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Birmingham city council, the biggest local authority in the UK and Europe, has declared itself in effect bankrupt, becoming the latest local government body to announce it cannot balance the books this year. The Labour-run council for the UK’s second city said on Tuesday that it had issued a section 114 notice owing to “unprecedented

Apple and Microsoft, the most valuable companies in the US, have argued some of their flagship services are insufficiently popular to be designated “gatekeepers” under landmark new EU legislation designed to curb the power of Big Tech. Brussels’ battle with Apple over its iMessage chat app and Microsoft’s search engine Bing comes ahead of Wednesday’s

Chinese lenders stepped in to extend billions of dollars to Russian banks as western institutions pulled back their operations in the country during the first year of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The moves by four of China’s biggest banks are part of Beijing’s efforts to promote the renminbi as an alternative global currency to the

Dealing with the market turmoil sparked by then UK prime minister Liz Truss’ ill-fated “mini” Budget last year felt like swimming with crocodiles, according to the Bank of England’s chief economist. Huw Pill told a panel at South Africa’s central bank on Friday that the September fiscal event, which set out £45bn in unfunded tax

Britain’s economic performance since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic was much better than previously thought, the Office for National Statistics said on Friday as revised figures added nearly 2 per cent to the size of the economy. The changes mean that by the end of 2021, the UK economy was 0.6 per cent larger

Shares in Indian industrial conglomerate Adani slid and opposition politicians demanded action after the Financial Times and two other media outlets reported new revelations about family-linked shareholders in the company’s stock.  The reports shone a spotlight on Indian institutions and the relationship between the conglomerate’s founder Gautam Adani and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a

Switzerland has proposed sweeping measures to clamp down on money laundering in an effort to shed the country’s reputation as a haven for ill-gotten gains. Finance minister Karin Keller-Sutter unveiled reforms on Wednesday to increase transparency and close legal loopholes by requiring the ultimate “beneficial owners” of trusts and companies to be declared. At present

UK foreign secretary James Cleverly has hit back at Conservative party critics ahead of a visit to Beijing this week, warning that failure to engage with China would be a sign of British “weakness”. Cleverly told the Financial Times he would tell his hosts on Wednesday that Britain welcomed Chinese investment provided it did not

What is included in my trial? During your trial you will have complete digital access to FT.com with everything in both of our Standard Digital and Premium Digital packages. Standard Digital includes access to a wealth of global news, analysis and expert opinion. Premium Digital includes access to our premier business column, Lex, as well

What is included in my trial? During your trial you will have complete digital access to FT.com with everything in both of our Standard Digital and Premium Digital packages. Standard Digital includes access to a wealth of global news, analysis and expert opinion. Premium Digital includes access to our premier business column, Lex, as well

Your browser does not support playing this file but you can still download the MP3 file to play locally. It’s almost time to wave goodbye to the summer, but is Rishi Sunak also poised to bid farewell to some of his ministers? The FT’s Whitehall editor Lucy Fisher is joined by columnist Stephen Bush and

What is included in my trial? During your trial you will have complete digital access to FT.com with everything in both of our Standard Digital and Premium Digital packages. Standard Digital includes access to a wealth of global news, analysis and expert opinion. Premium Digital includes access to our premier business column, Lex, as well

Wagner fighters made a makeshift memorial for their founder Yevgeny Prigozhin in St Petersburg on Thursday as the Kremlin maintained its silence on the warlord’s apparent demise in a plane crash. Supporters of Prigozhin, who is listed among the passengers of a private jet that crashed north-west of Moscow on Wednesday, killing all aboard, mourned

An aircraft said to be carrying notorious warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose Wagner group launched a failed mutiny in June, has crashed on a flight from Moscow to St Petersburg, according to Russian officials. All 10 people on the plane, including three crew members, died in the crash, Russia’s emergency ministry said, according to state newswire

Prospective investors in Arm’s initial public offering have raised concerns over the UK chip designer’s exposure to China, after the company warned of “significant risks” in the country. Managers at four separate funds considering an investment in Arm told the Financial Times that the prospectus for the planned listing on Nasdaq in September confirmed some

FTSE 100 bosses were given a 16 per cent pay rise on average last year, catapulting their earnings to 118 times that of the median UK worker and widening the income gap between executives and ordinary staff.  Bosses on the blue-chip index were paid a median £3.91mn each, a £530,000 rise from the previous year,

China is expected to make the biggest cuts this year to two of its core lending rates, as pressure mounts on policymakers and banks to reverse a trend of slowing momentum and revive flagging demand in the world’s second-biggest economy. The People’s Bank of China is set to announce reductions to both one-year and five-year

A group of Silicon Valley’s biggest private tech companies are dusting off long-delayed plans to list their shares, with the upcoming initial public offering of chip designer Arm set to provide a new gauge for market sentiment. Grocery delivery group Instacart, software company Databricks and identity verification start-up Socure are among those considered candidates to

SoftBank has bought a stake in UK chip designer Arm at a $64bn valuation, as the Japanese conglomerate takes full control of the Cambridge-based company and tries to set a floor for its stock price ahead of a listing that is expected next month. The deal saw SoftBank buy the 25 per cent of Arm

The number of babies born in England and Wales last year dropped to the lowest in two decades, according to official data that highlights the country’s demographic challenges. Statistics published on Thursday by the Office for National Statistics showed there were 605,479 live births in England and Wales last year, a 3.1 per cent decline

EY has rejected a proposal from US private equity group TPG to break up the Big Four firm and take a stake in its consulting business, according to a statement sent to partners on Wednesday. TPG wrote to EY in late July outlining its plan for a debt-and-equity deal to separate its consulting arm from