After months of nego­ti­ations the UK and the EU, yes­ter­day pub­lished the text of their deal to refine post-Brexit arrange­ments for North­ern Ire­land.Although North­ern Ire­land con­tin­ues to fol­low EU rules for goods trade, the new imple­ment­a­tion agree­ment sets out pro­cesses on trade, state sub­sidy and VAT policy to reduce the impact of the trade bor­der in the Irish Sea cre­ated by the ori­ginal deal. Trade: red-green lanes Goods com­ing from Great Bri­tain to North­ern Ire­land will be divided into two classes: those destined for North­ern Ire­land and those head­ing on to Ire­land and the EU single mar­ket. Com­pan­ies that register for a trus­ted trader scheme and use the green lane will have «an unpre­ced­en­ted reduc­tion» of cus­toms paper­work, the EU said. On the other hand, goods in the red lane will have to go through full cus­toms, food and animal health checks. For agri-food, the EU will accept UK pub­lic health stand­ards, mean­ing fresh meat and other good

 Rishi Sunak, prime min­is­ter, and Ursula von der Leyen, European Com­mis­sion pres­id­ent, yes­ter­day sealed the agree­ment in the shadow of Wind­sor Castle as they talked of open­ing a «new chapter» in rela­tions. Sunak and von der Leyen hope the deal to smooth trade between North­ern Ire­land and the rest of the UK will end years of grim post-Brexit ties between Lon­don and Brus­sels. «We have made a decis­ive break­through,» Sunak said at a press con­fer­ence with von der Leyen, as the two hailed an agree­ment to reform the so-called North­ern Ire­land pro­tocol, dubbed «the Wind­sor frame­work». The pro­tocol was estab­lished to pre­vent a hard bor­der on the island of Ire­land. But it is hated by North­ern Ire­land’s Demo­cratic Uni­on­ist party because it cre­ated a trade bar­rier for goods trav­el­ling from Great Bri­tain into the region, which remains part of the EU’s single mar­ket for goods. Sunak yes­ter­day began the task of selling the deal to North­ern Ire­land’s DUP a

 When the Adani Group broke ground on a new con­tainer ter­minal at Colombo port late last year, it was a win not just for the Indian con­glom­er­ate but for the gov­ern­ment in New Delhi that hoped to extend influ­ence in Sri Lanka. While Sri Lanka rejec­ted an earlier pro­posal amid protests about a key asset fall­ing into for­eign hands, Adani even­tu­ally secured the major­ity stake in a $700mn deal to build and oper­ate the ter­minal. The Adani group, whose owner Gautam Adani has long­stand­ing ties with Modi, has in recent years clinched deals from Myan­mar to Israel as part of an ambi­tious over­seas expan­sion. The Adani Group’s over­seas for­ays faced intense scru­tiny fol­low­ing alleg­a­tions last month by US short-seller Hinden­burg Research that it has for dec­ades used fraud and mar­ket manip­u­la­tion to fuel its rise. « This is Adani Ji’s for­eign policy,» Gandhi said, using a com­mon hon­or­ific to refer to Adani. «India’s min­istry of external affairs has been turned

 The house­ build­ing industry has warned that the num­ber of new prop­er­ties com­pleted each year in Eng­land could slump to its low­est level since the second world war, owing to a «per­fect storm» of gov­ern­ment policies and higher mort­gage rates. Stew­art Base­ley, exec­ut­ive chair of the fed­er­a­tion, said the gov­ern­ment’s «capit­u­la­tion» to the «not in my back yard lobby» and its mis­hand­ling of envir­on­mental policies, could lead to a plunge in house build­ing and threaten hun­dreds of thou­sands of jobs. Base­ley said «short-term polit­ical decisions to appease» back­bench Con­ser­vat­ive MPs con­cerned about devel­op­ment were threat­en­ing con­fid­ence in the hous­ing mar­ket just as Bri­tain headed into a prob­able reces­sion, with tighter mort­gage avail­ab­il­ity. In research for the HBF, plan­ning con­sultancy Lich­fields pre­dicted that the changes to the frame­work could reduce sup­ply by 77,000 prop­er­ties a year in the near term. The research also con­clud

 The UK eco­nomic out­look for this year has improved, with ana­lysts pre­dict­ing a smal­ler con­trac­tion in out­put than pre­vi­ously thought because of fall­ing energy prices and bet­ter than expec­ted busi­ness and con­sumer sen­ti­ment. The latest S&P Global/ Cips flash com­pos­ite pur­chas­ing man­agers’ index showed Brit­ish busi­ness activ­ity reboun­ded in Feb­ru­ary after six months of declin­ing out­put. Con­sumer con­fid­ence in Feb­ru­ary reached its highest level in almost a year, accord­ing to research group GfK. While the cost of the liv­ing crisis is far from over, and the Bank of Eng­land could raise interest rates fur­ther to curb infla­tion, there has been a sharp fall in whole­sale energy prices, which soared after Rus­sia’s inva­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary last year. Liz Mar­tins, eco­nom­ist at HSBC, said that given the bet­ter eco­nomic news and fall­ing energy prices, «it is now plaus­ible that there is no reces­sion at all». Allan Monks, eco­nom­ist at

 Sev­eral big wind farm developers, includ­ing Sweden’s Vat­ten­fall and Den­mark’s Orsted, are seek­ing tax breaks from the UK gov­ern­ment or enhanced sub­sidies as a sharp rise in costs puts Brit­ish projects at risk. Sev­eral com­pan­ies that won con­tracts in a gov­ern­ment auc­tion last year to build new renew­able power gen­er­at­ing capa­city from 2024 have warned min­is­ters the projects will be dif­fi­cult to deliver at the prices agreed, accord­ing to people involved in the talks. Last year’s sub­sidy auc­tion was the UK’s most extensive to date and secured enough capa­city to provide 12mn homes with cheap, low-car­bon power. The UK has 13.7GW of off­shore wind capa­city oper­a­tional but is seek­ing to increase that to 50GW by 2030 as part of an energy secur­ity strategy drawn up by min­is­ters last year, shortly after the full­s­cale inva­sion of Ukraine. But some wind farm developers that secured con­tracts in last year’s auc­tion have either delayed or are hes­it­at­ing

HM Revenue and Customs has launched a crackdown on the rapidly growing short-term rental market, launching an initial sweep targeting around 1,000 property owners who it suspects are not paying sufficient taxes. Based on information from online lettings platforms like Airbnb, the tax agency is sending out its first so-called "nudge" letters this month to those it believes have failed to declare the revenue generated by renting out on their tax returns. Recipients of the letters are given 30 days to respond or face an official investigation of their tax affairs. The scrutiny from HMRC comes as the rented-out market has grown rapidly over the past few years, helped by the preferred tax treatment for short-term lets over a traditional purchase-to-let. About 127,000 people in Britain declared property holdings in holiday rentals as businesses on their tax returns for 2019-20, the latest year for which figures are available. Unfortunately, Airbnb does not provide a geographic brea

The U.S. "makes no apologies" for prioritizing American jobs as it seeks to take a leading role in the global race for green energy, a White House official responsible for a $369 billion push to fund the effort said. In an interview with Financial Times, Joe Bidens top clean energy advisor, John Podesta, dismissed criticisms that the Americas Inflation Reduction Act will distract from investments and harm the economy of Europe. He said allies critical of the IRA should "welcome U.S. leadership". Podesta said: "We do not apologize that American taxpayer dollars should go into American investments and jobs. Podesta called for Europe to shoulder responsibility for developing its green energy sector. "We want to see a European industrial base succeed, but some of that job has to be done in Europe, he added. "We are going to do only some of that for them. Since the last year IRA passed, more than $90 billion of green investments has flowed to the U.S., inc

 IAG, the owner of British Airways, reported its first full-year profits since the pandemic hit and said profits might rise nearly 90% this year as the business recovers, but its shares fell around 6% on concerns over the group's debt. International Consolidated Airlines Group (IAG) has posted its first full-year profits since the pandemic hit. However, the owner of British Airways bounced back with EUR1.25bn of profits for 2022 and said that the figure might nearly double in future years as holiday and business travel resumes anew after a prolonged coronavirus pandemic. IAG's operating profits for 2022 were 1.22bn euros and reversed two years of losses caused by COVID. Louis Gallego said British Airways owners remained confident they would recover to coronavirus-pandemic operating profit levels within the next two years despite doubling. The British Airways owner said that capacity reached 78% of its pre-COVID levels last year - reaching 87% of its 2019 levels in the previous

The German economy shrank unexpectedly in the fourth quarter, data showed on Monday, suggesting that Europe's biggest economy could be heading into a much-predicted downturn. However, it is more likely to be a milder downturn than initially forecast. The German economy shrank 0.4% in Q4-2022, the statistics agency said Friday, down from the three months prior. Germany's economy shrank more than expected over the past three months of 2022 amidst a continuing energy crisis and rising inflation, raising fears that the country may be heading toward recession. On an annual basis, Germany's economy shrank 2.3 per cent from January through March, the same period in 2019, posting annual growth of 0.4 per cent in the fourth quarter. The European economic downturn widened late last year, with the size of its economy shrank by 0.6% in the final three months, the steepest contraction since the financial crisis, which showed Gross Domestic Product falling by 0.2 per cent.  High inflatio

Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC will report its findings, along with our mid-term objectives, during the second half of this year, said CEO Tufan Erginbilgic. A strategy review to set out the firm's priorities for investment will be reported in the second half of this year. The chief executive of Rolls-Royce said a plan to reverse Rolls-Royce's fortunes was already being put into place with speed. The boss of Rolls-Royce has signalled his support for the company's plans to build a fleet of mini-nuclear reactors across the UK, seen as a crucial part of a move towards net zero, but repeated concerns expressed by his predecessor Warren East over the need for state backing. CEO Tufan Erginbilgics's predecessor, Warren East, launched a restructuring plan that reduced jobs and debt. Still, Erginbilgic has much work ahead of him in returning Rolls to its previous glory. Rolls Royce shares are up more than 12 per cent since CEO Tufan Erginbilgic took the reins, suggesting some optimis

  Mr. Zhu Hexin is currently serving as vice governor of Sichuan provinces peoples government, as well as member of Sichuan provinces party leadership group. Mr. Zhu was vice chairman of Bank of Communications, Executive Director & Vice Chairman of Bank of China, Vice Governor of Sichuan province, Vice Chairman of the Peopleas Bank of China. An engineering graduate from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Mr Zhu was also a vice chairman at the Central Bank of China, as well as the vice governor of Sichuan province, southwest of China. Graduated with a Bachelors degree in engineering in the economic information management system major, information department, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. He started his professional career in August 1991, and joined Communist Party of China (CPC) in September 1999. Chang has worked for the bank system for almost 23 years, starting in 1993 with Nanjing branch of the Bank of Communications, accumulating rich experiences at th

  Zhu Hexin, one of China’s top com­mer­cial bankers, is under con­sid­er­a­tion to take over as the gov­ernor of the cent­ral bank, as Beijing pre­pares to over­haul the lead­er­ship of its lead­ing fin­an­cial insti­tu­tions next month. If his nom­in­a­tion is con­firmed, Zhu, the chair of the state-owned con­glom­er­ate Citic Group, would suc­ceed Yi Gang as gov­ernor of the People’s Bank of China, two people famil­iar with the pro­cess said. It also fol­lows a Com­mun­ist party con­fer­ence in Octo­ber, in which Xi was able to appoint loy­al­ists to the Polit­buro stand­ing com­mit­tee, the party’s most senior decision-mak­ing body. Apart from a pan­demic blip in 2020, when gross domestic product expan­ded just 2.2 per cent, China’s growth rate last year of 3 per cent was the slow­est since 1976. Among other appoint­ments expec­ted to be announced at next month’s legis­lat­ive meet­ing, Wu Qing, the Shang­hai vice-mayor who super­vises the fin­an­cial and busi­ness affairs of China

 The cent­ral bank has made no profits for the first time in 15 years after write­downs on bond invest­ments made as part of its crisis-fight­ing meas­ures. The European Cent­ral Bank made no profits for the first time in 15 years in 2022 after suf­fer­ing write­downs on its bond invest­ments, with ana­lysts pre­dict­ing years of losses fol­low­ing the reversal of its ultra-loose mon­et­ary policies. Since the global fin­an­cial crisis, rate­set­ters around the world have bought vast amounts of bonds at ultra-high costs to counter low infla­tion and fin­an­cial risks but are now start­ing to shrink their bal­ance sheets. As rates rise, the interest cent­ral banks pay on com­mer­cial lenders’ reserves is likely to out­strip the interest earned on bonds bought under crisisfight­ing pro­grammes. Daniel Gros, a fel­low at the Centre for European Policy Stud­ies think-tank, estim­ated that euro­zone cent­ral banks includ­ing the ECB, could be hit by about €600bn of losses on their invest­me

 Joe Biden has nom­in­ated former Mas­ter­card chief exec­ut­ive Ajay Banga as World Bank pres­id­ent, pick­ing a Wall Street vet­eran raised in India to over­see the insti­tu­tion’s most significant mis­sion change in a gen­er­a­tion. Banga’s nom­in­a­tion, a week after sit­ting pres­id­ent David Mal­pass abruptly resigned, was made as the US and other share­holder nations seek to expand the bank’s devel­op­ment remit to include the fight against global warm­ing. The US pres­id­ent said Banga had a grasp of the chal­lenges facing devel­op­ing coun­tries and «crit­ical exper­i­ence» in mobil­ising private money to «tackle the most urgent chal­lenges of our time, includ­ing cli­mate change». Banga, cur­rently vice-chair of Gen­eral Atlantic, a US private equity group, was the chief exec­ut­ive of pay­ments com­pany Mas­ter­card until the end of 2020. Banga’s nom­in­a­tion comes after the bank’s biggest share­hold­ers agit­ated for the insti­tu­tion to incor­por­ate cli­mate into devel­o

 South Africa will sig­ni­fic­antly increase pub­lic bor­row­ing to relieve two-thirds of Eskom’s debts as the strug­gling state elec­tri­city mono­poly imposes the worst rolling black­outs yet in Africa’s most indus­tri­al­ised nation. South Africa and the debt relief would enable Eskom to spend more money on main­tain­ing mal­func­tion­ing power sta­tions at the core of the crisis, said fin­ance min­is­ter Enoch Godong­wana, as he delivered the annual budget. Eskom would have to meet «strict con­di­tions» on bet­ter power sta­tion per­form­ance to access the relief, he added. Most of Eskom’s debt was already issued under gov­ern­ment guar­an­tee. Eskom this week hit a record for break­downs at age­ing coal plants that provide the bulk of South Africa’s power. Many ana­lysts and busi­nesspeople regard the plants as increas­ingly irre­par­able, given enorm­ous cor­rup­tion in Eskom under the rul­ing African National Con­gress. The power cuts reached an unpre­ced­en­ted 7,000 mega­watts

 The global bank­ing industry has warned that devel­op­ing coun­try debt piles have hit a fresh high, adding to fears of a wave of defaults this year. The com­bined gov­ern­ment, house­hold, cor­por­ate and fin­an­cial sec­tor debts of 30 large low- and middle-income coun­tries rose to $98tn at the end of Decem­ber, as their cur­ren­cies slumped against the dol­lar. The debt bur­den for the 30 coun­tries was up from $96tn a year earlier and from $75tn in 2019 before the pan­demic began, the IIF, a trade body for the global bank­ing industry, said in the latest edi­tion of its quarterly Global Debt Mon­itor. Gov­ern­ment debts alone were equal to almost 65 per cent of gross domestic product by the end of 2022, an increase of 10 per­cent­age points over pre­pan­demic levels and the highest-ever year-end total. The dol­lar soared against most emer­ging mar­ket and advanced eco­nomy cur­ren­cies throughout 2022, rais­ing the cost of meet­ing exist­ing debt oblig­a­tions, many of which are

 Cit­ig­roup has fore­cast that infla­tion will plunge from double-digit rates to nearly 2 per cent by the end of the year as rapid falls in gas prices give Rishi Sunak’s gov­ern­ment hope of solv­ing some of its biggest eco­nomic chal­lenges. Citi said yes­ter­day that con­sumer price infla­tion was likely to fall to 2.3 per cent in Novem­ber, well below the Bank of Eng­land’s fore­cast that it would remain near 4 per cent in the fourth quarter of the year. The bank’s pro­jec­tion provides a fil­lip for the prime min­is­ter, poten­tially mak­ing it easier to resolve pub­lic sec­tor strikes over pay and to ful­fil his pledge of halv­ing infla­tion by the end of the year. Only a month ago, he expec­ted that to hap­pen in Octo­ber. Citi’s fore­casts reflect a likely fall in house­hold energy bills as whole­sale gas prices con­tinue to drop. The cost of gas for deliv­ery in Septem­ber has halved in the past two months from £2.60 a therm to £1.26 a therm and fallen more than 80 per cent si

 Microsoft has announced deals with Nintendo and Nvidia to convince regulators to give the green light to its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the gaming company behind the Call of Duty series. Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, and Phil Spencer, its chief gaming executive, travelled to Brussels to address European competition commissioners in a closed hearing yesterday, setting out their case for the deal in the latest phase of investigations by watchdogs in Britain, the United States and the European Union. Microsoft’s takeover of one of the world’s most successful game developers raised concerns among regulators that the Call of Duty game may not be made available on other consoles and that Microsoft could dominate cloud gaming. The European Commission said its initial concerns were that «the transaction may significantly reduce competition on the markets for the distribution of console and PC video games, including multi-game subscription services and cloud game st

 Shares in the bank have hit a new low after a report that a reg­u­lator is examin­ing com­ments by chair Axel Lehmann over how much cli­ents had with­drawn. The renewed weak­ness in the stock fol­lowed a statement by Reu­ters that Finma was invest­ig­at­ing the accur­acy of com­ments made by Axel Lehmann to the Fin­an­cial Times on Decem­ber 1, and to Bloomberg a day later, in which he claimed out­flows had stead­ied and in some cases reversed. The com­ments by Lehmann came at a crit­ical time for the bank as it sought to raise SFr4bn of fresh cap­ital from share­hold­ers. Lehmann told the FT on Decem­ber 1 that out­flows had «com­pletely flattened out and . » A day later, in an inter­view on Bloomberg TV, Lehmann said out­flows had «basic­ally stopped». The bank revealed in its full-year res­ults this month that out­flows con­tin­ued throughout Decem­ber and into Janu­ary across the group, though there were areas of the busi­ness that had net inflows, such as Switzer­land and Asia-Pa

 Busi­ness activ­ity in the euro­zone grew faster than expec­ted this month, strength­en­ing the rebound from last year’s energy crisis and rein­for­cing calls for the European Cent­ral Bank to keep rais­ing interest rates to tackle high infla­tion. S&P Global’s flash euro­zone com­pos­ite pur­chas­ing man­agers’ index, a meas­ure of activ­ity in man­u­fac­tur­ing and ser­vices, rose to 52.3 from 50.3 in Janu­ary, accord­ing to fig­ures released yes­ter­day. «Busi­ness activ­ity across the euro­zone grew much faster than expec­ted in Feb­ru­ary, with growth hit­ting a ninemonth high thanks to resur­gent ser­vice sec­tor activ­ity and a recov­er­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing eco­nomy,» said Chris Wil­li­am­son, chief busi­ness eco­nom­ist at S&P Global Mar­ket Intel­li­gence. The euro­zone eco­nomy has proved more resi­li­ent than ini­tially feared to the fal­lout from Rus­sia’s inva­sion of Ukraine, with a mild winter help­ing to reduce nat­ural gas con­sump­tion, lower fuel prices and

Inter­na­tional fund­ing for Chinese start-ups dried up last year, push­ing many fledgling tech­no­logy com­pan­ies to raise cap­ital and list at home instead of on Wall Street. Dol­lar invest­ments in the coun­try’s new com­pan­ies fell by almost three-quar­ters last year, declin­ing to 19 per cent of the total cap­ital put into start-ups from 39 per cent in 2021, accord­ing to new data from research group ITJuzi. Chinese investors and founders say geo­pol­it­ical ten­sions with the US, as well as Beijing’s tech crack­down and harsh zero-Covid policy, spooked for­eign investors. «China’s ven­ture mar­ket was very, very dif­fer­ent last year,» said Zhou Xiang, head of Mingde Cap­ital Advisors, which helps start-ups raise fund­ing. «In the past, half of all deals were dol­lar based. Now it’s 70-80 per cent ren­minbi,» he said. Zhou said that the dimin­ish­ing interest in dol­lars, espe­cially in the coun­try’s tech sec­tor, was in part because founders were nervous about poten­tially be

 Meta will launch a sub­scrip­tion ser­vice that allows Face­book and Ins­tagram users to verify accounts for up to $14.99 a month, chief Mark Zuck­er­berg said.—Meta will launch a paid sub­scrip­tion ser­vice that allows Face­book and Ins­tagram users to verify accounts for up to $14.99 a month, chief exec­ut­ive Mark Zuck­er­berg announced yes­ter­day. The new fea­ture, called Meta Veri­fied, lets users «get a blue badge, get extra imper­son­a­tion pro­tec­tion against accounts claim­ing to be you, and get dir­ect access to cus­tomer sup­port», accord­ing to a Face­book post by Zuck­er­berg. Meta rev­en­ues have been hammered by pri­vacy changes made by Apple in 2021 that restric­ted its abil­ity to track users’ inter­net activ­ity, a key source of data for tar­geted ads. Meta said last Feb­ru­ary that the Apple change would cost it more than $10bn in lost advert­ising income for 2022, around 8 per cent of its total rev­enue in 2021. Anshu Sharma, founder of data pri­vacy com­pany Sk

 Bri­tain’s robust labour mar­ket, a rise in retail sales and signs that infla­tion is begin­ning to slow have fanned hopes that the Bank of Eng­land’s cycle of interest rate rises may be near­ing its peak. However, a flow of critical data over the past ten days sug­gests that the UK eco­nomy is show­ing a level of resi­li­ence that was not in evid­ence just a few months ago. Infla­tion has fallen more than expec­ted, and the labour mar­ket remained robust, accord­ing to the latest data, which has left many eco­nom­ists expect­ing the end to fur­ther interest rate rises by the Bank of Eng­land and a milder reces­sion than pre­vi­ously pre­dicted. With most meas­ures of under­ly­ing infla­tion eas­ing in Janu­ary, the head­line fig­ure fell to 10.1 per cent last month. Ser­vices infla­tion, a bet­ter meas­ure of domest­ic­ally gen­er­ated price pres­sures, fell more than expec­ted, includ­ing a slow­down in price growth in labour-intens­ive indus­tries, such as hotels and res­taur­ants.

 The world’s biggest computer maker has reported a steep decline in revenue for the last quarter after global demand for personal computers and electronics fell sharply. Lenovo of China said its total revenue had tumbled by 24 per cent to $15.3 billion in the three months to December compared with the same period in 2021. Net income attributable to equity holders plunged 32% to $437 million. The company specialises in consumer electronics, personal computers and software. The pandemic boosted sales significantly for Lenovo and its peers as many people worked remotely and decided to replace or upgrade their equipment. However, sales of new computers then collapsed. Yang Yuanqing, 58, Lenovo’s chief executive, said the entire PC and mobile market had experienced a «severe downturn» in the last quarter and planned to improve its efficiency. www.sba.tax

 The stock market rally has further to run this year; analysts have forecast signs that inflation has peaked, and a more resilient economy promises to support sentiment. Shares in London have outperformed City expectations since the start of this year, with the FTSE 100 breaching the 8,000 mark for the first time this week. Analysts at Barclays and Goldman Sachs believe the FTSE 100 index will end the year above its present level, at 8,200, compared with the record 8,012.53 hit on Thursday. However, Barclays said that fear of missing out among institutional investors was likely to return, particularly among asset managers that had «stayed on the sidelines, sticking to the stagflation playbook of 2022», Barclays said. However,persistent inflation means there is no free lunch and higher-for-longer rates are the cost for resilient growth». The top three biggest risers on the FTSE 100 since January are JD Sports, the athleisure retailer, International Consolidated Airlines, owner of Britis

 Gautam Adani’s elec­tri­city unit is halt­ing an $847mn acquis­i­tion of a coalfired power sta­tion in India in a sign that his busi­ness empire is slow­ing down spend­ing fol­low­ing a short seller attack. The Adani Group did not respond to a request for com­ment. Widely regarded as an ally of Nar­en­dra Modi, India’s prime min­is­ter, Adani presen­ted him­self as the archi­tect of logist­ics net­works and power gen­er­a­tion that formed the back­bone of India’s grow­ing eco­nomy. But a retrench­ment would mark a change in strategy for Adani, 60, who built his con­glom­er­ate dur­ing a debt­fuelled expan­sion, adding rev­en­ues by buy­ing or build­ing new projects ran­ging from solar power to air­ports. Adani Power in August agreed to buy DB Power, a com­pany that owns a prof­it­able coalfired power plant in the Indian state of Chhat­tis­garh, and its par­ent com­pany Dilii­gent Power Private. In quarterly earn­ings announce­ments last week, sev­eral Adani port­fo­lio com­pan­ies sai

 The pro­du­cer price index, which is often regarded as a lead­ing indic­ator of where con­sumer infla­tion is headed in sev­eral months, rose 0.7 per cent last month from Decem­ber, the US Bur­eau of Labor Stat­ist­ics said yes­ter­day, that sur­passed eco­nom­ists’ expect­a­tions for a 0.4 per cent increase. On an annual basis, the PPI, which tracks prices paid to US pro­du­cers for goods and ser­vices, was up 6 per cent from a year ago. That marked a mod­er­a­tion from 6.5 per cent in Decem­ber but came in well above mar­ket fore­casts for 5.4 per cent. Last month, a block­buster non-farm payrolls report showed the US eco­nomy added more than half a mil­lion jobs in Janu­ary, and the job­less rate fell to a 53year-low of 3.4 per cent. Fed chair Jay Pow­ell then warned rates might rise more than investors expect as the firm labour mar­ket could mean it takes longer for the Fed to hit its 2 per cent tar­get. The S&P 500 was down 0.6 per cent in morn­ing trad­ing, hav­ing man­aged

  ECB exec­ut­ive board mem­ber Fabio Pan­etta said the bank should shift to smal­ler rate increases soon or risk stamp­ing out growth .  Fabio Pan­etta urged his fel­low rate-set­ters to move in «small steps» after rais­ing its key policy rate by half a point at its past two meet­ings ,  say­ing fall­ing energy prices could lead to a «rapid» decline in euro­zone infla­tion this year to levels close to the cent­ral bank’s tar­get of 2 per cent .  Its bench­mark deposit rate is now 2 . 5 per cent .  «To move in small steps is not to move less , » Pan­etta told an event in Lon­don ,  say­ing the decline in energy prices ,  if main­tained ,  would mean infla­tion fall­ing to as low as 3 per cent later this year . The com­ments by Pan­etta ,  one of the most dovish mem­bers of the ECB board ,  indic­ate there are widen­ing divi­sions among its rate-set­ters over how much fur­ther it should raise bor­row­ing costs given the recent falls in infla­tion .  Infla­tion has slipped from a high of

  The boss of Amazon has pledged to increase investment in the company’s struggling grocery business ,  less than a fortnight after announcing that its growth plans had been put on hold .  Initially an online marketplace for books ,  it has grown into an international group selling its own products ,  such as Alexa and Kindle tablets ,  and setting up Amazon Studios ,  a television streaming division .  Amazon has tried to make inroads into food and grocery for several years ,  initially via its Amazon Fresh online delivery service ,  then through its acquisition of Whole Foods for $13 . 7 billion and more recently with the launch of its Amazon Fresh supermarkets and Amazon Go cashier-less stores .  Jassy ,  55 ,  said a lack of «normalcy» in the pandemic had prevented Amazon from getting its grocery proposition right the first time round . Martin Heubel ,  an Amazon strategy consultant and the former senior category manager for food ,  snacks and coffee at Amazon ,  said the Fresh bus