Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of the world economy, the financial markets, the eurozone and business.

Two heavyweight companies, HSBC and BP, have beaten profit forecasts this morning as the global economic outlook brightens.

Banking giant HSBC posted a 79% rise in pre-tax profit of $5.78bn (£4.1bn) for the first quarter of 2021, up from $3.21bn a year ago and well ahead of forecasts.

All regions were profitable in the quarter, notably HSBC UK Bank, which reported pre-tax profits of over $1.0bn in the quarter.

HSBC says that while it faces “interest rate headwinds” (ie, borrowing costs at record lows), expected credit losses and other credit impairment charges (‘ECL’) fell.

CEO Noel Quinn says the economic outlook has ‘improved’, more than a year after the pandemic began.

In a high-security, 1,000-capacity courtroom converted from a call centre, Italy’s largest mafia trial in three decades is under way in Lamezia Terme, Calabria. About 900 witnesses are set to testify against more than 350 defendants, including politicians and officials charged with being members of the ’Ndrangheta, Italy’s most powerful criminal group.

Several of the defendants will be asked to respond to charges of money laundering over establishing companies in the UK with the alleged purpose of simulating legitimate economic activity.

“’Ndrangheta interests in the UK have figured prominently as clans have used the country as an investment and money-laundering base,” says Nicola Gratteri, the prosecutor whose investigation has culminated in the maxi-trial.

Wealthy holidaymakers buying premium seats will cushion airlines from the decline in business flying, according to the boss of British Airways.

The company’s chief executive, Sean Doyle, said that contrary to research suggesting the airline industry will lose much of its most lucrative clientele, he believed corporate travel would return after the coronavirus pandemic, “but exactly what shape that takes we’re not sure”.

He said he was confident the flag carrier’s £6.5bn investment in refurbishing its business-class cabins, seats and lounges since 2018 had been worth it.

“The reason we’re very compelled by the investments is we have a significant premium leisure segment,” he told an industry webinar. “A lot of people who travel in our premium cabins are travelling for leisure, or visiting friends or relatives.

“That’s been growing over the last decade and we think that will continue to grow - and that gives us a very effective buffer if the...

The trial of two former executives at Serco has collapsed after the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) failed to disclose evidence to the defendants, in a major blow to the UK’s anti-corruption agency.

A judge at Southwark crown court on Monday instructed jurors to return a verdict of not guilty for Nicholas Woods and Simon Marshall, two former directors of the Serco subsidiary Serco Geografix Ltd, after the SFO offered no evidence following its identification of its error.

The executives had been charged with using fraud and false accounting to artificially reduce Serco’s profit margins on a contract for the electronic monitoring of offenders on behalf of the Ministry of Justice.

The SFO found a mistake this month which meant that material had not been disclosed to the defence. The SFO had sought an adjournment to seek a retrial, but the judge refused the application.

In a statement, the SFO said: “We are considering how best to undertake an assessment...

The chief executive of the pharmaceutical giant Emergent BioSolutions sold $10m in company stock weeks before the publication of the company’s financial results and a production error that ruined 15m Covid-19 vaccines sent its share price tumbling.

AstraZeneca said it would “strongly defend itself in court” and highlighted its supply of 50m Covid vaccine doses to European countries as Brussels launched legal action against the pharmaceutical company over delivery shortfalls.

The Anglo-Swedish firm said it regretted the decision by the European commission to start a legal case over alleged breaches of an advance purchase agreement.

AstraZeneca was able to deliver only about a quarter of the expected 120m doses in the first quarter of this year because of production problems at a plant in Belgium, leading to angry accusations from Brussels.

Officials in the EU’s executive branch were particularly enraged by the refusal of the company to divert doses made in two plants in the UK. AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, had claimed he was contractually obliged to provide doses made in Oxford and Staffordshire to UK residents in the first instance.

Announcing on Monday its decision to take...

Don’t look weird and make the name easy to write. In planning to call itself Abrdn, Standard Life Aberdeen has broken two golden rules of corporate rebranding. The new name is an awkward blur that is guaranteed to enrage customers’ spell-checking functions.

Stphn Brd, as the asset manager’s chief executive presumably now styles himself, called it “modern, agile and digitally enabled”, but he sounded like a man trying to justify a large bill from the designers to himself. Modern financial firms call themselves things such as Monzo or Revolut, which have a zing about them. In this case, the company had to include a guide to pronunciation. The answer turns out to be Aberdeen, so why bother rinsing out three-quarters of the vowels?

Standard Life Aberdeen has announced it is changing its name to Abrdn, in an attempt to give the venerable UK asset manager a 21st-century makeover.

The Edinburgh-based company, which dates back to 1825, said that the change reflected a “modern, agile, digitally-enabled brand”. The name, however, which is pronounced “Aberdeen”, has not been well received.

Critics say the dropping of vowels, a trendy strategy employed by TikTok stars and YouTubers such as the Strictly Come Dancing star Hrvy, makes for spelling and pronunciation issues.

The new identity, developed by the branding agency Wolff Olins, will be rolled out this summer “alongside implementation of a full stakeholder engagement plan to manage the transition”. The company would not reveal the cost of rolling out Abrdn, which will replace five brands the company had been using across its business.

“While the Abrdn brand might be specifically designed for the digital world, it looks far from...

The first sign that things were finally creeping back to normal in my shop was when a customer bounded in and said: “You were the last non-essential shop I went to before lockdown, and I wanted to make you the first I visited when it was over.” It was a happy, hopeful moment.

Last November I wrote about keeping an independent bookshop afloat throughout the pandemic: I’m based in Levenshulme, south Manchester – at the time it was a Covid hotspot and we were facing the prospect of another long mandatory period of closure.

I was fully aware of the very real chance that our shop, along with many other independent businesses that rely on footfall and people actually being allowed in through the door, may not survive. But for the most part I still felt, somehow, upbeat. It seemed to me then that there was a clear public groundswell towards supporting independent shops and local high streets. Most people seemed to agree, although I was also accused by some of being...

People across England are rushing to make the most of coronavirus restrictions easing this week, with newly published official figures showing a surge in restaurant reservations and road traffic.

As pubs, cafes and restaurants in England reopened for outdoor dining and drinking on Monday, many people had booked in advance, so as not miss out on the chance to see friends and family over a meal again – despite the cold temperatures and snowy weather in parts of the country.

Reservations for a meal out on Monday jumped to 79% of the level recorded on the equivalent Monday in 2019, a year before the coronavirus pandemic struck, the Office for National Statistics said, using figures from OpenTable.

This is the first time seated diner reservations have exceeded 2% of 2019’s level since the latest lockdown was announced in January. In London and Manchester, bookings jumped to 47% and 153% of 2019 levels, respectively.

A former Conservative cabinet minister who vets ministers and mandarins’ new jobs has called for urgent reform over “anomalies” that allowed conflicts of interest in Westminster and Whitehall.

Lord Pickles, the chair of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), told a committee of MPs he was “very worried” after Bill Crothers, a senior civil servant, was allowed to work part-time, then full-time, for the collapsed finance house Greensill Capital without being vetted.

“It also highlights a number of anomalies within the system that require, I think, immediate address,” he said.

Pickles was speaking days after his committee released an exchange of letters with Crothers that exposed the Cabinet Office’s unusual arrangement. It allowed Crothers to work for Greensill, which has now collapsed leaving thousands of jobs in the balance, while in charge of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ expenditure.

At a meeting of the public administration...

Drivers at one of the UK’s largest delivery firms say they are having to work for free for several hours a day, according to their representatives, despite the company expanding its workforce by thousands during the pandemic.

Union officials said they had challenged Hermes UK following multiple complaints from couriers in several areas of the country who say they feel compelled to “muck in” with the parcel sorting process in understaffed depots because they cannot start earning any money until it is done. While some are paid for this work, many are not, the GMB union said.

“We are challenging it because it is wrong. People should not be working for free and people should not be exploited into working for free,” said the union’s national officer Mick Rix.

Several drivers came forward to describe the “impossible choice” they regularly face. Speaking under condition of anonymity, they explained that as they get paid per delivery, they are entirely...

David Cameron and Rishi Sunak will be among senior politicians called to give evidence at a growing number of inquiries into the Greensill lobbying scandal, after two committees of MPs said they would begin their own investigations.

In a sign that ministers are struggling to contain the most serious crisis over political ethics for years, the Treasury select committee and the public administration and constitutional affairs committee said they would launch inquiries, alongside an independent inquiry ordered by No 10.

A spokesperson for Cameron has said he would respond “positively” to any request to give evidence to any of the inquiries, once they have established their terms of reference.

Eric Pickles, the former Conservative minister who now chairs the watchdog that examines the appointments of ex-ministers and civil servants, is due to give evidence to MPs on Thursday.

Pickles is understood to be furious at the growing scope of the scandal, and...

Deliveroo’s platform handled transactions worth £1.65bn during the period, a year-on-year increase of 130%.

Deliveroo’s strong growth came with customers in some of its main markets locked down for most of the period. However, Deliveroo acknowledged that growth is likely to decelerate after the reopening on Monday of restaurants and bars that can serve customers outdoors, meaning spending is likely to shift away from the stay-at-home economy.

Uncertainty over how Deliveroo will fare in the coming months was cited by investors among concerns that the company’s IPO at the end of March was overpriced. Deliveroo faces intense competition from the likes of Just Eat Takeaway and Uber Eats.

Multiple large investors, led by Aviva Investors, said Deliveroo’s treatment of workers was another important reason they would not participate in the float.

Deliveroo insists that its 100,000 workers are independent contractors, a status that means it does need to match...

Lucrative pay and share options have created an incentive for oil company executives to resist climate action, according to a study that casts doubt on recent net-zero commitments by BP and Shell.

Compensation packages for CEOs, often in excess of $10m (£7.2m), are linked to continued extraction of fossil fuels, exploration of new fields and the promotion of strong market demand through advertising, lobbying and government subsidies, the report says.

The setup with executives runs counter to efforts around the world to keep global heating to 1.5-2C (2.7-3.6F) above pre-industrial levels.

Boardroom rewards also underpin a skewed corporate logic that is slowing the world’s path to decarbonisation, according to the study, which was exclusively shared with the Guardian before publication in the Energy Research and Social Science journal.

Richard Heede, of the Climate Accountability Institute in the US, a co-author of the paper, said the discovery...

The Conservative peer conducting changes in Whitehall for Boris Johnson has defended his relationship with Bill Crothers, the former senior civil servant who has been drawn into the Greensill lobbying row.

Francis Maude is undertaking a review of the Cabinet Office for the prime minister.

During David Cameron’s first term, he was minister for the same department – and was instrumental in hiring Crothers for a senior role in the civil service to help curb government spending.

Asda is to stop baking bread, croissants and buns in-store at its 341 supermarkets, putting 1,200 jobs at risk.

In future, Asda’s baked products, such as bread and pastries, will be made in a central bakery and then warmed in stores. It said the changes would provide a broader range of products baked fresh several times a day, compared to just once a day at present.

Asda said the proposal followed “a notable shift in customer buying behaviours” in recent years, with demand for speciality breads, wraps, bagels and pancakes outstripping traditional loaves.

The latest job cuts come less than two months after Asda said 5,000 jobs were at risk from the closures of two warehouses and elimination of thousands of back-office jobs.

The Leeds-based retailer said the changes were not related to the £6.8bn sale of the company to the petrol forecourt billionaires Mohsin and Zuber Issa and private equity group TDR Capital. That deal is yet to be cleared by the...

The soaring value of cryptocurrencies added another name to the list of the world’s wealthiest billionaires on Wednesday with the introduction of Coinbase, the US’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, on to the Nasdaq stock exchange.

Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s CEO and co-founder, has a 20% stake in the company which analysts expect to be valued at between $65bn and $100bn when it starts trading, making his net worth up to $20bn.

There is nothing new about lobbying. The term is supposed to date back to the 19th century, when the US president Ulysses Grant was waylaid in the lobby of the Willard hotel, just down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, by people petitioning him for jobs.

Nor is there anything illegal, or even wrong, about it. MPs are constantly bombarded by lobbyists urging them to support everything from changes to building regulations to the size of the aid budget.

It is also naive to imagine a world where former politicians are not tempted to try pulling the odd string or two for corporate interests. David Cameron was useful to Lex Greensill precisely because, as the former prime minister, he could expect current members of the government to respond to his calls.

The British Heart Foundation and Salvation Army rang up their busiest day of sales ever on Monday as their charity shops opened for the first time in nearly four months after the coronavirus lockdown.

The BHF recorded more than £1m in sales, with furniture proving particularly popular, as customers refreshed their homes in advance of being able to welcome visitors again later this year. The Salvation Army said its sales had been double that of a usual Monday and donations had also been high.

The Charity Retail Association, which represents about 400 charities running thousands of shops, said most outlets in England and Wales had been able to reopen despite a slight drop-off in volunteers.

Robin Osterley, the CRA’s chief executive, said charity shops had been benefiting from greater interest in recycling and reusing items, as well as efforts to find bargains while financial times were tough.

“The environment is definitely driving growth, and...

Amazon, BlackRock, Google, Starbucks, billionaire investor Warren Buffett and hundreds of other companies published a letter on Wednesday condemning “discriminatory legislation” designed to hinder voting rights in the US.

The letter – the biggest statement yet from corporate America – follows weeks of heated debate over corporate opposition to a series of Republican-sponsored bills that critics charge will restrict voting rights in states across the US.

Bernie Madoff, the financier who pleaded guilty to orchestrating the largest Ponzi scheme in history, has died in a federal prison, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press on Wednesday.

Madoff died at the Federal medical center in Butner, North Carolina, apparently from natural causes, the person said.

The person was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity.

Last year, Madoff’s lawyers filed court papers to try to get the 82-year-old released from prison in the Covid-19 pandemic, saying he had suffered from end-stage renal disease and other chronic medical conditions.

The request was denied.

Madoff admitted swindling thousands of clients out of billions of dollars in investments over decades.

A court-appointed trustee has recovered more than $13bn of an estimated $17.5bn that investors put into Madoff’s business. At the time of his arrest, fake account statements were...

Pubs and restaurants in England that opened on Monday sold twice as many drinks as they did before the coronavirus pandemic struck, according to figures charting Britain’s rush for the first socially distanced pints of spring.

While the majority of venues remain closed due to a ban on indoor service, those that did welcome guests appear to have prospered from pent-up thirst.

One pub boss spoke of “Christmas trading” as venues with beer gardens and outdoor terraces enjoyed higher-than-average sales for a Monday in April, despite snowy weather across parts of the country.