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It was the sickly sweet scent lingering outside the school toilets that first alerted headteacher Dan Cleary to an emerging trend when pupils returned after the summer holiday last year. Since then, rarely does a fortnight go by when he does not have to discipline a student for stashing a “vape”, or electronic cigarette, in
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The writer is chief market strategist for Europe, Middle East and Africa at JPMorgan Asset Management A slew of economic data has recently surprised to the upside. According to the purchasing managers’ index for the eurozone, the bloc’s economy is growing again. The US had a bumper jobs and retail spending report for January. Investors
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Abu Dhabi National Oil Company’s potential acquisition of Gunvor, the energy trading house, has reached an impasse due to disagreements over the deal’s size, people familiar with the negotiations said. While Adnoc had hoped to acquire all of Gunvor, or a majority stake, the commodity trader’s chief executive Torbjörn Törnqvist is unwilling to yield control
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Labour is to review the UK business tax regime as part of efforts to make Britain the fastest-growing economy in the G7, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves will announce on Tuesday. Reeves, giving a speech in London to the annual conference of Make UK, the trade body for Britain’s manufacturers, will say the review is intended
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The writer is author of ‘Chip War’ When the US last week added several units of BGI Group, a Chinese genetic sequencing firm, to its entity list restricting technology transfer, the primary justification was that the company had been “contributing to monitoring and surveillance”, including of ethnic minorities. Yet the human rights implications of China’s
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History shows that heavy spending on armaments may reduce rather than increase stability. Still, the two goals align nicely for delegates at China’s annual National People’s Congress. Within Chinese business, this will create winners among defence companies and losers across many other sectors. Chinese premier Li Keqiang mentioned the word “stability” 33 times in his
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CBI boss Tony Danker has stepped aside following an allegation over his workplace conduct at the UK’s largest business group. The CBI on Monday said it had been told in January of an allegation regarding its director-general, which was investigated and dealt with “in line with CBI procedure”. It said the investigation “determined that the
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Xi Jinping has called Vladimir Putin his best friend. But now the Russian leader is in urgent need of help from China. Putin’s army is bogged down in Ukraine and running short of ammunition. Should Xi prove that he is a friend indeed by supplying Russia with weapons? China’s decision will say a lot about
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Estonia’s prime minister Kaja Kallas has won a resounding victory in parliamentary elections, a triumph for one of the EU and Nato’s most pro-Ukraine voices. Kallas’s liberal Reform party came in first place in Sunday’s vote, taking 37 seats of the 101 in Estonia’s parliament and putting her in pole position to carry on as
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America leads on innovation, and Europe on regulation, or so the conventional wisdom goes. But recently, the US seems to have taken the lead in the latter, particularly in politically powerful industries like technology, pharma and finance.  Just last week, Eli Lilly, the producer of popular insulin medications Humalog and Humulin, pledged to reduce its
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Of the hundreds of climbers who set out every year to scale Mount Everest, only about two-thirds reach the summit. EY’s global chair, Carmine Di Sibio, thinks he has better odds for his own ambitious adventure: a plan, known internally as Project Everest, which would split the Big Four accounting firm by spinning off its
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Technocrats and politicians reflexively justify power grabs by citing external threats. That authoritarian tendency has found an improbable exponent in Jon Cunliffe. This respected deputy governor of the Bank of England recently launched a programme to develop a digital pound. The central bank anticipates overlapping with commercial banks in some key activities while gaining sweeping
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