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Yevgeny Prigozhin earned the respect of Vladimir Putin through his private militia’s successes — at least compared with the disastrous performance of the regular army — on the battlefield. Prigozhin, who like the Russian president hails from St Petersburg, started out small. He spent the last years of the Soviet Union in jail for a

Retail investors have rushed to snap up UK government debt this year as yields have shot up and many bank deposit rates have failed to keep up.  The dash to buy gilts comes as the Bank of England has embarked on its most aggressive rate raising for a generation, surprising the market by lifting its

When they first appeared in 2014 to fight covertly in Ukraine, the masked militiamen of Russia’s Wagner group epitomised how Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin had mastered a new, underhand form of warfare. But after Wagner paramilitaries took control of at least one Russian city on Saturday and began a “march of justice” on Moscow, the blowback

Fifteen months ago, Vladimir Putin’s army was on the outskirts of Kyiv. Now the Russian leader is struggling to maintain control in Moscow. The rebellion of Wagner forces, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, is the final confirmation of how catastrophically wrong the war in Ukraine has gone for Putin. Even if the Russian leader prevails in

Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed his forces were “blockading” Rostov and marching on Moscow on Saturday morning, as armed, masked men with tanks and armoured vehicles surrounded government buildings in the southern Russian city. In what would mark the first coup attempt in Russia for three decades, Prigozhin appeared to have taken over a military

Vladimir Putin has admitted the situation in Rostov-on-Don is “complicated” after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s forces seized command points in the southern city and called on the Wagner mercenary group’s rank-and-file to lay down their arms. “Those who organised and prepared the military uprising, who took arms against their comrades, have betrayed Russia. And will pay for it.

Russian strongman Yevgeny Prigozhin has been charged with organising an armed uprising after threatening to attack Russian forces in retaliation for what he claimed was an air strike against his own paramilitaries. Prigozhin, founder of the notorious Wagner mercenary group, said on Friday that a “huge number” of fighters had been killed in the alleged

Scrapping the tax perks enjoyed by the UK’s so-called non-doms would net £3.6bn a year for the government, according to academic research that claims the risk of wealthy people leaving the country is “modest”. The £3.6bn estimate by academics at Warwick University and the London School of Economics comes after the Labour party proposed abolishing

The classic way to judge when stocks are having a bubbly moment is the taxi test. When drivers start telling you about their online portfolio or asking whether to buy shares in Tesla, you know stock markets have burst into the public consciousness. Something similar now is going on with bonds. At a dinner this

Before he became Indian prime minister in 2014, Narendra Modi could not get a visa to visit the US over claims about communal violence in his home state of Gujarat. US lawmakers this week gave Modi multiple standing ovations when he joined the small pantheon of leaders, alongside Nelson Mandela and Winston Churchill, who have

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will use his Mansion House speech next month to outline wide-ranging plans for channelling UK pension investments worth billions of pounds into fast-growing British companies as he seeks to boost economic growth. Options to be set out in several government consultations include regulatory changes to encourage UK pension funds to invest more

The writer is president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee Calling the UK an emerging market became an intermittent investor epithet during its recent economic and political turmoil. The serious point of such a characterisation is that the macroeconomic regime has shifted. Britain

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is meeting bank leaders in Downing Street to address the growing mortgage crisis caused by rising interest rates. Hunt is urging banks and building societies to examine the state of the mortgage market and see what additional help they can give those struggling to deal with surging monthly payments on their home

Investors are now betting that UK interest rates will climb as high as 6.25 per cent — the highest level since 1998 — by early next year after the Bank of England this week stepped up its battle with inflation.  The BoE on Thursday lifted its benchmark borrowing rate by 0.5 percentage points to 5

Wall Street stocks followed Europe lower on Friday, while government bonds rallied, after weak European economic data fanned fears of an impending recession. The benchmark S&P 500 index was down 0.8 per cent in early trade and the tech-focused Nasdaq Composite fell 1.2 per cent. The moves echoed a sell-off across the Atlantic, where closely

Stubbornly high inflation and the expectation of further interest rate rises add up to bad news for millions of mortgage borrowers who need to refinance in coming years. The Financial Times convened a panel of experts to answer your questions about refinancing or buying a property for the first time. Claer Barrett, the FT’s consumer

German house prices fell at a record rate of 6.8 per cent in the first quarter of this year, as higher borrowing costs, inflation and weaker economic growth took their toll on Europe’s largest property market. The year-on-year fall in the index of German residential property prices was the biggest since records began in 2000,

I double-check the name the notorious “finmeme-lord” known as Litquidity has reserved our table under. “I’m here for Hank Paulson,” I tell the maître d’ at Le Bernardin. He doesn’t bat an eye. I wonder if Paulson, the former US Treasury secretary responsible for bank bailouts after the 2008 financial crisis, dines at the three-Michelin-star

Yannick Bolloré, chief executive of the Havas marketing group, likes to take a morning dip in the Mediterranean Sea when he attends the Cannes Lions advertising festival. He could not reach it this week because the beach was occupied by the sofa-strewn cabanas built for Meta, Google, WPP and others. An event that started out

The eurozone economy has slowed sharply, according to a closely watched business survey which indicated that a period of recent growth in the services sector is stalling and price pressures are cooling. The benchmark purchasing managers’ index, a measure of activity in manufacturing and services, fell to a five-month low of 50.3 on Friday’s data,