The UK chancellor of the exchequer and the minister of finance of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on financial services co-operation, dated 20 December 2022.

The Department for Business and Trade has resumed trade negotiations with Switzerland to enhance the Free Trade Agreement between the two countries. The talks, the first since the 2024 UK general election, aim to strengthen the £51bn trading relationship between the two nations, focusing on services and investment for the first time. This initiative coincides with the International Investment Summit in London in October 2024. The current trade deal is based on a 1972 EU-Swiss deal and does not cover digital trade or data flows whereas 80% of all services exported from the UK to Switzerland were digitally delivered in 2021.

The UK and Thailand have signed an Enhanced Trade Partnership (ETP) aimed at boosting trade and investment between the two countries. Thailand is the second-largest economy in Southeast Asia, and trade between the UK and Thailand is currently worth £5.9bn annually. The ETP is designed to help boost sales and investment in priority sectors including automotive, tourism, investment, digital trade, financial services and education. The pact commits both countries to identifying opportunities that could be delivered through a potential future free trade agreement between the two countries. Recent changes had already made it easier for UK companies to sell to the Thai market, including an agreement on vehicle emissions testing aiming to save UK car manufacturers millions of pounds, and simplifying the process for Thai companies to import UK food and drink. The hope is that this ETP will create opportunities for British businesses in Thailand, whose rapidly growing economy and expanding middle class offer significant potential.

The UK and USA have released a statement, agreed between the UK Technology Secretary, Peter Kyle, and the US Commerce Secretary, Gina Raimondo, which outlines their agreement to launch a collaborative children’s online safety working group to assess the impact of social media on children and young people. The working group will aim to enhance transparency from social media platforms, understand access to privacy-preserving data and give effect to the countries’ online safety laws. Both countries will also work with their international partners to build a more secure digital space for children.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has announced that the UK and US have coordinated on a new sanctions package that will target seven individuals and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Unit 840 organisation. The seven designated individuals are members of IRGC Unit 840. IRGC Unit 840 was exposed by ITV in December 2023 during an investigation into plans to kill presenters of Iran International in the UK. The FCDO confirmed that the UK has responded to at least 15 similar threats and plots to kill British or UK-based individuals by the Iranian regime. This sanctions package aims to expose and disrupt the activities of members of organised criminal gangs who collaborate with the Iranian regime in the UK and overseas.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has announced that the UK, US and Australia have imposed sanctions on key figures in the financial networks of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). These key figures include key Hamas financier Zuheir Shamlakh, Hamas’s financial network’s key operator Ahmed Sharif Abdallah Odeh, Ismail Barhoum who is a member of Hamas’s Political Bureau in Gaza, senior leader of Hamas in the Bethlehem/West Bank region Hassan Al-Wardian and lastly, a senior PIJ official and representative based in Gaza Jamil Yusuf Ahmad Aliyan. These individuals are also subject to a travel ban and cannot enter the UK.

HM Treasury, the Department for Business and Trade and the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office has announced that the UK and the US have joined forces to strengthen the existing sanctions on the trade of Russian metals. The London Metal Exchange and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange will no longer trade new aluminium, copper and nickel produced by Russia. This action does not affect the trade of titanium or platinum group metals. The existing stock of Russian metal on the two global exchanges will also be exempt from these restrictions. This is to minimise the risk of market instability.

The Cabinet Office has reported that it met with the UK’s key intelligence allies to help coordinate the fight against coronavirus (COVID-19) fraud. It said that Cabinet Office Minister, Georgia Gould, will lead the meeting with top officials from the UK's key intelligence partners Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States to share strategies for combating coronavirus-related fraud. This Five Eyes alliance meeting intends to exchange best practices on detecting, recovering, and prosecuting pandemic-related fraud. The insights gained will inform the Public Sector Fraud Authority's ongoing efforts to enhance fraud prevention, detection, and recovery across government departments. This meeting is the main event of the International Public Sector Fraud Forum's fourth summit, currently taking place in London.

The UK has announced 50 new sanctions designations and specifications targeting Russia, in co-ordination with its G7 partners in support of Ukraine. The targets of the sanctions include ships in Russia’s shadow fleet, institutions in Russia’s financial system and suppliers involved in military production. Suppliers targeted include those supplying munitions, machine tools, microelectronics, and logistics to Russia’s military, including entities based in China, Israel, Kyrgyzstan and Türkiye, along with ships which transport military goods from North Korea to Russia.

This flowchart sets out the different steps in an anti-dumping investigation

This summarises completed UK antitrust enforcement actions since 2016. For more information on completed CMA, OFT and sectoral regulator behavioural investigations, see UK behavioural investigations under Article 101 TFEU/Chapter I Competition Act—closed cases tracker and UK behavioural investigations

Chapter II of the Competition Act 1998 prohibits the abuse by one or more undertakings of a dominant position