News

Elon Musk has made an offer to buy Twitter with a bid that values the company at $43.4bn, a move that could turn the Tesla chief executive into a social media mogul. Musk’s offer of $54.20 a share comes days after he took a 9 per cent stake in the company, becoming its largest shareholder

US president Joe Biden is expected to announce $800mn in additional military aid for Ukraine on Wednesday, including artillery and armoured vehicles, according to a person familiar with the matter. The assistance comes as Ukraine is bracing itself for a new and more brutal Russian offensive in the south-eastern Donbas region, after successfully forcing a

UK prime minister Boris Johnson, his wife Carrie Johnson and chancellor Rishi Sunak have been issued with fines as part of an investigation by the Metropolitan Police into breaches of Covid-19 rules in Downing Street and Whitehall during the pandemic. The force said on Tuesday that more than 50 fines had been issued. Downing Street

Ukraine’s finance minister has made an appeal for immediate financial support of tens of billions of dollars to plug a gaping fiscal deficit caused by the Russian invasion. Government spending exceeded revenues by about $2.7bn in March and Ukraine expects the gap to expand to $5bn-$7bn a month in April and May because of the

Emmanuel Macron and his far-right rival Marine Le Pen will face each other in the second and final stage of the French presidential election on April 24 after beating the other candidates in the first round of voting on Sunday, according to early estimates. Macron won 28.6 per cent and Le Pen 24.4 per cent

Italian prime minister Mario Draghi will visit Algeria on Monday to sign a new gas supply deal, as Rome strives to reduce its dependence on Russian fuel following the invasion of Ukraine. It is the latest in a series of moves made by European countries to secure alternative fuel sources as they seek to cut

Russian missiles on Friday hit a railway station in Kramatorsk, killing dozens in the town in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region as Moscow intensified its offensive in the east of the country. “Thousands of people were at the station during the missile strike, as residents of Donetsk province are being evacuated to safer regions of Ukraine,”

The Labour party and independent experts have warned that Boris Johnson’s energy security strategy will fail to reduce the UK’s reliance on expensive imports this decade and do little to alleviate the pressure on households from soaring fuel bills. The prime minister has backed away from setting targets for some of the fastest and cheapest

The US has imposed its most severe level of sanctions on Sberbank, Russia’s largest financial institution, and Alfa-Bank, the country’s biggest private bank, escalating its economic punishment of Moscow in response to atrocities committed by Russian forces in Ukraine. The announcement on Wednesday of “full blocking sanctions”, which prevent the lenders from transacting with any

Western powers have presented a united front on the eve of a phone call between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, when the US president is expected to detail punitive measures that would inflict “severe” damage to Russia’s economy if the country invades Ukraine. The US president hosted consultations with the leaders of France, Germany, Italy

EU and Nato allies have swung behind the Biden administration’s assessment that Russia may be poised to invade Ukraine, following unprecedented sharing of US intelligence on Moscow’s military preparations. Weeks of sustained US diplomatic engagement with European governments, backed by a sharing of intelligence normally reserved for its closest allies, have helped convince some previously

Jay Powell signalled his support for a quicker withdrawal of the Federal Reserve’s massive asset purchase programme, in comments that raised the spectre of earlier interest rate rises next year and exacerbated a stock market sell-off. Powell’s testimony at a congressional hearing roiled markets, which were already under pressure after the chief executive of Moderna

Albert Bourla has become the world’s most in-demand chief executive. As vaccines permitted some countries to reopen their economies over the summer, the Pfizer boss flew into Cornwall for the G7 summit in June, parking his private jet next to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plane. Weeks later, he was welcomed to the Olympics by then

The UK will place six southern African countries back on its red list of travel restrictions, after an apparent surge in cases of a heavily mutated coronavirus variant caused alarm among global health officials. Travellers returning from South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Eswatini will be forced to quarantine for 10 days at a

President Joe Biden has announced the release of oil from the US’s strategic stockpile in a bid to drive down petrol prices and snuff out a crude market rally that the White House has said poses a threat to the global economic recovery. The White House said on Tuesday the president was authorising the release

Joe Biden has nominated Jay Powell to serve a second term as chair of the Federal Reserve, opting for continuity at a delicate moment for the US economy as it grapples with persistently high inflation and a patchy labour market recovery. Lael Brainard, considered Powell’s fiercest competitor for the top job, was tapped for the

Telecom Italia is to hold an emergency board meeting on Sunday to evaluate a takeover offer from US private equity group KKR, a deal that would be one of the largest telecoms buyouts of all time. KKR already holds a 37.5 per cent stake in Telecom Italia’s “last mile” network but has moved to make

Nancy Pelosi said the US House of Representatives would press ahead with a vote on Joe Biden’s $1.75tn Build Back Better bill on Thursday night, after an independent government agency said the package would add $367bn to the federal deficit over the next decade. The Congressional Budget Office, which provides cost estimates for big legislation,

The euro struck its lowest level in 16 months this week as traders bet that the European Central Bank will stick to its accommodative policies even though widespread inflation is prompting US and UK policymakers to raise interest rates. Traders are dialling up their wagers that the Federal Reserve and Bank of England will lift

Three of Barclays’ top-20 shareholders have raised concerns over the terms of Jes Staley’s exit ahead of meetings between the bank and investors next week. Some investors have privately criticised the £2.4m in pay awarded to the departing chief executive, who resigned this month following a probe into his past ties to convicted sex offender

Joe Biden has signed his flagship $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill into law in a big legislative victory for the US president at a time when his approval ratings have hit an all-time low. At an event at the White House on Monday, Biden said that the passing of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act would

Divisions, commutes, workloads — and bras — were some of the issues raised by worldwide respondents to an FT reader survey on the return to the office. More than 1,000 readers — from London to Qatar — shared their concerns and hopes. There was optimism about hybrid work, a blend of office and remote working,

The writer is the author of ‘How to Own the Room: Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking’ It has become an unquestioned truism of the pandemic era to believe that more people than ever before are having a career wobble. They’re calling it The Great Resignation. Why not throw everything up in the air and

Saif al-Islam, a son of former Libyan dictator Muammer Gaddafi, has formally registered as a candidate in his country’s presidential elections due to be held on December 24. His entry into an unstable political scene divided between squabbling factions is expected to further complicate efforts to hold the election. The ballot is seen by the

Airbus has secured a multibillion-dollar order for 255 single-aisle jets from veteran airline investor Bill Franke, a deal that underlines the plane-maker’s forecast that the industry is poised to rebound strongly from the pandemic. The deal sealed at the Dubai Airshow on Sunday packages together A321neo aircraft for delivery across a stable of ultra-low-cost airlines

US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said controlling Covid-19 was key to taming inflation, as Joe Biden’s administration tries to stop rising prices derailing the US economic recovery and the president’s legislative agenda. “The pandemic has been calling the shots for the economy and for inflation,” Yellen said, speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation programme. “And

Are real estate prices today the equivalent of bread prices? It’s a question that was recently asked by a trade union leader in Germany, where there has been a push to seize corporate-owned rental units and put them in public ownership. Many Dutch cities want to ban investors from buying cheap homes to rent out.

After last-minute word changes insisted on by India and China, nearly 200 countries agreed to a climate deal that will help avoid the worst impacts of global warming, but stopped short of reaching the goals of the Paris climate accord. At a time of mounting public frustration over the warming planet — with protesters outside

Western intelligence suggests a “high probability of destabilisation” of Ukraine by Russia as soon as this winter after Moscow massed more than 90,000 troops at its border, according to Kyiv’s deputy defence minister. Hanna Maliar told the FT at the weekend that while interpretations of western intelligence “need further discussion”, they underlined “the high probability

The EU will tighten sanctions on the Belarus regime by targeting those closest to its authoritarian leader, the union’s top diplomat has said, as ministers prepare to step up their response to what Brussels terms a “hybrid attack” at its eastern border. Thousands of people have travelled from the Middle East via Minsk to Belarus’s