Boris Johnson has refused to rule out the possibility that more government officials may have had links to Greensill Capital, as Keir Starmer used prime minister’s questions to call for a full inquiry into what he called “the sleaze that’s now at the heart of this Conservative government”.

Ahead of a Labour opposition day debate calling for a wider review of lobbying and cronyism following revelations that David Cameron texted and called ministers to seek emergency government help for the now-collapsed finance company, Johnson said he could not remember when he last spoke to “Dave”.

Devoting all his PMQs questions to the issue, Starmer asked the prime minister about any further links after it emerged that the government’s chief commercial officer, Bill Crothers, worked as an adviser to Greensill in 2015 while still a civil servant.

“Is the prime minister aware of any other government official who had commercial links with Greensill, or any other...

Foxtons is facing a shareholder backlash over a decision to award a near-£1m bonus to its chief executive while refusing to pay back millions of pounds in taxpayer-funded government support to weather the Covid-19 pandemic.

The London estate agent, which has received almost £7m in government furlough money for staff and business rates relief, has also continued to spend freely to build its business.

On Wednesday the company revealed that it had made a £3m investment in Boomin, the property site set up by the co-founder of Purplebricks Michael Bruce, weeks after spending £14m to buy the rival London agency Douglas & Gordon. In November, Foxtons paid £2.2m for Aston Rowe.

Foxtons has said that Nicholas Budden, the chief executive, is to receive an annual bonus of £389,300 in 2020 to “reward hard work” in a year the business did “well in very tough circumstances”. In addition, Budden has also been awarded shares worth £569,000 under a long-term...

Boris Johnson’s government is “too cosy” with vested interests in business to take strong action on the climate crisis, the author of a new report on “the polluting elite” has warned.

Peter Newell, professor of international relations at the University of Sussex, said: “We are never going to have change while these actors are so close to government. The government is not willing to take on these interests as it has close ties to big industries, including fossil fuels. There is a definite reluctance to take them on.”

EasyJet has said it is ready to “ramp up” its operations during the summer holiday season as it prepares to offer more flights to passengers from late May, once Covid travel restrictions are eased.

The budget airline only expects to fly 20% of its 2019 capacity between April and June, with most European countries planning to resume flying at scale next month.

The UK’s competition watchdog has provisionally cleared the £31bn merger of Virgin Media and O2, paving the way for the creation of a “national champion” to challenge BT.

Last May, Liberty Global, which owns the UK’s largest cable company, Virgin, and Telefónica, which owns O2, announced a deal to merge their UK operations in a 50-50 joint venture.

The deal will create a new telecoms heavyweight and a stronger competitor to BT. Virgin Media has 5.3 million broadband, pay-TV and mobile users, while O2 has 34 million mobile customers.

In December the Competition and Markets Authority launched an in-depth investigation into the deal over fears it could lead to a lessening of competition in the UK telecoms market that could result in higher price rises or a drop in service quality.

“Given the impact this deal could have in the UK, we needed to scrutinise this merger closely,” said Martin Coleman, the chair of the CMA’s inquiry panel into the deal. “A...

Tesco’s profits fell by almost 20% to £825m during the past year, despite growing sales and winning customers from its rivals, because of the increasing cost of operating during the coronavirus pandemic.

The retailer’s group sales rose by 8.8% to £53.4bn during the 52 weeks to 27 February, surpassing analysts’ expectations, while its UK sales increased by 7%.

The supermarket’s online sales soared by 77% during the year to £6.3bn, as it doubled its capacity for online deliveries to 1.5m slots per week.

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

Global stock markets have climbed to a new record as government bond yields eased, despite a rise in US inflation. Consumer prices rose by 0.6% in March from the month before, pushing the annual rate of inflation up to 2.6% from 1.7%.

But markets took the data, released yesterday, in their stride. Analysts reckon that they are unlikely to change the US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell’s view that higher inflation in coming months, as the economy reopens, will prove transitory. We will hear from Powell later today.

US Treasury bond yields continued to fall, to a fresh three-week low. They have eased to 1.6217% since hitting a 14-month high off 1.776% on 30 March.

The MSCI gauge of equities in 50 countries advanced 0.34% to hit a fresh peak. In Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.4% and the Australian stock market advanced...

Hundreds of British Gas engineers will lose their jobs by midday on Wednesday after refusing to sign up to tougher employment terms imposed by the company’s controversial “fire and rehire” scheme.

On 1 April Britain’s biggest energy supplier handed dismissal notices to close to 1,000 of its engineers, who install and repair boilers and heating systems for the company’snine million service customers.

The engineers were granted a grace period of two weeks in which to change their minds and sign up to contracts that call for longer hours together with shifts over weekends and bank holidays – or lose their jobs.

In the last two weeks hundreds of engineers are understood to have signed up to the contracts, leaving 500 having refused to sign by the end of Tuesday. The company expects a final wave of 11th-hour contract signings on Wednesday morning, to leave between 300 and 400 engineers without a job.

The end of the grace period is expected to draw a...

W Galen Weston, the patriarch of one of Canada’s wealthiest families and a retail titan, has died aged 80.

Weston was the third generation of his family to lead George Weston Limited, an already-prosperous retail empire founded by his grandfather, which he expanded significantly.

The company, now run by his son, Galen Weston, controls Primark and Selfridges in the UK, as well as the Canadian grocery chain Loblaws, the pharmacy chain Shoppers Drug Mart and the real estate company Choice Properties. The empire also includes the luxury store Fortnum & Mason, along with food brands including Twinings teas, Kingsmill Bakery and Dorset Cereals.

The European commission is seeking “urgent clarification” from Johnson & Johnson after the company’s “completely unexpected” announcement that it has decided to delay the deployment of its coronavirus vaccine across Europe following concerns in the US about a small number of blood clots.

The drug company said in a statement on Tuesday it had been “reviewing these cases with European health authorities” and had “made the decision to proactively delay the rollout of our vaccine in Europe”.

A commission official told Reuters the company had confirmed at a meeting on Friday it would aim to deliver 55m doses to the EU as contracted by the end of June. The official said the commission was “in contact with the company” to get clarification on the decision.

The EU’s drug regulator, the European Medicines Agency, approved the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine last month and the company has committed to delivering at least 200m doses to the bloc this...

South-east Asian “super app” Grab, which offers services from ride hailing and food delivery to online banking, is to float in the US in a record deal with a so-called Spac investment company that values the business at almost $40bn (£29bn).

Singapore-headquartered Grab, which intends to list on Nasdaq in the US, has struck a $39.5bn merger deal with US-based Altimeter Growth Corp. It is by far the biggest deal to date involving a special purpose acquisition company (Spac) – a so-called “blank cheque” shell company that raises money first and seeks businesses to buy later – which has become the latest trend in global finance over the last year.

As part of the deal the loss-making Grab, whose valuation has more than doubled over the past 18 months, will receive about $4.5bn in cash. This includes $4bn in a private investment in public equity arrangement, a funding mechanism typical of Spacs, in the largest ever share sale by a south-east Asian Asian company in...

JD Sports has restarted dividend payments to shareholders after profits were shored up by bumper lockdown demand for trainers and hoodies, but says it has no plans to return taxpayer cash.

On Tuesday the sportswear group reported annual sales and profits within touching distance of those banked in the year before the pandemic struck, as shoppers switched to its websites when high streets were closed.

Pretax profits before one-offs came in at £421m on sales that were up slightly at £6.2bn in the year to 30 January. However, despite the strong performance – which increased the group’s profits forecast for the coming year – Peter Cowgill, JD’s executive chairman, said the company would not be repaying government cash.

Without furlough support and other public sector initiatives it is “likely we would have had to make tens of thousands of our colleagues, particularly those who work in stores, redundant”, the company said. It did not disclose how much...

A former top civil servant who went on to serve as a director of scandal-hit Greensill Capital is facing questions over a string of meetings he held with the head of the Cabinet Office after leaving Whitehall, as a Guardian investigation shows he had a shareholding in Greensill potentially worth $8m before the lender collapsed.

Bill Crothers, who worked in Whitehall for eight years and founded the Crown Commercial Service, controlling more than £40bn of government purchases, is being accused of benefiting from a “culture of impunity” at the heart of government.

Greensill is at the centre of a high-profile lobbying scandal, after the former prime minister David Cameron, who was a special adviser to the Greensill board and partly paid in share options, was found to have sent texts and emails to ministers as he sought approval for policies that would benefit the lender. On Monday, an independent government investigation was launched into Cameron’s lobbying...

The British defence company Babcock International is to cut 1,000 jobs after revealing write-offs of £1.7bn and plans to sell off a raft of businesses.

The company, the Ministry of Defence’s second-largest contractor, said 850 jobs would go in the UK, with the remainder overseas. It employs about 30,000 staff worldwide.

The job cuts are expected to save £40m a year, and will result in a one-off cost of about £40m. They form part of a plan to turn around the business by simplifying its operations, alongside asset sales that are expected to raise at least £400m over the next year.

Babcock declined to state where the job cuts would fall, saying that they were subject to a consultation process. It is headquartered in London and has dockyards, offices, equipment testing centres and research and development sites across the UK.

After conducting a review of its contracts, Babcock said it realised that some were not as profitable as it had hoped, and...

The government’s monthly trade figures come with a health warning – and rightly so. A combination of Covid-19 and Brexit means it is impossible to draw any firm conclusions about the trend from a single month’s data.

Look at what has happened to the UK’s exports to the EU. These collapsed by a revised record 42% in January but according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics subsequently rose by more than 46% in February.

Some bounceback in February was always to be expected. Towards the end of 2020 there was a lot of stockpiling going on as firms anticipated disruption as a result of the new UK-EU trading arrangement. That was a wise precaution because it is clearly taking time for businesses – on both sides of the Channel – to adjust. That process was not helped by the lockdown measures imposed across the UK in response to a fresh wave of the pandemic.

As it happens, UK exports to the EU have recovered more quickly than imports...

The UK construction sector saw a rise in repair and maintenance (1.9%) and in new work (1.5%) in February.

That lifted overall output up by 1.6% -- but again, the sector is still smaller than before the pandemic, even though builders have kept operating through the current lockdown.

I have a problem with milk. Well, multiple problems. Let me elaborate. (Are you excited?) Cow’s milk is, of course, bad news for the planet: three times worse in greenhouse emission terms than any plant milk. I have known for ages, but pretended not to, because tea is horrible with oat milk.

I do, however, seek out the least bad dairy. I get my milk from cows fed on seaweed, which reduces bovine belching: research has recently found this can cut methane emissions by up to 82%. So, great? Well. First, it comes in a plastic bottle, not a glass one. Worse, as a household we finish our two pints of seaweed milk precisely six days after our weekly delivery. If I ordered another two-pint bottle, most of it would end up down the sink. I have tried holding out, but I feel bad imposing my eco-guilt on my younger son, who has the smallest carbon footprint of any of us, and just wants milk on his cereal, so I end up buying a pint of Bad Milk from the corner shop. The household vegan...

Since rare but severe clotting was seen in some people following vaccination with AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, researchers worldwide have been grappling to understand why the clotting syndrome, known as “thrombosis with thrombocytopenia” (clotting with a low platelet count), occurs.

Most cases of these clots occurred in veins in the brain (a condition called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, or CVST), though some occurred in other veins, including those to the abdomen (splanchnic vein thrombosis). It has a high death rate.

Evidence is growing that the vaccine is causing this rare clotting syndrome. So what happens in those affected and, more importantly, why?

Almost 200 Dutch tourists have traded lockdown in the Netherlands for eight days of voluntary confinement at a Greek beach resort as part of a test to see if safe holidays can be arranged during the Covid pandemic.

“I’m very excited,” said Amy Smulders, 25, a graphic designer who travelled with her sister, beaming beneath her face mask as she waited for her luggage in Rhodes on Monday. “It feels very strange to be here, but [I’m] really excited to go on holiday.“

For €399 (£345) each, participants get “all-inclusive” access to the pool, restaurants and other facilities of the Mitsis Grand Hotel Beach, but nothing else.

As well as regular Covid-19 tests and remaining 1.5 metres apart, they must settle for watching the Aegean Sea from their rooms or terraces, as no one is allowed to leave the resort, where they will be the only guests.

“I could never imagine that, but this is all we could get right now and we will enjoy it,” said Terry Oorschot, 49,...

The spectre of a post-pandemic burst of inflation has been raised by the former Bank of England governor Mervyn King, as he warned central banks and finance ministries were in effect becoming hooked on stimulus.

In a thinly veiled attack on the $1.9tn package of measures announced by Joe Biden, King said policymakers provided extra support in the bad times but were reluctant to withdraw it in the good times.

King, who left Threadneedle Street in 2013, said the case for record low interest rates and fresh government support was rapidly diminishing as Covid-19 lockdown measures were relaxed.

His comments on the risks of inflation are at odds with most members of the Bank’s nine-strong monetary policy committee, though in tune with the thoughts of its chief economist, Andy Haldane, who has also warned of cost-of-living pressures as pandemic measures are eased.

The International Monetary Fund last week revised up its forecast for US growth this year...

The Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have joined the $100bn club of super-rich people with 12-digit fortunes after a surge in the share price of the tech firm’s parent company, Alphabet.

Page and Brin, who co-founded Google in 1996, joined a group of six others with paper fortunes of more than $100bn (£73bn), according to the Bloomberg billionaires index.

The eight men on the list, most of whom also made their money from technology companies, hold fortunes of more than $1tn and have added $110bn combined to their personal wealth this year because of the surge in tech firm share prices during the coronavirus pandemic.

Page, 48, has seen his fortune increase by $21bn so far in 2021, to $103.6bn before the market opened on Monday, making him the sixth-richest person in the world.

The rise is mostly because of the increase in Alphabet shares, which have risen by 32% in 2021. The shares dipped slightly (1.3%) when US trading began on...

Liberty Steel has missed deadlines to file accounts for some of its biggest British businesses, in the latest sign of the struggles facing Sanjeev Gupta’s industrial empire.

Gupta is listed as director of 15 companies whose accounts are overdue at Companies House, including those that operate the Liberty Steel works in Rotherham and Stocksbridge in South Yorkshire.

Other facilities with overdue accounts include those in Newport and Tredegar in south Wales, Dalzell in Scotland and Coventry in the West Midlands, plus Gupta’s Scottish aluminium smelter.

Gupta is urgently seeking finance to shore up the loose collection of companies that are gathered together under the banner of GFG Alliance, including Liberty Steel, an aluminium company and an energy company. The alliance has about 35,000 employees worldwide, of whom 3,500 are in the UK.

Gupta funded takeovers of the various metals assets in the UK, Australia and elsewhere in part through loans...

Shares in Alibaba surged on Monday after the e-commerce company said that a record $2.8bn fine handed down by Chinese regulators marked the end of an investigation into anti-competitive practices at the company.

Top executives at the company, founded by the billionaire Jack Ma, told investors that while Chinese regulators continued a wider investigation into the sprawling conglomerates in the country’s tech industry, they believed the multibillion dollar fine announced at the weekend marked the end of the focus on Alibaba. The company is listed in Hong Kong and its shares climbed as much as 9% on the management’s comments.

“We are pleased we can put this matter behind us,” said Joe Tsai, the executive vice-chair of Alibaba Group. “With this penalty decision we’ve received good guidance on some of the specific issues under the anti-monopoly law. Other than the mergers review, we’re not aware of any other [antitrust] issues.”

China’s market regulators...