Tag: financial times

Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte will resign on Tuesday in an escalation of the political instability that has enveloped the country as it battles both the Covid-19 pandemic and a brutal recession. Mr Conte will see his ministers on Tuesday morning to inform them of his decision, and then meet Italian president Sergio Mattarella to...

Dominion Voting Systems has filed a defamation lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s lawyer and former New York City mayor, seeking $1.3bn for his alleged role in perpetuating the “big lie” about fraud in the 2020 election. The legal claim against Mr Giuliani is part of a broader effort by the voting machines systems company...

Joe Biden’s administration is reversing a Donald Trump-era ban on transgender individuals serving in the military, framing it as “the right thing to do” and in the national interest. “President Biden believes that gender identity should not be a bar to military service, and that America’s strength is found in its diversity,” the White House...

House Democrats will on Monday evening deliver an article of impeachment to the Senate charging Donald Trump with “incitement to insurrection” for his role in the deadly attack on the US Capitol on January 6. In a move that will trigger the first impeachment trial of a former US president, House members who will act...

Rob Portman, the Republican senator from Ohio, has announced he will not seek re-election next year, knocking out one of the party’s moderates as it tries to rebuild in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential defeat. Mr Portman, a former US trade representative and budget director under former president George W Bush, joins Pat Toomey...

Lorenzo di Cretico, a manager at the central London restaurant and club 100 Wardour Street, moved to the UK 12 years ago with high hopes. He had been a manager at a trattoria in Rome but wanted to learn English and said London “had always been my dream”. He found a waiting job within a...

Shares in GameStop and BlackBerry surged in early trading in New York on Monday as amateur online traders continued their assault on professional investors betting that the stocks were overvalued. Gaming retailer GameStop rocketed more than 85 per cent in the opening hour of trade, building on a rally on Friday that exceeded 100 per...

This article is the first in the FT’s Runaway Markets series. Screaming stock rallies and wild speculation by have-a-go amateur investors are stirring concerns among market veterans over a bubble to rival anything seen in the past century. After a dramatic rebound from the coronavirus crash last March, benchmark equity indices have toppled a series...

This article is part of the FT’s Runaway Markets series. Booming stock prices have inflated one measure of Wall Street exuberance back towards levels seen just before the dotcom bubble burst more than two decades ago. Shares in 79 companies listed on US stock exchanges have more than doubled in the past three months. These...

Donald Trump’s Treasury department eased US sanctions on Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler five days before the former president left office, quietly issuing a licence that temporarily lifts restrictions on the mining tycoon for alleged corruption in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The decision followed an appeal by lobbyists working for Mr Gertler, including the lawyer Alan...

In the first week of his presidency, Joe Biden is expected to sign another round of executive orders to tackle climate change as one of the new administration’s top four priorities, along with Covid-19, the economic crisis and racial justice. A newly assembled team of mainly veterans will be charged with implementing the orders, after...

Moderna is launching a trial of a new Covid-19 vaccine as the US biotech group warned that its current shot was less effective in tackling the strain that emerged in South Africa.  Laboratory tests show Moderna’s Covid-19 jab still works against the variant named 501.V2, which emerged in South Africa, and B.1.1.7, which was first...

The prospect of new restrictions on international travel sent a shudder through the travel industry on Monday, piling pressure on companies already reeling from almost a year of disruption. Shares in European airlines tumbled as the UK government prepared to introduce tighter immigration rules following concerns that new strains of Covid-19 could spread from international travellers. Governments...

Merck, one of the world’s leading vaccine makers, is ending its Covid-19 vaccine development after its two candidates failed to elicit immune responses as strong as those seen from shots that are already available.  The US pharmaceutical company also said on Monday that its phase 1 trials showed participants’ response was not as robust as...

White nationalists are seizing the opportunity to further radicalise the fragmented pro-Donald Trump movement, after crackdowns by large social networks scattered the former US president’s most ardent supporters on to fringe platforms. In the run-up to US president Joe Biden’s inauguration, Facebook and Twitter both censored far-right narratives and Mr Trump himself, while the popular...

US president Joe Biden is set to tighten “buy American” provisions as part of a push to boost domestic manufacturing, in a move that risks straining relations with key US allies. Mr Biden is on Monday expected to order an increase in domestic content requirements for federal procurement contracts, following a campaign pledge to boost...

Shares in the electric car unit of China Evergrande, the world’s most indebted property company, surged to a record high as a $3.4bn cash injection catapulted its market valuation past those of traditional carmakers such as Ford. The company’s Hong Kong-listed shares soared as much as 67 per cent on Monday, a day after the...

Colin Fan, a former senior executive at Deutsche Bank, is stepping down from his role as managing partner at SoftBank’s Vision Fund, marking the latest shake-up at the fund’s tumultuous US operations.  Mr Fan, who joined the Vision Fund in 2017, is moving to an advisory role within the unit that manages the investment arm...

Deutsche Bank is investigating whether its staff mis-sold sophisticated investment banking products to clients in breach of EU rules and then colluded with individuals within these companies to share the profits. The internal probe — codenamed Project Teal — was triggered by client complaints last year, according to people familiar with the process. It initially focused on...

Portugal’s centre-right president was re-elected to a second five-year term on Sunday after a campaign fought amid one of the world’s worst outbreaks of coronavirus. Exit polls by three national broadcasters gave Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, a former leader of the opposition Social Democrats (PSD), 55-62 per cent of the vote, enough to win an...