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China’s foreign minister has warned of a clash with the US unless Washington ceases its attempts to contain Beijing, highlighting the Chinese Communist party’s concerns over escalating tension between the rival superpowers. “If the US doesn’t hit the brakes and continues to barrel down the wrong track, no amount of guardrails can prevent the carriage

One of Credit Suisse’s longest-standing shareholders has sold its entire stake in the scandal-hit Swiss bank after losing patience with its strategy amid persistent losses and a client exodus. US investment manager Harris Associates, whose deputy chair and chief investment officer David Herro was for years among the Swiss bank’s most prominent supporters, owned as

China will target an economic expansion of “around 5 per cent” for 2023 as President Xi Jinping seeks to restore pre-pandemic levels of growth and prepares to centralise power further in his own hands. Announcing the target, which was below last year’s goal of 5.5 per cent, China’s outgoing premier Li Keqiang told its rubber-stamp

The Financial Conduct Authority has been blamed by some UK officials and SoftBank staff for London losing out to New York on the blockbuster stock market listing of chip designer Arm. SoftBank, the Japanese owner of the Cambridge-based semiconductor company, this week dashed Rishi Sunak’s hopes of retaining the homegrown tech giant, rejecting entreaties from

Rishi Sunak is refusing to rush Britain back into the EU’s €95.5bn Horizon science programme despite his recent breakthrough in relations with Brussels, raising the prospect of a tough negotiation on rejoining the scheme. Senior colleagues said the UK prime minister was “sceptical” about the value of the research programme — the world’s biggest —

The world’s largest building materials company CRH is planning to move its listing from London to New York in a fresh blow to the UK’s capital market. The company, which has a market capitalisation of almost £30bn, is the latest UK-listed company to embark on a move to New York. Last year, Ferguson, the plumbing

China’s manufacturing sector expanded at its fastest pace in more than a decade in February, in one of the clearest signs that the world’s second-largest economy is shaking off the effects of a nationwide Covid-19 outbreak and years of growth-constraining pandemic curbs. The official manufacturing sector purchasing managers’ index hit 52.6 last month, according to

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak arrived in Belfast on Tuesday to sell his post-Brexit trade deal for Northern Ireland to business leaders after the region’s main unionist party welcomed progress but said concerns remained. Sunak unveiled the so-called Windsor framework with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Monday, hailing it as a “new

Rishi Sunak is poised to unveil a Brexit deal with the EU on Monday that will overhaul Northern Ireland’s trading arrangements and end a bitter dispute between the two sides. Although the UK prime minister plans to seal an agreement with Brussels, he still faces a political battle to win over Eurosceptic Conservative MPs and

The record-breaking global bond market rally since the start of this year has fizzled out as mounting signs of persistent inflation force investors to reverse their views on the likely future path of interest rate rises. Investors rushed into fixed income in the first few weeks of 2023 as they became increasingly expectant that the

Joe Biden has said he did not think China would send weapons to Russia to help its military campaign in Ukraine, in comments that appeared to undercut claims from his top officials that Beijing was considering the idea. In an interview with ABC television on Friday that was aired on the evening of the anniversary

The US will make “no apologies” for prioritising American jobs in its bid to lead the global clean energy contest, the White House official responsible for the $369bn green funding drive has said. In an interview with the Financial Times, John Podesta, Joe Biden’s senior clean energy adviser, pushed back at criticism that the US

The EU and its allies are investigating a surge in exports to economies in Russia’s vicinity as they seek to prevent companies from evading western sanctions imposed on Moscow. David O’Sullivan, the EU’s newly appointed sanctions envoy, told the Financial Times that big increases in trade with countries in Russia’s neighbourhood raised questions as to

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak is exploring a 5 per cent pay rise for public-sector workers to end an escalating wave of strikes after the Treasury was given an unexpected £30bn windfall. In a sign of a change of mood after months of strife, the Royal College of Nursing on Tuesday called off a 48-hour

The sanctioned Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin generated revenues of more than a quarter of a billion dollars from his global natural resources empire in the four years before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, according to corporate records. A Financial Times investigation has found that years of western sanctions against the Wagner mercenary group’s founder failed

Poland’s head of state has called on Nato powers to give postwar security guarantees to Ukraine, on the eve of a visit by the US president to Warsaw to reaffirm the west’s support for Kyiv a year into Russia’s war. Andrzej Duda told the Financial Times that promises of security guarantees “would be important” for

US secretary of state Antony Blinken said the US is “very concerned” China is considering supplying Russia with weapons and ammunition in Ukraine. Blinken said he told Wang Yi, China’s top foreign policy official, that such support would have “serious consequences” for the US relationship with Beijing during a meeting on the sidelines of the

The Russian army is suffering huge losses in Ukraine, shows no sign it has improved its “meat grinder” tactics and is struggling to sustain a stuttering offensive that is “advancing, if at all, in metres not kilometres”, Britain’s defence secretary Ben Wallace said on Friday. Despite fears that Russia is poised to launch a huge

Rishi Sunak has launched a high-stakes gamble to seal a deal with Brussels over Northern Ireland, making a surprise visit to Belfast as Tory Eurosceptics warned he was going too far to accommodate the EU. The UK prime minister is seeking to win backing from Northern Irish parties for an outline deal with the EU

Nicola Sturgeon announced her resignation as Scotland’s first minister and leader of the Scottish National party on Wednesday after a backlash over her strategy for securing independence and controversy over proposed gender laws. A thorn in the side of UK prime ministers for almost a decade, Sturgeon led the pro-independence SNP to repeated electoral success