Business

The head of private bank Coutts has been ousted over the closure of Nigel Farage’s bank accounts in a desperate attempt by NatWest to contain a crisis that has wiped £1bn off its share price. Peter Flavel’s resignation from Coutts was pushed through by the NatWest interim chief executive, Paul …

Drug companies are systematically funding grassroots patient groups that lobby the NHS medicines watchdog to approve the rollout of their drugs, the Observer can reveal. An investigation by the Observer has found that of 173 drug appraisals conducted by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) since April …

Rishi Sunak is to meet with bosses from FTSE 100 companies including AstraZeneca, Barclays and Shell to discuss how to attract more investment to the UK. Fourteen of the country’s biggest companies are due to attend the first meeting of the prime minister’s new business council on Tuesday, according to …

Terrific news: the banks aren’t about to collapse. The UK’s big lenders would continue to be “resilient”, says the Bank of England, even if the dark clouds over the economy turn into a prolonged thunderstorm. They have sufficient loss-absorbing capital to keep lending to households and businesses even in a …

Mark Zuckerberg’s “Twitter-killer” Threads has reached 70m sign-ups in less than 48 hours, as it more than doubled its growth from its first day on app stores. The new microblogging platform was launched in 100 countries this week . It immediately accumulated significant numbers of users, hitting more than 30 …

Does it matter that the entire infrastructure of wastewater collection and treatment in Kent, including tens of thousands of kilometres of sewers, is controlled by the Australian asset manager Macquarie? It should do, as these pipes are those of Southern Water, regularly criticised for noxious discharges into the sea. It …

Boots is to close 300 shops in the year ahead despite a 13.4% rise in quarterly turnover fuelled by high sales of sunscreen during the UK’s hot spell. The high street chemist, which is owned by the US group Walgreens Boots Alliance, said it was “evolving the store estate” by …

Rishi Sunak’s pledge to ease the cost of living crisis is in tatters after the Bank of England was forced to raise interest rates to 5% in an inflation-busting move that risks driving the economy into recession. With the prime minister under fire over the soaring cost of borrowing, the …

People across the UK will receive cost of living discounts – such as reductions on their council tax – if their cities, towns and villages sign up to new “clean energy” projects, under ambitious plans to be announced by Labour tomorrow. Keir Starmer and shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband …

JPMorgan Chase has announced a tentative settlement in a legal claim brought by a woman who said that the US banking giant knowingly benefited from sexual abuse that she and others suffered at the hands of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. The value of the settlement for a class of plaintiffs …