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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died aged 87, the US Supreme Court said on Friday, leaving a vacancy on the high court just weeks before the November presidential election. Ginsburg, a liberal icon, was nominated to the court by Bill Clinton in 1993. The second woman to serve on the Supreme Court, she was famed

TikTok will be removed from US app stores from midnight on Sunday as Washington moves to implement executive orders from President Donald Trump that will also target WeChat, a Chinese social media app, according to a person briefed on the plans. The US commerce department, which issued the orders on Friday, stopped short of forcing Apple

ByteDance has agreed to list TikTok on a US stock market at some point after its proposed partnership deal with American software group Oracle, as part of its effort to satisfy the Trump administration’s national security concerns with the video-sharing app. People with direct knowledge of the matter said that an initial public offering in

Joe Biden has delivered a direct warning to Boris Johnson that he can forget any prospect of a US-UK trade deal if the prime minister allows the Northern Ireland peace process “to become a casualty of Brexit”. The Democratic presidential candidate was a critic of Brexit and his warning to Mr Johnson is a sign

The Federal Reserve indicated it would not raise interest rates until inflation has been higher than 2 per cent “for some time”, as it sought to boost its monetary response to the pandemic. The new guidance from the Federal Open Market Committee implements a shift towards a more dovish long-term policy stance that was endorsed

Boeing hid design flaws in its 737 Max jet from both pilots and regulators as it raced to have the aeroplane certified as fit to fly, according to a damning Congressional report into why two of the aircraft crashed within months of each other last year, killing 346 people. The report by the US House

ByteDance will place TikTok’s global business in a new US-headquartered company with Oracle investing as a minority shareholder, said people briefed on a plan presented to US officials to avoid a ban of the popular video app by President Donald Trump. As part of the proposal, Oracle will have a stake in the whole of

The global chairman of EY has expressed “regret” that a fraud at collapsed German fintech Wirecard was “not uncovered sooner” and said the Big Four accounting firm would “raise the bar significantly” on its audits, including when verifying bank balances. Carmine Di Sibio, who has run EY since January 2019, wrote to clients amid a

President Donald Trump questioned whether climate change was responsible for the devastating wildfires that have swept across the West Coast, instead using a visit to California to blame the blazes on poor forest management. Meeting with state officials on Monday in California, parts of which have been razed by the wildfires, Mr Trump suggested that

ByteDance has reached a preliminary “technical partnership” agreement with Oracle for TikTok’s US operations that does not include a full sale of the popular video app, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. As part of the deal, Oracle plans to address the national security concerns the Trump administration has raised over the

SoftBank executives have revived discussions about taking the technology group private as the Japanese conglomerate seeks to redefine its strategy after a series of big asset disposals, people with direct knowledge of the matter said.  The talks are driven by frustrations over the persistent discount in SoftBank’s $115bn equity valuation compared with the value of

When Bernard Looney makes his long-awaited pitch to investors on the future of BP this week, the chief executive is expected to hammer home one message: that BP will be a stronger company when it produces less oil and gas. Since the veteran oil man took the helm in February, he has promoted with unlikely

SoftBank is set to sell the UK’s Arm Holdings to US chip company Nvidia for more than $40bn, just four years after its founder Masayoshi Son bought the chip designer and said it would be the linchpin for the future of the Japanese technology group.  Multiple people with direct knowledge of the matter said a

The UK government was explicitly warned in January that Boris Johnson’s Brexit divorce deal would leave Brussels able to claim jurisdiction over “large amounts” of UK state aid policy after the end of the transition period, documents seen by the Financial Times have revealed. A 10-page official briefing document shows the civil service issued clear

Firefighters in Oregon were battling 16 separate large fires that have forced authorities to evacuate 40,000 people and alert another 500,000 to prepare to flee, including residents of the city of Portland. Doug Grafe, the fire chief in the northwestern US state, said on Friday that the largest three fires were in counties near Portland

The threat of a turbulent US presidential election is raising the pressure on companies to load up on cheap debt as bankers warn that disruption to financial markets could deny them access to funds on favourable terms. Corporate bond issuance has started strongly in September after companies raised $210bn in August — a record for

Citigroup is set to become the first major Wall Street bank to have a female chief executive, after it announced on Thursday morning that Mike Corbat will step down next February and be succeeded by the company’s president Jane Fraser.  The succession was largely teed up on Ms Fraser’s appointment as president last year, which

Ireland has called on the UK to abandon moves to unpick parts of its Brexit treaty, warning that London risks forfeiting the EU’s trust as time runs out in talks on a free trade deal. Micheál Martin, the Irish premier, said Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to table a controversial new bill that would modify

Donald Trump told Bob Woodward, the Washington Post journalist, that he played down the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic even after his aides said it would be the “roughest thing” he would face as US president. Mr Trump told Mr Woodward in March that Covid-19 was “deadly stuff” while publicly dismissing the seriousness of the

AstraZeneca has paused all clinical trials of the Covid-19 vaccine it is developing with Oxford university after a participant in the UK section of the study suffered a suspected serious adverse reaction. The UK-based drugmaker voluntarily put the trial on hold after the discovery of the sick participant. AstraZeneca said it was working to review

US technology shares that powered stock markets to record highs this summer are set to fall for a third consecutive session, in what some investors are calling a “healthy” correction to valuations that had surged since the coronavirus sell-off. Futures contracts linked to the tech-focused Nasdaq 100 index — which includes Apple, Microsoft and Google

Donald Trump raised the prospect of “decoupling” the US economy from China and claimed that America was experiencing “the fastest recovery in US history”, honing his economic messaging as the presidential campaign enters its final stretch. Mr Trump, who made China a central focus of his 2016 campaign, previewed a tougher line on trade with

Rating an iPhone app takes just a second, maybe two. “Enjoying Skype?” a prompt will ask, and you click on a 1-5 star rating. Millions of people respond to these requests, giving little thought to their fleeting whim. Behind the scenes, though, an entire industry has spent countless hours and lines of code to craft

Shares in SoftBank fell more than 6 per cent in Tokyo on Monday morning after weekend revelations that the Japanese conglomerate was the mystery “whale” that had driven US technology stocks to record highs. The Financial Times reported on Sunday that the group’s trading strategy meant it was now sitting on gains of about $4bn

SoftBank is sitting on trading gains of about $4bn after founder Masayoshi Son drove aggressive bets on equity derivatives that helped propel the US stock market to record highs, said people with direct knowledge of the matter. The high-risk strategy has been built up over the past few months, these people said, with the Japanese

German automotive giant Daimler has ruled out expanding production in its home country as it prepares for further cost cuts in the face of a sharp fall in global car sales. Ola Kallenius, chief executive of the group, which owns Mercedes-Benz and is the country’s oldest carmaker, told the Financial Times it would invest in

People in China are shedding their face masks and partying again, with bars, nightclubs and beach venues across the country filling up after months of pandemic controls. Last weekend, hundreds of Beijing residents attended a music festival on the beachfront at Beidaihe — a location that also serves as the annual getaway for the Communist

On Friday, the Financial Times unmasked SoftBank, the Japanese investment group, as the “Nasdaq whale” whose options trading helped stoke an eye-popping rally in tech stocks before a vicious market correction this week. Now, with the air suddenly coming out of inflated valuations, investors are urgently trying to understand how activity in derivatives markets sent

SoftBank is the “Nasdaq whale” that has bought billions of dollars’ worth of US equity derivatives in a move that stoked the fevered rally in big tech stocks before a sharp pullback on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter. The Japanese conglomerate has been snapping up options in tech stocks during the past

Chinese shares tumbled and US stock futures slid further after the record rally in global equities this year was thrown into sharp reverse by a sell-off of tech stocks. China’s CSI 300 index of Shanghai- and Shenzhen-listed stocks dropped 1.2 per cent, while Japan’s benchmark Topix fell 1 per cent and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 shed