Business blog

Senate Democrats will meet on Tuesday for tense talks to try to chart a path forward for Joe Biden’s $1.75tn Build Back Better package, after fellow Democrat Joe Manchin all but torpedoed the president’s economic agenda.

Many lawmakers have already returned to their home states for the Christmas period. But Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, said Democrats in the upper chamber of Congress would hold a “virtual special caucus” call on Tuesday evening — which the Senate majority leader noted would be the “longest night of the year”.

In a letter to colleagues on Monday, Schumer placed the blame

The Turkish lira continued its freefall after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejected warnings from business about the dangers of recent interest rate cuts and vowed there was “no going back” from his approach.

The currency, which has lost 50 per cent of its value against the dollar since Erdogan ordered the central bank to start lowering borrowing costs in September, fell to a new record low of 17.5 against the dollar after markets opened on Monday. The lira’s more than 6 per cent fall was much worse than the 0.2 per cent dip for MSCI’s broad emerging market currencies index.

Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen scored a political victory over the weekend as four referendums backed by the opposition against key policies of her government including allowing US pork imports failed to pass.

The result averts the risk of undermining Tsai’s push for Taiwan’s inclusion in a regional trade pact, closer trade relations with Washington and efforts to switch more power generation from coal to natural gas.

Taipei is pushing for talks with the US on a potential bilateral trade deal, and recently applied to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Both steps are crucial for Taiwan

Palantir, a data analytics firm best known for its ties to the defence and national security communities, plans to shift its entire UK data processing operation from the US, ahead of what experts are calling a global “regulatory tsunami” affecting cross-border data flows.

By the end of 2022, Palantir will offer UK clients, including NHS England, the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Defence, the option to move all data processing within the UK, a change that it claimed will better protect them from security concerns such as hacks and data leaks. It will offer the same option in the

Lord Rothermere has succeeded in his attempt to delist the publisher of the Daily Mail from the stock market after the great grandson of the newspaper’s founder won enough shareholder support for his takeover bid despite opposition from some prominent investors.

Daily Mail and General Trust said that as of 5pm on Wednesday, 63 per cent of shareholder votes were in support of an offer made via a family investment vehicle of Jonathan Harmsworth, Viscount Rothermere.

About half of the votes came from the family. Harmsworth needed to pass a threshold of 50 per cent by 1pm on Thursday to