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General Electric has paid more than $7bn in investment banking fees since 2000, as Wall Street lenders reaped rewards from a frenzied period of dealmaking that culminated in a sinking share price and the eventual break-up of the best-known US conglomerate. GE spent $2.3bn on mergers and acquisition advice alone, according to figures from Refinitiv,

The US Department of Justice is preparing to launch a crackdown on wrongdoing by companies with the first cases expected within weeks, a top official has warned, after the Biden administration pledged to take a tougher stance on corporate crime. In an interview with the Financial Times, John Carlin, a senior official working on the

Global holdings of Chinese stocks and bonds have jumped by about $120bn in 2021 as foreign investors chase returns in the country’s markets despite recent volatility and regulatory crackdowns by Beijing. International investors held Rmb7.5tn ($1.1tn) of equity and fixed income securities priced in renminbi as of the end of September, up about Rmb760bn from

Elon Musk at the weekend asked Twitter users to decide whether he should sell more than $20bn worth of his Tesla shares and pay tax — and the online crowd responded with a resounding “yes”. Musk’s apparent willingness to cash in a tenth of his stock and incur a tax bill of more than $4bn

Investors propelled US stocks to a record high last week, buoyed by declining unemployment and advancements in the treatment of Covid-19 giving hope to a resurgent economy. The S&P 500 index of blue-chip US stocks, seen as a benchmark for the health of corporate America, rose 2 per cent for the week to Friday, its

Nancy Pelosi stared down progressives in her own party on Friday, vowing to press ahead with a vote on a $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill while delaying consideration of a separate, larger social spending package popular with the leftwing of the Democratic party. The move breaks a longstanding promise to move the two bills through Congress

Opec and its allies declined to accelerate plans to increase oil production, rejecting calls from President Joe Biden to help ease rising crude prices and increasing the odds of a retaliatory move by the US. The Opec+ group, which has included Russia since 2016, said on Thursday it would stick with a plan formulated this

The Federal Reserve said it would begin scaling back its massive $120bn monthly bond-buying programme this month, a critical milestone for a US economy that is recovering from the pandemic and contending with surging inflation. The decision is the culmination of months of debate among Fed officials about the level of support the world’s largest

US regulators have sued to block the merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, which would have created a mega-publisher in the US books market. Bertelsmann, which owns Penguin Random House, last November struck a $2.2bn deal to acquire Simon & Schuster from ViacomCBS, significantly outbidding Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in a deal

More than 100 global leaders will make a commitment on Tuesday to halt deforestation by 2030, while 30 financial institutions are set to promise to eliminate the harmful practice from their portfolios by 2025. In what is being billed as one of the first significant steps of the COP26 summit in Glasgow, leaders from countries

G20 leaders have sealed a deal to end international financing of coal power in a boost ahead of the opening of the COP26 climate summit. Leaders at a G20 summit in Rome agreed to end financing for coal-fired power plants overseas by the end of this year, according to the final text of their communiqué.

The US and the EU have agreed to ease tariffs on billions of dollars of steel and aluminium products in a bid to resolve a trade dispute that has hung over transatlantic relations since the Trump administration. “We have agreed with the US to pause our steel and aluminium [section 232] trade dispute and launch co-operation

President Emmanuel Macron has warned that an energy crisis threatens the world’s post-pandemic recovery, calling for leaders at a G20 summit in Rome this weekend to work together to stabilise supplies. In an interview, the French president also urged bigger financial commitments towards the fight against global warming on the eve of the COP26 climate

Severe staffing shortages and the mounting costs of keeping its logistics empire running at full speed will throttle Amazon’s earnings for the remainder of the year, the company warned on Thursday. The ecommerce giant said that “inconsistent staffing levels” within its fulfilment network had led to inventory being inefficiently routed to regions with a more

Royal Dutch Shell is under pressure to break itself up after the activist hedge fund Third Point built a large stake and accused the oil supermajor of being bogged down by an incoherent strategy. Third Point, which is led by Daniel Loeb, urged Shell to split itself into “multiple standalone companies”, including a “legacy” arm

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, and Microsoft both posted strong revenue growth in the third quarter, while Twitter swung to a loss, as the three tech companies released results late on Tuesday. Alphabet Alphabet smashed Wall Street’s profit expectations in the third quarter, thanks to stronger-than-expected ad sales, though the Google parent fell short of expectations

Tesla has become the first carmaker to be valued at $1tn after rental group Hertz said it had ordered 100,000 Tesla Model 3 sedans to electrify its fleet. Tesla shares rose 9.84 per cent in mid-day trading on Monday to $998.74, bringing year-to-date gains above 40 per cent and lifting the company’s market cap to

Poland’s prime minister has accused the EU of making demands of Warsaw with a “gun to our head”, urging Brussels to withdraw threats of legal and financial sanctions if it wanted to resolve the country’s rule of law crisis. In a move to ease tensions in the long-running dispute, which has raised fears of a

Saudi Arabia has pledged to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2060, while also maintaining its role as a leading producer of oil and gas, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in a speech on Saturday. The announcement comes just days before the opening of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow and the G20

US intelligence officials have launched a campaign to warn American companies about the risks of interacting with China in critical industries, in a push to make it harder for Beijing to obtain technology and data. The National Counterintelligence and Security Center wants to raise awareness about the links that Chinese companies have with the government,