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When you read the word “conservation”, what do you picture? For most people, I suspect it conjures imagery of green spaces — dense woodland, rolling hills, perhaps a stretch of marshes. So if I told you the UK had designated thousands of parcels of land as “conservation areas” over the past 56 years, protected by

The yen climbed on Friday as investors responded to news of the likely appointment of academic Kazuo Ueda as the next Bank of Japan governor. The Japanese currency climbed 0.5 per cent to ¥130.9 to the dollar, as markets judged Ueda likely to mark a departure from the ultra-dovish policies of Haruhiko Kuroda, who is

Russian president Vladimir Putin has “lost the energy war” and the worst of the European gas and power crisis has passed, according to Pierre Andurand, one of the world’s top-performing traders in the sector. Andurand, whose energy focused hedge funds have enjoyed three bumper years of returns during the coronavirus pandemic, said he had closed

Ünal Boybey and his family were left on their own to dig the bodies of their relatives out of the rubble in the devastated Turkish city of Adıyaman. Then they also dug the graves. “Normally municipal workers would do this,” said the 63-year-old as he watched two younger relatives shovel clumps of rust red earth

For Rishi Sunak, the moment of truth is approaching on whether he can strike a deal to settle the corrosive row over the post-Brexit settlement in Northern Ireland. As talks intensify, the British prime minister faces many questions but one above all others: what role, if any, can he accept for judges at the European

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has called on public sector workers to take into account the central bank’s view that inflation will “fall very rapidly” when asking for pay rises. Under pressure from MPs to comment on the strike action that has hit the health service, schools, transport and the civil service, Bailey told

The UK media regulator has launched a probe into whether telecoms companies are treating customers fairly as groups prepare to raise their rates by 14 per cent against a backdrop of rising living costs. Since 2021, much of the fixed broadband and mobile market has increased its prices annually in April both for new customers

Standing in Westminster Hall, the oldest building in Britain’s parliament, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy displayed his usual skill at coining a compelling phrase: “We have freedom,” the Ukrainian president told UK lawmakers. “Give us wings to protect it . . . Wings for freedom!” It was a typically eloquent plea, this time for fighter jets, a longstanding item on Kyiv’s

Business lobby groups have called on the government to kick-start economic growth by including tax breaks for investment worth billions of pounds and policies to tackle worker shortages in the Budget. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is expected to offer only modest help for companies in the March 15 Budget, with no immediate tax cuts likely because

Good morning. Goldman’s blues (and portfolio theory) People think Goldman Sachs is down and out, mostly because of this chart: Over the past decade, Goldman’s shares have returned less than half of what its rival Morgan Stanley’s have, and have underperformed the market in general. Goldman is supposed to be where all the smart money

Regulators failed to anticipate the dangers that borrowing by pension schemes posed to the stability of the UK’s financial system, according to a parliamentary report into the turmoil that hit the gilt markets following Liz Truss’s disastrous “mini” Budget in September last year. Pension schemes suffered multibillion-pound losses after they were forced to sell assets

Pension schemes that invested in liability-driven investment funds run by BlackRock and other managers are being advised to sell their holdings following last year’s gilt market turmoil. In a move expected to lead to outflows at some of the biggest asset managers, investment advisers XPS Pensions and Barnett Waddingham have cut their ratings on some

The writer is a former investment banker and author of Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon Goldman Sachs has lost its swagger. The market value of the venerable 154-year-old investment bank, at $121bn, is now $42bn less than its longtime arch-rival Morgan Stanley. It used to be that Goldman was the

The writer is chief executive of Ark, a charity that runs a chain of state sector academies Many of us in the education world had mixed feelings during the teachers’ strike on “Walkout Wednesday”. No one wants children to be missing out on school. But equally, it is hard not to sympathise with staff who

Amazon, Meta, Alphabet and Microsoft will collectively incur more than $10bn in charges related to mass redundancies, real estate and other cost-saving measures, as the Big Tech companies reveal the hefty price they incur to rein in spending. The US companies that have been implementing the largest job cuts in the tech sector disclosed the

Vodafone’s interim chief executive said the group “can do better” after it announced revenues were falling in some of its biggest markets. Margherita Della Valle, who took on the role at the start of the year, said the telecoms group had made changes to improve performance. “The recent decline in revenue in Europe shows we

The writer is a lecturer at Stanford University, former deputy secretary-general of Nato and previously the US chief negotiator on New Start The US has just declared Russia to be in non-compliance with the New Start treaty, the last remaining legally binding measure between the two countries to control nuclear arms. The issues are straightforward:

Lord Karan Bilimoria, chancellor of Birmingham University, has warned that it would be “utter madness” for ministers to try to bring down migration by cutting the number of foreign students at UK universities. Bilimoria, founder of Cobra beer and former CBI president, said he was “very concerned” by government discussions on cutting overseas student numbers:

As Cristiano Ronaldo jogged out to the pitch for his Saudi Arabian debut last week, gilded confetti popped and swirled down on the stands. The crowd in the Riyadh stadium roared. Seconds later, when Lionel Messi emerged to face his longtime rival, they erupted. Before the players’ entrance, Turki al-Sheikh, the kingdom’s entertainment emperor, had