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Junior doctors in England will walk out for 96 hours from April 11, the British Medical Association has announced, in a significant escalation of their battle for a 35 per cent pay rise. Dr Vivek Trivedi and Dr Robert Laurenson, co-chairs of the BMA junior doctors committee, said that during talks this week health and

The writer is founder of Sifted, an FT-backed site about European start-ups This year, I have heard several visiting Americans berate Europe for its lack of innovation and entrepreneurial success, with some justification. Since the beginning of the century, Europe’s share of the top 100 most valuable companies in the world has fallen from 38

Switzerland has raised interest rates by half a percentage point, despite the financial turmoil that this week led to a rescue-takeover of one of the country’s largest lenders. The Swiss National Bank opted to plough ahead with its fourth consecutive interest rate rise, saying the chances of inflation becoming entrenched had risen. It follows a

European equities traded lower by lunchtime on Thursday and the dollar recovered some of its earlier losses, as central banks pressed on with their policies to raise interest rates in spite of investor nerves over the health of the banking sector. The region-wide Stoxx 600 fell 0.7 per cent, with Germany’s Dax 0.6 per cent

Israel’s parliament has passed a law limiting the circumstances in which a prime minister can be removed from office, signing into law the first in a series of contentious legal changes that have sparked months of protests. The amendment, passed after a rancorous all-night debate that stretched into the early hours of Thursday, intensifies the

Swiss financial regulator Finma has defended its decision to wipe out the value of risky additional tier 1 bonds as part of the Credit Suisse rescue deal. The move enraged some bondholders because Credit Suisse shareholders will receive a payout. In a statement on Thursday, Finma said the AT1s “contractually provide that they will be

At the annual gathering of Europe’s solar power lobby in Brussels this month, industry executives celebrated the rapid rollout of panels across the region after the retreat from Russian gas. Standing behind a DJ deck, Walburga Hemetsberger, SolarPower Europe’s chief executive, said that the night should be “the best party ever”, adding that the European

There’s a colossal shift going on in artificial intelligence — but it’s not the one some may think. While advanced language-generating systems and chatbots have dominated news headlines, private AI companies have quietly entrenched their power. Recent developments mean that a handful of individuals and corporations now control much of the resources and knowledge in

Much as it can be enjoyable to poke fun at the crypto bros — with their silly memes, irritating acronyms, puerile jokes and frankly ridiculous ideas about the world — I have to confess: I don’t believe they’re the main problem. As far as I’m concerned it’s the earnest, strait-laced types who insist that we

The US Securities and Exchange Commission charged Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun and three of his businesses for improperly registering digital assets and for alleged market manipulation. The agency also charged eight celebrities including actress Lindsay Lohan and social media personality Jake Paul for illegally touting Sun’s crypto assets, alleging they failed to disclose they

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday pressed ahead with its monetary tightening campaign despite the recent turmoil in the banking sector, raising its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point and signalling another increase to come. Following its latest two-day meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee voted to lift the federal funds rate

The unexpected jump in UK inflation in February, coupled with turmoil in the global banking sector, leaves Bank of England rate setters facing an even tougher decision than usual on Thursday. The latest data, showing inflation at 10.4 per cent, has reinforced fears that price rises are increasingly being driven by domestic pressures in the

US distressed debt investors and corporate litigators are preparing to fight the Swiss government over its decision to write down $17bn of Credit Suisse bonds as part of the bank’s shotgun marriage with UBS. Switzerland provoked the ire of bond investors when the government used an emergency ordnance to write down the bonds to zero,

Angry investors are parking metaphorical tanks on Paradeplatz in Zurich’s financial district. Holders of $17bn in Credit Suisse AT1 bonds are squaring up for a legal fight with Switzerland. This promises to be as fierce as the scrap between Argentina and US hedge funds over a 2001 debt default. Swiss authorities wiped out $17bn of

British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe is planning to offer more than £5bn including debt for England’s Manchester United football club, a record acquisition price for a sports team, according to two people briefed about the plan. Ratcliffe, the founder of the Ineos chemicals empire, is competing against Qatari Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani for the

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak has easily won a House of Commons vote on his new post-Brexit deal for Northern Ireland by 515 to 29, but only after suffering a damaging Conservative revolt led by three ex-Tory leaders. Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Iain Duncan Smith were among the 22 Tories who voted against the

The European Central Bank’s president has warned of the risk of a “tit-for-tat dynamic” between companies and workers that pushes up profit margins and wages, increasing price pressures as both groups try to avoid a hit from higher inflation. Christine Lagarde said on Wednesday that the ECB’s recent increases in borrowing costs were “only starting

Germany’s central bank boss said the eurozone must be “stubborn” and keep raising borrowing costs to tackle inflation, as rate-setters on both sides of the Atlantic wrestle with the recent turmoil in the financial sector. “Our fight against inflation is not over,” Joachim Nagel, Bundesbank president, told the Financial Times after he and other members

European equities edged lower in early trade on Wednesday as investors looked ahead to the Federal Reserve’s decision on interest rates, in which the US central bank is expected to raise rates again to keep up the fight against inflation. The region-wide Stoxx 600 and Germany’s Dax both fell 0.1 per cent while the Cac

The wipeout of $17bn of Credit Suisse bonds has thrown into question further issuance in the market for risky bank debt, with some of Asia’s biggest banks considering pausing sales. Major banks in Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong are placing new additional tier 1 (AT1) bond deals on hold until market conditions stabilise, according to

Those to the right of Rishi Sunak like to dismiss the prime minister as a “Consocialist”. Others talk of “Heevesism”, an amalgam of the surnames of the chancellor Jeremy Hunt and his Labour shadow Rachel Reeves. These ugly and surely ephemeral appellations point to a simple argument, that the UK has stumbled into a period