Market Buzz
Friday newspaper round-up: Train strikes, Lloyds, Reaction Engines
A series of weekend strikes by train drivers on LNER from Saturday has been called off, their trade union Aslef has announced. Passengers travelling between London and Edinburgh had faced the prospect of months of disruption after LNER drivers earlier this month announced 22 days of industrial action from the start of September until early November. On Thursday, Aslef said drivers had reached a resolution with LNER regarding the breaking of agreements. – Guardian.
Thursday newspaper round-up: Energy bills, Qantas, CrowdStrike
Ministers have committed to help households struggling with their gas and electricity bills this winter after energy industry bosses warned that consumer debt had climbed to more than £3bn. With Labour under fire for scrapping universal winter fuel payments to pensioners, ministers met energy industry bosses on Wednesday to discuss ways of supporting struggling households through the coming colder months. – Guardian.
Wednesday newspaper round-up: Water companies, Hargreaves Lansdown, Klarna
Water companies will struggle to raise the billions of pounds needed to clear Britain’s waterways and fix its creaking infrastructure under the regulator’s plan to keep a lid on rising water bills, the industry will warn. The water sector’s trade association is expected to warn the industry regulator that its proposals to cap the steady rise in household bills by curbing water company spending may drive away the investors needed for a multibillion-pound overhaul of water infrastructure.
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Barclays, Mike Lynch, IBM
Ministers have been urged to intervene to prevent businesses struggling with gas and electricity costs from going bust, as bills are forecast to be 70% higher next year than before the energy crisis. A typical small business such as a pub, restaurant or independent retailer is paying more than £5,000 extra a year on bills than before the energy crisis that began in 2021, research by the forecaster Cornwall Insight shared with the Guardian shows. – Guardian.
Sunday newspaper round-up: Hezbollah, Economic pain, Wealth tax
Approximately 100 Israeli fighter jets launched strikes on around 270 targets located in over 40 southern Lebanese towns and villages. The set of strikes was one of the biggest between the two sides since fighting resumed in October. The bulk of the strikes were against short-range rocket launchers that could be used to hit northern Israel. In response, terrorist group Hezbollah fired over 320 Katyusha rockets at 11 military targets inside Israel. Most projectiles were stopped or hit open areas.
Friday newspaper round-up: Energy bills, listing rules, aircraft deliveries
Households will begin the run-up to winter with a sharp increase in their energy bills after the industry regulator increased its cap on energy prices by 9. 5% from October. Under the new price cap, the average annual energy bill will rise to £1,717 a year for gas and electricity, up £149 from its current level of £1,568, which has been in place since July. The price cap is set every quarter by Ofgem, the energy regulator for Great Britain, and imposes a maximum on how much suppliers can charge their 29 million household customers per unit of gas and electricity.
Thursday newspaper round-up: Asda, Post Office, M&S, Frasers Group
The owners of Asda are facing mounting pressure after figures showed the struggling supermarket chain’s share of the grocery market reached a “new nadir” as sales fell sharply this summer. The grocer’s sales fell 6. 4% in the three months to 10 August, equivalent to more than £2bn in annual lost revenues, as it became the only member of the traditional “big four” supermarkets to see sales shrink, according to analysts at NIQ. – Guardian.
Wednesday newspaper round-up: Waitrose, McDonald's, Crown Agents
Waitrose is planning to open 100 convenience stores over the next five years as part of a £1bn-plus investment in new outlets and shop refurbishments. The upmarket grocery chain is planning to unveil a revamped outlet in Finchley Road, north London, on Wednesday. This will kick off a new phase of expansion with its first new store in six years in Hampton Hill, west London, by the end of this year. – Guardian.
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Missing yacht, City Airport, energy bills
Morgan Stanley International chairman Jonathan Bloomer is among those missing after a yacht carrying UK tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch sank off the coast of Sicily during a violent storm, an Italian official has said. Salvatore Cocina, head of the civil protection agency in Sicily, said Bloomer and Chris Morvillo, a lawyer at Clifford Chance, were among the six people missing. Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, were also unaccounted for as of late Monday. – Guardian.
Monday newspaper round-up: Ted Baker, banks, Boohoo
Fashion brand Ted Baker’s remaining 31 stores in the UK are to close this week, putting more than 500 jobs at risk. Started as a men’s clothing label in Glasgow in 1988 by entrepreneur Ray Kelvin and becoming known for its quirky advertising and floral prints, Ted Baker’s UK arm entered administration in March after racking up losses. – Guardian.
Sunday newspaper round-up: Ukraine ceasefire, Morrisons, Labour
Moscow has postponed landmark negotiations with Kyiv that might have resulted in a partial ceasefire between the two countries. The two sides had agreed to send delegations to Doha for indirect talks aimed at stopping attacks on energy infrastructure. But the 6 August incursion into Russian territory by Ukraine's troops has been labelled as an escalation and led Moscow to postpone the talks. Some officials had hoped that the negotiations might mark a first step towards a deal to end the war.
Friday newspaper round-up: Housing targets, WH Smith, Thurrock council
Angela Rayner has been warned that the government could risk missing its housing targets by placing too much emphasis on creating new towns across England. The deputy prime minister announced plans last month for the “largest housebuilding programme since the postwar period”, kickstarted by the construction of a generation of new towns. – Guardian.
Thursday newspaper round-up: Wiz, Port Talbot, John Lewis
Cybersecurity firm Wiz, which last month rejected a $23bn (£18bn) takeover bid from Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is to open a European headquarters in London – a move that is a major shot in the arm for the UK’s aspiration to be a global tech hub. The new office, the company’s first in Europe, will be run by co-founder and research and development head, Roy Reznik, who is relocating from Israel to the UK capital to underscore the company’s business ambitions in the region.
Wednesday newspaper round-up: Avon, AstraZeneca, Google
Anti-sewage campaigners have warned of “extreme anger” if the Labour government does not radically reform the water regulator. Sources at the Environment Agency (EA) and in the Labour party have told the Guardian that while Labour had spent time considering reforms of the EA and Ofwat in order to fix the sewage crisis, some stricter options that had been proposed were now off the table. -Guardian.
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Telegraph, UK offices, China
The Treasury has sought to defuse a bitter row with the North Sea oil and gas industry by promising to keep investment reliefs on low-carbon projects, aiming to protect jobs and soften the expansion of the energy windfall tax. The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said last month that she would expand the levy on energy industry profits as part of her plan to plug a £22bn “hole” in the public finances that Labour said had been left by the previous Conservative government.
Monday newspaper round-up: Inflation, water compensation, FTSE 100 bosses pay
The Bank of England is poised for a setback in the battle against high inflation this week amid expectations for a first increase in the headline rate this year, highlighting the pressure from the cost of living crisis. In a week of key updates from the British economy, official figures on Wednesday are expected to show inflation returned above the Bank’s 2% target in July, driven in part by fast-rising prices for air fares, package holidays and hotels. – Guardian.
Sunday newspaper round-up: Taxes, BT, Taylor Swift
The Chancellor has ordered cabinet ministers to search for cost-cutting reforms and to gird themselves for difficult choices over government spending. It is understood that Rachel Reeves still requires £16bn to close an estimated £22bn financing gap. Taxes on capital gains, pension contributions relief and inheritances are all being considered as possible avenues to raise funds. The Chancellor however does not dismiss the possibility of tweaks to fiscal rules that would allow her to invest slightly more.
Friday newspaper round-up: Drax, X, Lord Saatchi
The Drax power station was responsible for four times more carbon emissions than the UK’s last remaining coal-fired plant last year, despite taking more than £0. 5bn in clean-energy subsidies in 2023, according to a report. The North Yorkshire power plant, which burns wood pellets imported from North America to generate electricity, was revealed as Britain’s single largest carbon emitter in 2023 by a report from the climate thinktank Ember. – Guardian.
Thursday newspaper round-up: Ocado, Boohoo, pensions
The UK’s largest employers have warned the jobs market is cooling amid a slowdown in wage growth in July and a fall in vacancies, extending an almost two-year downturn in hiring demand for permanent staff. Figures from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and the accountancy firm KPMG showed a fall in permanent staff placements in July as large employers made more redundancies and hired fewer new starters. – Guardian.
Wednesday newspaper round-up: Airbnb, Virgin Atlantic, Harland & Wolff
The Royal Mint has unveiled a “pioneering” factory that will recover gold from electronic waste, creating a more sustainable source of the precious metal for the coin manufacturer’s luxury jewellery line. The factory in south Wales, which has been under construction since March 2022, is designed to extract gold from up to 4,000 tonnes a year of circuit boards sourced in the UK from electronics including phones, laptops and TVs. – Guardian.