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Germany recorded its highest level of foreign direct investment last year, with a surge in UK companies setting up operations to keep a post-Brexit presence in the EU. FDI into Germany totalled €25.3bn last year, up 261 per cent from €7bn in Covid-hit 2021, according to official figures from Germany Trade & Invest (GTAI). The

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer on Monday sidestepped questions over how his party plans to fund its wide ranging reforms to England’s health service, as he outlined his plans to build an NHS “fit for the future”. Starmer warned that the NHS would not survive “five more years of Tory government”, arguing that a Labour

Bond disputes usually involve a bust-up between investors and company bosses. It is vanishingly rare for an issuer to side with disgruntled creditors. Credit Suisse nevertheless disputed the ill-judged decision of the Swiss authorities to wipe out its additional tier one securities. Swiss officials wanted UBS to take over its struggling rival. Waiving the requirement

German prosecutors have charged four people with the unauthorised sale of espionage software to Turkish security services, alleging just days before a pivotal election that it was used in an attempt to spy on the country’s opposition. The charges, which were filed at a regional court in Munich, allege that the former employees of a

Ukraine has just had a diplomatic triumph. Now the country is under pressure to follow up with a military triumph. After the pomp of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, the focus will switch back to the brutal realities of warfare in eastern Ukraine. The diplomatic and military support offered to Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the G7

Credit Suisse directly disputed the Swiss financial regulator’s basis for writing down $17bn of its additional tier 1 bonds, in a private letter aimed at sparing staff bonuses that were tied to the debt. Investors representing at least $4.5bn of wiped-out Credit Suisse AT1 bonds filed a lawsuit against Finma last month, seeking to overturn

Meta has been hit with a €1.2bn fine by the EU and ordered to suspend transfers of user data to the US, in the largest penalty to be imposed against a Big Tech company in the bloc over privacy violations. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, which oversees the General Data Protection Regulation, on Monday handed down

European stocks opened marginally lower on Monday as investors balanced caution over US debt ceiling talks with the possibility that the Federal Reserve would soon pause its monetary tightening campaign. Europe’s region-wide Stoxx 600 fell 0.1 per cent, ending its rally from the previous week, while France’s Cac 40 and Germany’s Dax each lost 0.2

Ukraine’s months-long preparation for its next counteroffensive to try to wrest back occupied territory has allowed Russia to fortify its positions along the almost 1,000km frontline. Satellite images reviewed by the Financial Times and analysed by military experts revealed a multi-layered Russian network of anti-tank ditches, mazes of trenches, concrete “dragon’s teeth” barricades, steel “hedgehog”

There is an ongoing paradox at the heart of what has become known as Britain’s cost of living crisis. With inflation still running at more than 10 per cent, Citizens Advice, which provides free guidance on debt issues and other consumer worries, said recently it had helped a record number of more than 600,000 people

What’s good for America is good for the world. That’s the message the US was trying to sell at the G7 meeting in Hiroshima. The Biden administration has recently been accused by both allies and adversaries of putting America first, if not alone, in some of its economic policies. But in Japan, the US team

Credit Suisse staff are making preparations to sue the Swiss financial regulator over $400mn of bonuses that were cancelled following the bank’s rescue by UBS. Thousands of senior Credit Suisse bankers have a portion of their bonuses linked to the group’s additional tier 1 bonds, securities that were wiped out in the takeover orchestrated by

Profits at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and a clutch of other western banks in China fell sharply last year, as Covid-19 lockdowns and geopolitical tensions thwarted hopes that their operations in the country might finally start to be lucrative. Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and HSBC reported losses in their China-based units in 2022

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer will outline plans on Monday to get the NHS “back on its feet” if his party wins the next general election, by pledging to cut waiting times and reduce deaths from cancer, heart disease and suicide. In a speech, Starmer will argue that the future of the NHS will be

US companies are rushing to borrow money in the bond market, bringing forward deals in case the country’s debt ceiling stand-off causes turmoil over the summer. Highly rated companies have issued bonds worth $112bn so far this month, according to data from Dealogic, up from $46bn in May 2022 and more than triple the amount

US president Joe Biden called on Republicans to moderate their “extreme positions” as he spoke with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Sunday in a bid to ease tensions in the escalating US debt ceiling crisis. Biden called the Republican leader on the flight home from the G7 leaders summit in Hiroshima, Japan, after negotiations had

Joe Biden has said he expects to see a “thaw” in US relations with Beijing, even as he concluded a G7 summit in Japan that made a concerted effort to counter military and economic security threats from China. The US president said in a news conference at the end of the three-day summit that talks

With the skeleton of Hiroshima’s A-Bomb Dome as a backdrop, Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida ended the G7 summit with a call for global peace and a world without nuclear weapons, after being upstaged by Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s appearance. Only a few weeks earlier, Kishida had thought “the hurdle was too high” for the Ukrainian president

“Magic circle” law firm Allen & Overy is merging with New York’s Shearman & Sterling to form a practice with combined revenues of about $3.4bn, in one of the biggest transatlantic legal tie-ups in history. The merger, which is subject to a vote of both firms’ partners, will create one of the largest law firms

China said that US chipmaker Micron Technology’s products posed “serious network security risks” as it banned operators of key infrastructure from buying them, in its first big measure against an American semiconductor group. The Cyberspace Administration of China on Sunday announced that the company, which is the biggest US maker of memory chips, “posed significant