EasyJet said it has hired rival Ryanair’s operations chief as it reported a rise in revenue despite intense competition in the European short-haul market.

Stonegate Pub Company, the owner of Slug & Lettuce, has agreed to buy pub group Ei in an all-cash offer that values Ei at £3bn including net debt.

Online fashion retailer Asos has warned that its annual profits will be as much as 46 per cent lower than expected after the botched rollout of new warehouses limited the stock available to shoppers, sending shares down by nearly a quarter.

Earnings at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, fell again in the second quarter, but the pace of the drop eased after a strong pick up in sales in June. 

Second-quarter profits at SAP missed expectations after Europe’s largest software maker — and Germany’s most valuable company — was hit by the simmering trade war between China and the US, which has dented software sales in Asia. 

The Australian dollar climbed on Thursday after the country’s unemployment rate held steady in June and the economy added full-time jobs.

The Bank of Korea has unexpectedly cut interest rates for the first time in three years amid growing concerns about the country’s economic outlook as Japan’s export controls on high-tech materials to South Korea and China’s slowing economy pile pressure on Asia’s fourth-largest economy.

Japanese exports continued to slump in June against a backdrop of slowing global growth and persistent trade tensions, while a larger than forecast fall in imports took the country’s trade balance back into surplus.

IBM’s revenues have fallen for a fourth straight quarter, pointing to continued pressure on its older products and services despite years of trying to reposition itself in growth markets like cloud computing, artificial intelligence and blockchain.

Ebay raised its full-year profit guidance as the ecommerce company reported better than expected second-quarter earnings, sending its shares higher in late trading on Wednesday.

Wall Street finished in the red on Wednesday following more subdued trading in global stock markets as investors digested a fresh batch of earnings and Donald Trump damped hopes of a swift resolution to trade talks with China.

The Pensions Regulator is investigating concerns that some employers are changing their business names to avoid their obligations to staff.

Investors in currency markets are growing increasingly fearful of a chaotic Brexit, piling into contracts which pay out if sterling fluctuates wildly in the run-up to the Halloween deadline.

A US federal judge on Wednesday sentenced Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera to life in prison.

BHP plans to produce less thermal coal from its assets in Australia over the next 12 months as it looks to pivot away from China and focus on more profitable markets in Japan and Taiwan.

Federal prosecutors have ended an investigation into hush money paid to two women who claimed affairs with Donald Trump, a judge in Manhattan said on Wednesday.

South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma was on the brink of a walkout from a judicial inquiry into claims of corruption against him, after his lawyers protested the questions he was facing on Wednesday.

The Canadian dollar edged lower after data on Wednesday showed inflation cooled in June from a seven-month high as a drop in oil prices and rising fuel inventories pushed energy prices lower.

The weakest set of building permits since 2017 underscored an overall weak pack of data for the US housing market in June, doing little to allay broader concerns about the health of the domestic economy.

The brother of the Manchester Arena bomber has been extradited to Britain from Libya, UK police have announced.

The price of iron ore remained above $120 a tonne on Wednesday after BHP Group, one of the world’s biggest suppliers of the steelmaking ingredient, revealed annual exports had declined for the first time this century.

Bank of New York Mellon continued to battle a “difficult operating environment” in its second quarter, characterised by a negative yield curve, low levels of market volatility and a stronger dollar.

Bank of America’s second quarter report suffered from the same malaise as the updates from its big peers: falling interest rates pinching lending revenue, forcing revisions to the growth outlook for the rest of the year.

Elliott, the activist hedge fund manager, has taken a 5 per cent stake in Saga, in a move that could lead to a shake-up of the specialist insurance and travel group.