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Energy stocks tumbled on Tuesday, falling in tandem with oil prices in response to cooling demand for fuel in the US and China. Shares in large oil companies including Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil each lost more than 3.5 per cent, while Houston-based Halliburton fell by more than 8 per cent. ExxonMobil closed almost 4

5/1/2023, 11:10:12 PM What to watch in Asia today FT reporters Events: The Reserve Bank of Australia’s monetary policy rate-setting meeting begins. The Asian Development Bank’s annual gathering starts in Incheon, South Korea. Finance ministers and central bank governors of Asean Plus Three countries hold a news conference on the event’s sidelines. Data: South Korea

Last week was the tenth anniversary of the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh, in which 1,100 garment workers were killed because a shoddily constructed factory collapsed on top of them. It turned out that the factory was making goods for major global brands. The managers who took the decision to outsource to unknown individuals

Silicon Valley Bank’s failure last month stemmed from weakened regulations during the Trump administration and mis-steps by internal supervisors who were too slow to correct management blunders, the US Federal Reserve said in a scathing review of the lender’s implosion. The long-awaited report, released on Friday, had harsh words for the California bank’s management but

Richard Sharp has been forced to resign as BBC chair after an investigation found that he breached the rules after failing to declare a role in the loan guarantee made to Boris Johnson before his appointment. Sharp has been under increasing pressure after an investigation was launched by Adam Heppinstall KC into whether he had

The US is significantly stepping up its commitment to use its nuclear arsenal to defend South Korea, as it seeks to reassure Seoul about the strength of their alliance in the face of threats from North Korea. President Joe Biden and his South Korean counterpart Yoon Suk Yeol are set to announce on Wednesday that

Credit Suisse suffered SFr61.2bn ($68.6bn) of asset outflows in the first quarter as clients fled the stricken bank, exposing the scale of the task UBS now faces after taking over its Swiss rival. The speed with which clients deserted Credit Suisse was the chief reason Swiss authorities stepped in last month to orchestrate a rescue

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

Many of the biggest names in British business quit the CBI on Friday after a second allegation of rape threatened the survival of the employers’ organisation. Groups ranging from insurer Aviva and car manufacturers Jaguar Land Rover and BMW to payments company Mastercard and retailer John Lewis said they were cancelling their memberships after the

Google plans to introduce generative artificial intelligence into its advertising business over the coming months, as big tech groups rush to incorporate the groundbreaking technology into their products. According to an internal presentation to advertisers seen by the Financial Times, the Alphabet-owned company intends to begin using the AI to create novel advertisements based on

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

China is starting to target western interests in the country after five years of snowballing trade and technology restrictions spearheaded by the US under presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Over the past two months, Chinese officials have slapped new sanctions on US weapons companies Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, launched an investigation into US chipmaker

The head of the IMF’s Africa department has called for a significant increase in international support to help countries overcome a funding squeeze that is jeopardising the continent’s economic development. Abebe Selassie told the Financial Times that reform of the current mechanisms for dealing with unsustainable debts of African countries was “desperately needed”. “Do we

The writer is executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies Asia, and author of ‘The Billionaire Raj’ Two recent Beijing trips by global leaders have shed light on the many paradoxes of a future age of economic decoupling. A visit by Emmanuel Macron, president of France, and Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission

It was nearly a decade ago when Intel, then the undisputed leader in global semiconductor manufacturing, made a fateful decision. A new technology, extreme lithography, was offering a way to pack more computing power on to the silicon wafers from which tiny chips, essential for widely used products like smartphones and PCs, are cut. Using

European stocks inched higher and Wall Street futures were steady on Wednesday ahead of closely watched US inflation data that will heavily influence the Federal Reserve’s next interest rate decision. The region-wide Stoxx Europe 600 opened 0.1 per cent higher. Germany’s Dax and London’s FTSE 100 both gained 0.2 per cent. Contracts tracking Wall Street’s

Will Japan abandon its ultra-loose monetary policies now that Kazuo Ueda has replaced Haruhiko Kuroda as governor of the Bank of Japan? The answer, it seems, is “no”. The new governor, a well-known and respected academic economist, stressed that the two pillars of Japan’s current monetary policy — negative interest rates and yield curve control

US president Joe Biden is set to arrive in Belfast on Tuesday night to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement as London urged the region’s biggest unionist party to end its boycott of Northern Ireland’s political institutions. Biden’s visit, which will be followed by a longer trip to the Republic of Ireland,

In the west, the job of government is to prop up wobbly banks. In China, the role of government is seemingly to destabilise lenders. US and European bank bosses, at worst, face losing their jobs. In China, they may lose their liberty too. The Chinese authorities escalated their attack on Wednesday with a probe into

The majority of developing economies had less foreign exchange reserves at the end of 2022 than they did at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to fDi Markets analysis of central bank data from 75 countries collected via Haver Analytics. Import cover ratios — a standard comparable measure of foreign exchange reserves — fell