Union furious as bank scraps remote-first policy from February 2027, forcing all UK employees to come in at least twice a week

NatWest has ordered 13,000 staff to increase their in-office days from two days a month to two days a week, angering its staff union.

The banking group, which serves customers under the Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest, Ulster Bank and Coutts brands, will require all of its nearly 40,000 UK staff to follow a strict two days a week office schedule from February 2027, abolishing a remote-first policy for thousands of employees.

Services restored for most users, but power fault stalled hearings and left Revolut, Lloyds and HSBC customers unable to pay or move money

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An outage at Google’s cloud services in the UK has caused widespread disruption, hitting courts and leaving millions of customers unable to access or send cash at banks including Lloyds, HSBC and Revolut.

Google blamed a “power event” for the failure at its London-based Cloud computing operations on Tuesday, which affected its “europe-west2-b zone”.

As long as Healey doesn’t go overboard, a small turn on surcharge dial will not seriously undermine flow of capital

Everyone is familiar with the banks’ plea: raising taxes on them amounts to taxing the nation’s growth. If you increase how much banks pay, goes the argument, less interest will be paid on deposits and loans will cost slightly more, meaning we’ll all be worse off eventually. In terms of economic theory, it’s coherent, it should be said: in an ideal world, a chancellor would strive to lower costs of capital at every opportunity.

In the real world, however, John Healey faces multiple competing demands, even from within a business lobby that extends well beyond the banks. As this newspaper revealed last week, the chancellor is likely to increase bank taxes in his budget next week. In the current climate of trying to “stay the course” on the fiscal rules by finding some money from somewhere, tapping the banks is a reasonable policy. Or, at least, better than most alternatives.

Concerns financial contracts known as derivatives were incorrectly logged, potentially boosting Barclays’ profits

The Bank of England is reportedly looking into Barclays’ handling of loans linked to the embattled private credit sector.

The Bank’s regulatory arm, the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), started reviewing the matter this year after concerns were raised by a Barclays insider, according to the Financial Times.

Financiers owe their windfalls and bonuses to higher interest rates. Britain should reclaim more for the public and resist City lobbying

John Healey is planning to tax British banks, the Guardian revealed, in the forthcoming budget. It’s about time for the chancellor to act. Banks have been raking it in. The campaign group Positive Money reported this summer that Britain’s four biggest banks made £29bn in the first half of this year, up a fifth on 2025. These windfalls owe more to higher interest rates than better products or services. Households and businesses pay more to borrow. Meanwhile, the Bank of England pays the banks tens of billions in interest on their reserves, with the Treasury footing the bill.

The chancellor is said to favour restoring the bank surcharge from 3% to 8%, which could raise around £2bn a year. This would recover a very modest share of the sector’s bonanza. Louis XIV’s finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, said that “the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing”. Britain’s banks have plenty of feathers. That hasn’t stopped them hissing. The banks say that they already face higher taxes than other companies, that they won’t be able to lend as much, and that their profits won’t last.

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Supporters of planned tax, however, say banks were bailed out by taxpayers during financial crisis and can afford to pay more now

• John Healey poised to raise taxes on banks in budget

The International Monetary Fund has urged John Healey to target savings on pensions and welfare, instead of taxing Britain’s banks at the budget later this month.

Helge Berger, deputy director of the IMF’s European department, was asked about bank taxes after the Guardian revealed Healey plans to tap the sector for additional revenue.

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• John Healey poised to raise taxes on banks in budget

Elsewhere in the markets today, South Korea’s Kospi share index has recorded its biggest weekly loss since October 2008, down 14.5% this week.

Although the Kospi did rise today (+2%), it was still a bad week for technology stocks – as investors worried about the borrowing, spending commitments and future profitability of AI companies.

The reality is that while companies embraced AI aggressively as it first emerged, now they are figuring out how to use it effectively while keeping AI costs under control. A slowing, more careful, path towards corporate adoption has been missed by the market which remained wildly frothy about valuations.

“A UK bank tax risk is now a base case. If it is confirmed on 28 October, it’ll be the size and timing that will be key.

If Healey does go ahead, shares of Lloyds and NatWest, which are almost entirely exposed to the UK, would likely be impacted most, and you are seeing this already in the share price reaction today. Barclays is partly exposed. HSBC is least exposed in the mix.”

Exclusive: Chancellor to target sector in his first budget, to help offset Iran war’s damage to public finances

John Healey is poised to tax Britain’s banks in his 28 October budget, to help offset the damage inflicted on the public finances by war in the Middle East, the Guardian understands.

The chancellor is in Bangkok, where the International Monetary Fund has praised the UK’s progress towards balancing the books, urging him to “stay the course”.

Move comes as Senator Elizabeth Warren condemns Barclays response to questions over ex-boss’s ties to sex offender

US lawmakers have unveiled a new bill to hold Wall Street’s “Epstein-connected” bosses to account for helping finance the late sex offender’s crimes.

It came as top Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren condemned the UK bank Barclays for “dodging responsibility” over its failure to vet former boss Jes Staley and his ties to the once well-connected billionaire.

Waves of protests expose debt crisis faced by French government, but political wrangling is stalling an escape plan. Is there a way out?

Eight years have passed since rising fuel prices brought the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) demonstrators to the streets of France, prompting the first big crisis of Emmanuel Macron’s time in the Élysée Palace.

As the French president contemplates his exit next year, turmoil has again gripped the streets in the form of student protests, but this time the financial markets are unhappy too.

Former City banker becomes eighth to clear their name, just days after five others were acquitted

Former City trader Christian Bittar has become the eighth person to have his conviction for rigging interest rates quashed, just days after five other former bankers also successfully cleared their names.

Christian Bittar, who previously worked for Deutsche Bank, was convicted in 2018 of conspiracy to defraud.

Exclusive: Chancellor urged to reverse Jeremy Hunt’s tax surcharge cuts to claw back billions in lost revenue

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Tax cuts for big banks have deprived the UK government of £6bn in revenues, according to campaigners, who are calling on the chancellor, John Healey, to increase taxes and force lenders to pay their “fair share” in the budget.

Calculations by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), which represents unions with more than 5.3 million members across England and Wales, shows that the public purse is billions of pounds worse off as a result of tax cuts introduced under the Tory chancellor Jeremy Hunt in 2023.

Eye-watering sum, to be split between 20 bankers, is one of the biggest payouts in the bank’s history

Top bosses at Goldman Sachs are in line to share a bonus pot worth up to $500m (£378m) this year, marking one of the biggest payouts in the Wall Street bank’s history.

The eye-watering sum will be shared between 20 bankers, with its chief executive, David Solomon, due to take about $100m (£75.6m) of the reward, which is made up of Goldman Sachs stock.

Acquittals of five former bankers come year after supreme court overturned ruling against City trader Tom Hayes

Five more former traders who were jailed for rigging interest rates have had their convictions quashed by the court of appeal in London, after a long battle to clear their names.

The court overturned the convictions of Jay Vijay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew, Philippe Moryoussef, Alex Pabon and Colin Bermingham – all of whom worked at Barclays.