Category Archives: Business

EU says it will retaliate immediately if Trump imposes new tariffs

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Bloc’s leaders also pledge to protect EU interests after US president announces escalation in aggressive trade policy

Europe will not hesitate to retaliate if Donald Trump imposes any new tariffs, the European Commission and EU national leaders have said, after the US president announced another escalation of his aggressive trade policy at the weekend.

Trump said he would announce on Monday 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports that would affect “everybody”, adding that reciprocal tariffs on all countries that tax imports from the US would follow on Tuesday or Wednesday.

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GB Energy faces ‘challenging’ task to find CEO for Aberdeen HQ, sources say

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Industry insiders say it will be ‘tricky’ to find suitable candidate who would agree to location and civil service pay

Britain’s state-owned energy company faces a “challenging” task to find a chief executive for its Aberdeen HQ when it begins recruiting this month, senior industry sources have said.

Great British Energy is poised to begin the hunt, but sources claim there are still no obvious frontrunners for the top job almost six months after the £8.3bn publicly owned clean energy company was formed.

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Why Trump blinked before imposing his ‘beautiful’ tariffs on Canada and Mexico

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Trump has teased two of the US’s biggest trading partners with levies but has moved the goalpost at least three times in two weeks

Donald Trump was in his element in the Oval Office this week. Surrounded by cameras, flanked by billionaire allies and confronted by a barrage of questions about whether he was really prepared to unleash a trade war on the US’s closest neighbors, the president talked tough.

By his telling, powerful economies were scrambling to bend to his will. Hours earlier, Mexico had announced a series of measures to shore up its border, prompting the White House to hastily postpone the imposition of 25% tariffs on all its goods; Canada would announce similar measures, and receive the same reprieve, later that day.

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Australia’s largest childcare provider faces activist pressure to give staff paid parental leave

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Shareholder lobby group says parents trust G8 Education to look after children but carers ‘are not supported to look after their own’

Australian employers commonly offer paid parental leave – in addition to the government scheme – to attract and retain workers in a competitive jobs market.

But the largest listed childcare provider in Australia, G8 Education, has no such policy, drawing the attention of activist shareholders who want to pressure it to change.

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Rare metal assets, 4,000 workers, a Canary Wharf HQ… but does this billion-pound firm really exist?

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A bizarre mining business’s fake audit reveals the potential for fraudsters at Companies House

At first glance, there is nothing remarkable about Gofer Mining plc. It appears to be just another multibillion-pound corporate giant, with London headquarters in Canary Wharf and interests stretching from Tibet to Ukraine.

Its lengthy financial accounts are full of prosaic details about ­mineral weights, rare metal assets and ­exploration plans.

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What does Elon Musk believe?

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The man given free rein by Trump to crusade against the federal government supported Democrats until 2022. But some of Musk’s longstanding positions lead a straight line to his far-right sympathies

Elon Musk is not a people person, as millions around the world will be able to attest after the planet’s richest man cut off food supplies, healthcare and probably even life itself to some of the most vulnerable without so much as a fore- or afterthought.

Musk sees himself as a data man, wielding numbers like a machete to slash and burn his way through government waste and corruption as he leads the rightwing charge to capture the US state.

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Trump delays key piece of China tariff plan amid threats to other countries

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President halts plan to put tariffs on low-value packages but says he will impose duties on more countries next week

Donald Trump halted a key part of his tariff attack on China on Friday, as he threatened to impose new US duties on goods from many more countries next week.

Plans to ensure shipments from China to the US worth less than $800 still face tariffs – removing the longstanding duty-free status of low-cast packages – have been delayed to give more time to federal agencies to prepare for the change.

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Rothschild braces for more ‘skeletons in the cupboard’ over conduct of late chair

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Exclusive: Bank holds crisis meeting to discuss response to news that Sir Evelyn de Rothschild left after allegation of sexual misconduct

Senior bankers at Rothschild & Co gathered on Tuesday in a meeting room at its St Swithin’s Lane headquarters in the heart of the City of London to discuss a memo that would shake the storied financial group to its foundations.

The memo, to be sent to staff on Wednesday morning, would admit for the first time that their celebrated former leader, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, had left the bank in 2004 after an allegation of sexual misconduct.

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Netflix increases UK subscription prices despite record audience

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Analysts warn streaming service needs to tread carefully as its standard subscription rate goes up by 18%

Whether you are binging The Night Agent or American Primeval, getting a Netflix fix has become pricier in the UK as the streaming giant increased subscription costs despite a record audience.

The streaming service has upped the cost of its most popular standard subscription without adverts by £2, or 18%, to £12.99 a month. Its other packages are going up in price, too. The last time it pushed through a price increase in the UK was October 2023.

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Australians rack up record credit card spending as growing numbers struggle to pay off debt

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Reserve Bank statistics show the national credit card debt sits at $17.8bn, up $236m in December 2024 alone

Australians racked up a record $28bn in personal credit card transactions in December, according to new data, leaving many households unable to clear debts and paying extreme interest charges.

The Reserve Bank statistics, analysed by financial comparisons site Canstar, show that Australians are struggling to clear purchases made on credit more than ever before amid persistently high living costs.

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Australia news live: BoM warns of life-threatening flash floods in Queensland and severe storms in north-east Victoria

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Flood-hit Townsville, Cardwell and Ingham could face more dangerous flooding. Follow the latest news live

O’Neil makes housing announcements in lead-up to election

The housing minister, Clare O’Neil, is in Parramatta today and will travel to Bennelong later, announcing 28 new social and affordable homes

Funding is incredibly important here. I know all of our Australians at home who are watching are really deeply concerned about those devastating differences we see between health outcomes, even important things like infant mortality.

All of the indicators that we use to determine equality of life are very different between our First Nations communities, particularly in remote areas.

I think our prime minister has been quite sober and rational about this, but it is not a reasonable idea, and it’s not shrewd as described by Peter Dutton.

So I think the prime minister has done the right thing. And Peter Dutton is out there playing politics.

But the issue, I think, here that we’re missing is that Gaza has completely been destroyed … It’s devastating to see those kind of images. So there needs to be a rebuild. There needs to be a place that people can come back to in a safe haven for them to call home.

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Watchdog to investigate two former figures at bankrupt Woking council

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Exclusive: Local authority in Surrey declared itself effectively bankrupt in 2023 after series of risky investments

Two former senior figures at bankrupt Woking council are to be investigated by the UK’s accounting watchdog after it racked up more than £2bn in debt on a failed investment spree.

The Surrey council declared itself effectively bankrupt in 2023 after ploughing vast sums of borrowed money into skyscrapers, a luxury hotel and other risky commercial investments, in what was one of the biggest financial failures in local government history.

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‘Stagflation’ fears as Bank of England cuts growth forecast and warns of price rises

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UK economy expected to grow by just 0.75% this year, in fresh blow to Rachel Reeves’s attempts to raise confidence

Rachel Reeves’s plans for growth suffered a double blow after the Bank of England halved its forecast for the year and warned households would face mounting pressure from rising prices.

In a downbeat assessment as it cut interest rates for a third time in six months, Threadneedle Street warned people would face a fresh squeeze on living standards from rising inflation even as the economy stalled.

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BBC and ITV slash big-budget TV spend as US streamers pour money into UK

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Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky also among UK broadcasters making cuts as Netflix, Disney and Amazon pile on pressure

UK broadcasters slashed their spending on big-budget TV shows to the lowest level in almost a decade last year, even as their US rivals Netflix, Disney and Amazon ploughed hundreds of millions more into British-made premium content.

In a sign of the increasing competitive pressures of the streaming era, the amount spent on high-end TV shows costing more than £1m an hour to make by domestic operators such as the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky, plunged by a quarter last year to £598m.

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Unambiguously bleak Bank of England forecasts pave way for spending cuts

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Weak jobs market and above-target inflation will dent Reeves’s growth plans and may wipe out fiscal headroom

With the public finances tight and Rachel Reeves having pledged to balance the books, interest rate cuts are one of the few levers that could boost the UK’s economic growth in the short term, and the chancellor will be glad of the Bank of England’s quarter-point reduction on Thursday – and the clear signal that it is now in cutting mode.

Seven of the monetary policy committee’s (MPC) nine members backed the quarter-point drop, taking the Bank’s policy rate to 4.5%, while two wanted to be more “activist”, proposing a half-point cut. The Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey, said the MPC would be “taking a gradual and careful approach to reducing rates further”.

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Bank of England cuts interest rates to 4.5% and halves UK growth forecast

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Latest quarter-point reduction comes with warning households face inflation of 3.7% by autumn

The Bank of England has cut interest rates to 4.5%, as it halved its UK growth forecasts for the year and warned households would face renewed pressure from rising prices.

With the government under fire over the sluggish economy, the Bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC) voted by a majority of seven to two to reduce its key base rate, down from 4.75%, to provide some financial relief to borrowers.

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Evelyn de Rothschild left bank in 2004 after sexual misconduct complaint

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Rothschild & Co investigated complaint against the late financier in 2003 and he left shortly afterwards

The financier Sir Evelyn de Rothschild left the bank that bears his family name in 2004 after an investigation into a sexual misconduct complaint, it has emerged.

Staff at Rothschild & Co were told on Wednesday that the late banker, who was a financial adviser to Queen Elizabeth II, left in March 2004 after the complaint in late 2003.

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Ten thousand Kroger-owned grocery store workers strike in Colorado

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Two-week strike begins as union for King Soopers alleges surveillance of workers and pushes to gut health benefits

Ten thousand workers at Kroger-owned King Soopers grocery stores in Colorado begin a two-week unfair labor practice strike on Thursday.

The union, United Food and Commercial Workers local 7, whose contract expired last month, voted 96% in favor of authorizing the strike.

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EU to tighten checks on goods sold by sites such as Shein and Temu

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European Commission also urges EU lawmakers to phase out exemption on customs duties for parcels under €150

Parcels sent from China by online retailers such as Shein and Temu will face strict new customs controls as part of a crackdown by the European Commission on “dangerous products” flooding the EU market.

Brussels officials also urged EU lawmakers to phase out the exemption on customs duties that is allowed for parcels under €150 (£125), which enables foreign suppliers to sell cheap goods in the bloc without paying the tax.

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Iran reformists urge concessions in attempt to reconnect to west

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Decision expected in next week that could allow country to rejoin international banking system

Iran’s reformists are pressing for the country to make concessions on financial transparency to allow it to reconnect to the global economic system and send a signal to the Trump White House that it is serious about renegotiating a new relationship with the west, including around its nuclear programme.

Tehran is expected in the next week to take decisions that would mean it would be taken off the blacklist of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the body that tackles money laundering and terrorist financing.

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