Bloomberg Vitol Group, the world’s largest independent oil trading company, posted a record profit of $4.2 billion last year as it benefited from soaring energy prices. Those earnings allowed it to hand a record $3 billion to its executives and senior staff through share buybacks during the course of the year, according to the company’s audited annual accounts, seen ...

The Ukraine war is entering its third phase, and this one could well be decisive. Phase one was Russia’s failed blitzkrieg, meant to destroy the Ukrainian state. Phase two, which continues in desultory fashion, was Moscow’s push to seize all the Donbas area along the Ukraine-Russia border. Phase three will feature a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south. If Ukraine can ...

The economy is weakening, and so is demand for advertising — at least, that’s how Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc justified its first-ever quarterly decline in revenue last week. Social-media rivals Snap Inc and Twitter Inc echoed the gloom, worsening this year’s share-price slump in the sector. Strange, then, that some of advertising’s more old-school players in Europe, from “Mad ...