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UK chancellor Rishi Sunak said his latest package of support for UK households will have a “minimal impact” on inflation after the government announced a windfall tax on energy companies to fund lower fuel bills. “Our estimate and my view is that it will have a minimal impact on inflation,” Sunak told Sky News on

Rishi Sunak has announced a £15bn package to help UK households facing a further rise in energy bills this autumn, while completing a major U-turn with a £5bn windfall tax on oil and gas companies to help pay for it. The chancellor also said he was considering “appropriate steps” to target “extraordinary profits” made by

China’s premier has said the world’s second-largest economy could struggle to record positive growth in the current quarter, urging officials to help companies resume production after Covid-19 lockdowns. The comments by Li Keqiang, to tens of thousands of officials on an internal videocast on Wednesday, underscore the difficulties President Xi Jinping’s administration will have in reaching its

Auditors and tax advisers in the UK are lobbying the government for exemptions from a ban on working for businesses in Russia imposed after the invasion of Ukraine. Foreign secretary Liz Truss this month announced plans to force British accounting, management consulting and public relations firms to cut ties with Russian clients as part of

US president Joe Biden has pledged to defend Taiwan militarily if China were to invade in remarks made during his first visit to Japan. “Yes. That is the commitment we made,” Biden said at a joint news conference in Tokyo when asked whether he was willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan. Speaking alongside

The EU’s decision to suspend its deficit and debt rules for an extra year is not an excuse for member states to persist with loose spending policies, Germany’s finance minister Christian Lindner has said, in a call for more fiscal discipline. “The fact that member states are now able to deviate from the Stability and

China is intensifying its drive for influence in the Pacific by negotiating security deals with two additional island nations following a pact with the Solomon Islands, according to officials in the US and allied countries. Beijing’s talks with Kiribati, a Pacific island nation 3,000km from Hawaii where US Indo-Pacific Command is based, are the most

Huw Pill, the Bank of England’s chief economist, said on Friday that it was “crucial” to ensure that the UK avoids stoking an “inflationary psychology” and indicated he supported further interest rate rises. With inflation having reached a 40-year high in April, Pill said that prices rising at more than four times the central bank’s

Shares in Chinese technology companies led declines across the Asia-Pacific region in the wake of Wall Street’s worst day since the early months of the coronavirus pandemic as concerns mounted over global growth. Hong Kong-listed shares in Tencent fell as much as 8.6 per cent on Thursday after the Chinese internet group reported its slowest

UK inflation hit 9 per cent in April, its highest level in over 40 years, after soaring gas and electricity bills intensified the cost of living crisis facing households. The rate of consumer price inflation was close to economists’ expectations and is almost double the rate the Bank of England expected only six months ago.

Tiger Global, the hedge fund known for making big bets on technology companies, slashed its shareholdings and dumped stakes in companies such as Netflix and Rivian as it suffered heavy losses during this year’s stock market rout. The total value of Tiger Global’s public stock positions fell from $46bn at the end of last year

China’s economic activity contracted sharply in April as a wave of lockdowns across the country posed the most significant challenge to its growth prospects since Covid-19 emerged over two years ago. Retail sales, the country’s main gauge of consumer activity which had already entered contraction in March, slumped 11.1 per cent year on year, compared

UniCredit and Citigroup are exploring asset swaps with Russian financial institutions as western banks exiting the country scramble to avoid hefty writedowns on their operations, according to people with knowledge of their plans. The banks are among a small number of western lenders with a significant presence in Russia. Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and the

Elon Musk on Friday tweeted that he had put his $44bn deal to take Twitter private “temporarily on hold” pending details supporting the calculation that spam and fake accounts represented fewer than 5 per cent of users. Musk posted his remarks on the microblogging site with a report from the Reuters news agency about the

The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund has attacked “corporate greed” and excessive pay for “mediocre performance” and vowed to take action against the worst offenders. Nicolai Tangen, chief executive of Norway’s $1.2tn oil fund, told the Financial Times that it would in particular target large salary packages that were not justified by performance, or were

Turkish authorities have raised the pressure on the country’s banks to limit corporate clients’ purchases of foreign currency in an effort to halt a renewed slide of the lira. Bankers in Istanbul, Turkey’s financial centre, say that they are facing increased interference from the central bank, with officials probing corporate FX transactions worth as little as $1mn.

Elon Musk has said he would reverse Donald Trump’s ban from Twitter, accusing the social media company of leftwing bias that had aggravated political divisions in the US. “I think it was a morally bad decision, and foolish in the extreme,” Musk said of the lifetime ban of Trump, which was imposed soon after a

Stock markets dropped on Monday, extending weeks of losses, as worries about higher interest rates hurting global growth were compounded by weak economic data from China. Europe’s regional Stoxx 600 share index, which has ended each of the past four weeks in the red, lost 1.2 per cent. China’s mainland CSI 300 gauge slid 0.8 per

EU capitals should consider seizing frozen Russian foreign exchange reserves to help pay for the cost of rebuilding Ukraine after the war, the bloc’s top diplomat has said, as the west debates how to force Moscow to pay for some of the damage the conflict has caused. Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign

A jubilant Sinn Féin was poised to clinch a historic victory in Northern Ireland’s elections and become the region’s biggest political force for the first time in a century, after more than half the seats to the Stormont assembly were decided. Sinn Féin, the party long associated with the paramilitary IRA, was clearly ahead of

Boris Johnson will face renewed pressure on his leadership on Friday after the Conservatives suffered significant defeats in local elections across the UK, including losing the flagship London council of Wandsworth. Labour won the borough beloved of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher for its ultra-low local tax rates after 44 years in Tory hands, but

European shares followed Wall Street higher after the US Federal Reserve announced its first 0.5 percentage point interest rate rise in more than 20 years. The regional Stoxx 600 share index added 1.7 per cent in early trading on Thursday after the widely expected rate rise from the US central bank, which sparked a relief

The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark policy rate by half a percentage point for the first time since 2000 and sent a strong signal that it intends to increase it by the same amount at the next two meetings. At the end of its two-day policy meeting on Wednesday, the Federal Open Market Committee lifted

China’s independent refiners have been discreetly buying Russian oil at steep discounts as western countries suspend their own purchases and explore potential embargoes because of the war in Ukraine. An official at a Shandong-based independent refinery said it had not publicly reported deals with Russian oil suppliers since the Ukraine war started in order to

The UK is to commit another £300mn of military aid to Ukraine, Downing Street announced on Monday, as Boris Johnson, prime minister, prepared to become the first western leader to address its parliament since Russia’s invasion. Johnson will make a speech to the Verkhovna Rada on Tuesday via video link, and is due to say

The German government has said it backs a phased-in ban on Russian oil imports into the EU, as officials in Brussels try to seek consensus on an embargo as part of the latest package of sanctions against Moscow. Jörg Kukies, one of chancellor Olaf Scholz’s closest advisers, said Berlin was in favour of an oil

Chinese regulators have held an emergency meeting with domestic and foreign banks to discuss how they could protect the country’s overseas assets from US-led sanctions similar to those imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, according to people familiar with the discussion. Officials are worried the same measures could be taken against Beijing in

European shares and the euro followed Asian markets higher on Friday, after Chinese authorities pledged to safeguard the world’s second-largest economy from coronavirus lockdowns, lifting sentiment following disappointing economic growth data. The regional Stoxx 600 share index added 1 per cent, after strong gains in Asia. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index closed 4 per cent

Apple’s services division posted record revenue in the quarter to March, pushing the company’s overall sales well beyond analysts’ expectations as it navigated supply chains issues and the highest inflation rate in decades. Revenues rose 9 per cent from a year ago to $97.3bn, versus the $94.1bn expected by analysts. Net profits jumped 6 per

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