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Chancellor Rishi Sunak has ordered officials to draw up plans for a possible windfall tax on more than £10bn of excess profits by electricity generators, including wind farm operators, on top of a hit on North Sea oil and gas producers. Treasury officials are working on a scheme that would go well beyond Labour’s original

A three-decade golden era for globalisation risks going into reverse according to company executives and investors, as world leaders prepare to meet in the Swiss town of Davos for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began. The geopolitical fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine, combined with the disruption to global supply chains caused by

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

THG has rejected a £2.07bn bid from two investment companies, as a venture capital firm controlled by property tycoon Nick Candy also said it was exploring an offer for the beauty and nutrition online retailer. THG has been hit by a string of setbacks since its initial public offering in 2020, with its share price

Wall Street stocks fell on Wednesday as a bounce for global equity markets faded and downbeat earnings from discount retailer Target intensified jitters about inflation and choked-up supply chains. The benchmark S&P 500 share index dropped 1.5 per cent in early dealings and the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite lost 1.8 per cent. Shares in Target plunged

Elon Musk said his agreed $44bn purchase of Twitter “cannot move forward” until the social media platform provides proof over the number of fake accounts, just hours after he warned the takeover might fall through. On Tuesday morning, Musk hit out again at Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal for refusing to provide proof over the

Twitter said it plans to enforce the $44bn takeover agreement with Elon Musk, just hours after the Tesla boss declared the purchase “cannot move forward” unless the social media company can certify the number of fake accounts. The San Francisco-based group made the comments in a detailed filing on Tuesday, outlining the whirlwind weeks in

Brussels is set to cut its growth forecasts further and lift its inflation outlook as the energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exacts its toll on the EU economy. Both the EU and euro area are forecast to expand by 2.7 per cent this year, well shy of the previous expectation of 4

German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said the G7 group of industrialised nations was urgently seeking alternative routes for the export of Ukrainian grain as Russia’s war against its western neighbour raised the risk of a global “hunger crisis”. Speaking at the conclusion of a three-day meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Germany, Baerbock said some

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

Russia’s state-owned gas supplier has said it will cut shipments to Europe through a major pipeline, sending prices surging and reinforcing President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to use energy as a weapon against the EU. Gazprom said gas flows would no longer be possible through the Yamal pipeline after the Kremlin imposed sanctions late on Wednesday

The EU has vowed to retaliate if the UK rips up a post-Brexit trade deal for Northern Ireland after London’s threat of unilateral action triggered alarm in Brussels and Washington. Joe Biden appealed to the UK to show “courage, co-operation and leadership” to settle a simmering dispute that could plunge London and Brussels into a

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

The US on Sunday targeted executives at Gazprombank for the first time in a new set of sanctions that also bans companies from providing Russia with corporate services such as accounting and consulting. “We’re sanctioning some of their top business executives, they’re the people who sit at the top of the organisation, to create a

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