John Aglionby

Staff at Kenya’s central bank were an integral part of an alleged $350m fraud over several years at one of the country’s midsized lenders, the lender’s shareholders claim in court documents filed on Friday. They also allege that current supervisors at the central bank have failed in the duties in relation to the bank’s receivership during the past 14 months. Analysts said that if the allegations are substantiated, they would “jeopardise the entire financial services system” in east Africa’s fi…

Ethiopia’s former foreign minister has been elected as the new head of the World Health Organisation, beating rivals from Pakistan and the UK after a gruelling campaign over many months to lead the UN agency. Victory in the secret ballot of the 194 member states gives Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus a five-year mandate to run an organisation that provides technical advice on medical matters and practical support in tackling pandemics. It follows a decade under the leadership of Margaret Chan, durin…

The economics of the allotment make little sense in pounds and pence but in terms of health and wellbeing there are many returns

Fast-fashion retailer Boohoo has slashed its annual sales and profit forecasts as consumers scale back purchases. The UK company said on Tuesday that it expected revenues to decline between 12 per cent and 17 per cent in the 12 months to the end of February. In May, Boohoo said the drop would be 5 per cent at most. The group was a winner during the pandemic-driven boom in online shopping but has since struggled with falling demand and rising costs. The retailer has lost more than 90 per cent o…

Shares in CAB Payments plunged 72 per cent on Tuesday after the fintech warned on profits just months after a London listing that was hailed as a rare bright spot for the struggling UK market. The company, which says it specialises in helping businesses make payments to “hard-to-reach markets” and has more than 490 customers, slashed its forecast for revenues this year by almost a fifth. A steep drop in the Nigerian naira as well as recent central bank intervention in the central African franc…

British regulators plan to reintroduce a cap on card fees imposed on transactions between the UK and EU, in a blow to the Visa and Mastercard duopoly that raised charges on businesses more than fivefold since Brexit. On Wednesday, the Payments Systems Regulator proposed that so-called interchange fees charged for cross-border and online credit and debit card payments should be restored to the level set before the country left the EU “to protect UK businesses from overpaying”. “The fees charged…

Demand for private medical insurance in the UK is expected to rise this year, according to industry executives and independent analysts, as the junior doctors’ industrial action shows no sign of ending and NHS waiting lists remain high. Payouts for private claims hit a record of almost £3bn in 2022, the latest year for which there is complete data, the Association of British Insurers said. Independent research suggests the number of Britons with medical insurance has grown at a high single-digi…

Nearly all — 97 per cent — of the 11.58mn taxpayers who filed their self-assessment returns by the January 31 deadline did so online. They filed in several ways. Some 5.2mn returns were submitted directly on the HMRC website or app and 6mn via commercial software. Meanwhile, 4.6mn people filed their returns themselves while 6.6mn used an agent, such as an accountant. The migration to commercial software will soon accelerate. From April 2026, when so-called Making Tax Digital rules come into ef…

The Labour party has proposed charging 20 per cent value added tax on private school fees and imposing business rates on the sector if it wins power at the next general election, expected later this year. It estimates the move would raise £1.5bn. Private schools fear the change would make fees unaffordable for large swaths of their students and have questioned the ethics of taxing children’s education. FT Money is looking to speak to parents concerned about paying the fees and the impact it wo…

Nicolas Maari admits that Labour’s plan to impose value added tax on private school fees, should it win power at the next election, has shaken his budgeting “quite drastically”. The property consultant who lives in Paddock Wood in Kent planned to send his two children to private school for their entire education. He says that will now not be possible if Labour’s proposal goes through. “Without the VAT we would have struggled but we would have put them through,” he says. “But sending two kids t…