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Thousands of British companies are cutting economic ties with China en masse, threatening to heap more pressure on the cost of living, the head of the CBI business group has warned. Tony Danker, the CBI director-general, said chief executives were increasingly switching business links from China to other countries in anticipation of a further deterioration

German bicycle brand Canyon has raised €30mn in a funding round led by US basketball player LeBron James, valuing the group at €750mn as investors bet the global cycling boom will keep on rolling. Canyon, which sells premium road, mountain and gravel bikes for as much as €8,000 directly to consumers via its website, has

Bentley made more profit in the first six months of this year than in all of last year, as luxury car buyers purchased ever more expensive vehicles and the company reaped the benefits of a pandemic restructuring. Operating profit for the Volkswagen-owned brand rose to €398mn in the first half of 2022, higher than the

Jon Seargent, my art history teacher, had a thankless job. There were about 30 of us in my year at college. We wanted to be photographers and film-makers, and he had to instil in us some kind of broader context. I often think of him, poor bugger, and I particularly remember what he told me

Jim O’Neill highlights the lack of capital investment in the UK as a major cause of stalling productivity and wage growth (“The UK needs a coherent economic strategy”, Opinion, July 24). He offers two suggestions to the next prime minister: incentives for risk-taking activities, and increasing government spending. Instead of incentives, our government offers windfall

Shares in one of China’s biggest property groups, Country Garden, fell 15 per cent on Wednesday after the company announced a heavily discounted $360mn capital raise, in the latest sign of liquidity problems hitting the country’s real estate sector. The Hong Kong-listed developer said it would price the new shares at HK$3.25 each, nearly 13

F45 Training shares plunged more than 70 per cent after the fitness chain, which is backed by actor Mark Wahlberg, slashed its full-year outlook and announced that its chief executive was stepping aside. F45’s share price fell as much as 77.5 per cent to a record low of 79 cents during morning trading on Wednesday.

US defence contractor Raytheon reported an increase in revenue during the second quarter, boosted by the recovery of its commercial airline customers, but sales in its missiles division were hit by supply chain issues. “A strong start to the summer travel season drove continued top-line growth” that “exceeded our expectations”, said chief executive Greg Hayes.

Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have exchanged blows over the economy in a crucial televised Tory leadership debate that ended in a bloody stalemate but took the contest to new levels of acrimony. Sunak, former chancellor, had hoped to use the primetime BBC1 debate to secure a breakthrough against foreign secretary Truss, who is seen

Russia will slash gas supplies through its largest pipeline to Germany to just a fifth of capacity later this week in a move that threatens to leave the continent short of critical supplies ahead of the winter. State-owned energy group Gazprom said it would cut existing flows on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline in half

The writer is a contributing columnist, based in Chicago For better or worse, the US Supreme Court has got exactly what it wanted in Michigan. Its decision to overturn Roe vs Wade, abolishing a US constitutional right to abortion, is forcing Michiganders to decide at the ballot box whether they want the procedure to be

KPMG has been handed its largest ever UK fine of £14.4mn for deliberately misleading the accounting regulator during inspections of its audits of collapsed outsourcer Carillion and another UK company, Regenersis. The fine was imposed by an industry tribunal that found the Big Four firm provided false and misleading documents and information to the Financial

Some of the world’s largest consumer goods producers face a hit to sales in the coming months as shoppers switch to cheaper supermarket own-brands in an effort to mitigate the cost of living squeeze caused by soaring inflation. Multinational makers of food and household products, including Unilever and Danone, are preparing to publish first-half results

Summer, the thirtysomething heroine of Lee Wei-Jing’s posthumously published novel The Mermaid’s Tale, lives by herself and is as professionally unambitious as she is romantically unbothered. Instead, she is driven by her dream of becoming a ballroom dancer. It is an all-consuming, solitary obsession; Summer stays up watching videos of performances late at night, practises

It was ear-catching to hear chief secretary to the Treasury Simon Clarke MP say in a radio interview, in explaining the current government’s uninspiring steps to try to fight inflation, “It’s as Mrs Thatcher said. ‘There is no alternative’, Tina.” Back in the day of Margaret Thatcher, and her beloved Tina, you published my letter

Everyone in the UK, it seems, is angry about their pay. Rail strikes are set to escalate over the summer. Bus drivers, refuse collectors and baggage handlers have staged walkouts across the country; more than 100,000 postal workers at the Royal Mail Group have voted to follow suit. In the public sector, unions representing teachers

Fewer than half of all tax specialists had a “positive overall customer experience” when dealing with HM Revenue & Customs last year — down by a fifth from the previous year — as service delays and errors have left thousands of taxpayers waiting months for refunds. According to the tax authority’s customer survey published in

Brussels has asked EU countries to cut their gas use by 15 per cent and set out emergency plans ahead of winter when it anticipates severe disruption to gas supplies from Russia. The European Commission on Wednesday said the 15 per cent reduction in gas consumption — from the average usage for the same period

This is an audio transcript of the Behind the Money podcast episode: Are big corporate profits to blame for inflation? Michela TinderaImagine a world where corporate profits are seen as a bad thing, where a company can be accused of being too successful. It sounds sort of crazy, doesn’t it? Well, maybe not so much

About 55,000 staff at EY’s US operations woke on Tuesday to find the wages they were paid on Friday had disappeared from their bank accounts after an error by the accounting firm’s payroll provider ADP. The embarrassing mistake came as US workers grapple with a surge in living costs. US inflation hit 9.1 per cent