News

The CBI needs to become “sharper and more focused” to reclaim the confidence of its members and the government after “devastating” allegations of rape, sexual harassment and bullying, the organisation’s president said on Friday. Speaking publicly for the first time after a week of bruising headlines questioning the future of the UK’s premier business lobby

The cost of buying insurance against a US government default has shot to its highest level in more than a decade, in an early sign of market concerns about the political impasse in Washington over the debt ceiling. Amid a stalemate between the White House and congressional Republicans on raising the federal borrowing limit, the

Andrew Bailey has said the Bank of England is working on reform of Britain’s bank deposit insurance guarantee scheme, raising the prospect of increased protection for customers. Speaking in response to high-profile bank failures on both sides of the Atlantic, the BoE governor suggested the UK might need to increase its limit for guaranteed deposits

EY has called off the plan to break up its audit and consulting businesses after months of internal disagreement and opposition from executives in the US. The Big Four firm communicated the decision on Tuesday in a note to partners, which was seen by the Financial Times. The plan, code named “Project Everest”, was approved

Corporate America is facing its sharpest drop in profits since the early stages of the Covid pandemic, according to Wall Street forecasts, as high inflation squeezes margins and fears of an impending recession hold back demand. Companies on the S&P 500 index are expected to report a 6.8 per cent decline in first-quarter earnings compared

Investors are loading up on protection against a fresh round of financial turmoil in US regional bank stocks as lenders prepare to reveal how badly their earnings have been squeezed by the troubles that took down Silicon Valley Bank. Regional bank share prices have stabilised since SVB’s collapse sparked a massive mid-March slide, but traders

US fund managers are increasing investments in international stock markets after rising interest rates and fears of an economic slowdown brought an end to more than a decade of domestic dominance. US stocks have vastly outperformed most other developed and emerging markets since the financial crisis, but the trend began to reverse last year. The

A British business registered to a terraced house in a north London suburb appears to have arranged the sale of about $1.2bn of electronics into Russia since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine at the start of 2022. Mykines Corporation LLP, a company based in the London borough of Enfield, is listed in Russian records

The US is pushing back against efforts by some European allies to offer Ukraine a “road map” to Nato membership at the alliance’s July summit, exposing divides in the west over Kyiv’s postwar status. The US, Germany and Hungary are resisting efforts from countries such as Poland and the Baltic states to offer Kyiv deeper

The Swiss government has cut bonuses for about 1,000 senior bankers at Credit Suisse, with the executive team losing their outstanding variable pay entirely, after the lender’s rescue by its rival UBS last month. Following a meeting on Wednesday, the federal council, Switzerland’s executive body, called on the finance ministry to cut bonuses at Credit

Donald Trump has arrived at a Manhattan courthouse to be formally charged in connection with payments made to buy the silence of a porn actress ahead of his 2016 campaign for the White House. The arraignment of Trump marks the first criminal case against a former or sitting US president and will fire the starting

Ferry operators are exploring rationing the number of coaches that pass through the UK’s busiest port in an effort to avert a repeat of last weekend’s travel chaos, sparking a furious reaction from transport companies. Some coaches were left waiting for up to 14 hours to board ferries from Dover as the Easter holiday getaway

Saudi Arabia and other members of the Opec+ group announced surprise oil production cuts totalling more than 1mn barrels a day, putting Riyadh on a collision course with the US as the kingdom attempts to boost prices amid fears of weaker demand. Saudi Arabia will implement a “voluntary cut” of 500,000 b/d, or just under

Two years on from the January 6 Capitol riots, and following a familiar call to arms from former president Donald Trump, it was widely feared that crowds of his supporters might swarm the streets of New York to protest his indictment by the Manhattan district attorney. But by Friday afternoon, the anticipated hordes were conspicuously absent.

Donald Trump will turn himself in to New York prosecutors on Tuesday, his lawyer said, insisting the former president would “not be put in handcuffs”. Joe Tacopina added he expected the charges — the first criminal indictment in history of an ex-US president — to relate to payments to buy the silence of porn actress

Wall Street bonuses fell last year by the most since the financial crisis, dropping 26 per cent to an average of $176,000 amid higher rates and a decline in dealmaking, according to a report from the New York state comptroller. The drop in payouts — the biggest since 2008, when year-end incentive payments fell 43

Binance hid substantial links to China for several years, contradicting executives’ claims that the crypto exchange left the country after a clampdown on the industry in late 2017, according to internal company documents seen by the Financial Times. Chief executive Changpeng Zhao and others holding senior positions repeatedly instructed Binance employees to hide the company’s

The governor of the Bank of England has dismissed the prospect of an imminent financial crisis, describing last week’s dumping of European bank shares as investors “testing out” lenders and insisting the world is not “at all in the place” it was before the 2008 crash. Appearing before the cross-party Treasury select committee on Tuesday,

Humza Yousaf has won the race to replace Nicola Sturgeon as leader of the Scottish National party, paving the way for him to become Scotland’s first minister. The 37-year old health secretary won 52.1 per cent of the vote of SNP members in the second round of voting, beating Kate Forbes, the finance secretary, who

Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Fidelity are the biggest winners from investors pouring cash into US money market funds over the past two weeks, as the collapse of two regional US banks and the rescue deal for Credit Suisse raised concerns about the safety of bank deposits. More than $286bn has flooded into money market