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Nvidia has become the first chipmaker to hit a $1tn valuation, leading a surge of enthusiasm across Wall Street for companies seen to benefit from the latest developments in artificial intelligence. Its shares rose more than 4 per cent to hit $406.1 in early trading in New York on Tuesday, after its chief executive Jensen

Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez has called a snap general election in July after his Socialist party suffered a resounding defeat in local and regional elections on Sunday. Sánchez made the surprise announcement on Monday morning as the conservative People’s party was still celebrating its huge electoral gains across the country. The PP will need

US president Joe Biden has struck a deal with Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker, that would avert a debt default looming in early June and bring relief to the global economy and financial markets. Biden and McCarthy reached the in-principle agreement on Saturday following days of tense, round-the-clock negotiations between the White House and

Jeremy Hunt has backed further interest rate rises to bring prices under control as figures showed only Argentina and South Sudan experienced bigger increases in underlying inflation last month. The UK chancellor signalled his support for Bank of England rate increases after a week when core inflation, which excludes energy and food, hit its highest

Credit Suisse has been ordered by a Singaporean judge to pay $926mn to former Georgian prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, a final blow to the bank before UBS is expected to complete its takeover as soon as next week. Ivanishvili, who is Georgia’s richest man, had already won a case against the Swiss bank in Bermuda

Net immigration to the UK rose to a record high of 606,000 in 2022, driven by rising numbers of people from outside the EU, including from Ukraine and Hong Kong. The figures fell short of estimates of about 700,000 but remain far above the Conservative government’s 2010 pledge to reduce net immigration to the “tens

UK inflation dropped to 8.7 per cent in April, a smaller fall than the Bank of England expected, raising pressure on the central bank to keep increasing interest rates.  The figure will come as a blow to ministers and the central bank because the fall in consumer price inflation from 10.1 per cent in March

The UK will escape a recession this year, the IMF said on Tuesday, adding that the country’s economy had been “buoyed by resilient demand in the context of declining energy prices”. But the fund cautioned that Britain risked being stuck with persistent inflation unless interest rates stayed high for longer. “Economic activity has slowed significantly

Meta has been hit with a €1.2bn fine by the EU and ordered to suspend transfers of user data to the US, in the largest penalty to be imposed against a Big Tech company in the bloc over privacy violations. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, which oversees the General Data Protection Regulation, on Monday handed down

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought to win over Brazil and India at the G7 summit in Japan, where he called on leaders to unite behind his proposal to end Russia’s war. Zelenskyy said there was a need for “the clear global leadership of democracy” to counter Moscow’s aggression, in a speech addressed to G7 leaders,

The G7 has issued its strongest condemnation of China, as the world’s most advanced economies step up their response to what they say are rising military and economic security threats posed by Beijing. In broad criticism of China over everything from its militarisation of the South China Sea to its use of “economic coercion”, the

A front company for the Russian mercenary group Wagner acquired tens of thousands of protective helmets from China late last year, at the same time as the group’s chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was raising a vast prisoner army to attack Ukraine. The Financial Times has found that entities used by the warlord to equip his operations

BT is to cut up to 40 per cent of its workforce by the end of the decade, as it seeks to slash costs and become a “leaner business”. The group said on Thursday that it would cut between 40,000 and 55,000 jobs, including employees and third-party contractors, by 2030. The group’s current workforce totals

The values of prime London offices are “close to the bottom” after a brutal year for commercial property investors, according to the head of one of the UK’s largest landlords. British Land boss Simon Carter said the value of good-quality London offices should stabilise after sharp falls in recent months, but warned of more pain

Vodafone plans to cut 11,000 jobs as new chief executive Margherita Della Valle seeks to revive profit growth at the telecoms group. Della Valle, who was made permanent chief executive last month, set out a strategy for the group on Tuesday, outlining the ways in which “Vodafone must change”. The cuts are part of plan

Turkey’s veteran leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Monday led a hotly contested election to extend his rule into a third decade, defying polls to enter an expected run-off for the presidency with momentum on his side. After a hard-fought campaign that had raised hopes of an opposition breakthrough, Erdoğan won 49.3 per cent of votes

The G7 and EU will ban Russian gas imports on routes where Moscow has cut supplies, according to officials involved in the negotiations, the first time pipeline gas trade has been blocked by western powers since the invasion of Ukraine. The decision, which is to be finalised by G7 leaders at a summit in Hiroshima

Russia’s defence ministry claimed a long-awaited Ukrainian counter-offensive had begun, pointing to intensifying attacks in eastern Ukraine over the past 48 hours. The ministry said on Friday that Ukraine had launched 26 assaults along a 60-mile stretch of the frontline near Bakhmut and the nearby town of Soledar, involving more than a thousand troops and

PwC is racing to contain the global fallout of an Australian leak scandal on its business after it emerged that the firm used confidential government tax plans to advise tech clients. Emails released by an Australian senate committee last week showed that PwC had used information received during its work with the government to win

The US has for the first time transferred seized assets from a sanctions-hit Russian oligarch to send to Ukraine for the reconstruction of the war-ravaged country. The authorisation came on Wednesday from attorney-general Merrick Garland, who said additional moves of this kind would be forthcoming. “While this represents the United States’ first transfer of forfeited

Donald Trump has been found liable for the sexual abuse of a journalist in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s, in a significant legal defeat for the former US president as he mounts a third bid for the White House. A nine-person jury deliberated for just a few hours before unanimously finding Trump liable