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On the surface, UK inflation in 2023 is becoming similar to the problem in the 1970s, when people talked about a “British disease” making the country the “sick man” of Europe. Stubbornly high inflation that eclipses rates in other countries. Index-linked contracts amplifying price pressures. The authorities struggling to control household costs. And wages following

Russia has claimed its army “fully liquidated” pro-Ukrainian militias who made a two-day incursion on its territory, an embarrassing episode that points to broader failures more than a year into President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. The apparent ease with which two Ukraine-based groups of far-right Russian nationals penetrated Russia’s border and temporarily “liberated” a village raised

Credit Suisse has given up trying to save its staff bonuses that were wiped out following the bank’s rescue by its rival UBS. Just over $400mn of deferred pay for Credit Suisse middle managers was reduced to zero as a result of the state-orchestrated takeover and several bankers are preparing lawsuits against Finma, the Swiss

Residential rents in the UK rose at a record rate last month, with tenants in London facing an even greater increase, as higher borrowing costs and a shortage of properties pushed up prices. Private property rental prices across the country rose 4.8 per cent in the 12 months to April, the biggest increase since the

Even the heat of Miami can’t warm a crypto winter.  The faithful descended on Florida last weekend for the world’s “biggest bitcoin event”. Only half as many made the journey as in 2022. Some of the buzz and meme coins were gone. So was the sense of indestructibility, after a year in which some of

She took the points and the fine. That’s your resignation issue right there. Forget about all the other stuff, the frankly overblown arguments about abuse of office. The fact is that Britain’s home secretary, a woman with open ambition to lead the country, cannot even make the right call when presented with a choice between

Future generations might say that the big event of 2023 was when Elon Musk thought of TruthGPT — the “maximum truth-seeking AI” he plans to launch. Musk is many things — brilliant engineer, massive risk-taker, overgrown adolescent. One thing he is not is someone who can be trusted with a technology that could assume God-like

Back in the financial crisis, Morgan Stanley’s analyst Andrew Sheets drew the above cartoon to show how tough things were for bond traders at the time. It came to mind looking at the market reaction to a third consecutive upside surprise in UK inflation, which has probably caused some gilt traders to evacuate their breakfasts

Rishi Sunak has decided against launching an ethics investigation into home secretary Suella Braverman over her handling of a speeding offence. The UK prime minister said he had concluded that Braverman’s actions “do not amount to a breach of the ministerial code”, after claims she had asked civil servants to secure her special treatment to

Chinese shares erased their gains for the year and metals prices fell amid mounting concerns over the outlook for the country’s economy and the possibility of an unprecedented US debt default. China’s benchmark CSI 300 index of Shanghai- and Shenzhen-listed stocks fell as much as 1.1 per cent on Wednesday, pushing the index’s year-to-date losses

Five of the world’s largest banks broke UK competition law by sharing sensitive information when trading British government bonds in the wake of the financial crisis, according to provisional findings from the country’s competition regulator. A small number of traders at Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Morgan Stanley and Royal Bank of Canada unlawfully shared sensitive

UK inflation dropped to 8.7 per cent in April, a smaller fall than the Bank of England expected, raising pressure on the central bank to keep increasing interest rates.  The figure will come as a blow to ministers and the central bank because the fall in consumer price inflation from 10.1 per cent in March

In a high-security vault in London’s Mayfair, where the glass is thick enough to resist automatic gunfire and four control rooms keep watch around the clock, some of the world’s wealthiest individuals have been rushing to store gold. The small safes inside, which cost as much as £12,000 annually, are set to be full by

Technologists used to be cheery types — often boosterish to the point of annoying. So it has been a little disorientating lately to watch a parade of tech leaders issue public warnings about the dire potential consequences of their own inventions. Mustafa Suleyman, one of the co-founders of AI lab DeepMind, told an event in

The chief executive of Nvidia, the world’s most valuable semiconductor company, has warned that the US tech industry is at risk of “enormous damage” from the escalating battle over chips between Washington and Beijing. Speaking to the Financial Times, Jensen Huang said US export controls introduced by the Biden administration to slow Chinese semiconductor manufacturing

In Douglas Stuart’s Booker Prize-winning novel Shuggie Bain, the main character relocates in the early 1980s to a bleak former mining community on the outskirts of Glasgow.  Stuart’s description of the local miners’ “pink hands that looked free of work” recalls the real-life fate of many British workers when big industries shrank or disappeared completely.

Dividends issued in the first quarter by the world’s largest listed companies hit a record this year, even as prominent investors and asset managers warn of a coming global economic slowdown. The world’s 1,200 biggest public companies collectively issued $326.7bn in dividends in the first quarter of 2023, a rise of 12 per cent on

Italy has announced a €2.2bn relief package for the flood-hit its Emilia-Romagna region, where an estimated 23,000 people have lost their homes and thousands of hectares of fertile farmlands were damaged after the region received more than half of its annual average rainfall in the space of just 36 hours. At least 15 people are

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves will on Wednesday embrace “Bidenomics” as a template for a Labour government, saying Britain risks being “sidelined” unless it accepts that the rules of the global economy have changed. In a speech in Washington, Reeves will back an “emergent global consensus” on the economy, involving an active state, muscular industrial policy,

Boris Johnson has been referred to the police by the Cabinet Office over further potential breaches of coronavirus regulations during his time as UK prime minister. Civil servants passed information to the Metropolitan Police and Thames Valley Police last week that had been discovered by lawyers working for the government on evidence for submission to

Ron DeSantis will announce he is running for president in a conversation with Elon Musk on Twitter, ending months of speculation about the Republican governor of Florida’s 2024 ambitions and placing the billionaire Twitter owner front and centre in the race for the White House. DeSantis, 44, will launch his campaign on Wednesday evening with