The 25 richest Americans, including Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, Amazon and Tesla heads Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, paid significantly less income tax than they should have under general rules, according to a ProPublica investigation into confidential US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data. With a combined wealth growth of $401bn between 2014 and...

The US Department of Justice was able to recover $2.3 million paid to cryptocurrency hackers following an attack on the operator of the US Colonial Pipeline. In May, hackers from DarkSide encrypted a significant amount of the pipeline operator's commercial data and demanded a ransom for decryption. "The Department of Justice seized 63.7 bitcoins, valued at approximately $2.3 million, believed...

G7 finance ministers are in favour of introducing a corporate tax of at least 15 per cent on profits of large corporations. The ministers reached an agreement on this issue following a meeting in London, British Finance Minister Rishi Sunak said. The introduction of this tax was earlier initiated by the US. "After years of discussions, G7 finance ministers have reached a historic agreement to...

US President Joe Biden has signed an executive order to blacklist 59 Chinese companies. Among them is one of the world's largest telecommunications companies, Huawei. "The executive order allows the US to prohibit investments in Chinese companies that undermine the security or democratic values of the US and our allies. <...> The executive order prevents US investments from supporting the...

The UN International Labour Organisation has concluded that the global employment market will not recover until 2023. According to the agency, there will be 205 million unemployed worldwide next year. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has warned that the rate of job creation will not catch up with the pandemic job cuts until at least 2023. The UN agency stated this in its new...

The rate of global economic growth over the next two years may be slightly higher than recently expected. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) May report improved its forecast for global GDP growth to 5.8% in 2021 and to 4.4% in 2022. The OECD predicts a marked improvement in global economic indicators and a return of most countries to pre-crisis levels by the end...

UN Secretary-General António Guterres, speaking at the International Financial Forum in Beijing, called on world leaders to abandon investments in the coal industry, Bloomberg reported. According to him, investment should be made in renewable energy sources, which would lead to phasing out the use of coal. Guterres recalled that South Korea had pledged to stop financing coal-fired plants abroad,...

Production of solar panels for renewable energy has become unprofitable for the first time in a decade. Prices for polysilicon, a key raw material for green electricity sources, have skyrocketed amid the coronavirus pandemic, writes Bloomberg. The cost of the key material for solar panels has quadrupled over the past year. Prices of solar modules, meanwhile, have increased by 18 percent since the...

The Saudi authorities hope to raise $55bn over the next four years from their privatisation programme. According to Mohammed Al-Jadaan, the country's finance minister, the kingdom has already identified 160 projects in 16 sectors, which are to be transferred into private hands in whole or in part through direct sale of assets or the creation of public-private partnerships. According to the...