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The UK competition regulator has blocked Microsoft’s $75bn acquisition of the Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard, in a possibly fatal blow to the software giant’s biggest-ever deal. The Competition & Markets Authority said on Wednesday it believed the company would be commercially motivated to make Activision’s games exclusive to its own cloud gaming service.

Joe Biden has announced he will seek a second term in the White House, ending months of speculation and firing the starting gun on a 2024 re-election campaign that could result in a rematch of his 2020 clash with Donald Trump. In a video posted to social media on Tuesday that sought to depict him

French luxury group LVMH on Monday became the first European company to hit a $500bn market capitalisation, boosted by Chinese consumers’ appetite for luxury goods following Beijing’s decision to lift all coronavirus-related restrictions. Shares in the Paris-listed company, whose brands include Louis Vuitton and Dior, edged up 0.3 per cent to €903.7 to achieve a

European governments have reacted with anger and dismay to comments by a Chinese diplomat questioning the legal status of former Soviet states and Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who regained their independence from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, have said they will summon Chinese diplomats on Monday to complain about

A lobbying firm is launching a one-year business engagement operation ahead of the next general election in what is likely to be one of multiple attempts to exploit the vacuum left by the crisis at the CBI. WPI Strategy, a public affairs group behind the imminent launch of “BizUK”, insisted that it was not trying

Dominic Raab has resigned as the UK’s deputy prime minister after an independent report into bullying claims against him upheld two of the allegations. Raab, who was also justice secretary, issued a letter on Twitter on Friday morning saying he wanted to “keep his word” having promised to resign if the inquiry by employment lawyer

Russian paramilitary group Wagner, notorious for its brutal role in Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, unsuccessfully asked China for supplies of weapons earlier this year, according to a leaked US intelligence report. Representatives from Wagner, which is controlled by close Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, “sought munitions and equipment” from China in “early 2023”, according to

UK inflation remained in double digits in March with annual price rises of 10.1 per cent, raising the chances of further interest rate rises from the Bank of England. Consumer price inflation had been 10.4 per cent in February and was expected to drop to 9.8 per cent last month. Although petrol and diesel prices

Chinese insurer Ping An said HSBC had “exaggerated” the “costs and risks” of spinning off its Asian operations, as the bank’s largest shareholder used a rare public statement to ramp up pressure on the lender to separate its business. Michael Huang, chair of Ping An Asset Management, said in a statement on Tuesday that although a

Shares in US bank State Street dropped 10 per cent in pre-market trading as quarterly profits missed expectations and fees were hit by subdued markets and reduced assets under management. The huge custody bank, which is also a large provider of index mutual funds and exchange traded funds, said assets under management in its investment

Companies have committed more than $200bn to US manufacturing projects since Congress passed sweeping subsidies last year, as president Joe Biden’s effort to spark a new industrial revolution gains momentum. The investment in semiconductor and clean tech investments is almost double the commitments made in the same sectors in the whole of 2021, and nearly

Hedge funds and other parts of the shadow banking system should face greater scrutiny after last month’s upheaval in US government bonds, the country’s top markets regulator has said, reflecting concerns that speculative investors pose a risk to financial stability. Gary Gensler, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, told the Financial Times that taming

JPMorgan Chase expects to increase the profits it makes from lending and said that deposits had jumped by $37bn in the first quarter, following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Net income rose 52 per cent from a year ago to $12.6bn, or $4.10 per share in the first quarter, boosted by a rise in

EY’s UK bosses have told partners to prepare for a fresh cost-cutting plan and a stream of staff departures as they admitted to embarrassment at the collapse of the firm’s long-running attempt to split its global business in two. On a call with partners on Wednesday, Anna Anthony, UK managing partner for financial services, said:

Tens of thousands of Hongkongers who moved to the UK are being blocked from accessing as much as £2.2bn of pension assets, as activists accuse the city’s government of retaliating against those deemed “unpatriotic” following a political crackdown. The figures, released by UK advocacy group Hong Kong Watch on the eve of the first visit

CBI director-general Tony Danker has been sacked with immediate effect following an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment at the employers’ organisation. He will be replaced by Rain Newton-Smith, the UK lobby group’s former chief economist, who will return as director-general after a brief spell as a managing director for policy at Barclays. The dismissal

Shares in a number of Chinese companies soared more than 100 per cent on Monday, as the first batch of initial public offerings under a new streamlined listings regime debuted in Shanghai and Shenzhen. The top gainers among the 10 new launches included Shenzhen CECport Technologies, an electronics distributor, whose shares rose as much as

ByteDance raked in a record underlying profit last year, overtaking China’s long-reigning tech giants Tencent and Alibaba for the first time even as losses mounted for its fast-growing TikTok business unit. The world’s most valuable private company posted a 79 per cent surge in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, its preferred metric for

US fund managers are increasing investments in international stock markets after rising interest rates and fears of an economic slowdown brought an end to more than a decade of domestic dominance. US stocks have vastly outperformed most other developed and emerging markets since the financial crisis, but the trend began to reverse last year. The

A British business registered to a terraced house in a north London suburb appears to have arranged the sale of about $1.2bn of electronics into Russia since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine at the start of 2022. Mykines Corporation LLP, a company based in the London borough of Enfield, is listed in Russian records