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Nicola Sturgeon announced her resignation as Scotland’s first minister and leader of the Scottish National party on Wednesday after a backlash over her strategy for securing independence and controversy over proposed gender laws. A thorn in the side of UK prime ministers for almost a decade, Sturgeon led the pro-independence SNP to repeated electoral success

Prime minister Rishi Sunak and chancellor Jeremy Hunt are exploring a pay offer to try to end the wave of public sector strikes that would backdate next year’s wage award for NHS staff and other key workers. After weeks of deadlock, Sunak and Hunt are considering giving workers a lump sum by backdating next year’s

Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy has vowed to double down on the company’s struggling grocery store business, despite recently announcing that its growth plans were on hold. Jassy told the Financial Times that the ecommerce giant was ready to “go big” on bricks-and-mortar stores, blaming a lack of “normalcy” during the pandemic for a series

David Solomon told a private gathering of Goldman Sachs’ top executives that he had erred by not cutting jobs earlier in 2022, according to people familiar with the remarks. Speaking to about 400 Goldman partners at a closed-door meeting in Miami this week, the chief executive said he took responsibility for being slow to reduce

Turkish authorities have launched a crackdown on developers connected to buildings that were toppled by this week’s devastating earthquake as president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan faces growing discontent over the quality of construction in the stricken region. The justice ministry has authorised almost 150 local prosecutors’ offices to set up earthquake investigation units to probe contractors,

Gillian Keegan, UK education secretary, has signalled she will fight any Home Office attempts to cut migration into Britain by driving away overseas students, saying universities were a “hugely valuable” export success. Keegan, in an interview with the Financial Times, said she wanted to build on the UK’s booming export market in university education, and

Nelson Peltz has called off his fight against Walt Disney a day after the company unveiled a restructuring plan involving the loss of 7,000 jobs, ending one of the biggest corporate battles in recent years. The end of the activist investor’s push removes a distraction for chief executive Bob Iger, who is seeking to steer

Gautam Adani, whose Indian business empire is under pressure over fraud allegations, repaid a $1.1bn share-backed loan last week after facing a margin call of more than $500mn, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter. They said the repayment was designed to avoid further damage to investor confidence in the group. Adani’s

Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell has warned that the US central bank might have to raise interest rates more than expected by investors because it will probably take a “significant period of time” to tame inflation given stronger labour market data. Powell’s comments to the Economic Club of Washington on Tuesday were his first since

Turkey was battling to respond to a historic natural disaster after its biggest earthquake in almost a century flattened neighbourhoods across the country’s south-east and northern Syria, killing more than 3,000 people. Monday’s 7.8 magnitude quake destroyed thousands of buildings when it hit shortly after 4am local time, sending people fleeing into the streets in

For some time, American officials have talked about the need to “put a floor” under the sharp deterioration in US-China relations. But the controversy surrounding the Chinese spy balloon (which Beijing insists was a “civilian” vessel blown by accident into American airspace) has dashed efforts to gradually improve relations between the two countries. A visit

The US has shot down the Chinese spy balloon that has been flying over the country for almost a week, shortly after President Joe Biden said he would “take care” of a situation that has derailed efforts to improve US-China relations. Defence secretary Lloyd Austin said US fighter jets had on Saturday afternoon shot down

The UK’s FTSE 100 hit an all-time high on Friday, as the blue-chip index dominated by multinational companies overcame the drag of a domestic economy headed for recession. The FTSE added as much as 1.1 per cent on the day to trade at 7906.58, eclipsing its previous peak in May 2018, before closing at 7902.

European government bond markets surged the most in years while stocks also rallied as investors bet that interest rates on both sides of the Atlantic would soon peak. The European Central Bank and the Bank of England both raised rates by half a percentage point on Thursday, with the BoE expressing optimism inflation would fall

Adani Enterprises has called off its $2.4bn equity fundraising in the latest blow to Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, who has seen shares in his industrial empire tumble after a short seller made allegations of fraud and stock manipulation. The decision to pull the share sale and refund investors marks an abrupt turn after Adani Enterprises’

More UK companies went bust last year than at any point since the financial crisis as soaring inflation, rising interest rates and the stalling economy hit businesses. The total number of company insolvencies registered in 2022 was 22,109 — the highest since 2009 and 57 per cent higher than 2021 — according to data issued

A US appeals court has dismissed a bankruptcy petition filed by a unit of Johnson & Johnson, upending the healthcare company’s attempt to resolve billions of dollars of legal claims from customers alleging its talcum powder caused cancer. The Third US Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday said it had dismissed a bankruptcy filing from

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak has sacked Nadhim Zahawi as chair of the Conservative party after his ethics adviser concluded there had been “serious breaches” of the ministerial code. Sunak finally jettisoned Zahawi after weeks of stories about his tax affairs, which have been politically damaging for the ruling party during a historic cost of

The UK tax authority has admitted that it gave misleading information last summer when it said no government minister was being investigated, even though Nadhim Zahawi was the subject of a probe. HM Revenue & Customs has now apologised for wrongly stating last June that no ministers were under investigation — mistakes it blames on

Goldman Sachs paid chief executive David Solomon $25mn for 2022, down almost 30 per cent compared to a year before, after the Wall Street bank reported a steep drop in profits, cut thousands of jobs and slashed employee bonuses. In a regulatory filing on Friday, Goldman disclosed that Solomon received a base salary of $2mn,