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EU regulators have cleared Microsoft’s $75bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard, breaking from the UK and US which are holding up the gaming industry’s biggest deal. Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief, on Monday said Microsoft had made concessions to alleviate its concerns, including allowing all European consumers who purchase an existing or future Activision game

The writer is chief investment officer of emerging market debt at FIM Partners Debt and currency investors went into the Turkish elections pricing in a high chance of an opposition victory in the first round. Such victory was meant to bring about a return to economic orthodoxy even if it was understood that the macro

Soaring UK inflation is not the result of higher company profit margins, even for food prices, a former Bank of England interest rate setter has said, echoing similar findings by current members of the Monetary Policy Committee. Michael Saunders, senior economic adviser at consultancy Oxford Economics, said on Monday that “greedflation”, where businesses drive up

The cost of buying insurance against default on Turkish bonds has shot up to its highest level since November as investors brace themselves for further market stress on signs that incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appeared on course to clinch the country’s presidential election. The “spread” on five-year credit default swaps jumped more than 100 basis

“Hide your brightness, bide your time.” That famous piece of advice from Deng Xiaoping has served China well over the past 40 years. Deng, the leader whose economic policies transformed China, understood that if his country was to become richer and stronger, it must avoid confrontation with the west. But Xi Jinping, who has led

European and Asian stocks rose on Monday as investors cheered German economic data that indicated inflation in Europe’s largest economy was slowing. Europe’s region-wide Stoxx 600 rose 0.2 per cent, extending its rally from last week, while France’s Cac 40 edged up 0.4 per cent and London’s FTSE 100 gained 0.3 per cent in the

Higher interest rates have so fundamentally shifted the financial environment that investors must focus on a company’s ability to maintain margins rather than just its growth prospects, veteran private equity executive Chip Kaye said. “This moment is different than anything we have had in the 40 years before . . . with inflation proving stickier and interest rates higher

Flush with confidence that victory against Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was finally within reach, Turkey’s main opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu called on voters to “finish it” in the first round. But rather than ending Erdoğan’s two-decade long rule, the tally from Sunday’s presidential election has triggered soul searching in the opposition’s camp — with the second

Can a bond that no longer exists trigger a default? This is the quasi-metaphysical question facing the panel of experts who have to determine whether Credit Suisse’s credit-default swap contracts will pay out. Call it Schrödinger’s swap. While most in the market had assumed that Switzerland’s decision to vapourise $17bn of Credit Suisse’s Additional Tier

If Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was rattled by the knife-edged nature of Turkey’s pivotal elections, with initial results suggesting that the president will be forced into a run-off for the first time, he did not show it when he addressed fervent supporters in the early hours of Monday morning. Instead, as he took to the balcony

Rishi Sunak will promise to send more military hardware to Ukraine when he meets Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a surprise meeting at Chequers, the UK prime minister’s country residence near London. The Ukrainian president has been visiting European capitals over the weekend as he drums up support for his country ahead of an anticipated counter-offensive against

Turkey’s veteran leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Monday led a hotly contested election to extend his rule into a third decade, defying polls to enter an expected run-off for the presidency with momentum on his side. After a hard-fought campaign that had raised hopes of an opposition breakthrough, Erdoğan won 49.3 per cent of votes

When the 140-year-old steel industry in Teesside finally collapsed in 2015, it swept away 3,000 jobs and, with them, a political and economic anchor in the north-east of England. Two years later an ambitious young Conservative mayor, Ben Houchen, stepped into the resulting vacuum, promising that a public-private partnership would attract a new wave of

The story of troubled American cities left with empty office buildings post-pandemic is well known. What’s less well understood is that this is really a tale of two cities — downtown, and everywhere else. While many commercial business districts are struggling, their urban outer rings are often thriving. Call it “the donut effect”. Academics Arjun

The writer is a partner with Delta Strategy Group. He was previously chief economist at the Securities and Exchange Commission Following weeks of declining prices for US regional bank stocks, short selling of equity shares is once again coming under scrutiny with calls for more regulatory oversight of the practice. In a letter to clients

James Anderson, the maverick fund manager, is returning to full-time investing a year after retiring from Baillie Gifford and is teaming up with the Agnelli family holding company for an entrepreneurial venture. Lingotto Investment Management, a new $3bn firm that is owned by Exor, has appointed Anderson to its team of investors. He will launch

Almost half the companies on the UK’s FTSE 350 index do not have a publicly available code of ethics, fuelling concern that staff will not feel safe sounding the alarm over misconduct. The number of companies that publish their ethics codes is significantly lower in the mid-cap FTSE 250 index than the blue-chip FTSE 100,

Events: A four-day session of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific begins in Bangkok to discuss accelerating climate action for sustainable development. One way to reduce food waste is by converting edible scraps into apparel: “Transforming Waste to Wonder: Exploration of Food-Inspired Fashion” is the title of a seminar at

Suella Braverman, home secretary, will on Monday reiterate the UK government’s commitment to bring down net migration as inflows are expected to hit a record high this year. Braverman will say in her keynote speech at the National Conservatism conference in London on Monday that she campaigned for Brexit because she wanted Britain to control

Hello and welcome to the working week. There is a symmetry to the next seven days. We begin with the reaction to Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections and end next Sunday with another national vote in neighbouring Greece. In both cases, the ruling party has been on the ropes because of the government’s response to

Sir Keir Starmer has scaled back a 2020 pledge to extend voting rights to all EU nationals, instead restricting the policy to long-term residents, according to Labour party officials. During his leadership campaign three years ago the Labour leader promised to give all EU citizens with “settled status” in the UK a vote in general