The union representing BA cabin crew plans to announce strike dates later this morning, the BBC...

US President Barack Obama has urged China to change its currency strategy to help re-balance the global...

The head of the Financial Services Authority will announce plans to toughen up consumer protection from financial...

A report into the collapse of Lehman Brothers criticises senior executives and auditor Ernst & Young for serious...

New York and London have been ranked as the joint-top global financial centres according to new...

The amount of money paid as public sector pensions could more than triple in the next 50 years, says the National Audit...

• Former chief Dick Fuld and accountants Ernst & Young criticised in 2,200-page report• Claims that buyer Barclays received assets it was not entitled to• Fuld tried to involve Gordon Brown to fast-track Barclays rescueA court-appointed US bankruptcy examiner has concluded that there are grounds for legal claims against top Lehman Brothers bosses and auditor Ernst & Young for signing off misleading accounting statements in the run-up to the collapse of the Wall Street bank in 2008 which sparked the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.A judge last night unsealed a 2,200-page forensic report by expert Anton Valukis into Lehman's collapse which includes scathing criticism of accounting "gimmicks" used by the failing bank to buy itself time. These included a contentious...

Government could have windfall of £5bn to spend if unemployment benefit costs less than forecast and tax on bankers raises moreThe government will not be raising new taxes, including VAT, in the last budget before the general election, the chief secretary to the Treasury, Liam Byrne, said today.Byrne also shed light on internal discussions over how the chancellor, Alistair Darling, plans to spend an expected windfall, if payment of unemployment benefits is lower than expected and receipts from the one-off tax on bankers come in higher – the "automatic stabilisers".Last autumn's pre-budget report had predicted borrowing for this year would be £178bn but the British Chambers of Commerce is now forecasting it may be £163bn.Speaking on BBC2's Daily Politics, Byrne said: "I can tell you...

Obama's congressmen will sabotage the health bill to keep their seats. It is stomach-churningIn our House of Representatives – "the people's body" – the Democrats at this moment enjoy a gaudy 75-seat majority. Wait. Did I just put "Democrats" and "enjoy" in the same sentence? Scratch that. The Democrats suffer the affliction of a 75-seat majority. That's a joke, except not really. What is going on right now in the lower house vis a vis healthcare reform is a stomach-turning sight to behold – a saga of preening, duplicity, pomposity, self-interest and, most of all, cowardice that is worthy of Holinshed. The players in this drama are participating in the destruction of their own party. They know this. And they persist.What's happening right now, of course, is that Nancy Pelosi,...

The number of homes sold in England and Wales at the start of 2010 was at a low level, a survey...

Saved permits can be used to meet future targets to cut emissions without reducing pollutionCompanies across Europe are hoarding permits to produce greenhouse gas emissions worth hundreds of millions of pounds, the Guardian can reveal.The surplus credits have been amassed from over-allocation of permits to pollute from the European emissions trading scheme, and by buying cheap credits from carbon-cutting projects in developing countries and holding on to their more expensive official EU allowances.The saved permits can be used to meet future targets to cut the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming and climate change without actually reducing pollution, or sold for a profit in the future.Campaigners for tougher emissions reductions said the saved-up allowances discredited the...

With two weeks until Dalton Philips takes the reins, the supermarket chain reports profits of £767mThe board of the supermarket chain Morrisons signalled its confidence in the operating performance of the business as it set new growth targets ahead of the arrival of its new chief executive, Dalton Philips, in a fortnight's time.Reporting annual profits up by a fifth to £767m, the finance director, Richard Pennycook, said Morrisons planned to open 140,000 sq metres of store space over the next three years – the equivalent of some 60 supermarkets. Pennycook said the supermarket chain was still "national" rather than "nationwide" and that 7.5m UK households were not in striking distance of its stores. The retailer has 425 stores, but sees scope for up to 600.After three years at the...

Sainsbury's and Tesco among stores caught out by wholesaler who passed off battery produce as organicFor those who made the conscious decision to spend more on free range or organic eggs, it was worth paying a premium to know the hens that laid them had been kept in ethical conditions.But those people who ended up paying over the odds for Keith Owen's eggs may feel a little less warm inside after it emerged the 44-year-old egg wholesaler had scammed all the major supermarkets and numerous small shops by passing off about 100m battery farmed eggs as free range or organic.Owen, a married father-of-two from Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, was jailed for three years today and forced to surrender the £3m profit he had made by "dishonestly and systematically" mis-describing eggs over a two-year...

Authorities seize data on 15,000 private clients, but bank insists it will not be seen by tax investigatorsHSBC was being investigated by Swiss banking regulators last night after issuing a grovelling apology to 24,000 customers of its elite private bank who, it said, had their details stolen by a former employee.The Financial Services Authority was being kept informed of developments surrounding the theft of the data, which HSBC had originally insisted "affected less than 10 clients" of the Swiss private bank.The information was allegedly stolen by Hervé Falciani, a former IT consultant at the bank. The admission by Britain's biggest bank of the scale of the theft comes at a difficult time for the notoriously secretive Swiss banking industry, which has taken a number of blows to its...

• Firm buys 10 exploration blocks from Devon Energy• Oil fields give BP up to an extra 40,000 barrels a dayBP has bought into the Brazilian oil rush with a $7bn (£4.65bn) deal that will boost the group's potential reserves by about 2bn barrels of oil.The deal, with Devon Energy of the US, will also create a joint venture to develop BP's controversial oil sands in Canada.A number of recent huge finds in water up to two miles deep and below a thick layer of salt on the seabed off the coast of Brazil has made the country the focus for international oil companies looking for new sources of oil and gas.By 2020, Brazil hopes to produce almost 6m barrels of oil a day – triple the country's current output.BP is one of the few major oil companies not to have any assets in Brazil. The deal...

• Pompey owe £15m to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs• 'The Revenue has accepted the administration is valid'Portsmouth's hopes of survival were today given a major boost when Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs accepted the club's move into administration.Pompey escaped being wound up after HMRC, which is owed around £15m by the club, abandoned its claim that the the club's owner, Balram Chainrai, did not have the legal right to put the club into administration.A spokesman for the club said: "The Revenue has accepted the administration is valid."The club yesterday made more than a quarter of their staff redundant. Eighty-five of 320 employees will lose their jobs but the administrator, Andrew Andronikou, said the chief executive, Peter Storrie, would remain on a salary of "under...

The validity of Portsmouth's administration will not be challenged by HM Revenue & Customs, the BBC...

About 24,000 clients of HSBC's private banking operation in Switzerland had personal details stolen, the bank...

The Chancellor Alistair Darling has warned not to expect a "giveaway" when the government's Budget is announced later this...

So far, low interest rates have shielded the heavily mortgaged homeowner from trouble. But a shaky recovery puts that in doubtWhen the nation's top financial watchdog tells banks to brace themselves for a worst case scenario of 4 million unemployed and a fresh collapse in the housing market, it is worth paying attention. The Financial Services Authority might have been asleep at the wheel before the great crash, but it has been uncanny in spotting potential potholes ever since.The doomsday scenario spelled out on Wednesday in the FSA's annual "stress test" is mainly intended to scare banks into making sure they have enough money put aside to cover future losses. The great miracle of last year's rescue measures is that both jobs and house prices have so far held up remarkably well. But the...

Staff bonus amounts to 15% of basic salary and is higher than last yearThe John Lewis Partnership has handed a bigger-than-expected annual bonus of £151m to its staff after enjoying a near-10% rise in profits.The group, which operates 224 Waitrose supermarkets as well as 29 department stores, announced annual profits of £306.6m this morning, excluding bonuses and tax.The John Lewis group is a partnership owned by its 70,000 permanent staff, and all of them – from the chairman Charlie Mayfield and the managing director Andy Street down to shop assistants and shelf-stackers – get the same percentage payout. Analysts had expected a bonus pot of £140m.The staff bonus amounts to 15% of basic salary this year, equal to nearly eight weeks' pay. Last year workers received 13%, while in...

Thousands gather in Athens to protest against the government's planned cuts imposed to alleviate the country's debt crisis...

• Supermarket customers duped in two-year, £3m scam • Lawyer claims client is far from industry's only bad eggA Midlands businessman was jailed for three years today after admitting making a fortune by fraudulently passing off battery farm eggs as free range or organic.Around 100m mislabelled eggs sold by Keith Owen ended up on the shelves of supermarkets including Sainsbury's and Tesco. That the fraud was able to carry on for two years while he made a £3m profit raises questions for the food industry about the provenance of goods.Owen, 44, from Bromsgrove, in Worcestershire, ran Heart of England Eggs Unlimited, which supplied eggs to major packing companies that in turn supplied them to supermarkets and smaller retailers.He pleaded guilty at Worcester crown court to three charges...

Conservatives try to outdo Labour by promising broadband speeds of up to 100Mbps in technology manifestoThe Conservatives have launched a technology manifesto that aims to increase broadband speeds and improve access to government data as the government's digital economy bill moves quickly through parliament.The manifesto pulls together a number of technology proposals that the Conservatives have floated in the runup to the general election, including promising superfast broadband connections of 100Mbps to most Britons and opening up data on contracts and public sector salaries.The Tories are looking to outdo Labour by promising improved broadband speeds. Labour set a target of universal access of 2Mbps by 2012. The Tories promise 50 times that but to most citizens, not to everyone.Rather...

Network Rail maintenance workers vote in favour of strikes, bringing about the possibility of action over...

The Red Knights group eyeing a possible bid for Manchester United says investment bank Nomura will advise...

Department store group John Lewis reports a 9.6% rise in annual pre-tax profits to...

Oil giant BP announces a $7bn (£4.7bn) deal that will allow it to begin exploring for oil off the coast of...

Japan's economy grew less that first estimated in the final quarter of 2009, revised figures...

Chinese inflation hit a 16-month high in February, leading to calls for the government to take measures to cool the...