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Deutsche Telekom has agreed a multipronged deal with SoftBank that deepens its bet on the lucrative US market and will see the Japanese group take a roughly $5bn stake in Germany’s dominant telecoms operator. The arrangement was unveiled on Tuesday as Deutsche Telekom also announced the sale of its T-Mobile Netherlands unit to private equity

A frantic summer of dealmaking has put 2021 on track to break records, with almost $4tn of deals already agreed since the start of the year, as companies rush to exploit cheap financing and bumper profits. There were $500bn of transactions globally in the usually quiet month of August, up from $289bn in the same

Fighting is raging in Afghanistan’s isolated Panjshir Valley, the last stronghold of resistance to the Taliban, as the Islamist group maintains a military offensive to pacify the last territory holding out against its rule. Amrullah Saleh, vice-president of the former government of Ashraf Ghani, warned of an “overwhelming humanitarian crisis” and pleaded for international relief

A sharp slowdown in US jobs growth precludes the possibility that the Federal Reserve will announce plans this month to begin scaling back its pandemic-era stimulus, economists say, as the spread of the Delta coronavirus variant muddies the economic outlook. Following very strong payrolls reports in June and July, the US central bank readied for

The US economy created just 235,000 jobs in August, in a sign that the more contagious Delta coronavirus variant is having an effect on hiring plans and worker shortages are still rampant nationwide. Non-farm payrolls data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday marked a sharp deceleration from the upwardly revised 1.1m jobs

WhatsApp has been fined €225m for breaking the EU’s data privacy law by not telling its users how it was sharing their data with its parent company Facebook. In one of the biggest fines relating to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Irish data regulator applied a penalty more than four times the level

The chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission is warning that cryptocurrency trading platforms are putting their own survival at risk unless they heed his call to work within the nation’s regulatory framework. Gary Gensler told the Financial Times that while he remained “technology neutral”, crypto assets were no different than any others when

The US dramatically scaled back its evacuation mission in Afghanistan on Monday with the number of civilians being airlifted out of Kabul falling sharply as its forces scramble to withdraw ahead of Tuesday’s deadline to end the 20-year war. Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said military commanders were sharing some drawdown logistics with Taliban commanders to

Rockets were fired at Kabul’s international airport on Monday as US troops rushed to complete evacuations a day ahead of the deadline for the withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan. Jen Psaki, White House spokesperson, confirmed that the airport had come under rocket attack but said that “operations continue uninterrupted”. There was no report of

The US warned its citizens to leave the vicinity of Kabul airport immediately due to “a specific, credible threat” of an imminent attack, with the Taliban scaling up its armed presence around the site ahead of an August 31 deadline for the American withdrawal. The alert from the US embassy in Kabul came hours after

The US has carried out a drone strike in eastern Afghanistan against an Isis-K “planner” behind the deadly attack on Kabul airport on Thursday, as countries wrap up desperate efforts to evacuate thousands of Afghans trying to flee. According to US Central Command on Friday night, American forces conducted an “over-the-horizon counter-terrorism operation” in Nangarhar

Joe Biden vowed to plough ahead with the evacuation of those trying to flee Afghanistan and punish the perpetrators of an attack outside Kabul’s airport that killed at least 13 US troops and dozens of Afghans. At the end of what one aide called “maybe the worst day” of his eight-month presidency, Biden attempted to

Investors in the US have started to dial back their use of leverage for the first time since financial markets were rattled by the coronavirus crisis last year, removing some of the borrowed money that has since fuelled a rally in stocks. Investors had borrowed $844bn against their portfolios in July, down from a record

Hedge funds that seek to profit from stricken companies are enjoying their best year since the aftermath of the financial crisis as the stimulus-driven market rally boosts the price of debt that had been skirting with default. Distressed debt funds — specialists in picking up bonds and loans issued by companies in trouble — made

UK defence secretary Ben Wallace has warned of increasing risks of attacks on troops and evacuees at Kabul airport, as world leaders prepare to push Joe Biden to extend the US-led evacuation from Afghanistan beyond August 31. At an emergency G7 meeting, the US president will hear calls from allies including Boris Johnson, UK prime

Nato members’ hopes that the US will extend the emergency evacuation from Afghanistan beyond August 31 were in doubt because of the risk of Taliban opposition, a British defence minister admitted on Monday. James Heappey said the Taliban “gets a vote” on whether to allow the air bridge out of Kabul to continue beyond the

Seven Afghan civilians have been killed around Kabul international airport as chaos continued to hamper western efforts to evacuate people from the country, one week after the Taliban retook control. Confirming the civilian deaths, the UK defence ministry acknowledged on Sunday that “conditions on the ground remain extremely challenging”, as the US warned its citizens

Joe Biden pledged to evacuate every American trying to leave Afghanistan and insisted the botched US airlift was making “significant progress”, dismissing suggestions his administration had ignored warnings the Taliban would conquer Kabul at lightning speed. “This is one of the largest, most difficult airlifts in history,” said Biden in a televised address to the

China’s biggest tech stocks are on track for their worst week in four months as groups including Alibaba came under renewed selling pressure on the latest signs that Beijing’s regulatory crackdown was tightening. The Nasdaq Golden Dragon index of large US-listed Chinese stocks closed more than 5 per cent lower on Thursday in New York,

European stocks tumbled at the open on Thursday, with commodities also under heavy pressure on mounting concerns over US monetary policy and the renewed spread of coronavirus. Major bourses across the region slid in early trading, with London’s FTSE 100 dropping about 2 per cent. The broad Europe Stoxx 600 fell 1.4 per cent with