News

Bad news comes thick and fast these days, from climate change to war to inflation. So it is worth pausing sometimes to appreciate good news, especially when it shows the power of policy to change things for the better. Last week brought one such opportunity, when official data revealed just how successfully the UK has

I have been appointed deputy for financial affairs for my brother, who has learning difficulties and is severely disabled. He lives in a residential home a long way from me so I cannot visit him every week. I have been asked by his carers to obtain a prepaid card for him which they will be

Europe’s attempt to build more sustainable life-sciences business clusters faces being damaged by a sharp drop in biotech valuations — prompting renewed concerns that US buyers will swoop on European start-ups. A rapid decline in the Nasdaq biotechnology index — down 13 per cent this year amid scientific setbacks and after a pandemic-driven surge —

Months of acrimony and division over the future of Generali will culminate this week in a shareholder vote in Trieste, the Italian port city that gave the country’s largest insurer its nickname. At stake is not just the fate of Generali, the almost 200-year old group with 75,000 employees and 67mn customers, but the credibility

Jean Monnet, one of the European Union’s founding fathers, wrote that “Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises.” And the coronavirus pandemic appears to have proven his adage correct, once again. EU health policy has advanced at breakneck speed in the last two years,

Standing outside a shopping centre in Belfast, Ann McCartney sighs. “Food is going up. There are ridiculous prices for electricity and gas. You don’t see your money when you’re in the shops — I’m cutting back.” For the 56-year-old who relies on sickness benefits, and many others in Northern Ireland, the cost of living crisis

French police have raided the Paris offices of Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance and a metalworks it formerly owned in an escalation of a criminal probe into the metals magnate’s empire. The Paris Prosecutor’s Office last year launched an investigation into Gupta’s French operations over allegations of “misuse of corporate assets” and “money laundering”, mirroring a

A new European framework for assessing medicines has the potential to speed up access to groundbreaking treatments and reduce the administrative burden on pharmaceutical companies, according to its developers. Health technology assessments, which examine the clinical effectiveness of a new medicine or medical device compared with existing technologies, are currently conducted by individual EU member

Aircraft leasing companies have launched a multinational effort to persuade safety authorities to allow grounded planes that were returned from Russia without full maintenance records back into commercial service. Declan Kelly, chair of Aircraft Leasing Ireland, said the trade body had begun an “asset preservation study” with regulators in Europe, the US and Bermuda to

Mainland Chinese property companies are scaling back their presence in Hong Kong as they struggle to deal with a liquidity crisis that has rocked the sector and forced the world’s most indebted developer Evergrande to default. Cash-strapped property company Kaisa, the Chinese sector’s second-biggest offshore bond issuer after Evergrande, sold an entire floor at The

The chief executive of Mizuho, SoftBank’s main lender, said he was “totally unconcerned” about the Japanese technology conglomerate’s financial health despite the sell-off in tech stocks forcing it to slow down investments. Mizuho, Japan’s third-largest lender, is part of a consortium of banks that provided SoftBank with a syndicated loan of $8bn this month as

The Pensions Regulator has become involved in a dispute over a £12mn surplus cash payment within a retirement scheme for thousands of UK water sector workers, in a case that is being closely watched by the industry. The regulator said on Monday it was in discussions with the trustees of the £710mn Water Companies Pension

Explosions struck the building housing the security services of the breakaway Moldovan republic of Transnistria on Monday, days after Moscow said the Russian-backed region could be drawn into the war in Ukraine. Transnistria, which is controlled by pro-Russian separatists and hosts Russian troop bases and arms depots, borders western Ukraine. It is seen as a

UK ministers are poised to double the government assistance provided to energy-intensive industries whose bills are soaring with an estimated £800mn three-year package to be announced on Friday. Kwasi Kwarteng, business secretary, has been under pressure from big business to provide relief for the spiralling cost of gas that is driving up global energy prices.

There may be much more leverage in leveraged buyouts than meets the eye. Evidence comes from Elon Musk’s $43bn Twitter bid and a far lower-profile fundraising by London-based asset manager 17Capital. Musk plans to obtain $12.5bn from a margin loan against Tesla shares worth $62.5bn. The money would contribute to the $33.5bn of cash equity

Hello dear readers, I hope you all had a good Easter break. Last week’s State of Fintech report from CB Insights had some striking stats. The first quarter of the year saw an 18 per cent quarter-on-quarter drop in funding, the largest since 2018 (though it was still the fourth strongest quarter on record). At the

European sanctions being imposed on individuals and companies believed to have ties to the Kremlin increases the danger that the internet could be split and siloed along political divides, according to the main internet registry for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia. RIPE NCC, a non-profit which hands out IP domain names

France’s Caribbean overseas territories have often been demonstrative in their dislike of far-right presidential candidates. On the 1988 campaign trail, Jean-Marie Le Pen was met with protests at a Martinique airport, which prevented his plane from landing. In 2017, his daughter Marine’s highest score in the Caribbean region was just 35.1 per cent, in Guiana.

Good evening, A UK parliamentary report today hit out at “disproportionate” and “arbitrary” Covid-19 travel restrictions that had left air passengers confused and delivered a “severe financial shock” to the aviation sector. As our Big Read explains, the last two years have seen the global industry battling for survival against flight bans and strict restrictions

Twitter is edging closer to selling the social media company to Elon Musk for $43.4bn in what could be one of the largest buyouts in history, people briefed about the matter have said. Twitter’s board was still meeting early on Monday to finalise the terms of an agreement with Musk, said one person briefed on

One of the lessons from the banking crisis is that it didn’t entirely matter who made the mess — everyone had to be seen to pay for it. Energy suppliers now face similar demands for penance as the price crisis drags on. High prices are not the fault of UK energy providers but a function