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US jobs growth rose at an unexpectedly rapid clip in October, defying expectations for a larger slowdown as the historically tight labour market again showed resilience in the face of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive efforts to curb demand. The economy added 261,000 positions last month, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics

The Bank of England has raised interest rates by 0.75 percentage points to 3 per cent in its most forceful act to tame inflation for 30 years but signalled that borrowing costs would not rise in the future by as much as markets expect. The pound fell 2 per cent against the dollar, which had

Grain shipments from Ukraine will resume on Wednesday after Russia agreed to rejoin a UN-backed initiative to allow exports via the Black Sea, ending a stand-off that threatened to reignite a global food crisis. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, had phoned his Turkish counterpart to say Moscow was

Banks that lent $12.7bn to Elon Musk for his $44bn Twitter takeover are preparing to hold the debt until early next year as they wait for the billionaire to unveil a clearer business plan they can market to investors, according to three people with knowledge of the plans. Barring an unexpected rally in credit markets

Britishvolt is preparing to enter administration as early as Monday after the troubled UK battery start-up failed to secure additional funding, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. The company, which has been developing a £3.8bn gigafactory in north-east England, has been in emergency fundraising talks for weeks after running down its cash

The US and EU have criticised Russia’s decision to pull the plug on the wartime deal that unblocked the passage of millions of tonnes of grain via southern Ukraine, with traders and food security experts saying Moscow’s move would fuel a fresh spike in prices and increase hunger levels among poorer countries. Washington called Moscow’s

Elon Musk has joined the elite club of social media barons after clinching a $44bn takeover of Twitter in the same week that investors wiped hundreds of billions of dollars from Big Tech valuations. Musk’s drawn-out acquisition of Twitter, which he launched in April but attempted to abort in July, has closed just as a

Elon Musk has closed his $44bn deal to take Twitter private, bringing an end to one of the most high-profile and dramatic buyout sagas in recent memory after months of legal wrangling between the world’s richest man and the social media platform. As the billionaire entrepreneur took over on Thursday night, he fired Twitter’s chief

Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden signalled the oil and gas group was ready to pay higher taxes as its announcement of $9.5bn in third-quarter profits prompted renewed calls for additional levies on energy companies. The profits are only surpassed in the company’s history by the previous quarter’s $11.5bn, leaving Europe’s largest energy major on

UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt has delayed the date for his long-awaited medium-term fiscal plan from October 31 to November 17, as calmer markets give the government some economic breathing space. Hunt made the announcement on Wednesday morning after talks with new prime minister Rishi Sunak, who wanted more time to go through the details of

US aerospace and defence group Raytheon Technologies received a third-quarter revenue boost from the recovering commercial air travel industry, but its missiles unit took a hit from continued supply chain constraints. Raytheon’s third-quarter revenue reached $17bn, up 5 per cent over the same period last year, slightly missing analyst estimates of $17.2bn. The top line

Rishi Sunak will become Britain’s youngest prime minister in modern times and the country’s first non-white leader after Conservative MPs overwhelmingly backed him to succeed Liz Truss. The former chancellor’s path to office was cleared on Sunday when ex-prime minister Boris Johnson abandoned his hopes of a comeback. Johnson had secured the public backing of

Boris Johnson was on Sunday desperately seeking more Conservative MPs to support his comeback bid, as he tried to secure the 100 nominations needed to enter the ballot to become Britain’s next prime minister. In a blow to Johnson, Suella Braverman, the Brexiter former home secretary, ruled herself out of running and gave her backing

Penny Mordaunt has held nine ministerial positions in eight government departments, including three cabinet posts. Yet until this summer’s Conservative leadership contest, when she came third, she was an unfamiliar figure to most of the British public. Now she is making another bid to become prime minister, touting her “fresh face” as a virtue that

Conservative MPs were on Friday deeply divided by the prospect of Boris Johnson returning as party leader and UK prime minister — just three months after he quit following a string of scandals. Contenders to replace Liz Truss — who dramatically resigned on Thursday after only six weeks in power — were racing to secure

Liz Truss was on Thursday forced to quit as UK prime minister, drawing to a dramatic close 45 days in office that saw her preside over financial turmoil and catastrophic damage to the ruling Conservative party. Truss was told to quit by senior party figures on Thursday morning, leaving bitterly divided Tory MPs facing the

UK prime minister Liz Truss committed to increasing state pensions in line with prices next year as Britain’s inflation rate rose to a 40-year high of 10.1 per cent in September. Speaking during prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Truss sought to reassure pensioners their incomes would not fall behind inflation

The Bank of England is set to delay the sale of billions of pounds of government bonds in a bid to foster greater stability in gilt markets following the UK’s failed “mini” Budget. The BoE had already delayed the start of its sale of £838bn of gilts bought under its quantitative easing programme from October

Jeremy Hunt, the new UK chancellor, on Monday scrapped the bulk of his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax cuts in a desperate effort to calm markets, while slashing the government’s energy support package. In an emergency move to rebuild the government’s fiscal credibility, Hunt rewrote the government’s tax and spending plans, putting a wrecking ball through

The UK’s new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has insisted that prime minister Liz Truss is still running the government after reports suggested he was preparing to scrap further parts of her “mini” Budget. Following Truss’s decision to sack her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng on Friday, senior Conservative MPs believe it is a matter of time before she