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European stocks sank at the open on Wednesday as weaker-than-expected earnings from ASM International, the Dutch chip tool manufacturer, reawakened investors fears of a coming economic slowdown. Europe’s region-wide Stoxx 600 and France’s CAC index both fell more than 1.1 per cent in the first hour of trade. ASMI dropped 11.8 per cent in Amsterdam

Asian stocks sold off sharply on Tuesday with investors growing increasingly nervous about the extent of China’s recovery and potential US restrictions on investments in the world’s second-biggest economy. China’s CSI 300 index dropped 0.8 per cent, taking its decline since last Tuesday to more than 5 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index slipped

Beijing has been forced to backtrack after its ambassador to France sparked a furore in Europe at the weekend by questioning the legal status of former Soviet states and Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea. China’s foreign ministry on Monday contradicted the comments from Lu Shaye, who had infuriated European capitals and fuelled distrust about Beijing’s ambitions

Several countries, including the UK, US and Italy, have begun evacuations from Sudan, after a week of fighting between the country’s armed forces and a paramilitary group. British prime minister Rishi Sunak said “UK armed forces have completed a complex and rapid evacuation of British diplomats and their families”. The White House said it had

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

Black market drones have been used in military attacks for years. Drones have been heavily used in the Ukraine war too, prompting speculation that China was involved. Beijing has denied widespread reports that the country exported drones to aid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The speculation highlights China’s growing dominance in commercial drone manufacturing. The government

Natural gas consumption in the EU fell almost 18 per cent in the eight months to March, exceeding the bloc’s target and easing fears of energy shortages caused by massive cuts to Russian imports. The large drop in gas usage by European households and businesses was aided by a milder winter. But it also reflected

Apple and Goldman Sachs are seeking to lure US depositors to a new savings account by offering to pay interest at more than 10 times the national average rate. The California tech giant and Wall Street bank on Monday launched a new savings account yielding 4.15 per cent a year, having first announced the product

Almost exactly a year ago, just before the IMF’s spring meeting, Janet Yellen, US Treasury secretary, launched a new buzzword: “friend-shoring”. The idea was that in a world of rising US-China tensions (and western hostility to Russia), American companies should move their “supply chains to a large number of trusted countries” — or friends. It

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

The cost of buying insurance against a US government default has shot to its highest level in more than a decade, in an early sign of market concerns about the political impasse in Washington over the debt ceiling. Amid a stalemate between the White House and congressional Republicans on raising the federal borrowing limit, the

HSBC has hired more than 40 investment bankers who used to work at Silicon Valley Bank, the latest move by the British lender to scoop up parts of the failed tech-focused bank. A month after HSBC acquired SVB’s UK subsidiary for £1, the bank is now hiring several dozen of its US bankers from First

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

Corporate America is facing its sharpest drop in profits since the early stages of the Covid pandemic, according to Wall Street forecasts, as high inflation squeezes margins and fears of an impending recession hold back demand. Companies on the S&P 500 index are expected to report a 6.8 per cent decline in first-quarter earnings compared

Technology is everywhere and always an unalloyed good. New technologies ultimately create better jobs and more broadly based prosperity. So goes the conventional economic wisdom. But what if it wasn’t true? What if technology had been used — in lieu of strong political and institutional restraints — to put more money in the hands of

Signs the US labour market is cooling have raised hopes that the worst inflation problem in decades is improving, but economists warn further action is still needed from the Federal Reserve to fully contain price pressures. Data released on Friday bolstered the view that the world’s largest economy, while still resilient, is gradually losing some

Northern Ireland’s police have warned of the risk of terror attacks on their officers as US president Joe Biden and UK prime minister Rishi Sunak prepare to visit Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the region’s landmark peace deal. Biden and Sunak are expected to celebrate the Good Friday Agreement, which was signed on

Kyiv is willing to discuss the future of Crimea with Moscow if its forces reach the border of the Russian-occupied peninsula, a top adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has told the Financial Times. The comments by Andriy Sybiha, deputy head of Zelenskyy’s office, are the most explicit statement of Ukraine’s interest in negotiations since it

Poland’s president on Wednesday pledged to send 14 MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine after welcoming president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Warsaw for a state visit to strengthen ties between the neighbouring nations. The fresh pledge follows Poland’s delivery of four of its Soviet-built jets after it agreed last month to make the first shipment of combat