The UK has dismissed an EU offer on rights to Britain’s fishing waters as “derisory”, dealing a blow to hopes that the two sides can secure a post-Brexit trade deal in coming days. With only five weeks to go before the end of the transition period, talks on the UK’s

BBVA and Sabadell, the Spanish banks, have given up merger talks they had confirmed less than two weeks ago because of disagreements over the pricing of the deal. Sabadell said in a statement to Spain’s securities regulator that its board of directors “has decided to terminate the above-mentioned discussions, because the

Europe’s financial sector has reached “peak uncertainty” as regulators and banks rush to stave off the harshest effects of the UK leaving the single market with just 36 days left before the end of the Brexit transition period. A combination of politics around trade talks, EU concerns about Britain diverging from

French tax authorities have begun demanding millions of euros from US tech giants as they push ahead with a new digital services tax that has enraged Washington. Facebook and Amazon are among the companies to have received communication from French authorities in recent days demanding payment of the tax for 2020,

Donald Trump said on Monday his administration would begin co-operating with Joe Biden’s transition team, bowing to Republican pressure to start the transfer of power even as he vowed to continue contesting his election loss. The president’s statement, which stopped short of a formal concession, came after a Michigan board certified

Donald Trump’s legal options to challenge his election loss are about to significantly narrow, with three battleground states carried by Joe Biden due to certify their results in the wake of a crushing weekend courtroom defeat for the president and a departure from his legal team. Pennsylvania and Michigan could make

A federal judge on Saturday dealt a blow to Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election, throwing out a lawsuit in Pennsylvania with an excoriating opinion that cast his legal arguments as shoddy, without evidence and contrary to the US constitution. The dismissal of the Trump campaign’s

Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the US presidential election result suffered significant setbacks on Friday after Georgia officially certified Joe Biden’s win and top Republican lawmakers in Michigan dismissed the idea they would throw the state to the president. The developments were the latest blows to Mr Trump’s unprecedented and long-shot

The World Health Organization has recommended that doctors do not prescribe Gilead’s remdesivir to patients in hospital with coronavirus, dealing another blow to the only antiviral approved to treat the disease. Remdesivir was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last month. But a landmark WHO study has cast

Brussels has failed to tame Big Tech because it has moved too slowly and lacked the legal muscle to restrain the likes of Google and Facebook from crushing their rivals, a new report from the EU’s external auditor has said. Antitrust probes are often too long and enforcement only occurs after