The chancellor has built up considerable fiscal headroom before the budget next week as government borrowing came in lower than forecast during the first half of the year. Borrowing came in at £108.1 billion between April and September, according to the Office for National Statistics. This was £44 billion […]

Ministers sealed what is only the second bespoke Brexit trade deal after agreeing terms with New Zealand that will allow cheaper wine imports but open British farmers up to competition. Under the terms of the agreement tariffs will be waived on a range of New Zealand imports, potentially reducing […]

Barclays has warned it may move to accelerate its transformation programme in the UK before the year’s end while reporting record group profits for the first nine months of 2021. It revealed that “structural cost actions” were on the way in its branch-based UK arm as the sector continues […]

Five of the UK’s leading manufacturing industries have issued a plea for more government financial support to boost capital investment in research and development as well as new factories and equipment with lower carbon emissions. Carmakers, aerospace, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and food and drinks manufacturers banded together on Wednesday to […]

Pinterest was the centre of attention on Wall Street last night after reports that PayPal had offered to buy the popular social media platform for $45 billion. The giant payments group was said to have discussed a bid of about $70 per share for the image-sharing network, which would […]

Andy Street, the West Midlands mayor, is backing a plan to close Coventry airport and turn the site into one of the world’s largest “gigafactories” making electric car batteries. At full production, the 60 gigawatt-hours facility would produce enough batteries to power 600,000 zero-emission cars a year. It also […]