News

New cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant continued to be detected around the world on Sunday, as nations tried to delay a surge in infections by restricting travel and imposing new quarantine measures. Omicron first emerged earlier this month in southern Africa. The World Health Organization designated it a “variant of concern” on Friday, saying

Global stocks and oil prices tumbled on Friday as investors dashed for shelter in safe haven assets after a new coronavirus variant shook market sentiment. A broad sell-off in European shares followed similar moves in Asian markets. Europe’s Stoxx 600 fell 3.1 per cent in early trade, with France’s CAC 40 index and Germany’s Dax

Two Deutsche Bahn employees alleged that some senior staff at the state-owned railway company misused corporate funds as part of widespread fraud at one of Europe’s largest infrastructure projects. While an investigation into the allegations was under way, one of the employees was fired. Fearing retaliation, the second whistleblower abruptly broke off contact with compliance

France’s interior minister on Wednesday said that “many” migrants had drowned during an attempt to cross the English Channel to Britain, amid reports that more than 20 had died in the worst incident so far in a surge of clandestine small-boat crossings. Gérald Darmanin wrote on Twitter that he was feeling “shocked” by the disaster

President Joe Biden has announced the release of oil from the US’s strategic stockpile in a bid to drive down petrol prices and snuff out a crude market rally that the White House has said poses a threat to the global economic recovery. The White House said on Tuesday the president was authorising the release

Joe Biden has nominated Jay Powell to serve a second term as chair of the Federal Reserve, opting for continuity at a delicate moment for the US economy as it grapples with persistently high inflation and a patchy labour market recovery. Lael Brainard, considered Powell’s fiercest competitor for the top job, was tapped for the

Telecom Italia is to hold an emergency board meeting on Sunday to evaluate a takeover offer from US private equity group KKR, a deal that would be one of the largest telecoms buyouts of all time. KKR already holds a 37.5 per cent stake in Telecom Italia’s “last mile” network but has moved to make

UBS has proposed former Morgan Stanley president Colm Kelleher as its next chair, succeeding Axel Weber when he steps down next year after a decade overseeing the Swiss lender. The appointment of Kelleher, a 64-year-old Irishman who spent 30 years at the Wall Street bank, was announced on Saturday morning. UBS conducted a wide external

Turkey slashed interest rates on Thursday, sending the lira tumbling to a new record low and amplifying concerns President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s fixation on low borrowing costs will worsen already acute inflation. The central bank cut its one-week repo rate by 1 percentage point to 15 per cent, marking the third straight reduction in interest

Three of Barclays’ top-20 shareholders have raised concerns over the terms of Jes Staley’s exit ahead of meetings between the bank and investors next week. Some investors have privately criticised the £2.4m in pay awarded to the departing chief executive, who resigned this month following a probe into his past ties to convicted sex offender

Germany’s energy regulator said it had “temporarily suspended” certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, dealing a setback to the Kremlin-backed gas project and sparking a rise in UK and continental European gas prices. The regulator said it could not yet approve the project, led by Russia’s Gazprom, because its owners had not yet properly

Royal Dutch Shell plans to ditch its dual share structure and move its tax residence from the Netherlands to the UK, in moves the oil group says will strengthen its competitiveness. The overhaul of the Anglo-Dutch group’s structure comes less than a month after the Wall Street activist investor Third Point announced a stake in

The COP26 climate summit in Glasgow succeeded in getting 197 countries to agree new rules on limiting greenhouse gas emissions, but last-minute objections from India and China stymied a commitment to end coal use and fossil fuel subsidies. Conference president Alok Sharma fought back tears in the final minutes as he apologised to other ministers

Jes Staley exchanged 1,200 emails with Jeffrey Epstein over a four-year period with content that included unexplained terms such as “snow white”, according to people familiar with the correspondence between the former Barclays chief executive and the convicted sex offender. Staley resigned from Barclays last week after seeing preliminary conclusions of an investigation by UK

Johnson & Johnson is to spin off its consumer products division, best known for Band-Aid plasters and baby shampoo, as the world’s largest healthcare company seeks to focus on pharmaceuticals and medical devices. The division, which generated $14bn in sales last year, will be split off in 18 to 24 months, most likely via a

Alexander Lukashenko has threatened to cut the transit of gas and goods through Belarus to Europe if the EU imposes further sanctions on his regime over the migrant crisis on the Belarusian-Polish border. The Belarus president was responding to an announcement by Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president, on Wednesday that the bloc would

US consumer prices are expected to have surged in October at their fastest pace in three decades, as bottlenecks and other supply-chain disruptions intensify and inflationary pressures broaden. Consensus forecasts compiled by Bloomberg indicate that the consumer price index to be published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday rose 5.9 per cent in

US industrial group General Electric is to split itself into three public companies from 2023, a big step in chief executive Larry Culp’s plan to streamline the sprawling conglomerate. The companies will focus on healthcare, energy and aviation. GE Healthcare will be spun off in 2023, with GE retaining a 19.9 per cent stake in

SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son has promised a ¥1tn ($8.8bn) share buyback programme over the next 12 months, yielding to investor pressure after the company’s Vision Fund unit disclosed a record quarterly loss of ¥825.1bn. Market expectations of a new round of share repurchases had been rising with some of the company’s largest shareholders, including activist

China reported dozens of new local coronavirus infections on Saturday, a day after the government reaffirmed its commitment to strict measures designed to limit the pandemic’s spread within its borders. The country’s National Health Commission on Sunday reported 74 new cases for the previous day, of which 50 were locally transmitted. A wave of cases