News

The vice-chair of the US Federal Reserve on Friday opened the door to a faster withdrawal of its massive bond-buying programme, suggesting the central bank could take earlier-than-expected action to tame inflation. Richard Clarida said the Federal Open Market Committee could consider discussing the pace of the planned “taper” at its upcoming policy meeting in

Turkey slashed interest rates on Thursday, sending the lira tumbling to a new record low and amplifying concerns President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s fixation on low borrowing costs will worsen already acute inflation. The central bank cut its one-week repo rate by 1 percentage point to 15 per cent, marking the third straight reduction in interest

US President Joe Biden has called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether the country’s biggest oil companies are engaged in “potentially illegal conduct” that is resulting in higher gasoline prices for Americans. In a letter to FTC chair Lina Khan, Biden said there was “mounting evidence of anti-consumer behaviour” in the market, noting

Germany’s energy regulator said it had “temporarily suspended” certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, dealing a setback to the Kremlin-backed gas project and sparking a rise in UK and continental European gas prices. The regulator said it could not yet approve the project, led by Russia’s Gazprom, because its owners had not yet properly

The Dutch government has launched an eleventh-hour attempt to keep Shell in the Netherlands by seeking to abolish a controversial dividend tax cited by the energy group as a reason to unify its share structure and move its headquarters to the UK. Officials from the Dutch government told the Financial Times that the caretaker government

The COP26 climate summit in Glasgow succeeded in getting 197 countries to agree new rules on limiting greenhouse gas emissions, but last-minute objections from India and China stymied a commitment to end coal use and fossil fuel subsidies. Conference president Alok Sharma fought back tears in the final minutes as he apologised to other ministers

In early March 2020, Pfizer’s chief scientific officer was summoned to the White House to discuss the disease that was sweeping across the world. Mikael Dolsten did not talk about the vaccine that would later bring the company fame and enormous wealth: instead, in those early days, he described how the drugmaker was working on

Jes Staley exchanged 1,200 emails with Jeffrey Epstein over a four-year period with content that included unexplained terms such as “snow white”, according to people familiar with the correspondence between the former Barclays chief executive and the convicted sex offender. Staley resigned from Barclays last week after seeing preliminary conclusions of an investigation by UK

Alexander Lukashenko has threatened to cut the transit of gas and goods through Belarus to Europe if the EU imposes further sanctions on his regime over the migrant crisis on the Belarusian-Polish border. The Belarus president was responding to an announcement by Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president, on Wednesday that the bloc would

US consumer prices are expected to have surged in October at their fastest pace in three decades, as bottlenecks and other supply-chain disruptions intensify and inflationary pressures broaden. Consensus forecasts compiled by Bloomberg indicate that the consumer price index to be published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday rose 5.9 per cent in

US industrial group General Electric is to split itself into three public companies from 2023, a big step in chief executive Larry Culp’s plan to streamline the sprawling conglomerate. The companies will focus on healthcare, energy and aviation. GE Healthcare will be spun off in 2023, with GE retaining a 19.9 per cent stake in

Tesla shares were under pressure on Monday after millions of Twitter users polled by chief executive Elon Musk concluded that he should sell 10 per cent of his stake in the electric carmaker. The 24-hour poll, which was conducted over the weekend, is the latest stunt by Musk to delight fans but risk controversy. When

China reported dozens of new local coronavirus infections on Saturday, a day after the government reaffirmed its commitment to strict measures designed to limit the pandemic’s spread within its borders. The country’s National Health Commission on Sunday reported 74 new cases for the previous day, of which 50 were locally transmitted. A wave of cases

Joe Biden has promised to pass a $1.75tn social spending bill as he looks to capitalise on the momentum provided by the passage of his $1tn infrastructure plan. The US president on Saturday welcomed Friday night’s vote in the House of Representatives which guaranteed the bipartisan infrastructure package will now become law. That bill was

Pfizer’s Covid-19 oral antiviral drug cut the risk of hospitalisation or death by 89 per cent in a late-stage trial, creating a potential new tool in treating patients and combating the pandemic. The US pharmaceutical company said on Friday that it was stopping the trial due to the “overwhelming efficacy” and will add the data

Opec and its allies declined to accelerate plans to increase oil production, rejecting calls from President Joe Biden to help ease rising crude prices and increasing the odds of a retaliatory move by the US. The Opec+ group, which has included Russia since 2016, said on Thursday it would stick with a plan formulated this

The US has added NSO Group, the Israeli military spyware company that created software that has been traced to the phones of journalists and human rights activists, to a trade blacklist in a bid to tackle the growing surveillance threat posed by technology companies. NSO and a smaller Tel Aviv-based company, Candiru, were among four

Pfizer has more than doubled the 2021 sales forecast for its Covid-19 vaccine since February and predicted another bumper year in 2022 as it expands global distribution and begins shipping jabs for boosters and children. The US company said on Tuesday that it expected to generate $36bn in sales this year and $29bn in 2022,

World leaders warned of the severe consequences of nations failing to strike deals to limit global warming to 1.5C since pre-industrial times at the opening session of the Glasgow COP26 UN climate conference. UK prime minister Boris Johnson, the host of the summit, used a James Bond analogy to drive home the urgency of action

G20 leaders have sealed a deal to end international financing of coal power in a boost ahead of the opening of the COP26 climate summit. Leaders at a G20 summit in Rome agreed to end financing for coal-fired power plants overseas by the end of this year, according to the final text of their communiqué.