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Joe Biden has nominated Jay Powell to serve a second term as chair of the Federal Reserve, opting for continuity at a delicate moment for the US economy as it grapples with persistently high inflation and a patchy labour market recovery. Lael Brainard, considered Powell’s fiercest competitor for the top job, was tapped for the

Telecom Italia is to hold an emergency board meeting on Sunday to evaluate a takeover offer from US private equity group KKR, a deal that would be one of the largest telecoms buyouts of all time. KKR already holds a 37.5 per cent stake in Telecom Italia’s “last mile” network but has moved to make

UBS has proposed former Morgan Stanley president Colm Kelleher as its next chair, succeeding Axel Weber when he steps down next year after a decade overseeing the Swiss lender. The appointment of Kelleher, a 64-year-old Irishman who spent 30 years at the Wall Street bank, was announced on Saturday morning. UBS conducted a wide external

The US House of Representatives passed the $1.75tn Build Back Better bill on Friday morning, sending Joe Biden’s ambitious social spending package to the Senate, where it faces an uncertain fate. The final vote was 220-213, with all but one Democrat voting in favour and every Republican opposing it. The Democrat-controlled House had aimed to

Turkey slashed interest rates on Thursday, sending the lira tumbling to a new record low and amplifying concerns President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s fixation on low borrowing costs will worsen already acute inflation. The central bank cut its one-week repo rate by 1 percentage point to 15 per cent, marking the third straight reduction in interest

Three of Barclays’ top-20 shareholders have raised concerns over the terms of Jes Staley’s exit ahead of meetings between the bank and investors next week. Some investors have privately criticised the £2.4m in pay awarded to the departing chief executive, who resigned this month following a probe into his past ties to convicted sex offender

Joe Biden has told Xi Jinping that their countries must not allow competition to “veer into conflict”, at the start of a virtual meeting that takes place amid rising tensions over Taiwan. “We need to establish a common sense guardrail, to be clear and honest where we disagree and work together where our interests intersect,”

Beijing has accused the EU of risking damage to world supply chains by throwing up regulatory and trade hurdles to foreign businesses, warning “discriminatory” practices could strain the global recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. The Chinese ambassador to the EU said the European Commission’s drive to sharpen its trade toolkit was seen by some businesses

A last-minute intervention from India and China weakened the move to end coal power and fossil fuel subsidies in the Glasgow Climate Pact in the closing stages of the UN COP26 summit. Countries agreed to “phase down” rather than “phase out” coal, in wording that was watered down several times in the course of the

Jes Staley exchanged 1,200 emails with Jeffrey Epstein over a four-year period with content that included unexplained terms such as “snow white”, according to people familiar with the correspondence between the former Barclays chief executive and the convicted sex offender. Staley resigned from Barclays last week after seeing preliminary conclusions of an investigation by UK

Toshiba’s board is poised to rule out pursuing a deal to take the whole company private and is preparing to reveal an alternative plan to split the business in three that some investors say they may reject, according to people familiar with the matter. A $20bn offer for the conglomerate by UK private equity group

US consumer prices are expected to have surged in October at their fastest pace in three decades, as bottlenecks and other supply-chain disruptions intensify and inflationary pressures broaden. Consensus forecasts compiled by Bloomberg indicate that the consumer price index to be published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday rose 5.9 per cent in

US industrial group General Electric is to split itself into three public companies from 2023, a big step in chief executive Larry Culp’s plan to streamline the sprawling conglomerate. The companies will focus on healthcare, energy and aviation. GE Healthcare will be spun off in 2023, with GE retaining a 19.9 per cent stake in

Tesla shares were under pressure on Monday after millions of Twitter users polled by chief executive Elon Musk concluded that he should sell 10 per cent of his stake in the electric carmaker. The 24-hour poll, which was conducted over the weekend, is the latest stunt by Musk to delight fans but risk controversy. When

China reported dozens of new local coronavirus infections on Saturday, a day after the government reaffirmed its commitment to strict measures designed to limit the pandemic’s spread within its borders. The country’s National Health Commission on Sunday reported 74 new cases for the previous day, of which 50 were locally transmitted. A wave of cases

Nancy Pelosi stared down progressives in her own party on Friday, vowing to press ahead with a vote on a $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill while delaying consideration of a separate, larger social spending package popular with the leftwing of the Democratic party. The move breaks a longstanding promise to move the two bills through Congress

US jobs growth picked up after two straight months of disappointing gains as Covid-related concerns that have kept workers on the sidelines eased. Employers in the world’s largest economy added 531,000 jobs in October, above the upwardly-revised 312,000 positions created the previous month and closer to the roughly 560,000 monthly average seen since the start

One of Austria’s most senior military officials has been removed from a sensitive government position amid concerns over his links to Jan Marsalek, the former chief operating officer of fraudulent payment company Wirecard. Brigadier Gustav Gustenau was until recently head of the office of security policy within the Austrian ministry of defence — which provides

The Mark Carney-led coalition of international financial companies signed up to tackle climate change has up to $130tn of private capital committed to hitting net zero emissions targets by 2050. The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (Gfanz) — which is made up of more than 450 banks, insurers and asset managers across 45 countries

More than 100 global leaders will make a commitment on Tuesday to halt deforestation by 2030, while 30 financial institutions are set to promise to eliminate the harmful practice from their portfolios by 2025. In what is being billed as one of the first significant steps of the COP26 summit in Glasgow, leaders from countries

G20 leaders have sealed a deal to end international financing of coal power in a boost ahead of the opening of the COP26 climate summit. Leaders at a G20 summit in Rome agreed to end financing for coal-fired power plants overseas by the end of this year, according to the final text of their communiqué.

The US and the EU have agreed to ease tariffs on billions of dollars of steel and aluminium products in a bid to resolve a trade dispute that has hung over transatlantic relations since the Trump administration. “We have agreed with the US to pause our steel and aluminium [section 232] trade dispute and launch co-operation

President Emmanuel Macron has warned that an energy crisis threatens the world’s post-pandemic recovery, calling for leaders at a G20 summit in Rome this weekend to work together to stabilise supplies. In an interview, the French president also urged bigger financial commitments towards the fight against global warming on the eve of the COP26 climate

Joe Biden announced a framework agreement with Democratic leaders on his US economic agenda, in an effort to stoke political momentum for his $1.75tn package after weeks of fraught negotiations. The president unveiled details of the proposed deal during a meeting with Democrats from the House of Representatives on Thursday morning, then spoke about it

Senior Democrats have laid out detailed plans for a new tax hitting about 700 American billionaires, in an attempt to extract revenue from the ultra-wealthy to pay for Biden’s $2tn flagship spending plan. Ron Wyden, the chair of the Senate finance committee, said on Wednesday the plan would apply to taxpayers with more than $100m

Tesla has become the first carmaker to be valued at $1tn after rental group Hertz said it had ordered 100,000 Tesla Model 3 sedans to electrify its fleet. Tesla shares rose 9.84 per cent in mid-day trading on Monday to $998.74, bringing year-to-date gains above 40 per cent and lifting the company’s market cap to

Poland’s prime minister has accused the EU of making demands of Warsaw with a “gun to our head”, urging Brussels to withdraw threats of legal and financial sanctions if it wanted to resolve the country’s rule of law crisis. In a move to ease tensions in the long-running dispute, which has raised fears of a

Saudi Arabia has pledged to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2060, while also maintaining its role as a leading producer of oil and gas, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in a speech on Saturday. The announcement comes just days before the opening of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow and the G20

Internal documents have revealed Facebook’s bungled attempt to curb an explosion of hate speech and misinformation ahead of and during the January 6 Capitol riots, causing distress among its employees. The revelations come even as in mid-January, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, downplayed the notion that the social media network played a big part

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has awarded almost $200m to a former Deutsche Bank employee who raised concerns about the manipulation of the Libor interest rate benchmark, marking the largest-ever payment under US whistleblower programmes. The US derivatives regulator said the payment had been made for “timely original information” that significantly contributed to an already