Global business’ deal making “suffered a record fall” in the final six months of this year as “rising interest rates and economic uncertainty” cooled firms from securing agreements, the Financial Times’ lead story reports. Mergers and acquisitions between firms over the period were valued at around $1.4 trillion (£1.2 trillion), $800bn less than over the same period in 2021 – the largest swing since records began in 1980, the paper says.