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Countering the security threat from the rise of China will be an important part of Nato’s future rationale, the alliance’s chief has said, marking a significant rethink of the western alliance’s objectives that reflects the US’s geostrategic pivot to Asia. In an interview with the Financial Times, Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said China was already

China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August that circled the globe before speeding towards its target, demonstrating an advanced space capability that caught US intelligence by surprise. Five people familiar with the test said the Chinese military launched a rocket that carried a hypersonic glide vehicle which flew through low-orbit space before cruising down towards its target.

From the top floors of a skyscraper that crowns the biggest New York office development since Rockefeller Center, a few hundred highly paid executives oversee one of the most pervasive enterprises that American capitalists have ever built. Less than half a century after it was started as a boutique investment vehicle run by two wealthy

Goldman Sachs reported a 60 per cent rise in quarterly profits, capping a week of bank earnings in which Wall Street firms reaped billions of dollars from a record burst of dealmaking. On Friday, Goldman reported third quarter group earnings per share of $14.93 on total net income of $5.4bn, up from $3.4bn a year

International bond sales by Chinese developers have all but halted as the crisis at China Evergrande stokes fears of defaults across the country’s property sector, throttling a crucial driver of Asia’s high-yield debt market. Just one developer has managed to tap overseas bond investors since Evergrande, the world’s most indebted real estate group, missed an

The Biden administration has secured pledges from Walmart, UPS and FedEx to extend their working hours in a bid to ease supply chain bottlenecks that are weighing down the US and global economic recoveries. According to a senior White House official, the three companies will on Wednesday announce a move towards a round-the-clock, seven-day-week model

The IMF’s executive board has opted to retain Kristalina Georgieva as the institution’s managing director and said it had “full confidence” in her ability to carry out her responsibilities, despite allegations she pressured World Bank staff when she was its chief executive to manipulate data to China’s benefit. The announcement followed marathon meetings of the

Henry Kravis and George Roberts, whose swashbuckling leveraged buyouts of the 1980s made them the face of the private equity industry, are stepping down as co-chief executives of KKR, the eponymous firm they founded in 1976.  The firm’s longtime co-presidents, Scott Nuttall and Joe Bae, will together take the helm, KKR said on Monday. Kravis

The UK’s COP president Alok Sharma has challenged China, India and Saudi Arabia to deliver on G20 promises made months ago, and come up with better formal climate targets ahead of the UN summit in November. “To all the G20 countries who have not yet stepped forward . . . it is incumbent on them to deliver that enhanced,

More than 130 countries have signed up to a ground-breaking global deal on corporate tax reform that the OECD hopes will eliminate tax havens while bringing in $150bn more a year from multinationals. The 136 nations also agreed to a two-year ban on imposing new taxes on tech groups such as Google and Amazon while

China has ordered coal miners to boost production urgently as the energy crisis threatens factories across the world’s second-biggest economy and forces Xi Jinping’s administration to backtrack on climate change promises. Energy officials in Inner Mongolia, one of China’s largest coal producing regions, instructed 72 local miners to expand capacity by 100m tonnes, according to

Global gas markets eased and equities climbed on Thursday, as investors banked that Russia would help Europe avoid a full-blown energy crisis. European and UK gas prices fell in early trading after a chaotic Wednesday that saw UK futures contracts climb almost 40 per cent before Russian president Vladimir Putin said his country was prepared

Government bond yields rose and European stocks fell on Wednesday after energy prices surged, the IMF trimmed its economic growth expectations and New Zealand became the latest central bank to raise interest rates. On Tuesday, European natural gas prices shot to record highs, dragging down government bond markets. The UK’s 10-year benchmark bond yield, which

The debt problems afflicting China’s real estate market deepened on Tuesday after a developer defaulted on its bonds while the world’s most heavily indebted property group Evergrande extended a suspension of its shares into a second day without explanation. Fantasia Holdings, a midsized developer that just weeks ago assured investors it had “no liquidity issue”,

Evergrande suspended its shares from trading in Hong Kong on Monday as the world’s most indebted real estate developer braced for the possible sale of its property management unit. Evergrande Property Services Group also halted trading of its stock, stating in a stock exchange filing that the move was taken ahead of “a possible general

Nancy Pelosi has given her warring party one more month to pass a $1.2tn infrastructure bill after the party failed to come to an agreement on Joe Biden’s spending plans despite a week of frantic negotiations on Capitol Hill. The Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives wrote to Democratic Congressional colleagues on Saturday morning

Joe Biden insisted Democrats would pass his ambitious domestic spending agenda despite interparty feuding that has stymied its passage, saying “we’re going to get this done” after a rare Capitol Hill visit to lobby lawmakers. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, was due to bring the US president’s $1.2tn infrastructure legislation

Nancy Pelosi appeared determined to press ahead with a make-or-break vote on Joe Biden’s $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill in the US House of Representatives on Thursday, even as progressive lawmakers threatened to sink the flagship piece of the president’s legislative agenda. “We are proceeding in a very positive way to bring up the bill . . . in a

Manufacturing activity in China suffered its first official contraction since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic as widespread power shortages compounded a loss of momentum across the country’s economy. China’s manufacturing purchasing managers’ index, an official gauge of factory activity, was 49.6 in September, dropping below the 50-point threshold that separates monthly contraction from expansion

Europeans are leaving their houses to go shopping, eat out, travel and visit cinemas as much as they did before the pandemic, in a sign of returning consumer confidence which suggests that the eurozone’s economic rebound remains intact, for now. Despite a slew of worrying economic news — from high energy bills that threaten household