News

UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt confronted a backlash from Tory MPs angry at a new era of high taxation even as the IMF hailed his efforts to restore the country’s fiscal credibility. On a day that two leading think-tanks said that high taxes had arrived for good and that wages were set for their most prolonged

British households are set for the steepest fall in living standards on record and the highest tax burden since the second world war after Jeremy Hunt laid out plans to cut public spending and raise revenue to fill a £55bn fiscal hole. The chancellor told a sombre House of Commons that a massive fiscal consolidation,

Jeremy Hunt, chancellor, will on Thursday seek to restore Britain’s tarnished economic reputation with a massive package of tax rises and spending cuts intended to repair the public finances and tame inflation. “We will face into the storm,” he will say. Hunt’s Autumn Statement will intensify the financial hardship facing millions of Britons and begin

Donald Trump has launched a third bid for the White House, firing the starting gun on the 2024 presidential election cycle just one week after midterm elections in which many of the Republicans he endorsed underperformed expectations in races up and down the ballot. “In order to make America great and glorious again I am

World leaders will state that today’s era “must not be of war” and will condemn threats to use nuclear weapons at the G20 summit in Bali, reflecting rising global anxiety around Russia’s war against Ukraine. A draft communiqué agreed by diplomats, seen by the Financial Times and confirmed by two delegations, said: “Most members strongly

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is planning a big package of spending cuts and tax increases in Thursday’s Autumn Statement after being warned that UK public borrowing will be about £70bn larger than expected. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that a worse economic outlook will raise government borrowing close to £100bn in 2026-27, according to an

Sam Bankman-Fried’s main international FTX exchange held just $900mn in easily sellable assets against $9bn of liabilities the day before it collapsed into bankruptcy, according to investment materials seen by the Financial Times. The largest portion of those liquid assets listed on a FTX international balance sheet dated Thursday was $470mn of Robinhood shares owned

FTX, the once high-flying cryptocurrency group, has filed for bankruptcy protection in the US, marking a stunning collapse of the $32bn empire built by the colourful 30-year-old entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried. The filing in Delaware federal court on Friday included the main FTX international exchange, a US crypto marketplace, Bankman-Fried’s proprietary trading group Alameda Research and

The Bahamas securities regulator has frozen the assets of part of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire and moved to appoint a liquidator for one of his entities, as the embattled entrepreneur raced to raise as much as $8bn to save FTX. The Bahamas Securities Commission took the action on Thursday against FTX Digital Markets, the Bahamian

Binance will abandon its deal to rescue Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX cryptocurrency exchange, citing concerns about its business practices and investigations by US financial regulators. The move comes a day after Binance, one of the world’s largest crypto trading venues, tentatively agreed to buy FTX after it suffered a liquidity crunch. “As a result of corporate

Democrats put up an unexpectedly strong fight as results rolled in from US midterm elections that will decide which party controls Congress, even as Republicans led by governor Ron DeSantis notched up a string of convincing victories in Florida. The early tallies from the midterm elections on Tuesday showed many battleground races across the country

A plan by ministers to review or repeal all EU laws on the UK statute book by the end of 2023 has suffered another setback after the discovery of 1,400 additional pieces of legislation. Rishi Sunak has started backing away from his ambitious proposals to scrub Britain’s statute book of unwanted EU laws, by abandoning

The US is working on a plan to harness cash from the world’s largest companies to help developing countries cut their use of fossil fuels, an idea it aims to unveil at the UN climate summit this week. US president Joe Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry is trying to marshal support from other governments, companies

US oil producers have raked in more than $200bn in profits since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as they cash in on a period of geopolitical turmoil that has shaken up the global energy market and sent prices soaring. Aggregate net income for publicly listed oil and gas companies operating in the US came to $200.24bn

The writer is international policy director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center Elon Musk has owned Twitter for one long week now. He has tweeted jokes and provocations, pitched ideas and sent out dog whistles. Musk is making the remarkable power that US tech executives hold over our lives, from geopolitics to the health of

Elon Musk is beginning lay-offs at Twitter’s 7,500-strong workforce, according to a company-wide email, in a dramatic cost-cutting cull that comes a week after the billionaire closed his $44bn buyout of the social media company. Twitter employees will be notified of their employment status by 9am Pacific time on Friday, according to an email seen

Jay Powell warned US interest rates would peak at a higher level than expected even as he held out the possibility of the Federal Reserve slowing the pace of its campaign to tighten monetary policy. Speaking after the central bank increased its main interest rate by 0.75 percentage points for the fourth time in a

Israel’s former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in pole position to emerge victorious from Tuesday’s parliamentary elections, according to exit polls that put his rightwing bloc on course for a razor-thin majority. Polls by Israel’s three main television channels, released after voting closed, forecast that a bloc combining Netanyahu’s Likud party, the extreme-right Religious Zionism

UK home secretary Suella Braverman was fighting for her political life on Monday as she was accused of breaking the law over the government’s treatment of asylum seekers. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, was coming under increasing pressure to fire Braverman, who admitted earlier she had used her personal email seven times to handle documents

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva claimed a nail-biting victory in Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday, defeating incumbent rightwing leader Jair Bolsonaro by less than two percentage points and setting the stage for a return to leftwing governance in Latin America’s largest nation. The tight result tops off a dramatic comeback for the 77-year-old opposition leader,

Moscow has suspended its participation in a UN-backed deal with Kyiv that unblocked the movement of Ukrainian grain out of its southern ports, threatening to deepen the global food crisis. Russia linked its decision to pull out of the deal to an attack on Saturday on ships in the port of Sevastopol in the Crimean