Ireland has abruptly shut down its decade-old programme offering residency in exchange for investment from rich global — especially Chinese — citizens following criticism of such schemes from the EU and other bodies. Ireland’s Immigrant Investor Programme, which has netted almost €1.25bn since its inception in 2012, soared in popularity last year, with the number
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Just before Christmas, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak arranged a bilateral video conference with Masayoshi Son in another attempt to persuade the powerful SoftBank boss to bring the chip design firm, Arm, back to the UK stock market. People involved in the call describe the conversation between the politician and Son, whose investment company acquired
Fighting in Ukraine is often compared to the first world war: massed troops, artillery barrages, and grinding trench warfare that seeks to wear down the enemy. But when Russia’s long expected spring offensive begins, there will be no proverbial whistle to mark the moment Russian troops attack and go “over the top”. It will arrive
In 2017, Eugenie Mathieu was a senior Greenpeace campaign strategist in New York, trying to stop ancient forests being chopped down to make toilet paper. A year later, she was back in her home city of London helping to run a natural capital investment fund at Aviva Investors, the asset manager. This is by no
Allen & Overy is introducing an artificial intelligence chatbot to help its lawyers draft contracts, as the magic circle legal firm seeks to adopt the much-hyped technology to find efficiencies for its lawyers and clients. The London-based group told the Financial Times it had rolled out a chatbot named Harvey after testing it since November
The next head of the UK accounting regulator will take over a more professional organisation than the “ramshackle house” inherited by Sir Jon Thompson in 2019. But a conundrum remains: can the watchdog drive up audit quality at the same time as increasing competition in the sector? Under Thompson, who will leave this summer after
In what he claimed was his last presentation to investors in November, Masayoshi Son lamented that his entrepreneurial knack would be wasted as SoftBank shifted to a full defensive mode to cut losses. To avoid that, he pledged to devote himself entirely to growing Arm, the UK chip designer owned by the Japanese technology group.
The initial findings of an investigation into the failure of the Virgin Orbit launch from a UK spaceport in January are pointing to issues with the fuel system. The attempt to send a satellite into orbit from a rocket piggybacking on a Boeing 747 failed when the craft suffered an “anomaly” while travelling at 11,000
Prime minister Rishi Sunak and chancellor Jeremy Hunt are exploring a pay offer to try to end the wave of public sector strikes that would backdate next year’s wage award for NHS staff and other key workers. After weeks of deadlock, Sunak and Hunt are considering giving workers a lump sum by backdating next year’s
We are all interventionists now. In the US, not long ago the bastion of free market thinking, fear of China, worries over the security of supply chains, aspirations for re-industrialisation and hopes of a green transformation are combining to reshape trade and industrial policies. The EU shares US worries over China, mostly in terms of
US equities softened on Tuesday after inflation slowed less than expected, raising investors’ expectations that the Federal Reserve will respond with further interest rate rises this year to combat increasing prices. Wall Street’s blue-chip S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.4 per cent and 0.3 per cent, respectively in morning trade in New
Rishi Sunak is due to meet EU leaders in Bavaria this week in a final push for a Brexit deal on Northern Ireland, amid warnings of a revolt by Conservative MPs if they judge the UK prime minister is ceding too much ground to Brussels. Sunak is expected to hold talks with EU leaders on
Northern Ireland’s Stormont assembly has failed to elect a speaker for the sixth time since elections last May, with the biggest pro-UK political party blocking the move as it presses for sweeping changes to post-Brexit trading arrangements for the region. The Democratic Unionist party’s continuing boycott came as long-running negotiations between London and Brussels to
Western intelligence shows Russia is amassing aircraft close to the border with Ukraine, an indication that Moscow is preparing to throw its jets and helicopters into the war to support a stuttering land offensive. The fear of a looming air war in Ukraine has prompted allies to prioritise rapid shipments of air defence assets and
Nato for the first time has openly acknowledged the possibility of Finland and Sweden joining the military alliance separately, breaking a taboo over their previous insistence they join as a pair, as their bids are being held up mainly by Turkey. The prospect of the two Nordic neighbours being delinked represents an admission that diplomatic
Germany’s defence minister has voiced his frustration with European partners who spent months pressuring Berlin to supply tanks to Ukraine but have so far failed to deliver any of the heavy armour themselves. Boris Pistorius said progress made by other countries in sending German-made Leopard tanks had “not been exactly breathtaking, to put it mildly”.
The US consumer price index rose at a rate of 6.4 per cent in January compared to a year earlier, a smaller decline than expected. Economists had been expecting a deceleration in the annual CPI to 6.2 per cent from the 6.5 per cent pace recorded in December, according to the consensus forecast published by
Welcome back to Energy Source. BP has been in the spotlight since last week’s announcement it will slow its shift away from oil and gas. Executives have been sent out to defend the move: the head of its low-carbon business told my colleague Tom there was “absolutely no link” between the decision and lower renewable
Is the US learning to live with division? I don’t put this thought forward with much confidence. I will regret it when pandemonium flares again. But the midterm elections of last November passed more or less without incident. The end of the federal right to abortion, an affront to liberal America, has not sparked civil
UK wage growth accelerated by more than expected in the three months to December but remained below inflation, according to official statistics that will be closely watched by the Bank of England ahead of its next interest rate decision. Growth in average regular pay, excluding bonuses, rose to an annual rate of 6.7 per cent
Good morning. Stephen continues to rest and recuperate. I’ve decided to start a rumour that he is on a ballooning holiday in Alaska. Pass it on. New this morning: growth in average regular pay rose to 6.7 per cent in the final three months of 2022 compared with the previous year. That figure is both