News

Alameda Research was allowed to exceed normal borrowing limits on the FTX exchange since its early days, Sam Bankman-Fried has said, in a concession that illustrates how the former billionaire’s trading shop enjoyed preferential treatment over clients years before the 2022 crypto crisis. In an interview with the Financial Times, the 30-year-old described the outsized

EU member states have agreed to implement a $60 ceiling on global purchases of Russian oil after Poland dropped its objections to the long-debated deal aimed at denting the Kremlin’s fossil-fuel revenues. Warsaw had delayed agreement on the cap after demanding a lower ceiling to further erode Moscow’s income. Its backing means the bloc will

Blackstone has limited withdrawals from its $125bn real estate investment fund following a surge in redemption requests, as investors clamour to get their hands on cash and concerns grow about the long-term health of the commercial property market. The private equity group approved only 43 per cent of redemption requests in its Blackstone Real Estate

Elon Musk is under renewed pressure from the US and EU over his ownership of Twitter, as regulators clamp down on the billionaire’s push to transform the social network into a freewheeling haven of free speech. The European Commission on Wednesday threatened Musk with a ban unless Twitter abides by strict content moderation rules, as

Britain is poised to relax one of the biggest restrictions on the banking sector as part of “Big Bang 2.0”, the long promised liberalisation of post-Brexit financial services rules. The “ringfencing” of banks with retail and investment arms was introduced after the 2008 financial crash with the aim of reducing risk and preventing banking collapses.

Rishi Sunak on Monday warned that the so-called “golden era” of UK relations with China was over, but he signalled his determination to engage with Beijing as he stopped short of describing the superpower as a “threat”. The new prime minister, in an implicit criticism of the pro-China policies of predecessor David Cameron, said there

Protests in Shanghai escalated on Sunday evening as police struggled to disperse large crowds who gathered in the city, part of a nationwide movement that poses one of the most brazen challenges to the Chinese Communist party’s authority in decades. The unrest began on Saturday night and centred on a road named after the Chinese

Elon Musk’s tumultuous reign at Twitter has led to a damaging rift with top brands and marketers, with the social media company’s $5bn-a-year advertising business hit by tensions over content moderation and resources. Multiple top advertising agencies and media buyers told the Financial Times that nearly all of the big brands they represent have paused

EU ministers say that time is running out to resolve the worsening dispute with the US over Washington’s $369bn in green subsidies as they seek to head off a transatlantic trade war. Brussels and Washington have set up a task force to address the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and its “buy American”

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia’s new strategy to destroy Ukraine’s infrastructure and plunge it into darkness would not weaken the country’s resolve to liberate all occupied land, describing the conflict as a “war of strength and resilience”. Pushing back against western fears of escalation, Ukraine’s president insisted there would be no lasting resolution to the war

Rishi Sunak has backed down in his longstanding power struggle with the Bank of England over plans to let ministers overrule City regulators and force them to take advantage of the “opportunities of Brexit”. The prime minister had proposed a controversial new “intervention power” for ministers, which BoE governor Andrew Bailey warned would seriously undermine

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried ran the cryptocurrency exchange as his “personal fiefdom” before its implosion, according to a lawyer working on the bankruptcy, with “substantial amounts of money” spent on items unrelated to the business such as vacation homes in the Bahamas. “We have witnessed one of the most abrupt and difficult collapses in the

Senior Walt Disney executives led a rebellion against chief executive Bob Chapek in recent weeks, which resulted in his ousting and replacement with predecessor Bob Iger, according to people familiar with the matter. The covert campaign to overthrow Chapek, which began in the summer, came after the outgoing chief executive lost the confidence of some

Sam Bankman-Fried’s businesses owe more than $3bn to their largest creditors, according to court filings, as the cryptocurrency group’s huge bankruptcy process gets under way. The crypto exchange FTX and linked companies founded by Bankman-Fried filed a list of their 50 largest creditors on Sunday, all of which are customers and owed more than $20mn,

The outcome of key UN climate talks hung on crunch negotiations over backsliding on global warming targets on Saturday, after the EU made a dramatic threat to walk away from the fraught COP27 summit. National negotiators said that progress was being made over the previously deadlocked issue of “loss and damage” funding by rich countries

Britain is entering a “new era of higher taxation”, combined with strained public services and the longest stagnation in real wages for more than 200 years, two leading think-tanks said on Friday. Publishing their analyses of Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Resolution Foundation said the chancellor was dealing with

British households are set for the steepest fall in living standards on record and the highest tax burden since the second war after Jeremy Hunt laid out plans to cut public spending and raise revenue to fill a £55bn fiscal hole. The chancellor told a sombre House of Commons that a massive fiscal consolidation, including

Elon Musk has given Twitter staff an ultimatum over their future at the social media platform, telling them to commit to an “extremely hardcore” working culture of long hours or receive three months of severance. In an email to staff, Musk told employees “we will need to be extremely hardcore” to build what he referred

The collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire has sparked a vast global investigation, with dozens of authorities circling the company as lawyers warn there could be 1mn creditors in its bankruptcy proceeding. FTX said in court filings it was in contact with US federal prosecutors, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission

CIA director Bill Burns has warned Russia against using nuclear weapons in the first known in-person meeting between senior officials of the two countries since President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Burns delivered his warning at a meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergei Naryshkin in Ankara, Turkey, on Monday, the US said. “He is conveying