool,” Li said in
Buried in the ground, far out of sight, exists a sprawling web of copper and steel pipes that are integral to keeping homes across the world running smoothly. Whether they are filling British taps with water, transporting gas across the southern US or acting as underground broadband ducts beneath remote parts of Spain, the common
Vitol and Gunvor, two of the world’s largest independent energy traders, remain significant buyers of refined oil from Russia more than a year after both companies pledged to drastically reduce their business with Moscow following President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Analysis of export records filed with Russian customs in the first four months
For more than two decades, 8 Canada Square, the London skyscraper that houses HSBC’s global headquarters and bears its logo, has been a symbol of Canary Wharf’s status as a global financial centre. But the bank’s decision to ditch the city’s east-end Docklands in favour of a more central location reflects the business district’s waning
What to make of the UK? It’s an economy supposedly in the throes of a “cost of living crisis” and yet consumer demand remains resilient enough that the central bank has now raised interest rates 13 times in a row to try to reduce stubbornly high inflation. It’s not as if no one is struggling.
One of the crueller games we played as children was to see what nonsense we could make the supply teachers swallow. I remember one person who managed, for a few glorious minutes, to convince the luckless stand-in that his Muslim faith prohibited him from reading out loud during the month of Ramadan. If there is