News

Is “levelling up” of regional inequalities in the UK a priority? The Budget to be delivered on March 15 by Jeremy Hunt, chancellor of the exchequer, should help answer that question. Unfortunately, recent work suggests the challenge is even more difficult than widely thought. It turns out that the UK has two regional problems, not

The UN’s atomic watchdog has said Iran has agreed to the reinstallation of cameras and other monitoring equipment at its facilities after months of mounting western concerns about the country’s nuclear programme. Iran removed more than 20 cameras and other equipment from its nuclear plants last year, escalating its stand-off with the west in what

Technology groups that have recently listed in the US burnt through more than $12bn of cash in 2022, with dozens of companies now facing difficult questions over how to raise more funds after their share prices tumbled. High-growth, lossmaking groups dominated the market for initial public offerings in 2020 and 2021, with 150 tech groups

China’s military spending will grow at its fastest pace in four years in 2023 and take up a larger share of the economy, underscoring Beijing’s reweighting towards security over development. Defence expenditure will increase by 7.2 per cent in 2023, well ahead of the 5.7 per cent increase in general public expenditure, according to a

England’s post-Brexit farm payments sounded like a promising opportunity for Jane Bassett. The third-generation farmer takes pride in the species-rich meadows — a playground for hares — on her small Peak District livestock farm and the new scheme replaces EU subsidies with cash for environmental work. Yet not only is Bassett unsure whether to take

What might an insurer, a housebuilder and two water companies have in common in early 21st-century Britain? Here’s one answer: if you checked the UK’s biggest listed companies at the end of January, these four businesses would have been among the only ones with a female chief executive and chair. This finding comes from the

China will target an economic expansion of “around 5 per cent” for 2023 as President Xi Jinping seeks to restore pre-pandemic levels of growth and prepares to centralise power further in his own hands. Announcing the target, which was below last year’s goal of 5.5 per cent, China’s outgoing premier Li Keqiang told its rubber-stamp

Last week Tokyo was teeming with fund managers from around the world eager to establish how Japan will fare as its biggest trading partners square up for a new cold war. The Daiwa Investment Conference provided the venue and the bento lunch boxes; robots, via their human advocates, provided the most convincing part of the

Scientists at four of the world’s leading universities have teamed up to investigate the origins of life on Earth — and look for similar biological processes taking place elsewhere in the universe. The universities of Cambridge in the UK, Harvard and Chicago in the US and ETH Zürich in Switzerland announced the formation of what

Federal Reserve officials are converging around the need to keep US interest rates high for longer, reflecting concern about recent hotter-than-expected inflation data and worries about global economic trends that could fuel price pressures. “In order to put this episode of high inflation behind us, further policy tightening, maintained for a longer time, will probably

For almost a decade, executives at JPMorgan Chase were able to avoid questions about their decision to keep Jeffrey Epstein on as a client while the convicted sex offender allegedly trafficked and abused dozens of teenage girls. Now, more than 20 employees at the US bank, including star managers, are having their communications scrutinised in

Investors’ bets on where UK interest rates will peak have shot higher over the past month, prompting an attempt by Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey to stop markets getting carried away. Futures markets are currently pricing in a jump in the BoE’s interest rate to just above 4.6 per cent by December. At the

Multinationals that relocate their regional headquarters to Saudi Arabia this year with the aim of securing lucrative government contracts would be “likely” to receive tax relief, said the kingdom’s investment minister, as executives fear they could be taxed in more than one jurisdiction. Many executives said they were still uncertain about the details of the

It has been more than a decade since Jeff Bezos excitedly sketched out his vision for Alexa on a whiteboard at Amazon’s headquarters. His voice assistant would help do all manner of tasks, such as shop online, control gadgets, or even read kids a bedtime story. But the Amazon founder’s grand vision of a new

Last June, when the US Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade, women started deleting period-tracking apps from their phones. With abortion set to become illegal in certain states, they feared the data might be used to prosecute those seeking terminations. Was this an overreaction, or simply the realisation that we have entered the age of

Sex education in kindergartens, freezing the eggs of single women to counter population decline, three-day weekends — these are some of the more unusual delegates’ proposals for China’s biggest annual political extravaganza, the “two sessions”. Lacking official backing and unlikely to be adopted, the ideas are a relatively freewheeling part of the meetings in Beijing,

The comedian Eddie Izzard used to do a standup routine about showers. In particular, the fine art of getting the water temperature right. Turn the dial a tad too far to one side, and you sustain third-degree burns. A fraction too much the other way, and you enter the sort of cryogenic stasis that messianic

Brussels has said it wants enough manufacturing capacity for clean technologies within the bloc to meet two-fifths of domestic needs while allowing EU governments to override environmental considerations in order for key projects to go ahead. In a draft proposal seen by the Financial Times, the European Commission said that in five key sectors —

The Financial Conduct Authority has been blamed by some UK officials and SoftBank staff for London losing out to New York on the blockbuster stock market listing of chip designer Arm. SoftBank, the Japanese owner of the Cambridge-based semiconductor company, this week dashed Rishi Sunak’s hopes of retaining the homegrown tech giant, rejecting entreaties from

A Saudi prince whose palatial London residence is on the market for £250mn after it was repossessed is being sued by a second lender over alleged missed payments on a private Boeing 787 jet. An Irish subsidiary of China Minsheng Bank is claiming at least £30mn in unpaid bills and interest on the business jet

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is to spend about £3bn in his March 15 Budget to shield UK households from higher energy bills, but new economic forecasts mean he will have little room for big giveaways. The chancellor has been handed draft forecasts by the UK fiscal watchdog showing the economy will barely meet his fiscal rule