Unilever increased prices for its products 11 per cent in the second quarter from a year earlier and raised its full-year sales guidance, as it battles to pass on more cost increases to consumers. The consumer goods maker said it had yet to pass on the full impact of input cost rises to shoppers in

European stocks drifted on Tuesday after US retailer Walmart issued an after-hours profit warning and investors girded themselves for another interest rate rise from the Federal Reserve. Europe’s regional Stoxx 600 index struggled for direction, while London’s FTSE 100 rose 0.5 per cent. Shares in Walmart dropped almost 9 per cent in pre-market trading in

For entrepreneurs hoping to get Masayoshi Son’s backing, the global outbreak of Covid-19 has made it harder than ever to meet the billionaire SoftBank founder in person. Even after two years of the pandemic, Son has stopped travelling overseas, switching instead to online video chats. Visitors from both in and outside of Japan are required

Good morning. Ethan is away this week, resting up for August, which I will skip altogether (Unhedged will appear just three times a week all month, with a special guest author writing one of those.) So you know who to blame for the below: robert.armstrong@ft.com.  The market thinks the Fed has very good timing It’s

The writer is professor of economics and political science at the University of California, Berkeley The dollar has had a spectacular run, having risen more than 10 per cent against other major currencies since the start of the year. Actually, not a few governments and central banks would prefer the adjective “disastrous” to “spectacular”. For developing

This year Patrick Pouyanné, chief executive of TotalEnergies, was en route to Mozambique when he stopped off in the tiny central African nation of Rwanda. Rwanda has no oil and gas reserves and a small domestic market of 13mn people. Yet Pouyanné and Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame signed a co-operation agreement anyway, agreeing to explore

Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have exchanged blows over the economy in a crucial televised Tory leadership debate that ended in a bloody stalemate but took the contest to new levels of acrimony. Sunak, former chancellor, had hoped to use the primetime BBC1 debate to secure a breakthrough against foreign secretary Truss, who is seen

Walmart has cut its outlook for the second quarter and the rest of the year, signalling a sharp worsening of the US retail environment as inflation bites the price-sensitive consumers on which the world’s largest retailer depends. “The increasing levels of food and fuel inflation are affecting how customers spend, and while we’ve made good

Walmart has issued its second profit warning in 10 weeks, signalling a further deterioration in the US retail environment as inflation weighs on the price-sensitive consumers on whom the world’s largest retailer depends. “The increasing levels of food and fuel inflation are affecting how customers spend,” said Doug McMillon, Walmart’s chief executive. He said the

Liz Truss, foreign secretary, has proposed sweeping reforms to UK trade union laws that would guarantee minimum services during strikes and raise the threshold on the number of workers needing to take part in ballots on industrial action. Truss, the bookmakers’ favourite to be the UK’s next prime minister, pledged on Monday to introduce legislation

Lord David Trimble, a key architect of the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland almost a quarter of a century ago, has died after a short illness. He was 77. The Ulster Unionist party, which Trimble led from 1995-2005, released a brief statement from his family saying the politician had died earlier