Week Ending 16th April 2021 U.S. stocks ended the week at all-time highs as Chinese growth data added to signs of a global economic recovery. The dollar slipped. The S&P 500 Index capped its fourth straight weekly advance as the strong data from Asia joined a raft of robust readings in the world’s largest economy […]

China’s economic growth slowed at the start of this year as its post-pandemic rebound began to level off, official figures showed. GDP grew by just 0.6% in the first quarter, missing expectations of a 1.5% increase and down from 3.2% in the last three months of 2020. But the figures also showed that the world’s […]

The number of employees at U.S. businesses rose in February by less than expected, underscoring the labor market’s struggle to recover despite a decline in Covid-19 infections in recent weeks. Company payrolls rose by 117,000 during the month, according to ADP Research Institute data released Wednesday. The median projection in a Bloomberg survey of economists […]

The UK pound passed US$1.40 on Friday for the first time in nearly three years. Just after 1.30pm, the pound was up 0.4% on the day but earlier it hit $1.4024 – its highest since 20 April, 2018. The UK’s rapid COVID-19 vaccination programme has sparked hopes that there might be a sharp economic recovery […]

The European Commission says it will start work on allowing police and financial data to continue to flow from the EU to the UK for the next four years. It comes after the commission said the UK’s data protection laws were in line with Europe’s, despite the changes brought about by Brexit. After the UK […]

New streaming service Disney+ has signed up nearly 95 million subscribers in just over a year, the entertainment giant has revealed. Disney’s latest quarterly results showed continued rapid growth for the direct-to-consumer channel, set up in November 2019 to compete with the likes of Netflix. Disney+ had 94.9 million paid subscribers as of 2 January, […]

US jobs growth bounced back less than expected in January while losses the previous month were worse than initially thought, latest figures show. The first set of employment data under President Joe Biden underlines the scale of the economic challenge faced as he seek to push through a $1.9trn COVID-19 recovery package. The Labor Department […]

The US economy suffered its worst annual decline for 74 years in 2020 as the pandemic crushed business activity and pushed millions of Americans out of work, official figures have shown. Gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by 3.5%, the biggest fall since 1946 when America was demobilising after the Second World War. Output is now […]

The company says it is well positioned to capitalise on the Brexit deal and is set to create more jobs on Wearside. Nissan has hailed the Brexit deal, saying the agreement will give it a “competitive advantage” as it committed to produce new electric vehicle batteries at its Sunderland plant. Chief operating officer Ashwani Gupta […]

President-elect Joe Biden has revealed a $1.9trn stimulus package to help the US get through the coronavirus pandemic. The package includes $415bn for the virus response, around $1trn for households, and roughly $440bn for small businesses and hard-hit communities. Mr Biden said: “A crisis of deep human suffering is in plain sight, and there’s no […]