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Joe Biden’s choice to be treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, collected more than $7m in speaking fees over the past two years from top financial firms and tech giants including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Google, according to disclosure forms filed as part of her nomination. Yellen’s was among three financial disclosures turned in by Biden transition officials that were made public on Thursday by the Office of Government Ethics. In a separate filing, Yellen listed firms and banks where she had received speaking fees and said she intended to “seek written authorization” from ethics officials to “participate personally and substantially” in matters involving them. Yellen was the Federal Reserve chair from 2014 to 2018. Her term was not renewed by President Donald Trump. She took in the speaking fees in 2019 and 2020. Her selection by Biden to lead the Treasury Department has been cheered by progressive Democrats, who support Yellen’s work as a labour economist who has long prioritised com

New era has dawned in the United Kingdom, which has turned its back on a 48-year liaison with the European project for an uncertain post-Brexit future. The UK left the EU’s vast single market for people, goods and services at 23:00 GMT, midnight in Brussels, on Thursday, New Year’s Eve, as the Brexit transition period expired 11 months after the country formally left the bloc on January 31. New Year’s Day newspapers reflected the historic but still deeply divisive change, which will have repercussions for generations to come. The pro-Brexit Daily Express’s front-page photograph showed the White Cliffs of Dover an enduring symbol of Britishness with “Freedom” written on a Union flag. “Our Future. Our Britain. Our Destiny,” said the headline. The pro-EU Independent was less sure: “Off the hook or cut adrift?” it asked, reflecting widespread uncertainty at the path the country had now chosen. As 2021 began, attention turned to the UK borders, particularly the key Channel seaports, to see

Bitcoin it homing in on $29,000 as the world’s largest cryptocurrency pushes its mindnumbing rally in 2020 past 300%. The digital asset surged above $29,700 as of 3 p.m. Wednesday to a record. In December alone, Bitcoin has surged almost 50%, putting it on track for its biggest monthly gain since 2019. Bitcoin has now quadrupled in value this year amid the global coronavirus pandemic, while the wider Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index tracking the largest digital currencies is up about 270% as rival coins such as Ether have also rallied. The latest price surge continues to divide opinion between those who view cryptocurrencies as a hedge against dollar weakness and inflation risk, and others who question Bitcoin’s validity as an asset class given its speculative nature and boom and bust cycles. “While a growing institutional presence has been part of the narrative of the current bull run, we may see increased retail interest in Bitcoin as a form of digital gold,” Paolo Ardoino, chief techno

Boeing’s 737 MAX resumed passenger flights in the United States for the first time on Tuesday after a 20-month safety ban was lifted last month. American Airlines Flight 718 departed Miami around 10:4am bound for New York’s LaGuardia Airport and is scheduled to land around 13:08pm, according to several flight-tracing websites. American Airlines and planemaker Boeing have sought to reassure the public over the plane’s safety after it was cleared by US regulators in November to resume flights. Tuesday morning’s American Airlines flight has about 100 passengers aboard, according to an airline spokeswoman. The airline will give customers the chance to change flights if they don’t want to fly on the MAX. Last month, the Federal Aviation Administration approved changes that Boeing made to an automated flight-control system implicated in crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people in total. In both crashes, the system pushed the nose down repeatedly based on faulty sensor reading

I nvestors poured into U.K. markets on the first full day of trading since a Brexit deal ended years of uncertainty weighing over the nation’s economic future. The pound climbed, the FTSE 100 Index rose the most in nearly two months and long-dated sterling corporate bonds led peers on Tuesday. Investors are mostly casting aside concerns for now about the agreement, which won’t extend to the financial industry or the U.K.’s critical services sector. It was the first market open for U.K. stocks and bonds since Britain and the European Union finalized their future trade relationship on Thursday, avoiding the risk of a chaotic divorce this week. Confidence across markets was also spurred by an agreement on U.S. stimulus. “I would expect U.K. assets to outperform and the pound too, although the deficiencies of the deal are being highlighted by everyone,” said Mark Nash, head of fixed income alternatives at Jupiter Asset Management. A trade deal avoided a worst-case scenario for the U.K. eco

Deposit Money Banks borrowed N1.7tn from the Central Bank of Nigeria in the third quarter of 2020. The CBN disclosed this in its third quarter economic report. Part of the report read, “Deposit Money Banks and merchant banks continually accessed the standing facilities window to square up positions in 2020 Q3. “The trend at the CBN standing facilities window indicated more activities at the Standing Deposit Facility window, compared to the Standing Lending Facility window, owing to liquidity surfeit in the banking system. “Following the Monetary Policy Committee meeting of September 2020, applicable rates for the SLF and SDF changed from 14.5 per cent and 7.5 per cent to 12.5 per cent and 4.5 per cent respectively. “Total SLF granted during the review quarter was N1.7tn, made up of N866.93bn direct SLF and N833.53bn Intraday Lending Facilities converted to overnight repo. “Daily SLF ranged from N0.13bn to N384.41bn and averaged N58.64bn in 29 transaction days from July 1 to September 2

US Justice Department sued Walmart Inc on Tuesday, accusing the retailer of fuelling the opioid crisis in the country and ignoring warning signs from its pharmacists, according to a court filing. The retailer’s shares fell about 2 percent following the news. The lawsuit, filed in the US district court in Delaware, alleges Walmart failed to take its gatekeeping duties as a pharmacy seriously. Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer, created a system that turned its 5,000 in-store pharmacies into a supplier of highly addictive painkillers, dating as early as June 2013, the lawsuit said. The Trump administration’s allegations come months after the retailer filed a lawsuit in October against the federal government, seeking clarity on the roles and legal responsibilities of pharmacists and pharmacies in filling opioid prescriptions. The opioid epidemic has killed roughly 450,000 people across the US since 1999 due to overdoses from prescription painkillers and illegal drugs. Walmart was not i

XRP, the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency, slumped after Ripple Labs Inc. said it faces a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit over its affiliated token. The U.S. regulator has “inexplicably decided to sue Ripple,” the firm’s Chief Executive Officer Brad Garlinghouse said in an emailed statement. He didn’t specify the exact nature of the lawsuit but asserted XRP is a currency and “does not have to be registered as an investment contract” a reference to the longstanding debate over whether XRP is a security and subject to regulatory disclosures. “The SEC has permitted XRP to function as a currency for over eight years,” he said. Ripple will challenge the suit in the courts “to get clear rules of the road for the entire industry in the U.S.,” he added. XRP fell as much as 13%, touching the lowest level in about a week. The token has a market value of about $21 billion, making it the largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin and Ether, according to CoinMarketCap data. The lawsui

Qatar’s sports broadcasting network has signed a new deal to retain the rights to air all English Premier League games for another three years in the Middle East amid a long-running dispute with Saudi Arabia over the pirating of football broadcasts. The announcement was made in a press release on Thursday by the Premier League which said a deal worth $500m with the beIN network will run from 2022 to 2025. “We are pleased to agree [to] a significant deal with beIN SPORTS, who are a longstanding and valued partner,” Premier League Chief Executive Richard Masters said. “They have an outstanding track record of delivering top-quality Premier League content across all its platforms.” Nasser al-Khelaifi, chairman of beIN, said the media group was “delighted to renew our long-established and trusted partnership with the Premier League through to 2025”. “This deal demonstrates that rights-holders who do the most to protect their intellectual property also do the most to protect the value of th

The Mexican government announced the country’s daily minimum wage will rise by 15 percent in January to the equivalent of about $7 a day. The new wage still amounts to less than $1 an hour. But the increase is well above the country’s current 3.3 percent inflation rate. Minimum wages on the northern border, which are higher due to higher costs of living, will also rise 15 percent to about $10.70 a day. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Thursday the business sector had proposed an increase of 10 percent, but was outvoted by labour and government representatives on the tripartite commission that determines minimum wages. Lopez Obrador said, “workers are going to get an increase that is still, on the world scale, shameful.” Mexico’s minimum wage is the lowest in the Americas on par with Haiti and the lowest in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But the Mexican Employers’ Federation said the increase and the coronavirus pandemic could force hundreds of thous