Ashmore AUM fall, Ryanair traffic levels rise in August

Stocks to watch

Asset manager Ashmore Group said on Friday that assets under management and earnings slipped in the twelve months ended 30 June as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and inflationary concerns led to widespread risk aversion.

Assets under management declined by 32% year-on-year to $64.0bn, with the majority of the movement attributable to a negative investment performance of $16.6bn and net outflows of $13.5bn. The FTSE 250-listed group also said reported EBITDA had fallen from £195.7m in the 2020-21 trading year to £122.3m twelve months later, while reported operating profits dropped from £192.9m to £119.2m.

Low-cost carrier Ryanair posted a 52% jump in August traffic on Friday.

The budget airline said passenger numbers grew to 16.9m last month, up from 11.1m in August 2021, while Ryanair's load factor – which gauges how full its planes are – ticked up to 96% from 82%.

Newspaper round-up

The Treasury is working on a menu of options to counter Britain's cost of living crisis in readiness for an emergency mini-budget due to take place within two weeks if Liz Truss replaces Boris Johnson as prime minister. With opinion polls and bookmakers' odds showing Truss the clear favourite to move into 10 Downing Street next week, officials are drawing up plans that would allow the new government to move quickly over bills and longer-term reforms of the energy market. – Guardian

Selfridges is aiming for almost half its interactions with customers to be based on resale, repair, rental or refills by 2030 as the upmarket department store responds to increasing demand for more sustainable shopping. The retailer said it wanted to step up action after increasing sales of secondhand items by 240% to 17,771 pieces last year and facilitating 28,000 repairs, more than a third of which were pairs of trainers, in its effort to trade in a more environmentally sustainable way. It also rented out more than 2,000 items to customers and sold more than 8,000 refills. – Guardian

Households are paying up to £250 per year too much for electricity under outdated clean energy rules, industry leaders have signalled, as they throw their weight behind reforms aimed at bringing bills down. Under historic arrangements, wind and solar farms built before 2014 can sell electricity at the market rate and benefit from government subsidies. This has allowed some generators to reap huge windfalls as prices have surged this year. Costs have not risen in line with electricity prices as wind and solar do not buy fuel to generate power. – Telegraph

One of Britain's biggest operators of petrol forecourts has denied profiteering from rising fuel prices, despite a rise in earnings as prices at the pump headed towards £2 a litre. Gross fuel profits at EG Group, run by the billionaire Issa brothers, who also own Asda, increased by more than 14% to $545.0m in the three months to the end of June and by $1.0bn for the first six months of this year, a 17% jump throughout its global forecourts business. – The Times

Speculation was growing last night that Credit Suisse is preparing to cut thousands of jobs in a cull that could affect London-based staff. Reports yesterday suggested that bosses at Switzerland's second-biggest lender were considering plans to shed about 5,000 roles across the bank, out of a total workforce of 51,000. – The Times

US close

Wall Street stocks delivered a mixed performance on Thursday, with the Dow reversing earlier losses.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.46% at 31,656.42, while the S&P 500 added 0.30% to 3,966.85 and the Nasdaq Composite shed 0.26% to 11,785.13.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com