News

Rishi Sunak has hinted that he could perform a U-turn and introduce a windfall tax on UK oil and gas companies unless they ramp up investment in new energy projects. The UK chancellor has long argued against such a levy, which is backed by the Labour party, on the grounds that it would deter investment

Ministers are to unveil the biggest overhaul of broadcasting rules in almost 20 years, handing the BBC, ITV and a privatised Channel 4 far greater bargaining power with digital TV platforms such as Sky, Amazon and Samsung. Nadine Dorries, culture secretary, will on Thursday publish long-awaited plans to privatise Channel 4, revamp television regulations for

Liz Truss, UK foreign secretary, has warned China to learn lessons from the west’s robust economic response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying Beijing will face consequences if it does not “play by the rules”. Truss, in a hawkish set-piece speech, argued that the Ukraine crisis had delivered a salutary lesson to the west and

Britain’s Conservative party has confirmed it is investigating reports that a male MP watched pornography on his mobile phone while sitting in the House of Commons chamber. The allegations, first reported in the Mirror and Sun newspapers on Wednesday, were discussed during a meeting of Tory MPs on Tuesday in which female members shared their

European stocks were volatile on Wednesday, following a bruising session on Wall Street where the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite share index posted its biggest single-day decline since September 2020. The regional Stoxx 600 share index lost almost 1 per cent cent in early dealings before recovering to trade 0.4 per cent higher. Exporters were boosted by

McKinsey’s managing partner has pushed back against allegations that the consultancy breached conflict of interest rules by advising opioids producers on how to “turbocharge” sales while also working for US health regulators seeking to tackle a deadly painkiller overdose epidemic. Bob Sternfels told a US congressional committee on Wednesday that he regretted McKinsey did not

Bill Hwang, founder of collapsed family office Archegos Capital Management, has been arrested by US authorities and charged with racketeering, fraud and market manipulation. The indictment unsealed on Wednesday accused Hwang, 58, and former chief financial officer Patrick Halligan, 45, of using Archegos as an “instrument of market manipulation and fraud” with “far-reaching consequences for

Spotify chief executive Daniel Ek has sought to distance his company from Netflix, telling investors the two are “vastly different businesses”, after the recent crash in the video streaming service’s stock price sliced Spotify’s value by a fifth. “I think a lot of people are grouping us and Netflix together . . . despite both being media companies and

Tech investors have been on edge about this quarter’s earnings season ever since Netflix stunned Wall Street by revealing that its decade-long run of subscriber growth had come sputtering to a halt. Now, they are finding little to comfort them as more companies report their numbers. On Wednesday, despite insisting that its business is nothing

The head of the London Metal Exchange has decided to stay in the role, backtracking on plans to join a digital assets start-up as the 145-year-old City institution seeks to repair a reputation damaged by recent chaos in the nickel market. Matthew Chamberlain, chief executive, said the events of recent weeks had brought into focus

Higher interest rates and investor rotation into value sectors have squashed tech company valuations. When the businesses are listed in the UK, they already come with a discount to US peers built in. Cambridge-based Aveva added a third woe to the list on Wednesday. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will hit the profitability of the industrial

The BT Tower. A dank Soho alley. A pub. The highly anticipated anglicisation of the French series Call My Agent! begins with a montage reminding us that we’ve left Eiffel, Haussmann and café culture behind. The venue is now unmistakably London, but it’s a famous French idiom that comes to mind while watching the new

A year and a half before the coronavirus first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan, Devi Sridhar, a professor in global public health at the University of Edinburgh, warned with eerie prescience of the pandemic looming on the horizon. The biggest threat to the UK, Sridhar told audiences at the Hay Literary Festival in

Most of us are facing the challenge of re-entry into the “new normal”. My FT colleague Rana Foroohar perfectly captured the weirdness of this moment as “the cognitive dissonance of corporate life,” in this week’s Swamp Notes newsletter (and you can sign up here).  There is much to think about as we struggle to manage

Art began with animals – just look at Mayan jaguars, Egyptian cats and the painted bison in Lascaux. The particularly British love affair with the equestrian and canine is ingrained in its art history: see George Stubbs’ regal, romantic horses, Van Dyck’s painting of King Charles II as a child with his eponymous spaniel and

Egypt’s president has called for stakes in army-owned companies to be sold on the stock exchange before the end of the year, as part of efforts to address the economic fallout of the war between Russia and Ukraine. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi also announced plans for greater private sector participation in state-owned companies in a speech

An easing of UK immigration rules for care workers will not solve the sector’s workforce crisis unless the government funds an immediate increase in pay to well above the statutory minimum, a leading advisory group said on Wednesday. The Migration Advisory Committee, which was tasked with assessing how the end of EU free movement had

Two top-10 investors in Moderna have voted against a shareholder resolution that would push the US drugmaker towards transferring its technology to the developing world. The resolution, which will be proposed at the vaccine maker’s annual meeting on Thursday, asks its board of directors to explore the feasibility of transferring Moderna’s intellectual property and technical

India’s second-richest man Mukesh Ambani and US buyout group Apollo Global Management are planning a joint bid for UK high street pharmacy chain Boots, according to people familiar with the matter. The private equity group is working with Ambani’s Reliance Industries on a bid that if successful, would see one of Britain’s best-known retailers expand

Magnus Carlsen has often proved himself an innovative and inventive world champion, as he continues to stay ahead of his rivals in all forms of the game. Carlsen is the player to beat in two-hour classical play, 15-minute rapid, five-minute blitz, and one-minute bullet. The Norwegian, 31, has always varied his openings so as to

Welcome back. We have written a bit about environmental, social and governance investing losing some of its allure since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Investors are flocking towards oil-and-gas opportunities at the expense of clean energy projects. But there are signs of ESG resilience. Index provider MSCI reported earnings on Tuesday and said its ESG and