The move comes as the UK automotive industry privately lobbies against the proposed 2040 introduction of a ban on sales of new diesel trucks, amid a split between manufacturers over when heavy goods vehicles should abandon fossil fuels.
A survey has found that almost a quarter of workers are actively planning to change employers in the next few months, amid a “great resignation” prompted by a high number of vacancies and burnout caused by the pandemic.
Training is another option -- with the holiday park operator Haven launching a training scheme for 200 chefs in the latest attempt to address a shortage of skilled kitchen staff.
Ryanair will pull its share listing from the London Stock Exchange in the next six months because of Brexit, as the airline made a quarterly profit for the first time since 2019.
And fashion brand French Connection is also departing the stock market, after shareholders backed the £29m takeover led by a Newcastle-based businessman, putting the company back into private hands for the first time since 1983.
Retailer Next (+2.7%), precious metals producer Fresnillo (+2.5%) and educational publisher Pearson (+2.4%) also rallied, with (most) banks also having a solid day.
But cybersecurity firm Darktrace had another rough day, plunging by 15% to finish at 681.5p.
They’re under pressure since an analyst note raising doubts about its valuation and as the expiry looms of a lock-up on insiders selling their stakes.
Housebuilders also fell, with traders anticipating that a rise in UK interest rates might hit demand. Barclays ended the day down 0.7%, as investors came to terms with Jes Staley’s departure.
Michael Hewson of CMC Markets sums up the day:
BT Group shares have popped higher ahead of this week’s H1 numbers after the company said it had delivered on its £1bn of gross annualised cost savings 18 months ahead of its March 2023 deadline.
Ryanair shares are modestly higher after reporting its first quarterly profit since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Today’s first half numbers still translated into a loss of €48m, due to a poor Q1, but the number of passengers carried saw a rise of 128% compared to a year ago, with the load factor rising to 79%. Revenues came in at €2.15bn, although the business cautioned on a return to profitability due to its focus on capacity over prices which are likely to be kept low over the rest of the year in order to put pressure on its competitors. The airline also said it is considering delisting its shares from the London Stock Exchange.
IAG shares are also higher, after its British Airways operation announced it had agreed a £1bn 5 year committed credit facility with UK Export Finance, on top of a £2bn facility that was agreed at the end of last year, and drawn in March 2021.
Barclays share price has fallen back on the announcement today that CEO Jes Staley has stepped down with immediate effect, to be replaced by Head of Global Markets, C.S Venkatakrishnan. Staley is said to be contesting the preliminary conclusions of an FCA and PRA investigation into his “characterisation to Barclays of his relationship with the late Mr Jeffrey Epstein”.
On the flip side, both Lloyds Banking Group is building on its gains from last week, finally overcoming the 50p level, taking out its previous peaks in June, and hitting its highest levels since February 2020 in the process.
Due to the energy crisis in the UK, we find ourselves in an unsustainable situation and regrettably, Bluegreen Energy Services Limited is forced to make the difficult decision to cease trading.
Under Ofgem’s safety net, all Bluegreen Energy customers are well protected, and your supply of Gas/Electricity is secured and will not be subject to interruptions.
Energy regulator Ofgem will now appoint a new supplier to take on Bluegreen’s customers, through its Supplier of Last Resort process.
I think this is the 15th UK energy company to collapse since August, and the 17th collapse during 2021.
Bluegreen Energy Services, an energy supplier serving around 5,900 domestic customers and a small number of non-domestic customers, has today announced they are ceasing to trade.
While bitcoin, ether and even ‘joke coin’ dogecoin have all rocketed in value since their early days, looking for the next sensation can be risky amid a speculative frenzy.
Here’s Bloomberg’s take:
Investors drawn to cryptocurrencies can be forgiven for having an expectation of high returns, especially lately. After all, even as the S&P 500 Index more than doubled in the past five years, Bitcoin rocketed more than 80-fold -- albeit with much of the rally occurring in the past year. “Memecoins” such as Dogecoin and Shiba Inu have also surged, often for no particular reason.
Big gains aren’t a given, though, especially in a market as untamed, sprawling and speculative as crypto. And the inflation in value is often ephemeral. For evidence, there’s Squid Game, or SQUID, the latest memecoin sensation, inspired by the Netflix hit. It surged more than 230,000% in the past week to $2,861.80, according to CoinMarketCap pricing -- only to plunge 100% to less than half a cent as of Monday in New York.
“Betting on the right coin can lead to jaw-dropping riches,” said Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of crypto lender Nexo, in an email Sunday. “The problem is, what goes up in a straight line tends to retreat in a similar fashion.” He added, “you hear that some memecoin investors don’t care about the losses. They are in it for the ride,” but that “once the selling starts, a cascading effect can play out, so it’s wise to only use money you can afford to lose.”
There's many lessons to be learned from the boom-and-bust Squid Game memecoin, the latest crypto sensation https://t.co/apT6FTVCnu
Speculators who bet on a cryptocurrency linked to the Netflix sensation Squid Game have suffered grisly losses.
SQUID was the latest memecoin sensation to grip the crypto world. Launched last week at just one cent, it quickly soared to over $38 by late Sunday night.
Then suddenly today, it surged to $2,861 before immediately plunging almost 100%, to just a quarter of a cent, wiping out those who bought the coin after its value began rising sharply.
The Squid Game cryptocurrency Photograph: CoinMarketCap.com
But concerns about the coin quickly emerged, after users said they were unable to resell their tokens on cryptocurrency exchanges. Now, SQUID has collapsed, heightening suspicions the entire venture was a scam, known as a ‘rug-pull’.
The anonymous hucksters behind a Squid Game cryptocurrency have officially pulled the rug on the project, making off with an estimated $2.1 million. Remember on Friday morning when Gizmodo told you it was an obvious scam? It was only obvious because investors could purchase the crypto but couldn’t sell it. But plenty of people didn’t get the warning in time.
The SQUID cryptocurrency peaked at a price of $2,861 before plummeting to $0 around 5:40 a.m. ET., according to the website CoinMarketCap. This kind of theft, commonly called a “rug pull” by crypto investors, happens when the creators of the crypto quickly cash out their coins for real money, draining the liquidity pool from the exchange.
The SQUID crypto coin was launched just last week and included plenty of red flags, including a three-week old website filled with bizarre spelling and grammatical errors. The website, hosted at SquidGame.cash, has disappeared, along with every other social media presence set up by the scammers. You can see an archived version of the website here.
Shortages at US factories are constraining activity and pushing up prices, says Andrew Hunter, Senior US Economist at Capital Economics.
While the ISM index remains at a strong level by past standards and consistent with solid GDP growth, we already know that shortages – particularly in the autos sector – contributed to a sharp slowdown in third quarter, with little sign of any easing to those supply chain issues any time soon.
Those problems are also far from just a US phenomenon and, based on the deterioration in the international manufacturing surveys in recent months, particularly in China, the US ISM index looks set to drop below 55 by the end of the year.
Back in the UK, holiday park operator Haven is launching a training scheme for 200 chefs in the latest attempt to address a shortage of skilled kitchen staff.
The company, which operates 40 sites across the UK, said successful applicants would receive 18 months of training from professional chefs and would have a talent coach and mentor.
After an eight-week course at selected Haven centres, the trainees will learn on the job at one of the company’s parks.
Haven said trainees would be paid £8.91 an hour, the legal minimum for those aged 23 and over, and would gain a professional apprenticeship qualification through its training partner, Lifetime.
Ann Blyth, the talent director at Haven, said:
“This carefully curated programme will be hugely beneficial to all those selected, giving applicants the tools they need to begin a fantastic career and get that essential on-the-job training, which is very hard to come by these days.”
Good report from ISM on #manufacturing with new orders, production, order backlog, and employment all growing. But supplier deliveries slowing at faster pace, resulting in price increases at a faster rate. That said, inventories are rising but customer inventories still too low. pic.twitter.com/auYoYrr0Ki
ISM: Manufacturers face unprecedented supply chain hurdles
A second survey of US factories, from the Institute of Supply Management, also shows that growth slowed last month.
The ISM’s US manufacturing PMI dipped to 60.8%, down from 61.1% in September.
Although that shows the economy grew for the 17th month in a row, the report also found that supply chain bottlenecks continued to hold back the recovery.
It says:
New Orders, Production and Employment Growing
Supplier Deliveries Slowing at Faster Rate; Backlog Growing
Manufacturing Inventories Growing; Customers’ Inventories Too Low
Prices Increasing, Exports Growing and Imports Contracting
Supply deliveries continue to lengthen and ISM is catching up with the Markit PMI on this metric. No surprises here. pic.twitter.com/LZf4LGSktU
ISM Manufacturing Business Committee Chairman Timothy Fiore, explains that shortages of materials, components and skilled staff are all hitting the sector:
“Business Survey Committee panelists reported that their companies and suppliers continue to deal with an unprecedented number of hurdles to meet increasing demand.
All segments of the manufacturing economy are impacted by record-long raw materials lead times, continued shortages of critical materials, rising commodities prices and difficulties in transporting products. Global pandemic-related issues — worker absenteeism, short-term shutdowns due to parts shortages, difficulties in filling open positions and overseas supply chain problems — continue to limit manufacturing growth potential.
Growth across the US factory sector has been hit by supply chain problems -- matching the problems in the UK.
American manufacturers have reported that production growth hit the slowest in 15 months in October, as severe supplier delays hit output.
And with input costs surging, US manufacturers raised their prices at the fastest rate on record.
That’s according to data firm IHS Markit’s latest Purchasing Manager’s Index. It has dropped to 58.4 in October, down from 60.7 in September, which is the lowest reading in 10 months (any reading over 50 shows growth).
The report found that shortages of materials and long delays receiving them knocked output growth to its lowest since July 2020, and left firms struggling to satisfy another rise in new orders.
The @IHSMarkitPMI US Mnfg PMI was 58.4 in Oct, down from 60.7 in Sep. The "steep" rise in new business was hampered by a shortage of raw materials and long delivery times. Production growth was the slowest since Jul 2020. https://t.co/rVzY3oQnVqpic.twitter.com/zEZLtlKpLV
Companies continued to highlight strong demand conditions, but some noted that raw material shortages were hampering demand from clients as stocks of inputs had already been built or delivery times were too extensive.
The pace of new order growth was the slowest for ten months. New export sales rose only fractionally as foreign demand was also weighed down by the knock-on effects of uncertain supply. In line with capacity constraints, production growth slowed to the softest since July 2020 in October. Raw material and labour shortages were commonly cited as hampering the upturn.
Business confidence fell to its lowest in a year, as firms worried about supply chain disruption and inflation.
Street signs at the intersection of Wall and Broad Streets in lower Manhattan. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP
The US stock market has opened at a fresh record high.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which contains 30 of the largest US companies, has surged through the 36,000 points mark for the first time, continuing its strong rally.
Fast-food restaurant group McDonald’s are the top Dow riser, up 1.5%, followed by enterprise software firm Salesforce.com (+1.4%), Visa (+1.2%) , Boeing (+1.1%) and Disney (+1%).
The broader S&P 500 index, and the tech-focused Nasdaq, are both also at new highs.
Investors are shrugging off the ongoing supply chain crisis, which slowed US growth over the summer, and the prospect that the Federal Reserve starts to taper its stimulus programme this week.
Fiona Cincotta, Senior Financial Markets Analyst at City Index, says an encouraging earnings season has boosted stocks:
US stocks rose at the open amid optimism surrounding the economic recovery as global earnings continue to impress and European stocks hit record highs. Of the 280 S&P 500 companies that have reported 82% have exceeded expectations.
Strong earnings are supporting the belief that the economy will be OK despite headwinds from rising prices, labour shortages and supply chain issues.
Stocks are looking to power higher even as inflation expectations remain high and the bets are rising that the Fed could move to hike rates sooner.
Comments by US treasury secretary Janet Yellen, who expressed confidence in the economic recovery from the pandemic is also helping sentiment.
Back in the City, telecoms group BT continues to lead the FTSE 100 risers after hitting its cost savings plans early.
BT confirmed this morning that it has achieved its target of £1bn gross annualised cost savings 18 months early (it was aiming for March 2023), after the Sunday Telegraph reported it was ahead of schedule.
BT shares are up 4% at 144.5p, on track for their highest close in three weeks, ahead of the company’s Q2 financial results on Thursday where it could announce new savings targets under its modernisation programme.
They had jumped over 200p in June, for the first time since the pandemic, after telecoms entrepreneur Patrick Drahi surprised investors by taking a 12.1% stake in BT.
