Spanish blue-chips including Telefónica, Iberdrola and Seat are positioning themselves for tens of billions of euros in EU coronavirus aid they hope will transform their industries and benefit their bottom lines. Spain expects to receive some €140bn from the €750bn EU coronavirus recovery fund, which leaders approved last week, making Madrid

Credit Suisse has named António Horta-Osório as its next chairman, picking the outgoing chief executive of Lloyds Bank to help steer the lender through the fallout from the coronavirus crisis. Mr Horta-Osório will start at Credit Suisse at the end of April, the bank said in a statement on Tuesday. Urs

The EU will call on the US to seize a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity to forge a new global alliance, in a detailed pitch to bury the tensions of the Trump era and meet the “strategic challenge” posed by China. A draft EU plan for revitalising the transatlantic partnership, seen by the Financial Times,

The UK is poised to become the first western country to approve a Covid-19 vaccine, with the independent regulator set to grant approval within days. Deliveries of the vaccine developed by BioNTech and Pfizer would begin within hours of the authorisation, according to government officials. The first injections could take

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