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Chinese real estate developer Evergrande said a potential sale of its property services unit had collapsed, deepening the pressure on the group that has just days to avoid an official default on its debt. A deal to sell 50.1 per cent of Evergrande Property Services Group to fellow developer Hopson Development Holdings for HK$20bn ($2.6bn)

Johnson & Johnson spent $1.4bn on a contentious legal manoeuvre that created a subsidiary to manage multibillion-dollar claims relating to its talc and placed it into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company’s chief financial officer Joseph Wolk said on Tuesday. The world’s biggest health products company has faced tens of thousands of lawsuits from plaintiffs alleging

Countering the security threat from the rise of China will be an important part of Nato’s future rationale, the alliance’s chief has said, marking a significant rethink of the western alliance’s objectives that reflects the US’s geostrategic pivot to Asia. In an interview with the Financial Times, Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said China was already

China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August that circled the globe before speeding towards its target, demonstrating an advanced space capability that caught US intelligence by surprise. Five people familiar with the test said the Chinese military launched a rocket that carried a hypersonic glide vehicle which flew through low-orbit space before cruising down towards its target.

Goldman Sachs reported a 60 per cent rise in quarterly profits, capping a week of bank earnings in which Wall Street firms reaped billions of dollars from a record burst of dealmaking. On Friday, Goldman reported third quarter group earnings per share of $14.93 on total net income of $5.4bn, up from $3.4bn a year

Japan’s new prime minister has pledged to move the country away from neoliberal fundamentalism as he lambasted his own party’s failure to deliver broad-based growth under the Abenomics programme that defined the economy for almost a decade. In his first interview with international media since taking over Japan’s leadership this month, Fumio Kishida told the

International bond sales by Chinese developers have all but halted as the crisis at China Evergrande stokes fears of defaults across the country’s property sector, throttling a crucial driver of Asia’s high-yield debt market. Just one developer has managed to tap overseas bond investors since Evergrande, the world’s most indebted real estate group, missed an

The EU will be making a “historic misjudgement” if it fails to agree to rewrite the Brexit deal that covers trading arrangements for Northern Ireland, the UK warned on Tuesday. In an uncompromising speech, UK Brexit minister Lord David Frost warned that “fractious” relations between the two sides would not find a new equilibrium unless

The price of US crude oil hit a fresh seven-year high on Monday on fears that fuel demand was recovering faster from last year’s economic slowdown than producers could bring supply to the market. West Texas Intermediate, the US crude benchmark, was trading at more than $81 a barrel, the highest since 2014 for the

The Kremlin’s ambassador to the EU has called on Europe to mend ties with Moscow in order to avoid future gas shortages, but insisted that Russia had nothing to do with the recent jump in prices. Vladimir Chizov, Russia’s permanent representative to the EU, said he expected Gazprom, the state-controlled exporter that supplies 35 per

A top investor at the world’s biggest hedge fund has warned that high inflation is here to stay and central banks may be powerless to fight it without derailing the economic recovery, following a week in which soaring energy prices rocked markets around the world. Bob Prince, co-chief investment officer at Bridgewater Associates, said the

The pace of US jobs growth stalled for a second straight month, raising questions about whether the Federal Reserve can begin scaling back its enormous pandemic-era monetary stimulus as early as next month. Employers in the world’s largest economy added just 194,000 jobs in September, falling short of the disappointing 366,000 gains posted in August

The head of the International Energy Agency said Russia has the capacity to send substantially more gas to Europe and alleviate the energy crisis gripping the continent, in an intervention likely to bolster claims that the country is withholding crucial supplies. Fatih Birol, the executive director of the IEA, told the Financial Times that the

Government bond yields rose and European stocks fell on Wednesday after energy prices surged, the IMF trimmed its economic growth expectations and New Zealand became the latest central bank to raise interest rates. On Tuesday, European natural gas prices shot to record highs, dragging down government bond markets. The UK’s 10-year benchmark bond yield, which

The debt problems afflicting China’s real estate market deepened on Tuesday after a developer defaulted on its bonds while the world’s most heavily indebted property group Evergrande extended a suspension of its shares into a second day without explanation. Fantasia Holdings, a midsized developer that just weeks ago assured investors it had “no liquidity issue”,

A Facebook whistleblower accused the company on Sunday of placing “profit over safety”, as it emerged that she had complained to US securities regulators that it was misleading investors. Speaking on the news programme 60 Minutes, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, unmasked herself as the whistleblower who leaked a trove of internal company

Nancy Pelosi has given her warring party one more month to pass a $1.2tn infrastructure bill after the party failed to come to an agreement on Joe Biden’s spending plans despite a week of frantic negotiations on Capitol Hill. The Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives wrote to Democratic Congressional colleagues on Saturday morning

Nancy Pelosi appeared determined to press ahead with a make-or-break vote on Joe Biden’s $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill in the US House of Representatives on Thursday, even as progressive lawmakers threatened to sink the flagship piece of the president’s legislative agenda. “We are proceeding in a very positive way to bring up the bill . . . in a

Manufacturing activity in China suffered its first official contraction since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic as widespread power shortages compounded a loss of momentum across the country’s economy. China’s manufacturing purchasing managers’ index, an official gauge of factory activity, was 49.6 in September, dropping below the 50-point threshold that separates monthly contraction from expansion

Europeans are leaving their houses to go shopping, eat out, travel and visit cinemas as much as they did before the pandemic, in a sign of returning consumer confidence which suggests that the eurozone’s economic rebound remains intact, for now. Despite a slew of worrying economic news — from high energy bills that threaten household

Two top Fed officials on Monday warned that failing to raise the US debt ceiling would have catastrophic consequences, hours before Republicans in the Senate were set to block a bill that would increase the borrowing limit and stave off a government shutdown. John Williams, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said

Germany’s two main parties are neck and neck after Sunday’s election, according to first exit polls from voting to determine who will succeed Angela Merkel as leader of Europe’s largest economy. An exit poll from public broadcaster ARD put both the left-of-centre Social Democrats and the centre-right CDU/CSU on 25 per cent, with the Greens

US president Joe Biden and congressional Democrats are gearing up for a frantic dash to pass their multitrillion dollar economic agenda, avert a debt default, and salvage their worsening prospects in the 2022 midterm elections. Eight months after he entered the White House, Biden must overcome a series of hurdles in the coming weeks if

US prosecutors have reached an agreement with Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei and daughter of the Chinese tech giant’s founder, to resolve fraud charges against her. The details of the agreement are set to be announced in a court hearing in Brooklyn at 1pm, Eastern time, according to a letter from Nicole

Deepening worries over Evergrande have ignited selling in a $428bn corner of the Asian debt market, underscoring how the crisis at the Chinese property developer is spreading to other assets as traders and investors brace for a crucial payment deadline on Thursday. Yields on US dollar-denominated bonds issued by riskier Asian borrowers have soared to

The UK carbon dioxide shortage threatening industries from steel to food is spilling over into Europe, one of the world’s largest distributors of the gas has warned. Nippon Gases, which sold almost $1.5bn of industrial gases on the continent last year, said “other countries in Europe will also suffer shortages” of CO2, estimating that its

Executives at crisis-hit Chinese property developer Evergrande have admitted that billions of dollars raised by selling wealth management products to retail investors were used to plug funding gaps and even to pay back other wealth management investors. Evergrande financial advisers marketed the products widely, including to homeowners in its apartment blocks, while its managers pushed

The world’s largest technology companies have snapped up smaller rivals at a record pace this year in a buying spree that comes as US politicians and regulators prepare to crack down on “under the radar” deals. Data from Refinitiv analysed by the Financial Times show that tech companies have spent at least $264bn buying up

Australia has been thrust into the limelight after signing a trilateral defence partnership with the US and the UK that is set to provide its navy with nuclear-propelled submarines. But the intention behind Aukus goes far beyond those submarines and Australia. The new pact is an essential building block in Washington’s attempts to prevent China

France has recalled its ambassadors from Washington and Canberra for consultations, in a diplomatic protest against a new security pact under which Australia will buy nuclear-powered submarines from the US and cancel its existing contract with Paris.  Jean-Yves Le Drian, French foreign minister, issued a statement on Friday night saying he had been told to