Sunday newspaper round-up: Ukraine, HSBC, Rolls-Royce
Officials from Ukraine and the US are expected to sit down in Riyadh and talk about a possible partial ceasefire on Sunday. The meeting will be taking place sooner than expected and will precede another between delegations from the US and Russian on Monday. On Saturday, the American president said that efforts to stop an escalation in the war were "somewhat under control". For his part, Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that: "We are only at the beginning of this path". "We are working for a ceasefire and a lasting peace [...] We won’t have the terms of discussions or timing be played out in the media." - The Sunday Telegraph
Aerospace and Defence
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16:05 26/03/25
Banks
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FTSE 100
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16:05 26/03/25
FTSE 350
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FTSE All-Share
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HSBC Holdings
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16:05 26/03/25
Rolls-Royce Holdings
798.40p
16:05 26/03/25
The UK's foreign secretary quizzed HSBC's chairman over the lender's freezing of approximately £1bn of pension savings belonging to British nationals from Hong Kong. Those funds are owed to those people who fled Hong Kong in order to avoid a crackdown by Chinese authorities. Beijing has ordered the lender not hand over the funds. - The Financial Mail on Sunday
The Cabinet Office is set to tell departments to slash their administrative budgets by 15%. The goal is to save £2.2bn per year by 2029-30. As a first step, they will be tasked with cutting budgets by a tenth by 2028-29. That smaller move is expected to result in savings of £1.5bn per year. Included among administrative budgets are Human Resources, policy advice and office management, as opposed to frontline services. - Guardian
Rolls-Royce is preparing to hike production from its US plants to offset the impact of Donald Trump's trade war. As part of its emergency contingency plans, which are being drawn up, the engineer would take on more staff in the US and grow its North American footprint. It is also looking at how much of its production can be shifted to the US from geographies targeted by tariffs. It already employs 6,000 people in the US spread across 11 sites. - The Sunday Telegraph