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Wall Street equity markets rallied on Wednesday after reassuring earnings reports from tech titans Microsoft and Alphabet soothed markets ahead of a crucial US interest rate decision later in the day. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite US stock index gained 2.7 per cent, with the tech sector rising on relief that inflation and signs of an

Has the high price of food passed a peak? Even before the UN-brokered grain deal between Kyiv and Moscow gave the green light last week for shipments to leave Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, food commodity prices had been plummeting. Fears of recession, a bumper harvest in Russia and hopes of revived grain trade flows have

The writer is professor of corporate law at the University of Cambridge The Financial Reporting Council has announced a fresh review of the UK Corporate Governance Code, indicating that it will strengthen and expand it. The FRC, likely to be absorbed soon into a new, more powerful regulator — the Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority

When two trains are heading for collision, the switch operator puts them on different tracks. Alas, in geopolitics it is up to the drivers to take evasive action. In the case of the US and China, each questions the other’s ability to drive trains. History offers us little hope that looming trainwrecks will organically resolve

The world’s biggest oil and gas companies are generating more money than ever while spending relatively little of it. European supermajors BP, Shell and TotalEnergies have each pledged to become green businesses over the next three decades but are still investing only a fraction of their capital on renewable energy. With each expected to report

Norway’s Equinor and Spain’s Iberdrola revealed bumper profits on Wednesday as the energy groups benefited from turmoil in commodity markets in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. State-controlled Equinor said it would return an additional $3bn to shareholders as it reported adjusted pre-tax earnings of $17.6bn in the three months to the end of

European gas prices jumped further on Wednesday after Russia followed through on its threat to make further cuts in gas supplies to the region. Gas prices rose 12 per cent early on Wednesday and have risen by more than a third this week from already extremely elevated levels as Europe struggles to fill gas storage

Lloyds Banking Group has beaten quarterly profit estimates and updated full-year guidance as interest rate rises and an increase in mortgages boosted the UK lender. Second-quarter pre-tax profit rose to £2.04bn, inching up from £2.01bn a year earlier but beating consensus of £1.6bn. Revenues for the three months to June rose 10 per cent to

Deutsche Bank has ditched an already reduced target for cost cuts this year as Germany’s largest lender warned that it was braced for “higher-than-expected bank levies, inflation, unforeseen costs related to the war in Ukraine and litigation matters”. The combination of factors has rendered its ambition of bringing costs down to 70 per cent of

Credit Suisse announced plans for a “comprehensive” review of its businesses as the troubled Swiss bank installed Ulrich Körner as chief executive and slumped to a far larger second-quarter loss than expected. Körner, who heads Credit Suisse’s asset management business, will take over from Thomas Gottstein, who is stepping down after leading the bank through

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 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

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

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 —

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

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

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