1 A judge has ruled that Britain’s youngest self-made billionaire can be sued by investors in his cryptoasset exchange after it was alleged that he had manipulated it to profit at the expense of customers. Ben Delo allegedly approved the operation of a secret “insider trading desk” at BitMEX.
2 A businesswoman in Vietnam has been sentenced to death for one of the biggest frauds on record. Truong My Lan was convicted of corruption and of embezzling 304 trillion dong (£9.7 billion) from Saigon Commercial Bank, controlling the funds through a network of “ghost” companies.
3 More than a third of voting AstraZeneca shareholders opposed plans to increase the potential pay of Sir Pascal Soriot, its chief executive, to up to about £18.5 million this year. A new three-year executive remuneration policy includes raising the annual potential maximum performance share award to up to 850 per cent of Soriot’s salary.
4 The Financial Conduct Authority has judged Neil Woodford guilty of failings that led to the 2019 collapse of his £15 billion investment empire with heavy losses for 300,000 investors. Woodford said the preliminary findings were “fundamentally misconceived”.
5 The competition regulator has expressed “real concerns” that big technology companies including Apple, Amazon and Microsoft are using their dominance in the world of artificial intelligence in a way that could harm consumers.
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6 Annual profits at the City fund management firm co-founded by Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Conservative MP, more than halved last year before client withdrawals forced the business to wind itself down.
7 The European Central Bank has held its interest rates at record highs for a fifth meeting in a row as it awaits key economic data that could be the trigger for it to loosen monetary policy.
8 The head of the International Monetary Fund has warned that the global economy faces a decade of “tepid” growth if the United States maintains higher interest rates for a lengthy period. Kristalina Georgieva said that the Biden administration could consider other measures.
9 “Influential” research by McKinsey asserting that companies with diverse leadership teams performed better than rivals was flawed, academics found. Studies suggesting that greater ethnic diversity at the executive level can improve a company’s financial performance were called into question in an academic journal.
10 A joint venture led by a Bristol-based start-up has developed a way to turn human waste into sustainable aviation fuel and plans to build a commercial-scale production facility after signing a supply agreement with Wizz Air.
