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ExxonMobil will expand its share buyback programme to $50bn as the US supermajor defies a political backlash by handing investors the profits from surging oil and gas prices. Exxon said it would spend $50bn in the three years to 2024 buying back its own shares, an increase from the current $30bn programme that was due

The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund will become a more vocal shareholder and plans to vote against companies that fail to set a net zero target, overpay their top leaders, or do not have sufficiently diverse boards. Nicolai Tangen, chief executive of the $1.3tn Norwegian oil fund, told the Financial Times’ Global Boardroom event that

US stocks slid and the price of Brent crude touched its lowest level since January after a round of strong economic data revived concerns that the Federal Reserve will rapidly lift borrowing costs to tame inflation. The benchmark S&P 500 was down 1.2 per cent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 1.5 per cent in

A traffic jam of oil tankers has built up in Turkish waters after western powers launched a “price cap” targeting Russian oil and as authorities in Ankara demanded insurers promise that any vessels navigating its straits were fully covered. Under EU sanctions which came into effect on Monday, tankers loading Russian crude oil are barred

The EU must “simplify and adapt” its rules on state aid to counteract the competitive effects of the US’s new $369bn climate package, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Sunday. Europe should “adjust our own rules to make it easier for public investments”, von der Leyen said in her first public response

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 investor withdrawals at its $125bn real estate investment fund after a surge in redemption requests from investors pulling cash from private assets. The private equity group met only 43 per cent of redemption requests from investors in the Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust fund in the month of November, according to a

Inflation in the eurozone has fallen for the first time in 17 months, raising hopes that the biggest global price surge for a generation has peaked and easing pressure on central banks to continue increasing rates aggressively. A slowdown in energy and services prices helped inflation in the single currency bloc to fall more than

The head of British Gas-owner Centrica has warned that more UK retail energy suppliers will probably go bust this winter, with some who are “struggling for cash” already likely to be trading while technically insolvent. Chris O’Shea, head of Britain’s biggest energy supplier, said some of the larger UK energy providers were also at risk

BlockFi has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, making the crypto lender backed by Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm the latest casualty of the fallout from the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange. The filing marks an unravelling several months in the making for New Jersey-based BlockFi, led by chief executive Zac Prince, which was valued

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 of green subsidies as they seek to head off a transatlantic trade war. Brussels and Washington have set up a taskforce to address the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and its “buy American” provisions,

Net migration to the UK rose to a record high of more than half a million people in the year to June 2022, according to figures published by the Office for National Statistics on Thursday. The surge in long-term arrivals to the UK was driven by a post-pandemic rebound in international study and by inflows

The UK Supreme Court has ruled that the Scottish government does not have the legal authority to hold an independence referendum without agreement from Westminster, scuppering Edinburgh’s plan to hold a vote next year. The ruling cuts off the legal route for Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, to unilaterally hold a rerun of the 2014

The UK economy is set to be the worst performer in the G20 bar Russia over the next two years, the OECD said on Tuesday, underlining the lasting impact of high energy prices on Europe as a whole. The OECD said in its latest economic forecasts that UK gross domestic product would fall 0.4 per

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak has ruled out any Swiss-style alignment with EU laws in order to strike a trade deal with the bloc, instead promising that the existing Brexit arrangements could “deliver enormous benefits for the country”. Talking at the CBI annual conference in Birmingham on Monday, Sunak came under pressure to address two

The UN climate summit has agreed to establish a historic fund to pay for climate-related damage in poorer countries after working beyond sunrise in Egypt on Sunday, but backed down on greater cuts to greenhouse gas emissions and an end to fossil fuel use. Almost 200 countries at the summit achieved a breakthrough for a

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