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LONDON — British bank Barclays on Wednesday suspended £22 million of bonuses owed to ex-boss Jes Staley amid a probe into his links with US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Barclays has frozen its former chief executive's unvested long-term bonus share awards — worth $30 million or 26 million euros — while he remains the subject of a regulatory investigation, the group said as it posted surging annual profits.

The bank said its nominations committee made the decision "pending further developments in respect of the regulatory and legal proceedings related to the ongoing investigation regarding Mr Staley".

The former boss, who stepped down last year, was nevertheless entitled to a contractual entitlement of £2.4 million in cash and shares — equivalent of 12 months' salary — as well as pension and other benefits.

Staley resigned in November ahead of contesting the outcome of the UK investigation into his historical relationship with Epstein, the American financier who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking underage girls for sex.

Staley quit after UK regulators informed the Barclays board of the preliminary conclusions of an ongoing probe.

The bank has stressed that watchdogs have made no findings that Staley saw or was aware of Epstein's crimes.

Staley for his part has expressed deep regret at having had a professional relationship with Epstein prior to becoming Barclays head in late 2015.

Epstein continues to cause huge fallout elsewhere, with Queen Elizabeth II's second son Prince Andrew this month settling a sexual assault lawsuit for an undisclosed sum with a woman who says she was "lent out" for underage sex by the late financier.

The prince has not been criminally charged and has denied the allegations.

Profits surge 

Barclays on Wednesday also revealed that it had beefed up its staff bonus pool after 2021 net profits more than quadrupled as the economy recovered from coronavirus fallout.

Profit after tax surged to almost £6.4 billion, helped by the release of £700 million that had been set aside for bad loans during the pandemic.

That compared with a £1.5 billion profit the prior year, when Barclays had taken a £4.8 billion charge to cover COVID-19 fallout.

The bank ramped up its total bonus pool by almost a quarter to more than £1.9 billion, becoming the latest UK lender to shrug off Britain's cost of living crisis with dizzying staff incentives.

Addressing MPs on the state of the economy, Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey on Wednesday asked retail banking giants to reflect on the current high-cost of living situation for the bulk of Britons when handing out big bonuses.

Bailey sought also to downplay his recent comments that British workers should be careful about asking for wage increases with inflation at the highest level in decades.

"I'm not saying people should not take pay rises. It was in the context of large pay rises," he told the cross-party panel of lawmakers.

"If everybody tries to get ahead of the shock that we've had from outside, we'll get the second round effects and it will get worse, that's the problem."

On executive pay and bonuses in reaction to a question from Angela Eagle, an MP from the main opposition Labour Party, Bailey told the Treasury Committee:

"When you're thinking about it, please reflect on the economic situation we're in with this very big economic shock coming in from outside."

Barclays, like the banking sector in general, says big bonuses are required to avoid losing talent to rivals.

On Wednesday it said the 2021 profits performance was "driven by an improved macroeconomic outlook" and buoyed also by reduced unsecured lending balances and a benign credit environment.

Leadership after Staley 

"Barclays demonstrated a clear and sustainable path to growth over the course of 2021," said chief executive C.S. Venkatakrishnan.

The annual results are the first under Venkatakrishnan, who was promoted from his role as head of global markets following Staley's sudden departure.

Barclays on Wednesday named Anna Cross as its new finance director with effect from April.

The deputy finance director was the first woman to take the top finance job at the lender.

ABU DHABI — The United Arab Emirates is ploughing money into drones, robots and other unmanned weaponry as autonomous warfare becomes more and more widespread — including in attacks on the Gulf country by Yemeni rebels.

Large, black drones with the orange logo of EDGE, the UAE's arms consortium, were on display at this week's Unmanned Systems Exhibition (UMEX), along with remote-controlled machineguns and other "smart" weapons.

The exhibition comes at a time of growing unmanned attacks around the region, including the January 17 drone-and-missile assault by Yemen rebels that killed three oil workers in Abu Dhabi, the first in a series of similar incidents.

"Autonomous systems are becoming ever more prevalent around the world," Miles Chambers, EDGE's director of international business development, told AFP.

"We are really heavily investing in developing our autonomous capability... as well as in electronic warfare and in our smart munitions. These are our three pillars."

EDGE, an Abu Dhabi-based defence consortium that groups 25 Emirati firms, was formed three years ago but reached an estimated $4.8 billion in arms sales in 2020 — nearly all of them to the UAE government.

The group was ranked 23rd among the 100 top arms-producing and military services around the globe in 2020, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

The UAE is part of the Saudi-led coalition that has been fighting Yemen's Houthi rebels since 2015. Although it withdrew ground troops in 2019, it remains a key player in the grinding conflict.

EDGE's most lucrative deals have included maintenance of military jets, worth almost $4 billion, as well as providing guided munitions at $880 million.

On Tuesday, it unveiled a vehicle-mounted remote-controlled assault rifle that can swivel 360 degrees and has thermal imaging and a laser range finder accurate to 50 centimetres for targets more than two kilometres  away.

EDGE was looking at "expanding our international footprint" in 2022, said Chambers.

'Step up' 

The use of drones and other unmanned weapons is increasingly common.

Last year the United States and Israel said an Iranian drone attacked a ship managed by an Israeli billionaire as it sailed off Oman. Two crew were killed.

In November, Iraq's prime minister survived an attack by a bomb-laden drone, and according to reports, Israel's 2020 assassination of a top Iranian nuclear scientist was carried out using a remote-controlled machinegun mounted on a pick-up truck.

Drones are also favoured by Yemen's Houthis.

In December, the coalition said the insurgents had fired more than 850 attack drones and 400 ballistic missiles at Saudi Arabia in the past seven years, killing 59 civilians.

That compares with the 401 coalition air raids carried out in January alone over Yemen, according to the Yemen Data Project, an independent tracker which reported around 9,000 civilian deaths from the strikes since 2015.

Ahmed Al Mazrouei, owner of an Emirati company that mainly develops four-wheel drive vehicles and personnel carriers, said the UAE defence industry was ready to "step up" following the attacks on Abu Dhabi.

"The challenges are important because they push us to develop ourselves in order to meet those challenges," he said.

"Our goal is to have more systems and more tech" in the next 10 years, Mazrouei added. "This is an Emirati-made production... and we want to compete globally."

EDGE has signed multiple deals with foreign partners, including US firms Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, and Brazil's Embraer, Khalid Al Breiki, who heads one of EDGE's five clusters, told AFP at last year's Dubai Airshow.

The establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020 has also opened up new opportunities.

The fifth edition of UMEX is the first to include Israel, one of seven newcomers among the 26 countries taking part.

On Monday, the UAE defence ministry signed three deals with domestic and international companies with a total value of more than 654.6 million dirhams ($178.2 million), including a 10 million dirhams sale of drone systems to UAE-based International Golden Group.

KUWAIT CITY — Kuwait Airways announced on Monday an expanded $6 billion deal with Airbus for 31 aircraft, restructuring an agreement reached in 2014. 

The deal comes after what the airline labelled occasionally "heated" negotiations following probes over allegations of kickbacks surrounding the initial order.

"We have managed to agree on a monumental restructuring that will position Kuwait Airways in a much stronger place to succeed for the next 15 years," the company Chairman Ali Al Dukhan told a news conference.

The new agreement, which adds three new aircraft to the existing order of 28, includes nine Airbus A320neo, six A321neo, three A321neoLR, four A330-800neo, seven A330-900neo and two A350-900.

Al Dukhan said the reshaped deal, aimed at giving the airline greater flexibility after the travel industry was rocked by the coronavirus pandemic, now carried a "total value of about $6 billion".

"Although corrections were made in 2018, the deal needed further corrections to suit Kuwait Airways' future, especially with the need to transition and become more flexible in a post-COVID aviation industry," he said.

Negotiations took place against the backdrop of bribery allegations that cost Airbus billions of dollars in settlement fees in other countries in 2020.

Record profits 

"As we initiated the negotiations, we knew we were already the underdogs going in as 40 per cent of the deal's value had already been paid and the delivery had started," Al Dukhan said.

He added: "We entered four months of serious, professional negotiations, which did get heated at times, but always maintained respect and understanding of each other's wants and needs."

Kuwait Airways had initially ordered 15 Airbus A320neo and 10 A350 in 2014, with delivery beginning in 2019.

In February 2020, Kuwait's parliament opened a fact-finding panel to probe allegations of kickbacks, after Airbus paid huge fines to settle bribery cases in French, British and American courts.

Under the settlement, Airbus agreed to pay 3.6 billion euros ($4.1 billion) in fines to settle corruption probes into some of its aircraft sales.

Last week, the European giant announced record profits of 4.2 billion euros ($4.8 billion) in 2021, after two straight years of losses during the pandemic.

Deliveries of aircraft rose 8 per cent to 611 aircraft, Airbus said in an earnings statement.

LONDON — From jogging outfits to summer dresses, Lea Baecker has stitched together most of her wardrobe herself from inside her London flat, part of a burgeoning number of young amateur seamstresses.

Like many others in the growing horde of sew-it-yourself enthusiasts, she has grown increasingly disillusioned with the retail clothing industry, viewing it as too destructive.

"My main motivation was not having to buy ready-to-wear clothes anymore because I didn't want to support fast fashion," Baecker, 29, said, referring to clothes made and sold cheaply to be thrown away after minimal use. 

The doctoral student in neuroscience only started sewing in 2018, beginning with small bags before moving on to clothes. 

Four years on, she estimates about 80 per cent of clothes in her wardrobe are homemade, from pyjamas to long fleece coats, as well as jeans made with denim scraps scalped from relatives. 

Baecker now buys new clothes "very rarely", she added, wearing one of her self-made long, hand-sewn dresses. 

'Scale' 

The fashion and textile industry is the third most polluting sector globally after food and construction, accounting for up to 5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2021 report by the World Economic Forum. 

Low-cost fashion retailers are regularly criticised for their waste and pollution, as well as the pay conditions imposed on their workers. 

Tara Viggo knows fast fashion only too well, having worked in the industry for 15 years as a pattern maker. 

"I realised the scale that the fashion industry was working at and it was a bit terrifying," she said.

In 2017, Viggo decided to start creating her own patterns — the blueprint drawings on paper before garments are made.

She started out small, selling only around one set of patterns per year, a far cry from the four a day that she would sometimes churn out in the ready-to-wear industry.

Viggo conceded independent operators like her were only tiny competitors to the big brands, but insisted they still could have a meaningful impact.

"The more of us that do [it], the better," she said. 

"It's like a trigger... People start to look at where their consumption" is, she added noting it also made you aware of the true costs involved.

"Once you know how to sew your own clothes, you can't fathom that a shirt should be £3 [$4.10, 3.60 euros] anymore."

'More young people' 

Viggo's "Zadie" jumpsuit is now a top seller on "The Fold Line", an online platform selling independently produced sewing patterns, according to its co-founder Rachel Walker.

Since its launch in 2015, the website has grown from about 20 designers to more than 150 today. 

Rosie Scott and Hannah Silvani, who run a London workshop selling fabrics from fashion designers' unsold stock, have also seen the resurgence in sewing's popularity, particularly among young people.

"The clients have changed," said Scott. 

"More young people have shown interest in sewing — young people who are really interested in making their own clothes and making them sustainably."

Women make up more than 90 per cent of the clientele, she noted. 

Customers can choose from some 700 designer fabrics, sold from £8 a metre for cotton voile — a sheer, lightweight cotton fabric — to £110 for the same length of lace. 

Orders soared during the pandemic and are still going strong despite the lifting of restrictions, Scott said. 

Instagram key 

The sector's explosive growth would not have been possible without Instagram, where the sewing community has made a pastime once seen as unfashionable much more trendy. 

The photo-sharing platform "is really important", Baecker said, allowing sewists to post images of their designs and engage with each other. 

This is what prompted her to join the social network, where she now regularly shares her latest works. 

"I found each pattern has a specific hashtag that you can look up and then you can see a lot of different people wearing the same pattern and you can imagine how it can look on yourself," she explained.

For example, Viggo's #Zadiejumpsuit — which comes in velvet or cotton, with or without sleeves — has been tagged in almost 11,000 posts. 

Meanwhile, the hashtag #handmadewardrobe features in more than 900,000 posts. 

With Baecker sharing so many of her creations, she has also inspired friends to join the growing sewing revolution. 

"That is my proudest achievement... getting my friends into sewing as well," she said. 

ISTANBUL — There is a silver lining to Turkey's currency crisis and the global supply chain crunch: The country is becoming an attractive alternative at the gates of Europe for foreign firms.

Turkey is seizing on its geographic advantage to woo companies as the skyrocketing cost of sea freight and pandemic-related disruptions to supply chains push some European companies to reduce their dependence on Asia.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose policies have contributed to the lira's plunge, has promoted a new slogan for exports: "Made in Turkiye", using the country's language instead of the internationally-known "Made in Turkey".

But his vision must overcome concerns about Ankara's complicated relationship with the European Union, the independence of the judiciary and political uncertainty ahead of elections next year.

Nevertheless, Turkey's exports reached a record $225.4 billion last year, with a target of $300 billion in 2023.

"Many international companies are taking action to supply more from Turkey," said Burak Daglioglu, head of the Turkish presidency's investment office. 

He said the country offers automakers or textile companies a "competitive talent pool, sophisticated industrial competencies, well-developed services industries, perfect geographic location and state-of-the-art logistic infrastructure". 

Ikea announced last year it wanted to move part of its production to Turkey.

The Italian clothing group Benetton said it wants to "increase its production volumes in countries closer to Europe, including Turkey".

Peter Wolters, vice chairman of The Netherlands-Turkey Chamber of Commerce, said the business group received "requests from the household and garden sector, textile and fashion and also yacht building industry who search for new partners in Turkey".

Soaring freight costs

It has become extremely expensive to ship goods from Asia.

As a result of container shortages, the cost of freight between China and northern Europe has increased ninefold since February 2020, according to the Freightos Baltic Index.

While a cargo ship can take weeks to travel from Asia to Europe, Turkey is only three days away by truck.

A study by the McKinsey consulting group published in November placed Turkey in third position among countries with the best potential for textile supplies by 2025, behind Bangladesh and Vietnam but ahead of Indonesia and China. 

"Apparel companies are also looking to change their sourcing-country mix... to secure the supply chain," the global report's authors wrote.

The report said Turkey offers "cheaper production costs due to a declining lira".

The lira has fallen by 44 per cent against dollar since 2021 as the central bank — prodded by Erdogan — cut interest rates even though inflation was rising. 

Turkey's new net minimum wage is now equivalent to $315 — an amount barely higher than that of Malaysia. 

Erdogan, who has been in power for two decades and seeks re-election in 2023, is betting on a weak lira to boost exports and growth, according to some observers, even if it destroys Turks' purchasing power. 

Europe, 'friend' and 'enemy'

The collapse of the lira is also problematic for several industries due to the country's dependence on imports for energy and raw materials. 

"It's not like Russia, for example, which has extensive raw materials," said Roger Kelly, leading regional economist covering Turkey and Russia at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. 

He said Turkey also faces competition from countries within the EU.

"I don't think we should ignore those countries in southeast Europe like Romania or Bulgaria, which are actually in the EU — which helps them to a certain degree — and also have low production costs and strong production bases as well."

Erdal Yalcin, professor of international economics at Germany's Konstanz University of Applied Sciences, said uncertainty over Turkey's judiciary and institutions is also a concern.

"We don't see big investments, even though Turkey from a purely economic perspective would be the perfect place to bring production closer to Europe," Yalcin said.

Another issue is Turkey's difficult ties with the EU, with Yalcin noting that in the rhetoric of Turkish leaders, "one day Europe is a friendly nation, the other day it's an enemy". 

He also pointed to Volkswagen's move to postpone the construction of a plant in Turkey after Ankara's Syria operation against a US-backed Kurdish militia in late 2019 before scrapping the plan during the coronavirus pandemic.

"As long as people are being killed, we are not laying the foundation stone next to a battlefield," VW CEO Herbert Diess said at the time. 

For Yalcin, no big decisions will be taken by businesses before the 2023 election and "until this uncertainty about the political future of this country is resolved". 

TUNIS — Every day at the family grocery stall in a Tunis market, Bilel Jani sees the reality of a biting economic crisis, which for many has overshadowed Tunisia's latest political turmoil.

"People here are poor," he said, handing a meagre bag of olives to a customer. "Most of our customers are living day-to-day. Monthly salaries these days don't even cover a week."

The small North African country, roiled by years of political turmoil that deepened with President Kais Saied's power grab last July, is also mired in a deep recession. 

Surging prices and job losses have hurt families that were already struggling before the coronavirus pandemic. 

This week, Tunisia started preliminary talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over a bailout package. 

Such a deal would likely mean cuts to subsidies and public sector wages, which many fear would spell more suffering for the most vulnerable.

That could fuel the same kind of grievances that sparked a revolution a decade ago and brought down Zine El Abidine Ben Ali after 23 years in power.

The economic crisis since then has pushed tens of thousands of Tunisians to seek better lives overseas.

Arab Spring's birthplace

At the Halfaouine market in a winding street near central Tunis, Jani's customers are already feeling the pain.

"People used to buy by the kilogramme," he said. "Now they just buy the absolute necessities."

His customer Dalila Dridi said life was a struggle on her salary from the education ministry.

"I earn 1,000 dinars [$348, 305 euros] a month and I used to have 100 or 60 dinars left over at the end," she said. "Now I have to borrow to get to the end of the month."

Asked when things had started to deteriorate, she said "since Zine left".

Ben Ali had ruled with an iron fist. But in late 2010, in the neglected town of Sidi Bouzid, vegetable salesman Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in desperate protest against police harassment.

That sparked a revolt which forced Ben Ali into exile and sparked the Arab Spring uprisings around the region.

But rather than addressing corruption and structural economic problems, the dysfunctional democracy that followed was torn by an ideological showdown between hardliners and secularists.

Successive governments staged hiring sprees to tamp down social unrest, inadvertently tripling the wage cost of Tunisia's public sector, one of the world's most bloated.

Battling inflation 

Little was done to help poorer regions in a country with vast wealth disparities, said Romdhane Ben Amor of the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights. 

Then, in 2020, the pandemic hit and Tunisia's economy shrank by more than nine per cent while public debt spiralled.

The International Crisis Group think-tank warned last month that the debt-burdened treasury "can barely cover the salaries owed to public-sector workers or honour commitments to repay external loans".

With both the government and private banks reluctant to lend to the private sector, about 80,000 small and medium-sized companies have either declared bankruptcy or left the country since early 2020.

"The economy is in a deep recession, debt is at unprecedented levels and unemployment is at 18 per cent," and much higher among the youth, said economist Ezzedine Saidane.

Inflation has remained stubbornly high, in December hitting 6.6 per cent on an annualised basis.

Those rising costs have spelled misery for people relying on stagnant salaries, pushing many of Tunisia's once large middle class towards poverty.

"I've stopped buying lots of things because my salary doesn't cover it," said Dridi.

'Waiting for a spark' 

All this poses a looming challenge for President Saied, who last year sacked the government and seized wide-ranging powers, vowing to "cleanse" state institutions and rewrite the constitution.

Ben Amor worries that Saied, an austere constitutional law professor, "doesn't have an economic or social programme".

"He doesn't meet any economic experts. He meets legal experts. But our problem is not legal," he said. "There's a crisis, but it's an economic and social one."

Ben Amor said that going to the IMF, with the austerity that would likely follow, should be Tunisia's last option after domestic solutions were exhausted.

For example, the country's large informal sector and companies that benefited from the pandemic all represent untapped sources of tax revenue, he said.

"The IMF looks at citizens and their needs as numbers: the public wage bill, interest rates, debt rates etc," he said. "It doesn't look at them as people who have needs — to eat, have health care, travel."

Ben Amor believes that the economic crisis could easily spark major social unrest.

"This seems like the calm before the storm," he said. "Society is waiting for a spark. Just as happened in 2010."

WASHINGTON — Advanced countries should "immediately" provi de relief to developing countries whose debt burdens have swelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Wednesday.

In a message to Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers gathering in Jakarta this week, the IMF chief renewed her call for urgent action from creditors, warning of dire consequences if they fail to do so.

"We estimate that about 60 per cent of low-income countries are in or at high risk of debt distress, double 2015 levels," Georgieva said in a blog post.

"These and many other economies will need... more grants and concessional financing, and more help to deal with debt immediately."

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the G-20 put in place the Debt Service Suspension Initiative to help countries that ramped up borrowing to deal with the twin health and economic crises, but that program ended in December.

The G-20's Common Framework meant to offer a way to restructure large debt loads remains subject to uncertainty, and only three countries — Chad, Ethiopia and Zambia — have requested a negotiation under its terms.

Georgieva echoed the IMF's sister institution, the World Bank, calling for officials to take additional steps including "reinvigorating" the common framework, beginning with "a standstill on debt service payments during the negotiation under the framework".

She also called for the programme to be extended "a wider range of highly indebted countries".

A key sticking point in the debt restructuring process is the lack of accurate information about borrowing levels, especially loans from China.

The Washington-based crisis lending institutions have called for greater transparency, including on the debts of private firms in those countries.

Addressing the debt will be especially critical as rising inflation has prompted a "policy pivot" by central banks in advanced economies which are raising interest rates, which in turn will put more pressure on borrowers.

Georgieva cautioned that if "financial conditions tighten suddenly, emerging and developing countries must be ready for potential capital flow reversals".

She said authorities may have to intervene in foreign exchange markets to deal with shocks, and even impose measures to contain the exodus of capital.

Georgieva stressed that beating COVID-19 worldwide remains critical to ensuring the economic recovery, noting the IMF projects "cumulative global output losses from the pandemic of nearly $13.8 trillion through 2024". 

"Ending the pandemic will also help address the scars from economic long-COVID," caused by business disruptions and time lost by students.