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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,

Italian oil major Eni plans to spend at least €2.5bn in the UK over the next four years as the government demands oil and gas companies significantly increase investment in Britain’s energy system or face a windfall tax on their soaring profits. The commitment by the group — the ninth-largest gas producer in the North

Anthony Albanese is on track to become Australia’s first Labor prime minister in nine years, after Scott Morrison’s conservative Liberal-National coalition government failed to win enough seats to form either a majority or minority government. But unexpected wins from the environmentalist Greens and a number of climate-focused independent candidates meant it was not immediately clear

Huw Pill, the Bank of England’s chief economist, said on Friday that it was “crucial” to ensure that the UK avoids stoking an “inflationary psychology” and indicated he supported further interest rate rises. With inflation having reached a 40-year high in April, Pill said that prices rising at more than four times the central bank’s

Boris Johnson will not be issued with further fines over his involvement in the “partygate” scandal, Downing Street confirmed on Thursday, as the Metropolitan Police announced the end of its probe into the affair. The Met said it had made 126 referrals for fixed-penalty notices in its investigation into parties in Downing Street and Whitehall

Turkey has blocked Nato’s initial decision to process requests by Finland and Sweden to join the military alliance, throwing into doubt the hopes for a quick accession of the two Nordic countries. Nato ambassadors met on Wednesday with the aim of opening accession talks on the same day that Finland and Sweden submitted their applications

Twitter said it plans to enforce the $44bn takeover agreement with Elon Musk, just hours after the Tesla boss declared the purchase “cannot move forward” unless the social media company can certify the number of fake accounts. The San Francisco-based group made the comments in a detailed filing on Tuesday, outlining the whirlwind weeks in

China’s economic activity contracted sharply in April as a wave of lockdowns across the country posed the most significant challenge to its growth prospects since Covid-19 emerged over two years ago. Retail sales, the country’s main gauge of consumer activity which had already entered contraction in March, slumped 11.1 per cent year on year, compared

Hedge funds focused on US equities are pulling back sharply on their bets after the longest stretch of sustained selling in more than a decade left many managers nursing stiff losses. The S&P 500 index has fallen for six weeks in a row in a tumultuous stretch that on Thursday left Wall Street’s benchmark share

German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said the G7 group of industrialised nations was urgently seeking alternative routes for the export of Ukrainian grain as Russia’s war against its western neighbour raised the risk of a global “hunger crisis”. Speaking at the conclusion of a three-day meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Germany, Baerbock said some

Elon Musk on Friday tweeted that he had put his $44bn deal to take Twitter private “temporarily on hold” pending details supporting the calculation that spam and fake accounts represented fewer than 5 per cent of users. Musk posted his remarks on the microblogging site with a report from the Reuters news agency about the

Finland’s president and prime minister have vowed to join Nato, an announcement that will redraw Europe’s geopolitical map and push neighbouring Sweden to apply for membership in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. President Sauli Niinistö and Prime Minister Sanna Marin both said on Thursday that Finland “must apply” for Nato membership within days.

US consumer price growth remained at a four-decade high in April, despite the first moderation in the annual pace in eight months, underscoring the urgency of the Federal Reserve’s push to stamp out inflation. The consumer price index rose at an annual pace of 8.3 per cent last month, a step down from the 8.5

A global equity sell-off hit Asian markets on Tuesday after the steepest one-day fall on Wall Street since 2020 as investors worried about a slowdown in the world’s largest economies. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index slid 2.8 per cent in afternoon trading after a one-day holiday. Chinese technology groups listed in the territory recorded some

Vladimir Putin has claimed Russia was forced to “strike back pre-emptively” against Ukraine, adding that the Kremlin’s troops were “fighting on their own land” in the conflict, just as Soviet forces did in the second world war. In his speech at the annual Victory Day parade in Moscow’s Red Square, the Russian president sought to

The director of the CIA said that Chinese president Xi Jinping has been “unsettled” by the war in Ukraine, which had demonstrated that the friendship between Beijing and Moscow had “limits” at a time when western allies were moving closer together. Speaking at the FT Weekend Festival in Washington on Saturday, Bill Burns said the

Early election returns showed Sinn Féin set for a historic victory in Northern Ireland’s elections in what would mark the first time the nationalist party, committed to Irish reunification, has outperformed unionists in the region. The party scooped 29 per cent of first-preference votes under Northern Ireland’s proportional representation system, up 1.1 points on the