News

Is Beyoncé still a pop star? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself over the past week as I walked around Brooklyn, where her latest album has been blasting steadily from cars and portable speakers, providing a soundtrack to late summer barbecues and block parties. I even witnessed one man playing Renaissance loudly through his

Last week something unusual happened. A chief executive who presided over a UK corporate failure received a financial punishment. The case in question was particularly egregious: the collapse of construction company Carillion in 2018 with £7bn in liabilities and £29mn in cash. The fines for directors? At less than £400,000 a piece, maybe not so

Tesla rival Lucid Motors halved its 2022 production target on Wednesday, citing “extraordinary supply chain” challenges as it tries to ramp up production and meet “strong demand”. The California-based group, backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, said 2022 production is now estimated between 6,000 and 7,000 cars, down from an earlier projection of 12,000

Foreign secretary Liz Truss, frontrunner in the race to become the next British prime minister, said she would look to change the Bank of England’s mandate to ensure it controlled inflation. Speaking at a hustings of Conservative party members in Cardiff on Wednesday, she argued that inflation had been caused by “huge” supply side shocks

SoftBank has raised as much as $22bn in cash from deals that would sharply reduce its stake in Alibaba over the coming years, as the Japanese investor responds to a market downturn that has ravaged its technology portfolio. The group, led by billionaire founder Masayoshi Son, has this year carried out the sale of about

Motoring organisations on Wednesday called on BP and the big four supermarkets to cut their petrol prices and provide greater help to Britons struggling with the cost of living crisis. The AA claimed BP — which unveiled its highest quarterly profits for 14 years on Tuesday — was charging “what they can get away with”

Opec and its allies have agreed one of the smallest oil production increases in the group’s history as Saudi Arabia attempts to appease western allies without using up all its unused capacity. The increase agreed on Wednesday of just 100,000 barrels a day, or 0.1 per cent of global demand, is likely to cause disappointment

Hefty recent interest rate rises by the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank highlight the concern among central bankers that high inflation could become entrenched and spiral further beyond their control. With many advanced economies facing the spectre of recession, monetary policymakers are grappling with an unenviable choice: raise rates gradually, which will more

Thousands of crypto accounts linked to the Solana blockchain have been “drained” in a blow to one of the biggest networks in the digital asset market. Solana and several other platforms linked to the blockchain were on Wednesday investigating an apparent hack that affected at least 7,767 digital wallets, the computer programs that store traders’

Security officers said it had been “hot and hectic” at London’s Heathrow airport this summer. While airline and airport executives try to pin the blame on each other for summer travel chaos, the officers are dealing with the fallout from cancelled flights and big queues at Heathrow’s terminals — in teams that are inexperienced and

Boris Johnson sometimes joked that he dreamt of shaking up the Treasury by making John Redwood, the former cabinet minister and Thatcherite radical, his chancellor of the exchequer. It stayed a dream. His first two chancellors were orthodox fiscal conservatives. Liz Truss, the frontrunner to succeed Johnson as prime minister, is given to similarly puckish musings.

Nancy Pelosi pledged an “ironclad” US commitment to Taiwan during a historic visit to the country on Wednesday that has infuriated China and raised warnings that military manoeuvres Beijing announced in retaliation would amount to a blockade of the island. The comments from the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, made during a meeting

European equities slipped in morning trade on Wednesday after hawkish comments from the Federal Reserve clouded market hopes that the US central bank would ease the pace of rate rises to counter an economic slowdown. The Stoxx 600 slipped 0.1 per cent in morning trading, with London’s FTSE 100 up 0.2 per cent and Germany’s

Just after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi landed in Taiwan, she published an article arguing that her controversial visit was critical to demonstrating American support for the country as it faces mounting pressure from China. “In the face of the Chinese Communist party’s accelerating aggression, our congressional delegation’s visit should be seen as an unequivocal

In the spring of 1992, Japan’s senior intelligence officials made a fairly standard decision to deny entry to Reverend Moon Sun-myung, the late founder of South Korea’s Unification Church, on the grounds that he had previously served in US prison for tax evasion. Shortly afterwards, though, the religious leader sailed through security checks to enter

The British empire was built in the age of coal, a fuel the UK had in spades. The US became a superpower in the era of oil, of which it had plenty. China’s rise has come as the world starts switching to a greener energy system needing minerals and metals for battery and solar industries

The two men going head to head to become Kenya’s next president agree on one thing: China is at the heart of next week’s election. For deputy president William Ruto, it is the spread of Chinese nationals in cities, many of whom are trying to earn a living selling local street food dishes. And former

Accountants should stop complaining about extra scrutiny and fines for audit failures and improve the quality of their work, said the head of the sector’s UK watchdog, which imposed record financial sanctions on the industry last year. Auditors have faced heavy criticism in recent years after failing to raise the alarm in a series of

Molson Coors’ chief executive said cost inflation is now his biggest concern after the US brewer experienced a further jump in prices for inputs like barley, aluminium and freight. That upward trend was taking some of the shine off consumer demand that otherwise appeared resilient despite broader concerns over rising interest rates, inflation and a

Bain & Co, the Boston-based global management consultant, was on Tuesday hit with a three-year ban from tendering for British government contracts because of its “grave professional misconduct” in a major corruption scandal in South Africa. Jacob Rees-Mogg, Cabinet Office minister, told Bain that the affair had rendered the company’s integrity “questionable” and that he