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The British government is set to introduce legislation within days to establish a new regulator to police the growing dominance of big technology platforms, such as Google, Amazon and Facebook. The draft bill will put the digital markets unit within the Competition and Markets Authority, the main UK competition watchdog, on a statutory footing and

The voice of British industry is turning into a whisper. Members of the CBI are bailing out, following allegations of sexual assaults at the business lobby group. On Friday, household names including car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover, retailer John Lewis and FTSE 100 insurer Aviva joined the exodus. The loss of members and access to

The writer is an FT contributing editor and co-founder of Now Teach Some years ago, shortly before I left the Financial Times, I gave a talk at a literary event in Oxford. Put up your hand, I said to the audience, if you are useless at maths — whereupon the arms of around a third of

If the CBI had been aiming to rehabilitate its battered reputation after weeks of damaging headlines, then Friday morning’s news of a second rape allegation sent the employers’ organisation into a tailspin. Within three hours of The Guardian publishing a graphic account of the alleged rape of a woman while she was working for the

Aeroplane analogies have become prevalent in markets commentary over the past year, generally focused on the extent to which Jay Powell, pilot of the US Federal Reserve, can glide to a nice soft landing in the economy. Can he engineer a slowdown in inflation without causing a crash? The passengers are getting nervous, it seems.

The writer is author of ‘Extra Time: Ten Lessons for an Ageing World’ The news this week that India’s population is forecast to overtake that of China’s is a powerful psychological moment. Not for three centuries, since the Mughal Empire outnumbered the Qing Dynasty, has India been bigger than its rival. The Chinese Communist party

They used to say you were more likely to get divorced than break up with your bank. The high street institutions we stick with for most of our adult lives are often the ones who offered us a free railcard at university. But this should no longer buy our loyalty, as the amount of interest

In 2019, after months of gruelling work, executives at Apple and Goldman Sachs were gearing up to unveil Apple Card, a landmark move for the iPhone maker’s burgeoning ambitions in financial services. As the launch date approached, the partners hit a sticking point. Apple, keen to be seen as providing unique value for customers and

Dominic Raab ended his ministerial career on Friday with an angry volley of criticism at the way he had been driven from office and with claims his designation as a bully would “paralyse” ministers trying to do their jobs. The UK’s departing deputy prime minister will not get much sympathy from the civil service. Accounts

Private equity’s appetite for corporate Britain is back, as groups seek to revive a takeover frenzy that has seen nearly £80bn spent taking UK public companies private over the past five years. The deal-doing flurry seemed to have fizzled out in 2022, as geopolitics and rising interest rates muted takeover plans. But in the past

Many of the biggest names in British business quit the CBI on Friday after a second allegation of rape threatened the survival of the employers’ organisation. Groups ranging from insurer Aviva and car manufacturers Jaguar Land Rover and BMW to payments company Mastercard and retailer John Lewis said they were cancelling their memberships after the

If there is a Great British Bully, it is probably Flashman, the vicious schoolboy villain of Thomas Hughes’s Victorian novel Tom Brown’s School Days. Among other things, Flashman toasted Tom in front of a fire as a punishment. Flashman’s abuse would still count as bullying, according to Dominic Raab, who resigned as UK deputy prime

British businesses said that economic activity accelerated at the fastest pace in a year this month, while input cost inflation slowed off the back of falling fuel and energy prices, according to a closely watched survey released on Friday. The S&P/Cips global flash UK composite purchasing managers’ index, a measure of private sector activity, rose

Shortly before his exit, Logan Roy, the anti-hero of the HBO drama Succession, rallies the journalist “pirates” at his television news network in New York City. “This is not the end. I’m going to build something better, something faster, lighter, meaner, wilder,” he shouts defiantly. “And I’m going to do it from in here, with

Even on the day the museum is closed to visitors — a Tuesday — the vast courtyard of the Palais du Louvre in central Paris is teeming with tourists taking selfies in front of IM Pei’s glass pyramids and hawkers selling miniature Eiffel Towers decked with sparkling lights. But the Café Marly, a French brasserie

The writer is the author of ‘Two Hundred Years of Muddling Through: The Surprising Story of the British Economy’ It is becoming worryingly easy to use the dread phrase “the 1970s” when discussing Britain’s economy. Inflation has been persistently high, industrial unrest continues to dominate the news agenda and all against a backdrop of an

Oliver Dowden, the cabinet office minister and a longstanding ally of Rishi Sunak, has been appointed deputy prime minister, replacing Dominic Raab. Dowden, a political fixer and former Conservative party chair, first made his reputation as David Cameron’s deputy chief of staff in Downing Street, before later becoming an MP. It was widely expected in

Asian stocks sold off and European markets were steady on Friday as investors worried about the prospects for China technology stocks and progress in political negotiations over the US debt ceiling. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index posted its largest daily drop since late February, falling 1.8 per cent with all sectors in negative territory. The

Dominic Raab has resigned as the UK’s deputy prime minister after an independent report into bullying claims against him upheld two of the allegations. Raab, who was also justice secretary, issued a letter on Twitter on Friday morning saying he wanted to “keep his word” having promised to resign if the inquiry by employment lawyer

Good morning. Yesterday morning, Westminster was awash with rumours that Dominic Raab was soon to be sacked: at time of writing, Raab is still very much in place. These rumours can fly through a parliamentary party at times and it is a useful reminder of a neglected truth about politics: there ultimately aren’t a lot

A gold-plated European parliament pension scheme is set to run out of money within two years, putting payouts at risk for almost a thousand members including the Brexiter Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen, the French far right leader. Senior MEPs are fighting to avoid a €300mn taxpayer bailout of a special voluntary scheme for