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The US military has shot down the Chinese spy balloon that flew over North America for a week and moved to recover the debris to glean more information about the surveillance craft. US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said a fighter jet on Saturday afternoon shot down the surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina

The UK’s FTSE 100 hit an all-time high on Friday, as the blue-chip index dominated by multinational companies overcame the drag of a domestic economy headed for recession. The FTSE added as much as 1.1 per cent on the day to trade at 7906.58, eclipsing its previous peak in May 2018, before closing at 7902.

Apple broke a 14-quarter streak of revenue growth as supply chain problems in China delayed delivery of iPhones during the critical holiday period. Total revenue in the quarter fell 5.5 per cent to $117.2bn, below forecasts of $121.1bn, according to Refinitiv. Analysts had been pricing in a 2 per cent decline after Apple warned of

Adani Enterprises has called off its $2.4bn equity fundraising in the latest blow to Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, who has seen shares in his industrial empire tumble after a short seller made allegations of fraud and stock manipulation. The decision to pull the share sale and refund investors marks an abrupt turn after Adani Enterprises’

More UK companies went bust last year than at any point since the financial crisis as soaring inflation, rising interest rates and the stalling economy hit businesses. The total number of company insolvencies registered in 2022 was 22,109 — the highest since 2009 and 57 per cent higher than 2021 — according to data issued

The Biden administration has stopped providing US companies with licences to export to Huawei as it moves towards imposing a total ban on the sale of American technology to the Chinese telecom equipment giant. Several people familiar with discussions inside the administration said the commerce department had notified some companies that it would no longer

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak has sacked Nadhim Zahawi as chair of the Conservative party after his ethics adviser found he committed “serious breaches” of the ministerial code by failing to be transparent about his tax affairs. Sunak finally jettisoned Zahawi on Sunday after weeks of negative coverage in the latest political scandal to hit

The UK tax authority has admitted that it gave misleading information last summer when it said no government minister was being investigated, even though Nadhim Zahawi was the subject of a probe. HM Revenue & Customs has now apologised for wrongly stating last June that no ministers were under investigation — mistakes it blames on

Goldman Sachs paid chief executive David Solomon $25mn for 2022, down almost 30 per cent compared to a year before, after the Wall Street bank reported a steep drop in profits, cut thousands of jobs and slashed employee bonuses. In a regulatory filing on Friday, Goldman disclosed that Solomon received a base salary of $2mn,

The US economy logged better than expected growth in the final quarter of 2022, even as the Federal Reserve’s aggressive campaign to raise borrowing costs began to weigh more heavily on business activity. The world’s largest economy expanded 2.9 per cent on an annualised basis between September and December, according to data published by the

The US and Germany will send main battle tanks to Kyiv, a significant increase of western military aid that was condemned by Russia and prompted cheers throughout Ukraine. The US will be sending 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine — or the equivalent of one Ukrainian tank battalion, senior Biden administration officials confirmed on Wednesday.

Germany is to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, in a move that marks a significant breakthrough in western efforts to bolster Kyiv’s fight against the Russian army. A person familiar with the matter confirmed Germany would send the tanks, though he would not provide details as to how many and what type were under

Nadhim Zahawi was fighting for his political life on Monday after prime minister Rishi Sunak ordered an ethics inquiry into the tax affairs of the Conservative party chair. Sunak’s support for Zahawi was highly conditional, after he declared that “there are questions that need answering” over Zahawi’s dispute with HM Revenue & Customs. Downing Street

The eurozone will avoid a recession this year according to a widely-watched survey of economists which illustrates the sharp about-turn in global economic sentiment in the past couple of weeks. As recently as last month, analysts surveyed by Consensus Economics were predicting the bloc would plunge into recession this year. But this month’s survey found

Banks are gearing up for the biggest round of job cuts since the global financial crisis, as executives come under pressure to slash costs following a collapse in investment banking revenues. The lay-offs — which are expected to be in the tens of thousands across the sector — reverse the mass hirings banks made over

Google’s parent company will axe 12,000 staff, pushing total tech job losses in the past 12 months above 200,000, as industry bosses concede they overextended during the pandemic’s digital boom. The industry-wide cull has affected more than 50,000 people across just four Big Tech companies that also include Amazon, Meta and Microsoft. Apple is the

Investors have been put on notice that central bankers on both sides of the Atlantic will “stay the course” on interest rate increases to cool down their economies and tame high inflation. European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde warned that further big rate rises lay ahead in comments later echoed by a top official at

More than a dozen companies have expressed interest in buying Britishvolt’s Northumberland factory site only hours after the battery group collapsed, as politicians warned the failure was a “disaster for the UK car industry”. Britishvolt fell into administration on Tuesday after a last-ditch fundraising effort was blocked by its creditors. Its largest asset is a

Business leaders and top government officials have expressed optimism about the global economy as China drops Covid controls, the US embarks on a green investment boom and western Europe adjusts to the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Gita Gopinath, deputy managing director of the IMF, signalled that

US drugmakers AbbVie and Eli Lilly have become the first pharmaceutical groups to pull out of a pricing agreement with the UK government in protest at a sharp rise in clawback payments. Eli Lilly said on Monday that the payments, which apply to branded medicines and have risen to more than a quarter of industry