Ministers are taking a “big gamble” on energy prices easing further after failure to reach an agreement on increasing the UK’s gas storage capacity in time for next winter, the government’s top adviser on infrastructure has warned. Sir John Armitt, chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, told the Financial Times that while the UK needed
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US officials believe the two aerial objects shot down by US fighter jets in recent days were high-altitude balloons, but “much smaller” than the one brought down over the Atlantic last week, according to the top Democrat in Congress. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said he had been briefed by Jake Sullivan, the US
David Solomon told a private gathering of Goldman Sachs’ top executives that he had erred by not cutting jobs earlier in 2022, according to people familiar with the remarks. Speaking to about 400 Goldman partners at a closed-door meeting in Miami this week, the chief executive said he took responsibility for being slow to reduce
Prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for scores of developers as the death toll from last week’s earthquake in Turkey and Syria tops 33,000 and the security situation in some areas of the disaster zone deteriorates. Turkish investigators have identified 131 people of interest in a wide-ranging probe into the catastrophe, handing out 113 arrest warrants,
Investors are betting on a longer period of higher interest rates as they begin to accept the message from US Federal Reserve officials that more time is needed to cool inflation in the face of a resilient labour market. Pricing in the futures market shows that investors expect rates to peak slightly above 5 per
The UK business department has gone through more reincarnations than Doctor Who, the science fiction character who is a product of Britain’s highly successful creative industry. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is now reorganising it again — hiving off parts of what was the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and merging the business rump
The writer is chair of Rockefeller International In February of 1998, 25 years ago this month, I was in Bangkok, ground zero of the Asian financial crisis. The implosion of the Thai baht had triggered a serial meltdown of currencies and markets with protesters in the streets across the region and chaos spreading. As world
Richard Sharp, the chair of the BBC, is under new pressure to quit after MPs ruled he made “significant errors of judgment” in failing to declare his role in arranging an £800,000 loan to former premier Boris Johnson. The reprimand by MPs leaves Sharp in a precarious position, with Labour saying his position was “increasingly
Gemma Hatvani has worked in the energy industry for 20 years but has not experienced anything like the past couple of months as struggling households flock to her Facebook-based service, Energy Support and Advice UK. “It’s horrendous . . . the demand from people needing food parcels, top-up vouchers . . . I know we hear this word a lot but it’s unprecedented,”
The writer is Ukraine’s minister of finance In the aftermath of the cold war, world powers put in place systems of global governance. The goal was to protect liberal values, human rights and the world economy, and to extinguish the threat of nuclear annihilation. The unquestionable success of this new rules-based international order was its
Bonuses for associates joining major US and UK law firms, which reached record highs in 2021, have dried up as the legal sector suffers from a sharp decline in dealmaking, according to the industry’s largest recruiters. The six-figure sums paid to junior lawyers as sign-on or retention bonuses had all but disappeared by the end
Sandesh Gulhane dreamt of being a doctor since he was three years old. But the Glasgow-based GP and shadow health secretary for the Scottish Conservatives now despairs over the “brutal” conditions facing the country’s NHS that has left patients frustrated and fearful over delayed operations and long waiting lists. He says he often encounters colleagues
A Deutsche Bank probe into the mis-selling of risky foreign exchange derivatives in Spain has found that staff acted disingenuously, exploited flaws in the bank’s controls and broke EU rules, according to people with knowledge of the report. One of the people said employees acted in “bad faith” over years, pushing small and medium sized
This week’s earthquakes in Syria and Turkey are the deadliest in either country since 1939, according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. The latest estimates suggest that at least 25,000 people were killed in the disaster and the number is still rising. Improvements in early detection, infrastructure and emergency response systems
Almost two years ago, a dozen elite football clubs proposed a breakaway European Super League. The objective was to establish one single league competition that would boast a large number of the world’s very best players — and could grab a significant part of the sport’s multibillion-dollar revenues. The plan failed — victim of a
The US shot down an unidentified object that was flying over Canada on Saturday, in the second incident in two days that comes one week after the Pentagon took down a Chinese spy balloon off the US coast. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Saturday afternoon said he had ordered the shooting down of “an
A second member of the European parliament has been charged with corruption and another arrested as Belgian prosecutors continued their investigation into the “Qatargate” scandal. Marc Tarabella, a Belgian socialist, was remanded in custody on Saturday after being charged with corruption, money laundering and participation in a criminal organisation. He was arrested on Friday, just
Turkish authorities have arrested the developer of a large residential building that was toppled by this week’s devastating earthquake as president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan faces growing discontent over the quality of construction in the stricken region. A contractor for a building of luxury flats in the hard-hit Hatay province in Turkey’s south was detained on
Meta has delayed finalising multiple teams’ budgets while it prepares a fresh round of job cuts as Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to contain costs in his “year of efficiency” causes disruption at the social media company. Two Meta employees familiar with the situation told the Financial Times that there had been a lack of clarity about
Shares in small artificial intelligence groups have soared this year on the back of the hype surrounding ChatGPT and other generative AI models, leading analysts to warn of a “speculative” bubble in the making. Last year marked a breakout year for AI that can produce fluent textual responses to questions, draft poems and stories and
Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s tour of European capitals may bring Ukraine closer to acquiring fighter jets. That would provide wings for freedom — and a helpful updraft for defence companies. They are already benefiting from Ukraine-related orders: Saab, maker of the Gripen fighter jet, rose 10 per cent on accelerating sales guidance on Friday. The Ukrainian president’s