EY came close to dis­cov­er­ing fraud at the heart of Wir­e­card in 2016 when the col­lapsed pay­ments firm’s trustee in Singa­pore acci­dent­ally told the aud­itor the truth, stat­ing he did not hold any money on its behalf. At the time, Wir­e­card’s accounts stated that Cit­adelle Cor­por­ate Ser­vices in Singa­pore over­saw escrow accounts in Asia that held about €150mn in cash. By June 2020, the amount in those accounts had sup­posedly risen to €1.9bn, when Wir­e­card dis­closed the money did not exist. Wir­e­card man­agers rushed to come up with an explan­a­tion for the state­ment by the trustee, who later con­firmed to EY that he did hold the cash, said people famil­iar with the details. The firm, which audited Wir­e­card for almost a dec­ade, has been cri­ti­cised for fail­ing to request doc­u­ments dir­ectly from OCBC, the Singa­pore bank where the trustee accounts were said to be held. In late March, Rajar­at­nam told the aud­itor in writ­ing that «as of 31st of Decem­ber 201

  Brus­sels has drawn up plans to hit back at the $369bn US Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act by unwind­ing state aid curbs to allow tax cred­its for green invest­ment. The EU is plan­ning to hit back at the US’s $369bn Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act by unwind­ing state aid restric­tions to allow a wave of tax cred­its for green invest­ment. Under a draft plan seen by the Fin­an­cial Times, the European Com­mis­sion will fur­ther relax rules to sup­port state sup­port of new pro­duc­tion facil­it­ies in green sec­tors, includ­ing via the cre­ation of tax bene­fits. But the move strays into con­tro­ver­sial ter­rit­ory within the EU, as it will be far easier for deep-pock­eted coun­tries such as Ger­many to dole out fiscal incent­ives than their fisc­ally stretched coun­ter­parts in the south. «What we are say­ing here is that if you want to give invest­ment aid, you can give that in the form of a tax credit if that is more accom­mod­at­ing for the busi­ness,» Mar­grethe Vestager, com­mis­sion vice-

The Ger­man eco­nomy con­trac­ted 0.2 per cent in the final quarter of last year, as high gas prices squeezed demand and placed the euro­zone’s largest eco­nomy on the brink of reces­sion. However, fears of a reces­sion had eased this month when offi­cials said the eco­nomy was likely to have stag­nated, rather than shrunk, in the fourth quarter. «High rates of infla­tion have driven the Ger­man eco­nomy into a winter reces­sion,» said Timo Wollmer­shäuser of the Ifo Insti­tute, a think-tank. In response, eco­nom­ists down­graded their expect­a­tions for the euro­zone growth fig­ure to a 0.1 per cent fall, down from a no-change fore­cast before the release of the Ger­man fig­ures. The GDP drop «pours cold water on the recent optim­ism about the pro­spects for the euro­zone and sug­gests that a tech­nical reces­sion in both Ger­many and the euro­zone as a whole is more likely than not, after all», said Fran­ziska Pal­mas, senior Europe eco­nom­ist at Cap­ital Eco­nom­ics. «We are look­i

 According to the International Monetary Fund, the UK is on course to be the world’s worst- performing big economy this year. It expects the economy to contract by 0.6 per cent in 2023, making Britain the slowest-growing big economy in the world. The Russian economy is expected to grow by 0.3 per cent this year after a 2.2 per cent contraction in 2022. The IMF has upgraded its global growth forecasts in response to plummeting global energy prices and hopes that inflation will fall faster than expected. According to the forecasts, Britain is notable for being the only big economy expected to contract. In contrast, next year’s growth is expected to rise to 0.9 per cent, 0.3 percentage points from the IMF’s last forecast in October. The UK is the only economy in the G7 not to have reached its pre-pandemic size and has suffered the worst inflation rate of its peers in the past year. The economy is forecast to enter into recession within months, with the downturn expected to last until the

 Chan­ging trade pat­terns have made the global flow of raw mater­i­als less effi­cient and more costly to fin­ance and are also likely to push up the price of com­mod­it­ies for con­sumers, accord­ing to a new study by con­sultancy McKin­sey. «Since the end of 2020, we have seen a doub­ling of the work­ing cap­ital require­ments in the com­mod­ity trad­ing sec­tor,» said Roland Recht­steiner, McKin­sey part­ner and lead author of the report. «We could see a sim­ilar increase by the end of next year if changes in trade flow mater­i­al­ise». However, the cost of the fin­an­cing required to move these car­goes has risen sig­ni­fic­antly because of volat­il­ity in prices and rising interest rates. On top of this, Rus­sia’s inva­sion of Ukraine has triggered a pro­found shift in global trade flows — often res­ult­ing in longer, less effi­cient ship­ping routes. An example is coal, where prices have nearly tripled over the past year. In addition, as car­goes have to travel fur­ther, fin­an­

 India’s Adani Group has rebut­ted alleg­a­tions of wrong­do­ing by short seller Hinden­burg Research that wiped more than $50bn from its value last week in a bid to calm investors in the middle of a $2.4bn share sale. Yes­ter­day Adani pub­lished a doc­u­ment of 54 pages, plus some 350 more of appen­dices in which it argued that Hinden­burg’s report had «caused ser­i­ous and unpre­ced­en­ted adverse impact on our investors». Adani Enter­prises, one of the group’s com­pan­ies, said over the week­end that its fol­low-on pub­lic offer­ing of shares would pro­ceed as planned, des­pite con­cerns that it would struggle to attract investors. The offer­ing was inten­ded to widen the share­holder register of the sprawl­ing indus­trial group, much of which is cur­rently owned by related entit­ies and Maur­i­tius-based funds. The offer­ing was launched on Fri­day, and books are set to close tomor­row. The short seller’s chal­lenge has caused a fris­son across India’s busi­ness com­munity: the co

  While eco­nom­ists have ques­tioned the viab­il­ity of the idea ,  polit­ical ana­lysts have been less dis­missive ,  point­ing out that the desires of South Amer­ica’s mainly leftwing pres­id­ents to pro­mote regional integ­ra­tion and chal­lenge the US dol­lar’s dom­in­ance should not be under­es­tim­ated .  For the first time in more than seven years ,  Brazil and Argen­tina are polit­ic­ally aligned under left­ist lead­ers ,  with both Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Alberto Fernán­dez keen to present a united front .  Brazil’s pres­id­ent said in Buenos Aires last week that «God will­ing» ,  the fin­ance min­is­ters and lead­ers of the two cent­ral banks would have the «intel­li­gence ,  com­pet­ence and good sense» to begin work that could even­tu­ally pro­duce a com­mon cur­rency .  His Argen­tine coun­ter­part said while he did not know how the com­mon cur­rency would work ,  the two nations would enjoy a «deeper stra­tegic bond» in the future . The two lead­ers made clear an e

  The Chinese gov­ern­ment has vowed to make con­sump­tion the «main driv­ing force» of the eco­nomy as hopes grow that Beijing’s aban­don­ment of zero-Covid policies will unleash a flood of spend­ing by Chinese con­sumers ,  fuel­ling a global rebound .  «The greatest poten­tial of the Chinese eco­nomy lies in the con­sump­tion by the 1 . 4bn people , » Li Keqi­ang ,  premier ,  said dur­ing a meet­ing of China’s cab­inet ,  the state coun­cil ,  accord­ing to a state­ment released late on Sat­urday .  While China has long sought to boost con­sumer spend­ing ,  the com­ments from its out­go­ing premier come at a cru­cial moment as Beijing seeks to rebuild the eco­nomy after years of pun­ish­ing lock­downs .  The Chinese eco­nomy grew by just 3 per cent in 2022 ,  under­scor­ing the impact of the gov­ern­ment’s zero-Covid strategy before it was aban­doned last month . Mul­tina­tion­als includ­ing Uni­lever have said in recent weeks they were expect­ing a rebound in demand in the coun­t

 Pakistan's generators produced more power than was required on Monday, causing voltage fluctuations that culminated in a system collapse that plunged 220 million people into darkness, an internal government document reviewed by Reuters showed. Complete grid failures are rare, and operators of modern grids count local shocks from integrating renewable energy as their primary challenge. But the blackout in Pakistan on Monday was its second near-complete grid failure and the third in south Asia in three months. The grid's failure plunged 220 million people into darkness for a whole day and disrupted commercial activity as outages also hit internet and mobile services. According to the note, the grid frequency was already 50.30 hz moments before the incident. The severe frequency fluctuations in the transmission lines caused it to trip, Sajjad Akthar, general manager at state-run National Transmission and Distribution Company, wrote in the note drafted on Tuesday. «Transmission li

  Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence pion­eers are back­ing a new $550mn fund ded­ic­ated to invest­ing in AI start-ups, in a move that bucks the wider down­turn in tech deal­mak­ing. Toronto-based Rad­ical Ven­tures said it has received invest­ment from sev­eral lead­ers in the AI field. This includes Fei-Fei Li, cre­ator of the influ­en­tial ImageNet project, Geof­frey Hin­ton, the pion­eer in neural net­works who is also a mem­ber of the Google Brain team, and the fam­ily office of former Google chief exec­ut­ive Eric Schmidt. Rad­ical’s fund comes amid a huge new wave of interest from ven­ture cap­it­al­ists in start-ups after San-Fran­cisco based OpenAI released Chat­GPT, a ques­tion­and-answer tool, in Novem­ber. Earlier this week, Microsoft inves­ted $10bn in OpenAI at a $29bn valu­ation. «There’s no ques­tion there’s a lot of hype and money flow­ing into this space,» said Jordan Jac­obs, man­aging part­ner and co-founder of Rad­ical Ven­tures. «We’ve had an enorm­ous flood of inbound

Brit­ish­volt’s admin­is­trator EY has nar­rowed down the list of poten­tial buy­ers of the col­lapsed UK bat­tery start-up to five suit­ors, with Aus­tralian peer Recharge Indus­tries among the lead­ing con­tenders.  Brit­ish­volt had been plan­ning to build a £3.8bn giga­fact­ory in Blyth, north­east Eng­land, that would have formed a key­stone of the UK elec­tric car industry but fell into admin­is­tra­tion this month after run­ning out of cash. If no deal is reached by the end of Janu­ary, the site will be sold inde­pend­ently of the intel­lec­tual prop­erty, which includes bat­tery tech­no­logy and 26 Brit­ish­volt staff. Recharge Indus­tries, which is also plan­ning to build a bat­tery plant in the Aus­tralian city of Geelong, has made a bid of about £30mn. It has shown proof of funds to EY, and exec­ut­ives from the com­pany are vis­it­ing the Blyth site, accord­ing to two people famil­iar with the mat­ter. Tak­ing on the busi­ness will be com­plic­ated for any buyer because of

The insur­ance group said yes­ter­day that Penny James had agreed with the board that she would leave imme­di­ately and that Jon Green­wood, the chief com­mer­cial officer, would become act­ing chief exec­ut­ive. «It has been a priv­ilege to lead Dir­ect Line Group for nearly four years,» said James. Dir­ect Line’s chair Danuta Gray thanked James for her ser­vice since join­ing as chief fin­an­cial officer in 2017 and get­ting the top job two years later. A per­son close to James said the depar­ture was a mutual decision. Gray said the board would work closely with the interim chief exec­ut­ive to focus on «our pri­or­it­ies of driv­ing our per­form­ance and restor­ing bal­ance sheet resi­li­ence, fol­low­ing the sig­ni­fic­ant head­winds the busi­ness faced in recent months». Dir­ect Line moved to strengthen its bal­ance sheet on Thursday with a rein­sur­ance deal that it said lif­ted its solvency ratio. Pres­sure has built on James as spiralling infla­tion in used car prices, and oth

  H&M blamed high clothes prices ,  its exit from Rus­sia and a cost-cut­ting pro­gramme for an unex­pec­tedly large col­lapse in its earn­ings as the world’s second-largest fash­ion retailer’s struggles with prof­it­ab­il­ity con­tinue .  Oper­at­ing profit plunged 87 per cent to SKr820mn in the fourth quarter to the end of Novem­ber from a year earlier .  Shares in H&M fell more than 4 per cent to SKr125 . 80 yes­ter­day ,  hav­ing lost nearly half of their value since their recent peak in April 2021 .  The Swedish retailer ,  which lags behind Indi­tex ,  the Span­ish owner of Zara ,  in sales and prof­it­ab­il­ity ,  launched a SKr2bn cost-cut­ting pro­gramme last year that included 1 , 500 job losses . H&M’s sales in the fourth quarter were up 10 per cent to SKr64 . 4bn but flat in local cur­rency terms .  It said sales from Decem­ber 1 to Janu­ary 25 had increased 5 per cent in local cur­ren­cies .  «Sales in the new fin­an­cial year have star­ted well , » said Helmer

 Sir Tim Bar­row, the prime min­is­ter’s national secur­ity adviser and former ambas­sador to the EU, has been deployed to help with the dip­lomacy around the highly sens­it­ive dis­cus­sions. Simon Case, cab­inet sec­ret­ary, is said by col­leagues to be play­ing an increas­ingly import­ant role, draw­ing on his exper­i­ence of EU nego­ti­ations. The case led to early dis­cus­sions on the Irish bor­der prob­lem thrown up by Brexit. Three people famil­iar with the talks said there had been a «sig­ni­fic­ant» step for­ward and that the out­line of a frame­work agree­ment was crys­tal­lising. But two EU insiders cau­tioned that con­vert­ing the out­line of a deal into a viable polit­ical agree­ment «depended a lot» on whether Sunak could sell the deal in Lon­don. Talks between Lon­don and Brus­sels have intens­i­fied in recent weeks to thrash out a deal to min­im­ise the impact of the North­ern Ire­land pro­tocol, which cre­ated a trade bor­der in the Irish Sea. Sir Jef­frey Don­ald­son,

 The US eco­nomy pos­ted bet­ter than expec­ted growth in the final quarter of 2022, even as the Fed's rate rises star­ted to weigh heav­ily on busi­ness activ­ity. That marked a slow­down from 3.2 per cent growth in the third quarter, reflect­ing the steps the US cent­ral bank has taken to damp demand. The Fed is now pre­par­ing to deliver a quarter-point rate rise, from the cur­rent range of 4.25 per cent to 4.5 per cent, next week as it weighs how much higher to go now that infla­tion appears to have peaked. Offi­cials broadly back the fed­eral funds' rate hit­ting 5 per cent, and for that level to be main­tained at least to the end of the year, sug­gest­ing fur­ther rises to come bey­ond the Feb­ru­ary decision. The gross domestic product data are the latest sign the eco­nomy has proved more resi­li­ent than expec­ted in the face of sub­stan­tially higher bor­row­ing costs while also show­ing the Fed's actions are begin­ning to have a more not­able effect. «Look­ing at

  South Africa has down­graded its eco­nomic pro­jec­tions fol­low­ing the worst spell of rolling black­outs in the his­tory of the con­tin­ent’s most indus­tri­al­ised nation. The South African Reserve Bank raised its bench­mark rate by a quarter of a per­cent­age point to 7.25 per cent, a smal­ler increase than in pre­vi­ous policy decisions and below the half-point level that most eco­nom­ists expec­ted, warn­ing that the coun­try’s eco­nomy would barely grow this year. In Novem­ber it had fore­cast a 1.1 per cent expan­sion. ‘The shift in focus towards growth comes at a time that infla­tion pres­sures are start­ing to dis­sip­ate.’ Eskom, the power pool, is to impose 250 days of rolling black­outs this year, up from a pre­vi­ous fore­cast of 100 days. The power cuts will remove «as much as two per­cent­age points from growth in 2023, com­pared to the pre­vi­ous estim­ate of 0.6 per­cent­age points», it said. The cent­ral bank also slashed growth fore­casts for 2024 from 1.4 per cen

 Small busi­nesses have warned that gov­ern­ment plans to slash energy sub­sidies will add to the fin­an­cial pain caused by energy sup­pli­ers' alleged lack of help. Energy relief for busi­ness is to be scaled back in 2023-24, leav­ing about 5.5mn small com­pan­ies with reduced assist­ance even as gas and elec­tri­city bills soar. Small busi­nesses have warned that plans to slash energy sub­sidies will cause them acute pain, com­pound­ing alleged mis­treat­ment by energy sup­pli­ers that had already left them exposed to higher costs. The gov­ern­ment this month announced it would scale back energy relief for busi­ness in 2023-24, leav­ing about 5.5mn small com­pan­ies with reduced assist­ance in the face of soar­ing bills. About one in four small busi­nesses will have to close, downs­ize or restruc­ture their oper­a­tions due to the cut in sub­sidies, accord­ing to the Fed­er­a­tion of Small Busi­ness lobby group, while almost 30 per cent will receive a max­imum of only £49 in rel

  The new chief exec­ut­ive of Rolls-Royce has given a bru­tal assess­ment of Bri­tain’s flag­ship engin­eer­ing group, telling employ­ees that it must trans­form the way it oper­ates or it will not sur­vive. In a global address broad­cast to staff, parts of which were shared with the Fin­an­cial Times, Tufan Ergin­bil­gic warned that investors were los­ing patience with the FTSE 100 group. "Every invest­ment we make, we des­troy value," he told employ­ees, adding that fin­an­cially, "we under­per­form every key com­pet­itor out there". Elop, who also warned staff that the com­pany was stand­ing on a "burn­ing plat­form". Less than three years later, the nearly 150-year-old Finnish com­pany was sold to Microsoft. Ergin­bil­gic said: "We do have a burn­ing plat­form, not because I say so but because of what I am going to share with you." The com­pany’s per­form­ance was "unsus­tain­able", he said. Rolls-Royce’s recent his­tory is one of

 Offi­cial data yes­ter­day showed that infla­tion rose to 7.8 per cent year on year in the Octo­ber to Decem­ber quarter, the highest rate since 1990. The read­ing will dash hopes of a pause in rising interest rates, which have climbed above 3 per cent since May, put­ting pres­sure on house­hold fin­ances. Jim Chalmers, Aus­tralia’s treas­urer, noted that the 1.9 per cent quarter-on-quarter rise was lower than the 2.1 per cent recor­ded in the three months to March but added that price growth was non­ethe­less «unac­cept­ably high». The gov­ern­ment has inter­vened in the energy sec­tor to try to reduce a pro­jec­ted 56 per cent surge in elec­tri­city costs this year. Chalmers,Aus­tralia’s treas­urer, said there were early signs that the move had «taken the sting out of» energy prices, which rose 8.6 per cent in the quarter annually. Hous­ing prices rose 10.7 per cent in the fourth quarter, while food and non-alco­holic bever­ages jumped 9.2 per cent. Enter­tain­ment and recre­ation w

 Prime Min­is­ter Shehbaz Sharif on Tues­day expressed his «sin­cere regrets for the incon­veni­ence» and said an inquiry would determ­ine the cause. «Already a lot of indus­tries have closed down, and if those indus­tries don’t restart soon, some of the losses will be per­man­ent,» said Sakib Sher­ani, founder of Macro Eco­nomic Insights, a con­sultancy in Islamabad. Ana­lysts warn that the eco­nomic situ­ation is becom­ing unten­able, and Pakistan is at risk of fol­low­ing Sri Lanka, where a lack of for­eign reserves triggered severe short­ages of essen­tial goods and led to a default in May. Islamabad’s for­eign reserves have dropped below $5bn, less than enough for a whole month of imports, and Sharif’s gov­ern­ment remains in a dead­lock with the IMF over resur­rect­ing a $7bn assist­ance pack­age that stalled last year. Ahsan Iqbal, plan­ning min­is­ter, told the Fin­an­cial Times that Pakistan had reduced imports «drastic­ally» in an attempt to con­serve for­eign cur­rency. Paki

 Canada's cent­ral bank has raised interest rates to their highest level since 2007 but sig­nalled a likely pause in its tight­en­ing cycle after it said it saw signs that the eco­nomy had cooled down. The Bank of Canada lif­ted its overnight rate 0.25 per­cent­age points to 4.5 per cent yes­ter­day, mark­ing the eighth con­sec­ut­ive meet­ing at which it has raised bench­mark bor­row­ing costs. In Janu­ary last year, interest rates were 0.25 per cent, where they had been since the start of the pan­demic in March 2020. The BoC was the first cent­ral bank in a G10 eco­nomy to hint that it was ready to pause its tight­en­ing cycle, not­ing in Decem­ber that there had been a slow­down in domestic demand. Mem­bers of the US Fed­eral Reserve and the European Cent­ral Bank have so far indic­ated that they will "stay the course" and con­tinue to raise rates to tamp infla­tion. ""Eco­nomic growth has been stronger than expec­ted and the eco­nomy remains in excess demand

 An Aus­tralian bat­tery com­pany has made a pre­lim­in­ary bid for col­lapsed bat­tery pro­du­cer Brit­ish­volt as it seeks to cap­it­al­ise on closer ties forged between Aus­tralia and the UK over the past year to res­cue the busi­ness. David Col­lard, the founder of Recharge Indus­tries, said he would visit the Brit­ish­volt site in north-east Eng­land this week and meet gov­ern­ment offi­cials before mak­ing a formal offer. Col­lard said Bri­tain’s trade agree­ment with Aus­tralia, as well as the Aukus secur­ity alli­ance, should rein­force the bene­fits of com­bin­ing Brit­ish­volt with his com­pany’s plan to con­struct a bat­tery fact­ory in Geelong, a coastal city in Aus­tralia, by 2024. The col­lapse of Brit­ish­volt this month extin­guished the UK’s hopes of incub­at­ing a world-lead­ing global bat­tery maker.Col­lard is up against a dozen poten­tial bid­ders for the site, includ­ing Jag­uar Land Rover owner Tata Motors and DeaLab, a Lon­don fin­an­cial group with close links

  The DoJ has sued Google for allegedly exer­cising mono­pol­istic con­trol of the digital ads mar­ket in the latest legal broad­side against the US tech­no­logy giant.—The US Depart­ment of Justice has sued Google for allegedly exer­cising mono­pol­istic con­trol of the digital advert­ising mar­ket, in the latest legal broad­side against the busi­ness as Wash­ing­ton seeks to crack down on the dom­in­ance of Big Tech. A com­plaint filed yes­ter­day by the DoJ and a group of US states in a Vir­ginia fed­eral court accuses Google of using «anti-com­pet­it­ive, exclu­sion­ary and unlaw­ful means to elim­in­ate or severely dimin­ish any threat to its dom­in­ance over digital advert­ising tech­no­lo­gies». The ‘behemoth’ is accused of ‘a sys­tem­atic cam­paign to seize con­trol of the wide swath of high-tech tools’ Author­it­ies also accused Google of hav­ing «per­vas­ive con­flicts of interest» because it con­trols numer­ous aspects of the digital ad mar­ket, includ­ing the tech used by w

 Activ­ity has unex­pec­tedly returned to growth for the first time since June, says an S&P Global sur­vey likely to bol­ster ECB resolve to raise rates. S&P Global’s flash euro­zone com­pos­ite pur­chas­ing man­agers’ index, a meas­ure of activ­ity in man­u­fac­tur­ing and ser­vices, rose to 50.2 in Janu­ary from 49.3 in Decem­ber, fig­ures yes­ter­day showed. «A steady­ing of the euro­zone eco­nomy at the start of the year adds to evid­ence that the region might escape reces­sion,» said Chris Wil­li­am­son, chief busi­ness eco­nom­ist at S&P Global Mar­ket Intel­li­gence. Sup­ply chain stress has eased, and the reopen­ing of the Chinese eco­nomy has helped restore con­fid­ence in the broader global out­look for 2023. The rise in the com­pos­ite euro­zone PMI index con­trasts with an unex­pec­ted deteri­or­a­tion in the UK, where the cor­res­pond­ing index sig­nalled the sharpest drop in activ­ity in two years. A resi­li­ent euro­zone eco­nomy coupled with high under­ly­in

 Pub­lic sec­tor bor­row­ing soared to the highest Decem­ber fig­ure on record last month, driven by higher interest pay­ments and also energy-aid meas­ures.—Pub­lic sec­tor bor­row­ing more than doubled last month to the highest Decem­ber fig­ure on record, driven by higher interest pay­ments and the meas­ures to help house­holds and busi­nesses with soar­ing energy prices. Pub­lic sec­tor net bor­row­ing hit £27.4bn, up from a revised £10.7bn in the same month in 2021 and the highest Decem­ber fig­ure since monthly records began in 1993, accord­ing to the Office for National Stat­ist­ics yes­ter­day. Pub­lic bor­row­ing rose «largely because of a sharp rise in spend­ing on energy sup­port schemes and an increase in debt interest», said the ONS. A read­ing below 50 indic­ates the major­ity of busi­nesses repor­ted a con­trac­tion for the sixth con­sec­ut­ive month. «Weaker than expec­ted PMI num­bers in Janu­ary under­score the risk of the UK slip­ping into reces­sion,» said Chris Wil