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JPMorgan Chase is summoning all staff back to the office, becoming the latest corporate giant to call time on era of remote and hybrid working sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The US’s largest bank, which has some 316,000 employees worldwide, announced on Friday that all workers on hybrid work schedules will be required to return to the office five days a week from March.

Five years after Covid-19 emptied offices across much of the world almost overnight, prominent employers are now seeking to draw a line under a prolonged period of hybrid work and draw staff back to their desks full-time.

While leading Wall Street firms have led the charge, the debate over the merits and pitfalls on remote work – for employers, employees, customers and communities – continues across multiple industries.

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Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary, said her agency will need to start taking “extraordinary measures”, or special accounting maneuvers intended to prevent the nation from hitting the debt ceiling, as early as 14 January, in a letter sent to congressional leaders Friday afternoon.

“Treasury expects to hit the statutory debt ceiling between January 14 and January 23,” Yellen wrote in a letter addressed to House and Senate leadership, at which point extraordinary measures would be used to prevent the government from breaching the nation’s debt ceiling – which has been suspended until 1 January.

The department has in the past deployed what are known as extraordinary measures, or accounting maneuvers, to keep the government operating. But once those measures run out, the government risks defaulting on its debt unless lawmakers and the president agree to lift the limit on the US government’s ability to borrow.

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The parent company of TGI Fridays, the casual dining chain, has filed for bankruptcy, the company said, as it explores a long-term survival plan for the troubled business.

The company said the COVID-19 pandemic was the “primary driver of our financial challenges” and that the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process will allow it to “explore strategic alternatives.”

“The next steps announced today are difficult but necessary actions to protect the best interests of our stakeholders, including our domestic and international franchisees and our valued team members around the world,” Rohit Manocha, the executive chairman of TGI Fridays Inc., said in a statement on Saturday.

The pandemic forced in-person dining establishments to close or pivot their business models, and many struggled to recover. Meanwhile, fresher, faster and cheaper options, like Shake Shack, came for casual dining chains’ lunch.

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US corporations and their supporters in Washington are pushing aggressively to roll back tax policies they once endorsed, in a move that could return hundreds of billions of dollars to some of America’s biggest companies.

As congressional negotiators attempt to keep the government funded past 19 January, an agreement is emerging that ties the corporate tax breaks to an increase in support for vulnerable American families – an effort to make the deal more palatable for Democrats.

Just six years ago the Business Roundtable, a lobbying group for CEOs of large US firms, described the Trump-era Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as “a remarkable, once-in-a-generation opportunity”. Now, the group is leading “a six-figure advocacy campaign” to roll back parts of it, according to Politico, and threatening that failing to secure new tax cuts will lead to “slower job creation, smaller wage increases and lower overall economic growth”.

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FTX Trading on Friday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, capping a sudden and startling downfall for one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges.

Founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried also resigned from the company, which appointed John J. Ray III as its new chief executive. Bankman-Fried plans to stay with FTX while it works through the bankruptcy process, according to a statement on Friday.

"The immediate relief of Chapter 11 is appropriate to provide the FTX Group the opportunity to assess its situation and develop a process to maximize recoveries for stakeholders," Ray said in the statement.

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The Federal Reserve is expected Wednesday afternoon to announce its largest interest rate hike since 1994 — a bigger increase than it had previously signaled and a sign that the central bank is struggling to restrain stubbornly high inflation.

The central bank is considered likely to raise its benchmark short-term rate by three-quarters of a percentage point, far larger than the typical quarter-point increase, to a range of 1.5% to 1.75%. It will also likely forecast additional large rate hikes through the end of the year.

A series of sizeable increases would heighten borrowing costs for consumers and businesses, likely leading to an economic slowdown and raising the risk of a recession. The Fed's previous rate hikes have already had the effect of raising mortgage rates roughly 2 percentage points since the year began and have slowed home sales.

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