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Stock markets and eurozone bond prices dropped on Thursday after Switzerland delivered an unexpected interest rate rise, following a sharp boost to borrowing costs by the US Federal Reserve. Europe’s regional Stoxx 600 share index, which rallied on Wednesday after the European Central Bank promised a new mechanism to support weaker eurozone nations from rising

The Federal Reserve is set to embrace an increasingly aggressive approach to monetary policy tightening as it confronts the highest inflation in four decades. During its two-day policy meeting, officials on the Federal Open Market Committee have been actively debating the merits of implementing the first 0.75 percentage point increase since 1994. An adjustment of

UK government plans to go ahead with its first flight deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday night were grounded by a series of last-minute interventions by the European Court of Human Rights and court of appeal in London. Government sources confirmed on Tuesday evening that there would now be no one on the flight,

Brussels is to launch legal action against the UK as early as Monday, on the publication of draft legislation to rip up large parts of the 2020 Brexit deal, EU officials say, as the two sides edge closer to a possible trade war. The officials said the European Commission would respond immediately to a British

Boris Johnson has been accused by Tory MPs of “damaging the UK and everything the Conservatives stand for” as he prepares to publish a bill to rip up his 2020 Brexit deal with the EU covering trade with Northern Ireland. The legislation, to be published on Monday, will bring Johnson into conflict with many of

US defence secretary Lloyd Austin accused China of stepping up coercive behaviour towards Taiwan as he stressed that Washington would maintain its military capacity to resist any force that threatened the country. Speaking at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue defence forum in Singapore, Austin said China was engaging in provocative behaviour across the Indo-Pacific region that

Ministers are planning to reject the main recommendations from a major review of England’s food strategy as Boris Johnson seeks to regain the support of rightwing MPs and avoid hitting households with new expenses in the cost of living crisis. The review, led by Henry Dimbleby, founder of the Leon restaurant chain, was commissioned in

Rishi Sunak has been accused of squandering £11bn of taxpayers money by paying too much interest servicing the government’s debt. Calculations by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the oldest non-partisan economic research institute in the UK, show the losses stem from the chancellor’s failure to take out insurance against interest rate rises

Apple is making its biggest move yet into finance by offering loans directly to consumers for its new “buy now, pay later” product, taking on a role played in its other lending services by banking partners such as Goldman Sachs. Short-term loans made through the iPhone maker’s new Apple Pay Later service, announced on Monday,

The chief executive of London’s Heathrow airport, the UK’s largest, has warned it will take up to 18 months for the aviation industry to rehire staff and return operations to pre-pandemic levels, following a gruelling period of disruption and cancellations. John Holland-Kaye said airlines and airports needed to “plan much better” to avoid further cancellations

Boris Johnson on Monday night survived a bruising no-confidence vote, but his victory by 211 to 148 in a ballot of Tory MPs left him badly damaged and exposed the scale of the division and animosity in his party. The result means that more than 40 per cent of Johnson’s MPs wanted to oust the

Boris Johnson’s key allies are preparing to defend him in a challenge to his leadership, as they conceded it was increasingly likely that rebel Conservative MPs had reached the key threshold needed to trigger a vote of no confidence in the UK prime minister this week. For such a vote to take place, Sir Graham

US corporate bonds sold by low-rated companies have slumped in price, signalling lenders’ intensifying worries that scorching inflation and higher interest rates are beginning to hit borrowers most vulnerable to an economic downturn. Bonds assigned a triple C rating or below, the lowest rung on the ratings ladder, have posted a negative return of 2.8

Lawyers filed a multimillion pound claim on Friday against administrators of the collapsed fund of Neil Woodford, the fallen star of British stock picking, in an attempt to recoup heavy losses of hundreds of thousands of savers. It marks the third anniversary of the suspension of the Woodford Equity Income Fund, which managed £3.7bn when

Opec and its allies on Thursday agreed to accelerate oil production in July and August, as the cartel’s linchpin Saudi Arabia bowed to US pressure to cool a crude price rally that has threatened to stall the global economy. The cartel said it would increase output by almost 650,000 barrels a day in both months,

JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon on Wednesday warned investors to brace themselves for an economic “hurricane” as the war in Ukraine and policy tightening by the Federal Reserve roil markets. Dimon struck a gloomier tone on the economic outlook than in remarks he made just last week during JPMorgan’s first investor day in two

The UK and EU have agreed a co-ordinated ban on insuring ships carrying Russian oil, shutting Moscow out of the vital Lloyd’s of London insurance market and sharply curbing its ability to export crude, according to British and European officials. Lloyd’s has been the heart of the marine insurance industry for centuries and blocking its

The US chipmaker Qualcomm wants to buy a stake in Arm alongside its rivals and create a consortium that would maintain the UK chip designer’s neutrality in the highly competitive semiconductor market. Japanese conglomerate SoftBank plans to list Arm on the New York Stock Exchange after Nvidia’s $66bn purchase collapsed earlier this year. However, the

Central banks are raising rates rapidly in the most widespread tightening of monetary policy for more than two decades, according to a Financial Times analysis that lays bare the reversal of their previous historically loose stance. Policymakers around the world have announced more than 60 increases in current key interest rates in the past three

Emerging market bonds are suffering their worst losses in almost three decades, hit by rising global interest rates, slowing growth and the war in Ukraine. The benchmark index of dollar-denominated EM sovereign bonds, the JPMorgan EMBI Global Diversified, has delivered total returns of around minus 15 per cent so far in 2022, its worst start