Business news 18 October 2021
James Salmon, Operations Director.
Interest rate signal
Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said the central bank will “have to act” to curb inflationary forces and warned higher energy costs mean price pressures will linger.
Speaking to an online panel organized by the Group of 30, Bailey said that while central banks don’t have the tools to counter supply disruptions and he still believes the recent acceleration of inflation will be temporary, officials need to seek to prevent higher inflation expectations from becoming entrenched.
Markets are betting that the Bank of England will start raising rates in the final months of 2021, and will take its benchmark to 1% by the end of 2022 from the current record-low of 0.1%.
Ford
Ford have announced they invest £230m in its Halewood plant for electric vehicle manufacture on Merseyside to secure 500 jobs for Liverpool. Part of the investment will come from the government’s Automotive Transformation Fund.
Pearson
Pearson reported that revenue was up 10% for the nine months through September, reflecting ‘strong’ enrolment growth in virtual schools.The strong enrolment growth in virtual schools in the 2020/21 school year offset flat revenue in online program management.
Land Securities
Land Securities said rent collection rates continued to improve, with September quarter rent collection now at 85% from 81% earlier in June. As at 12 October 2021 – collection day 10 – 85% of the net rent due on 29 September had been paid, this compares with 81% for the June quarter date.
China
China’s economic growth slowed in the July-to-September quarter of 2021, to 4.9% compared with the same period last year. It was down from 7.9% in April-June and rose just 0.2% quarter-on-quarter, weighed by multiple headwinds from a property slump to an energy crisis.
House Prices
Right move has announced that UK house prices rose 1.8% month on month. Rightmove labelled October as the first “full house” since March 2007, meaning price records were posted in all regions of the UK, as well as property market sectors.
National Grid
National Grid said it expected is annual earnings to show a ‘marginally greater’ half-on-half weighting compared to previous years. In a trading update for the six months through September, the company said it expected the first-half earnings weighting in its US regulated operations to be in line with the prior year.In the UK electricity transmission unit, depreciation was now expected to increase by around £50 million in the full year.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin has rallied after falling over the weekend, ahead of an anticipated U.S. exchange-traded fund approval. It fell both Saturday and Sunday to nearly $59,000 before climbing over $62,000 this morning.
Markets
Most stocks and U.S. futures slid this morning as surging energy prices cemented worries about inflation and reinforced bets on policy tightening
Covid & Delta plus
Surging Covid cases in the U.K. have left the country behind the rest of Europe with calls for an investigation into a new variation/mutation known as delta plus. As we were faster to reopen and relax restrictions than other European countries, we are now seeing reports of the highest daily jump in new cases yesterday since mid-July. Weekly deaths from the virus also topped 800 for each of the past six weeks, higher than in other major western European nations.
“At the moment the U.K. has a higher level of Covid-19 than most other comparable countries, this is seen not just in positive tests but in hospital admissions and deaths,” wrote Jim Naismith, a professor at the University of Oxford
Metaverse
Facebook said it would create 10,000 jobs in the EU over the next five years to help develop the “metaverse”, a collective virtual-reality world, not controlled by a single company. The social-networking firm called the investment “a vote of confidence in the strength of the European tech industry and the potential of European tech talent”.
Oil
Oil Prices hit a fresh three-year high on Friday, climbing above $85 a barrel on forecasts of a supply deficit over the next few months as rocketing gas and coal prices stoke a switch to oil products. And oil continued its rise this morning, hitting its highest level in years as demand recovers from the pandemic, boosted by more custom from power generators turning away from expensive gas and coal to fuel oil and diesel.
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