Silicon Valley workers are scrambling to offload stakes in tech start-ups through private share sales after a wave of job cuts, compounding a collapse in valuations. Employees of embattled tech groups are flooding secondary markets — where stakeholders in a private company sell shares to third parties — as the industry’s former darlings like Klarna and Stripe have been forced into aggressive cost-cutting measures, according to brokers and investors.

ExxonMobil is suing the EU in a bid to force it to scrap the bloc’s new windfall tax on oil groups, arguing Brussels exceeded its legal authority by imposing the levy. The lawsuit is the most significant response yet against the tax from the oil industry, which has been targeted by western governments amid a surge in energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Oil and gas groups are set to dominate the list of best-performing US stocks in 2022, after bumper profits following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drew investors back to the sector. Of the 25 performers in the benchmark S&P 500 index of stocks, as many as 15 will be fossil fuel operators. The energy sector has climbed almost 60 per cent, a sharp contrast with a 21 per cent drop in the S&P 500 as a whole.