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European Central Bank unity on its new inflation target could dissolve into division as early as next week when policymakers meet to discuss changing its guidance on raising interest rates, its president Christine Lagarde has warned. The bank’s rate-setters are due to meet next Thursday for their first discussion since they last week launched a unanimously

Brussels will set out plans this week to increase taxes on polluting fuels and introduce an EU-wide levy on aviation kerosene for the first time, under measures intended to put it at the forefront of global efforts to reduce carbon emissions.  The European Commission will propose a revamp of its 15-year-old rule book on carbon

The world’s largest economies have thrown their weight behind a global tax reform deal that would impose a minimum levy on multinational corporations, ramping up pressure on a small number of holdout countries to sign up to the agreement. G20 economy ministers and central bankers meeting in Venice on Saturday issued a joint communique endorsing

Joe Biden is set to sign a sweeping executive order to curb the power of big business by stamping out anti-competitive practices that harm smaller rivals. The White House on Friday unveiled 72 measures in Biden’s order, which include a ban on non-compete clauses for workers and span industries from technology and transportation to healthcare and

US government bonds rallied and global stock markets dropped sharply, as worries about inflation were replaced by concerns that the global economic recovery from coronavirus has peaked. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond, which moves inversely to its price, fell 0.04 percentage points to 1.276 per cent. The move put the world’s benchmark bond

Federal Reserve officials held a vigorous debate last month on whether the economic rebound in the US would soon be strong enough for the central bank to start dialling back its pandemic-era stimulus more quickly than expected. Minutes from the June meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting released on Wednesday showed two prevailing

The Pentagon cancelled the highly-sensitive $10bn Jedi cloud computing contract that had been awarded to Microsoft, drawing a line under a contentious government bidding process that was marred by claims of interference from Donald Trump. The US defence department said on Tuesday it was reversing its decision to hand over large parts of its data

Oil prices jumped to the highest level in three years after Opec and its allies abandoned a decision over increasing oil production, as Saudi Arabia, Russia and the UAE struggled to reach a compromise.  Opec+ oil ministers had been due to reconvene on Monday after failing to reach a deal at the end of last

China’s cyber security regulator has ordered that Didi be taken off domestic app stores just days after the ride-hailing giant raised $4.4bn in the biggest public listing this year. Didi’s app has “problems of seriously violating laws on collecting and using personal information”, the Cyberspace Administration of China said on Sunday evening, two days after

Hackers began a global ransomware attack on Friday, hitting more than 1,000 companies, and forcing Sweden’s Coop grocery chain to close hundreds of stores. In what appears to be one of the largest supply chain attacks to date, hackers compromised Kaseya, an IT management software supplier, in order to spread ransomware to the managed service

The US labour market created 850,000 jobs in June, as the world’s largest economy continued to heal from the Covid-19 shock and hiring caught up with the unrelenting demand for workers. Non-farm payrolls data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday came in well above economists’ expectations of 720,000 jobs created for the

The world’s leading economies have signed up to a plan to force multinational companies to pay a global minimum corporate tax rate of at least 15 per cent following intense negotiations in Paris at the OECD. The historic agreement among 130 countries will ensure the largest companies, including Big Tech, pay at least $100bn a

Amazon is seeking to force Lina Khan, the new chair of the US Federal Trade Commission, to recuse herself from any investigations involving the company, citing her previous work and criticism of the ecommerce giant. In a petition filed with the regulator on Wednesday, Amazon said Khan had “already made up her mind” that the

US home price growth accelerated in April at the fastest pace in more than three decades as strong housing demand continued to come up against a shortage of residential properties. The S&P Case-Shiller national home price index, which covers all nine US census divisions, rose 14.6 per cent year on year in April, data on

China’s strengths as a cyber power are being undermined by poor security and weak intelligence analysis, according to new research that predicts Beijing will be unable to match US cyber capabilities for at least a decade. The study, published on Monday by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, comes as a series of hacking campaigns

The UK’s financial watchdog has ordered Binance to stop all regulated activities in Britain and imposed stringent requirements in a stinging rebuke of one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges. The intervention by the Financial Conduct Authority in recent days is one of the most significant moves any global regulator has made against Binance, a

Johnson and Johnson has agreed to stop selling opioids in the US as part of a $230m settlement with the state of New York to resolve claims it helped fuel the prescription painkiller epidemic. The company, which made opioids including a fentanyl patch and a tablet, denied any wrongdoing but will stop manufacturing and distributing

The US justice department has said it will sue Georgia over its new law limiting ballot access, in the Biden administration’s first big legal action against voting restrictions in Republican-led states. Merrick Garland, the attorney-general, announced the move on Friday and signalled it could be a precursor to action against other states that have adopted

US President Joe Biden said he had reached a deal with a bipartisan group of senators on an infrastructure spending package worth about $1tn, a major step towards enacting one of his top economic priorities. Biden announced the agreement to reporters outside the White House on Thursday, after meeting with the moderate senators who forged

Germany and France have called for a new EU strategy of closer engagement with Russia to build on discussions with Moscow in the wake of US president Joe Biden’s Geneva summit with Vladimir Putin.  Diplomats said Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, wants the EU to consider inviting the Russian president to a summit with EU