Bloomberg UK wages rose quicker than expected at the end of 2022, heaping pressure on the Bank of England to deliver another interest-rate increase next month. Average earnings excluding bonuses were 6.7% higher in the three months through December from the previous year, the Office for National Statistics said Tuesday. That’s the fastest pace since records began in 2001, excluding ...
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Britain loses 2.5m days to worst strikes since 1990
Bloomberg The economy lost nearly 2.5 million working days to strikes last year as Britain suffered its most severe industrial action since Margaret Thatcher was in power. The Office for National Statistics said Tuesday that 843,000 working days were lost due to labor disputes in December, making it the worst month in more than a decade. That took the total ...
Read More »Scotland’s employment rate jumps to highest on record
Bloomberg Employment in Scotland hit a record high at the end of 2022 as tightness in the labor market spread to all corners of the UK. The portion of adults who have a job climbed to 76.6% in the three months ending December, up 2.4 percentage points from a year earlier. The figures from the Office for National Statistics on ...
Read More »Germany’s Norma rejected buyout offers
Bloomberg Norma Group SE, a German maker of hose clamps and pipe connections for everything from cars to washing machines, rejected several takeover approaches in recent months from bidders including Carlyle Group Inc., people familiar with the matter said. The company explored a potential sale with advisers toward the end of 2022, according to the people, who asked not ...
Read More »Hungary leads east EU economic slide amid war in Ukraine
Bloomberg Soaring inflation, higher interest rates and supply-chain snarls spurred by the war in Ukraine pushed most of the European Union’s biggest eastern economies into contraction in the fourth quarter. Poland’s economy shrank 2.4% from the previous three months — much worse than the 0.5% forecast in a Bloomberg survey — for its second non-consecutive decline last year. It ...
Read More »Nato struggles to meet spending goals as it weighs higher target
Bloomberg Nato countries may agree as soon as this summer to spend at least 2% of their economic output on defense, a slight shift from the alliance’s 10-year-old pledge to “move toward the 2% guideline.†North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and the alliance’s defense ministers were supposed to discuss the target when they meet in Brussels for ...
Read More »US, China diplomats weigh first meeting after balloon drama
Bloomberg Secretary of State Antony Blinken is considering a meeting with Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, at a security conference later this week, people familiar with the matter said, in what would be their first face-to-face talks since an uproar over a Chinese balloon led to a new spike in tensions. Blinken and Wang would meet at the Munich Security ...
Read More »Nikki Haley launches 2024 Republican presidential bid
Bloomberg Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina Governor and Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, announced Tuesday that she’s running for president, casting herself as the Republican leader best positioned to usher in a fresh chapter for the GOP. “It’s time for a new generation of leadership – to rediscover fiscal responsibility, secure our border, and strengthen our ...
Read More »Ukraine defense chief shakes up ministry amid corruption probes
Bloomberg President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s embattled defense chief appointed three deputies as part of a shakeup aimed at quelling accusations over corruption in the top echelons of the government. Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, who earlier this month confronted speculation that he would be removed from his post, is taking to damage control after officials under him were swept up in a ...
Read More »Philippines protests China ‘laser use’
Bloomberg The Philippines has protested China’s move to aim a military-grade laser at a Philippine ship in the South China Sea which the US said was “provocative and unsafe†and threatens peace and stability in the region. The diplomatic protest, filed with the Chinese Embassy in Manila on Tuesday, “condemned the shadowing, harassment, dangerous maneuvers, directing of military-grade laser, ...
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