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The old riverside customs and excise office in South Shields, once one of the world’s most important shipbuilding hubs, boasts a mosaic that tells the port’s maritime story. In the middle there is the River Tyne, before it was blackened by shipyards and coal, teeming with salmon. “There was a time when they used to

The Biden administration has bolstered efforts to sign big oil importers on to a plan to cap prices they offer for Russian crude, concerned that without it the world faces a damaging surge in fuel costs. Negotiations are under way between the US and China, India and other countries that have been buying up discounted

The writer is the founder of Sahm Consulting and a former Federal Reserve and White House economist Some commentators argue that the US needs a recession to bring inflation down. That thinking hinges on a simplistic model of the economy and a refusal to see Covid and the war in Ukraine as important sources of

Microsoft shrugged off worries about the effects of a weakening economy with a confident forecast for its latest fiscal year on Tuesday, sending its shares up more than 6 per cent in after-hours trading. The optimism came despite a sharp contraction in the personal computer market, the strength of the US dollar and signs of

Shares in US retailers led Wall Street lower on Tuesday after Walmart warned that higher inflation would hurt its profits. The broad S&P 500 share index shed 1.2 per cent, with consumer cyclical stocks suffering the sharpest declines. Walmart’s share price dropped 7.6 per cent after the big-box retailer issued its second profit warning in

Credit Suisse is set to appoint Ulrich Körner as its new chief executive, taking over from Thomas Gottstein, whose departure will bring an end to one of the most tumultuous periods in the Swiss bank’s 166-year history. The appointment of Körner, who is head of the bank’s asset management division, is expected to be announced on

French satellite operator Eutelsat and money-losing UK start-up OneWeb are going for the moonshot: a merger that stakes their future on being able to compete with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. The deal, which was announced on Tuesday, involves an incumbent trying to stave off obsolescence by teaming up with a scrappy tech disrupter —

There are different routes to political greatness. Some lead by charisma. Others surf public opinion. David Trimble, the Northern Irish leader who died this week, was neither. He was something rarer: an anti-populist. The Ulsterman, often described as “prickly”, led his people along a hard, unpopular road to a better future. For UK politicians wrestling

European gas prices have surged 30 per cent in two days after Russia deepened supply cuts to the continent in Moscow’s latest attempt to weaponise energy supplies. Futures contracts for delivery next month tied to TTF, the European benchmark wholesale gas price, jumped 20 per cent on Tuesday to breach €210 per megawatt hour, the

Germany is rethinking its plan to exit nuclear power by the end of the year, as concern increases that Russia’s moves to cut gas supplies could trigger a winter electricity crunch in Europe’s largest economy. A U-turn on nuclear power would mark a big departure in German energy policy. It would be a particularly bitter

The writer is a science commentator If there were a celebrity hierarchy of proteins, p53 would be its Kim Kardashian. The protein scuppers tumour growth: a lack of p53 — for example through a mutation in the gene that produces it — predisposes a person to cancer. It is, therefore, the most exhaustively studied protein

European energy ministers have agreed an EU-wide plan to cut gas consumption in case of a complete shut-off of Russian supplies. As part of the deal, the 27 EU nations on Tuesday vowed to slash 45bn cubic metres in gas use between August 1 and March 31, equivalent to a 15 per cent decrease from

The IMF has slashed its global growth forecasts and raised its projections for inflation, warning that the risks to the economic outlook are “overwhelmingly tilted to the downside”. The downgraded estimates, released on Tuesday, come as the world grapples with the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, prolonged disruptions caused by the pandemic and rapidly

The author is EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy Seven years ago, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Germany, Iran and the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy concluded a landmark diplomatic deal. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was the result of years of intense

Rishi Sunak’s attempt to derail Liz Truss’s Tory leadership bid appeared to have failed on Tuesday, as a new opinion poll found that Conservative members believed that she won a crucial head-to-head televised debate. The YouGov survey found Tory activists — who have the final say on who will be Britain’s next prime minister —

What would Amazon’s stock price be if US retail investors were banned from investing? Lower, doubtless. The thought experiment shows that Alibaba’s 2014 listing in New York was doubly impressive. The world’s largest-ever listing depended on foreign investors. This year, mainland China’s legions of retail investors should get the chance to invest. For Chinese tech

Alibaba will apply for a dual-primary listing on Hong Kong’s stock exchange, in a move analysts say lays the groundwork to grant mainland Chinese investors access to its shares and help minimise disruption if US regulators force it to delist from Wall Street. The New York-listed Chinese ecommerce group, which has a secondary listing in

Unilever increased prices for its products 11 per cent in the second quarter from a year earlier and raised its full-year sales guidance, as it battles to pass on more cost increases to consumers. The consumer goods maker said it had yet to pass on the full impact of input cost rises to shoppers in

This article is an online version of our Inside Politics newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter sent straight to your inbox every weekday. Good morning. The topic of today’s newsletter is political betting. I used to do a lot of political betting before joining the Financial Times, and you can find an awful

UBS has warned that further turmoil in markets will prompt clients to retreat after its second-quarter profits fell short of expectations, sending shares in the world’s largest wealth manager down more than 5 per cent. The Swiss group’s private bank bore the brunt of a bruising quarter, with pre-tax profit for the business falling 11

European stocks drifted on Tuesday after US retailer Walmart issued an after-hours profit warning and investors girded themselves for another interest rate rise from the Federal Reserve. Europe’s regional Stoxx 600 index struggled for direction, while London’s FTSE 100 rose 0.5 per cent. Shares in Walmart dropped almost 9 per cent in pre-market trading in