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Welcome back to Energy Source! Russian president Vladimir Putin opened a new front in the energy war with the west, cutting off gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria after the countries refused Moscow’s demand to shift payment into roubles. The move sent gas futures on the continent soaring by as much as 20 per cent,

“Sent from heaven to finish all your educations” was how Walter Sickert defined himself in 1907 to young British artists. Aged 47, he had just completed his own education: a decade living between Dieppe and Venice, exhibiting in Paris, honing influences from his mentors, Whistler and Degas, before detonating European modernism in a domestic context

A Nasdaq-listed ride-sharing company has agreed a $100mn deal to buy UK start-up Zeelo, the latest in a string of acquisitions as technology companies push into the transport industry. Dubai-based Swvl, which listed in New York this month through a merger with a blank cheque company, has rattled through five acquisitions in the past eight

Sophisticated trading desks and compliance departments on Wall Street are facing renewed scrutiny following the arrest of Bill Hwang on federal racketeering, fraud and market manipulation charges. Hwang, 58, and former chief financial officer Patrick Halligan, 45, were yesterday accused of using Archegos Capital Management as an “instrument of market manipulation and fraud” with “far-reaching

Russia has exported €63bn worth of fossil fuels via ship and pipelines since the invasion of Ukraine, according to new data, with most going to the EU. The largest importers of Russian coal, oil and gas were Germany, Italy and China, according to an analysis of pipeline and seaborne trade by the Centre for Research

Fear of male violence distorts women’s lives. It affects daily decisions: is it safe to take that shortcut? Should I avoid that empty train carriage? Assessing risk is second nature for most of us, yet the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a police officer in London last year turned out to be an

Number 30 Charlotte Street is holy ground for London’s restaurant cognoscenti. It was, from some point in the mid-Neolithic until well into this millennium, the site of L’Etoile, a traditional French restaurant commanded by the charismatic Elena Salvoni. It had run its course by the time it closed, but it is still wonderful to see

A decade ago, while attending a conference in an unprecedentedly prosperous and westernised Moscow, I went to interview the British KGB double agent George Blake in his dacha outside town. It was meant to be just a newspaper article, but it spiralled out of control, and my biography of him appeared last year. Other recent

EY Germany is planning to cut workloads as it overhauls its auditing practices following the failure to spot that half of Wirecard’s revenues and billions of corporate cash did not exist. The German arm of the Big Four accounting firm on Thursday promised staff “an improvement of working conditions” after receiving the recommendations of an

Hello, this is Kenji from Hong Kong. I have been involved in the #techAsia newsletter since its inception in April 2019, and am excited to continue my engagement in its latest incarnation. Despite the changes in the format, the mission of the newsletter remains the same: to deliver the latest and deepest stories from the

The Bank of Japan has driven the yen to a new multi-decade low, defying a global shift towards higher interest rates and vowing to keep bond yields at zero. Within hours of the BoJ’s policy decision on Thursday, the yen fell 1.7 per cent to ¥130.62 against the dollar as the central bank promised to

Volvo Cars has begun sourcing alternatives to its Chinese-made parts as coronavirus lockdowns now spreading across the country add a new supply chain threat to an auto industry that has been beset by them over the past year. The company started double sourcing components that are obtained in China in a bid to shield its

Barclays’ profits fell 18 per cent in the first quarter and the bank had to delay a promised £1bn stock buyback as a jump in litigation and conduct provisions overshadowed a surge in trading revenue. Net income fell to £1.4bn, down from £1.7bn in the same period last year, the British bank said on Thursday.

Miner and commodity trader Glencore has suffered a rebuke from some shareholders over its climate transition plan, highlighting the increased scrutiny of corporate proposals to tackle global warming. Almost 24 per cent of votes cast at the group’s annual general meeting in Switzerland on Thursday were opposed to a resolution seeking approval for the company’s climate

J Sainsbury warned underlying profit would be lower than expected this year amid “significant external pressures and uncertainties” including cost inflation and a squeeze on household incomes. The UK’s second-largest supermarket on Thursday forecast underlying profit of between £630mn and £690mn. Analysts’ consensus forecast, as compiled by the group, had been for £703mn. Chief executive

Good morning and welcome to Europe Express. Russia fired the first warning shots yesterday in a looming energy war when it halted gas deliveries to Poland and Bulgaria. But the EU called the Kremlin’s bluff: it can use reverse flows, alternative supplies and storage to help the two countries. The European Commission insisted that other

Good morning. Wall Street rallied yesterday, then faded. Sentiment is poor, and surprisingly solid results from Facebook (still boycotting “Meta” around here) after the bell seem unlikely to change that. But readers have suggested plenty of good reasons to be cheerful: it’s spring, Trump is out of the White House, and Russia is losing. Keep

It barely took half an hour to gravely wound the chances of an alliance on France’s far right that could turn the movement into a serious player in government instead of a token opposition presence. On Sunday night after Marine Le Pen lost the presidential election to Emmanuel Macron but achieved a historic score for

Accounting firm RSM has bought out most of the shares in the business held by its former UK partners, consolidating the power of its new management team two years after the entire board was ousted following an investor coup. The UK’s seventh-largest accounting firm by revenue was thrown into chaos in 2019, when its chief

Throughout her career as an economist, Lise Vesterlund has been struck by the number of male colleagues who were exceptionally good at teaching and writing research papers, yet “somehow when it comes to doing any kind of service work, they [have some defect] that somehow makes them never serve on a committee”. So the work

It might seem like business-as-usual in the post-pandemic western art world, but some of the alternative models initiated during the lockdowns are finding their footing. One is the Fair Art Fair (FAF), an app launched last September by the London artist-gallerist Stacie McCormick, with some Arts Council backing. Despite its name, the platform operates more