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Goldman Sachs has slumped to its lowest quarterly profit in three years, as a costly retreat from consumer banking deepened the pain of the industry-wide slowdown in deals and trading. Net income plunged by almost two-thirds to $1.1bn in the second quarter, down from $2.8bn a year earlier, Goldman said on Wednesday. The Wall Street

Thames Water’s biggest investor slashed the value of its stake last year, raising questions about how easy it will be for the indebted UK utility to persuade shareholders to inject much needed equity.  The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, one of Canada’s biggest public sector pension funds, owns a 31 per cent stake in Thames

Microsoft will next week face its first formal EU antitrust investigation in 15 years over claims the US tech giant is unfairly tying its video conferencing app Teams with its popular Office software. The push from the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, comes after Microsoft’s concessions to appease competition concerns proved insufficient, four people

Global companies are accelerating their push to decouple China data in response to the country’s increasingly stringent data and anti-espionage laws, as relations between Washington and Beijing deteriorate. The drive for full localisation of data in China and separation of information technology systems from the rest of the world is happening as Beijing strengthens its

Three of the largest US banks reported a surge in profits from charging more for loans, as the Federal Reserve’s series of interest rate rises fattened their bottom lines. JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo collectively earned $49bn in net interest income in the second quarter, the difference between what the banks pay for deposits

Rivals have poached at least 120 senior Credit Suisse investment bankers in recent months, reducing the need for big redundancy packages for UBS, which completed the takeover of its ailing Swiss neighbour in June. Deutsche Bank has hired about 40 former Credit Suisse bankers globally, while Jefferies has brought on at least 25 and Santander more

The UK economy marginally contracted in May as an extra bank holiday pushed activity down, but the decline was less steep than economists had expected. UK gross domestic product fell 0.1 per cent between April and May, following an expansion in the previous month, data published by the Office for National Statistics showed on Thursday.

Andrew Bailey has called on UK banks to pass on higher interest rates to savers, as the Bank of England concluded that the country’s top eight lenders are sufficiently resilient to withstand a severe economic downturn. Speaking after the latest stress tests on banks’ capacity to weather potential catastrophes, the BoE governor said lenders were

Nato leaders are set to declare they are prepared for Ukraine to ultimately join the military alliance, in a carefully hedged statement that drew immediate condemnation from Kyiv for its lack of a firm timeframe. A draft of a summit communique under discussion on Tuesday pledges to “extend an invitation” to Ukraine to join the

Thames Water has fallen short of its goal of raising £1bn of urgent funding, instead securing conditional agreement from its shareholders to inject £750mn of new equity. The troubled UK utility said on Monday its investors had agreed to provide the £750mn by April 2025 if certain conditions were met. These include a business plan

US controls on investment into China would only target sensitive national security sectors, Janet Yellen has told her counterparts in Beijing during a four-day visit aimed at putting a “floor” under their turbulent relationship. Speaking at a news conference on the final day of her visit, which included meetings with Premier Li Qiang and her

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has ruled out big pre-election tax cuts this autumn, warning he must “double down” on inflation and would not “pump billions of pounds of additional demand” into the UK economy. “We will not countenance tax cuts if they make the battle against inflation harder,” Hunt told the Financial Times, admitting that meeting

Six more women have alleged that financier Crispin Odey sexually assaulted or harassed them, expanding the timeline of his abuse across five decades and raising further questions as to the extent his behaviour was tolerated by senior colleagues. The women came forward after the Financial Times last month published the accounts of 13 women who

Meta unveiled its long-awaited competitor to Twitter on Wednesday, which chief executive Mark Zuckerberg pitched as a “friendly” alternative to the struggling social media platform, in a move intended to draw users and revenues from Elon Musk’s company. The app, called Threads, is a “text-based conversation app” where users are able to publish posts up

The Financial Conduct Authority has publicly confirmed its investigation into Crispin Odey and Odey Asset Management for the first time and defended its “intensive” oversight of the hedge fund group. In a letter to the Treasury select committee published on Wednesday, FCA chief executive Nikhil Rathi said that while there was a limit to how

The biggest Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank for two decades continued in the early hours of Tuesday, with Israeli forces operating in the Jenin refugee camp for the second day. Backed by armed drones, hundreds of Israeli troops entered Jenin early on Monday, setting off a protracted round of fighting that has forced

Apple has been forced to make drastic cuts to production forecasts for the mixed-reality Vision Pro headset, unveiled last month after seven years in development and hailed as its most significant product launch since the iPhone. The complexity of the headset design and difficulties in production are behind the scaling back of targets, while plans

The world’s largest active bond fund manager says markets are too optimistic about central banks’ ability to dodge a recession as they battle inflation in the US and Europe. Daniel Ivascyn, chief investment officer at Pimco, which manages $1.8tn of assets, said he was preparing for a “harder landing” than other investors while top central

One of the largest investors in Thames Water has given its support for the utility as other industry figures sought to stave off any possible nationalisation of the sector. The £90bn Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), which has a near 20 per cent stake in Thames Water, said on Friday: “We have given our backing to

Investment bankers’ advisory fees have plunged to the lowest level in almost a decade as the industry suffers from a wave of job cuts because of a prolonged slowdown in deal activity. Fees for completed mergers and acquisitions globally plummeted 35 per cent in the first half of the year to $12.8bn compared with 2022,