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US defence secretary Lloyd Austin accused China of stepping up coercive behaviour towards Taiwan as he stressed that Washington would maintain its military capacity to resist any force that threatened the country. Speaking at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue defence forum in Singapore, Austin said China was engaging in provocative behaviour across the Indo-Pacific region that

Octopus Energy has made a last-minute entry in a three-way race to buy collapsed electricity and gas supplier Bulb, according to two people close to the deal. Centrica, the owner of British Gas, and Masdar, an Abu Dhabi-based energy company, are also in talks with the UK government as it tries to secure bids ahead

The European Central Bank has paved the way for a series of rate rises, starting with a quarter-percentage point move in July and raising the prospect of a bigger half-point shift in September. The ECB said in a statement on Thursday that its governing council “intends to raise the key ECB interest rates by 25 basis

Hundreds of millions of people are at risk of “hunger and destitution” because of food shortages due to the Ukraine war, the chief of the UN warned, as talks stalled over ending Russia’s blockade of Black Sea grain shipments. António Guterres spoke as negotiators from Russia and Turkey failed to break an impasse over how

The chief executive of London’s Heathrow airport, the UK’s largest, has warned it will take up to 18 months for the aviation industry to rehire staff and return operations to pre-pandemic levels, following a gruelling period of disruption and cancellations. John Holland-Kaye said airlines and airports needed to “plan much better” to avoid further cancellations

Boris Johnson is facing a vote of no confidence in his leadership on Monday evening in a dramatic escalation of tension between the prime minister and his own MPs. Conservative MPs will vote in a secret ballot from 6pm to 8pm on whether they want Johnson to carry on as prime minister. Downing Street said

Boris Johnson’s key allies are preparing to defend him in a challenge to his leadership, as they conceded it was increasingly likely that rebel Conservative MPs had reached the key threshold needed to trigger a vote of no confidence in the UK prime minister this week. For such a vote to take place, Sir Graham

US corporate bonds sold by low-rated companies have slumped in price, signalling lenders’ intensifying worries that scorching inflation and higher interest rates are beginning to hit borrowers most vulnerable to an economic downturn. Bonds assigned a triple C rating or below, the lowest rung on the ratings ladder, have posted a negative return of 2.8

The US economy registered another month of solid jobs growth in May, despite employers grappling with a historically tight labour market. Employers in the world’s largest economy added 390,000 jobs during the month, less than the upwardly revised 436,000 positions created during the previous period but more than economists had expected. The jobless rate steadied

Opec and its allies on Thursday agreed to accelerate oil production in July and August, as the cartel’s linchpin Saudi Arabia bowed to US pressure to cool a crude price rally that has threatened to stall the global economy. The cartel said it would increase output by almost 650,000 barrels a day in both months,

JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon on Wednesday warned investors to brace themselves for an economic “hurricane” as the war in Ukraine and policy tightening by the Federal Reserve roil markets. Dimon struck a gloomier tone on the economic outlook than in remarks he made just last week during JPMorgan’s first investor day in two

Western sanctions on Russian banks have made it difficult or impossible for African countries to buy grain from Russia to help solve a global food crisis triggered by the invasion of Ukraine, the head of the African Union has told EU leaders. Macky Sall, Senegal’s president made the complaint by videoconference at an EU summit

France has apologised for the chaos that marred the Champions League final on Saturday night in Paris and admitted that the way British football fans were handled went badly wrong. However, ministers also blamed the distribution of fake tickets “on an industrial scale” for the match between Liverpool and Real Madrid for the crowd control

The UK tax authority has admitted it has no idea how much tax is being evaded by UK residents holding money offshore, after new figures revealed hundreds of billions of pounds was held in tax havens. HM Revenue & Customs disclosed in freedom of information requests that UK residents had £850bn in financial accounts overseas

Emerging market bonds are suffering their worst losses in almost three decades, hit by rising global interest rates, slowing growth and the war in Ukraine. The benchmark index of dollar-denominated EM sovereign bonds, the JPMorgan EMBI Global Diversified, has delivered total returns of around minus 15 per cent so far in 2022, its worst start

UK chancellor Rishi Sunak said his latest package of support for UK households will have a “minimal impact” on inflation after the government announced a windfall tax on energy companies to fund lower fuel bills. “Our estimate and my view is that it will have a minimal impact on inflation,” Sunak told Sky News on

EY is working on a split of its audit and advisory operations worldwide in the biggest shake-up of a Big Four accounting firm in two decades, according to three people with knowledge of the plans. The proposal, which is still being thrashed out among EY’s upper echelons, is a bold attempt to escape the conflicts

China’s premier has said the world’s second-largest economy could struggle to record positive growth in the current quarter, urging officials to help companies resume production after Covid-19 lockdowns. The comments by Li Keqiang, to tens of thousands of officials on an internal videocast on Wednesday, underscore the difficulties President Xi Jinping’s administration will have in reaching its

Chinese and Russian strategic bombers flew over the Sea of Japan as Joe Biden attended a Quad summit in Tokyo, in a joint exercise the Japanese government denounced as “unacceptable”. The nuclear-capable bombers conducted a joint flight on Tuesday that began over the Sea of Japan as the US president was meeting his counterparts from

The biggest producer of oil and gas in UK waters has pushed back strongly against government threats of a windfall tax on the industry’s surging profits, warning it would make some North Sea projects uneconomic and could be “detrimental” to the country’s energy security. Linda Cook, chief executive of the FTSE 100 company Harbour Energy,