Category Archives: Business

Markets jittery as trade war and recession worries spook investors -as it happened

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Beijing has alarmed investors by threatening counter-measures against the US, threatening to escalate the trade war

Earlier:

Update: Britain’s FTSE 100 has hit a new six-month closing low.

The blue-chip index just closed 80 points lower at 7,067, a drop of 1.1%.

Time for a quick recap

Financial markets remain volatile today, as fears of an economic downturn hit stock prices and drive bond prices to new record highs.

Related: Online shoppers and Amazon Prime Day lift UK retail sales

If President Xi would meet directly and personally with the protesters, there would be a happy and enlightened ending to the Hong Kong problem. I have no doubt! https://t.co/eFxMjgsG1K

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Dow Jones plunges 800 points as recession fears rattle markets

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  • Sharp declines come after Tuesday rally inspired by tariff delays
  • Trump urges Fed chief Powell to make further interest rate cuts

Signs of a global economic slowdown roiled the markets on Wednesday as shares dived and investors fled to bonds with such intensity that short-term yields rose above longer-term ones for the first time since the crisis of a decade ago – an inversion many market-watchers saw as a strong signal of an approaching recession.

Related: Inverted curve proves White House has won its battle with the Fed

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Branding cheese as feta and gruyere may be banned in Australia under EU deal

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The trade minister, Simon Birmingham, has released a list of food products the EU wants protected as ‘geographical indicators’

Australia is gearing up for a fight with the European Union over the naming of hundreds of products including feta, gruyere and scotch beef as negotiations continue over an “ambitious” free trade agreement.

The trade minister, Simon Birmingham, has released a list of names the EU wants protected as part of the new trade deal – known as “geographical indications” or GIs – which are aimed at protecting European products.

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Saudi Aramco ready for record $2tn IPO after first-half results

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Profits fell 12% but company still ahead of world’s six biggest listed oil producers combined

Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil group is ready to move ahead with a record $2tn (£1.7tn) market float after revealing profits of $46.9bn for the first half of this year.

Saudi Aramco’s profits for the six months ending in June were down from $53.2bn in the first half of last year owing to lower oil prices, but were still well ahead of the world’s six biggest listed oil companies combined.

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Britons have spent £4bn stockpiling goods in case of no-deal Brexit

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Research suggests one in five people have a food, drinks and medicine hoard worth £380

Britons have spent £4bn stockpiling goods in preparation for a possible no-deal Brexit, new research suggests.

One in five people are already hoarding food, drinks and medicine, spending an extra £380 each, according to a survey by the finance provider Premium Credit. The survey found that about 800,000 people have spent more than £1,000 building up stockpiles before the 31 October Brexit deadline.

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Versace apologises after tops imply Hong Kong and Macau are countries

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One of China’s best-known actors, Yang Mi, ends contract over controversy

The luxury fashion label Versace and its artistic director, Donatella Versace, apologised to China on Sunday after one of its T-shirts was criticised for identifying the semi-autonomous regions of Hong Kong and Macau as countries.

Versace said on its Weibo account that it had made a mistake and had stopped selling and destroyed the T-shirts on 24 July.

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UK energy watchdog demands answers after major power cut

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Outage caused travel chaos and cut electricity to almost 1m people in England and Wales

The energy watchdog, Ofgem, is demanding answers from the National Grid after a power cut left people stuck in trains for up to nine hours and cut electricity to almost 1 million people in England and Wales.

The biggest power outage in a decade caused widespread disruption on the rail network during the evening rush hour on Friday. Traffic light systems stopped working, causing gridlock in some areas, and Newcastle airport was left in darkness. Power had been restored to 900,000 customers by Saturday, but the rail network was struggling to get services back to normal.

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Transport chaos across England and Wales after major power cuts

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Failure on National Grid network affects train services and road users

Large parts of England and Wales have been left without electricity following a major power cut, electricity network operators have said, with a serious impact reported on rail and road services, including city traffic lights.

Passengers were shut out of some of the country’s busiest train stations during the Friday evening rush hour, while hundreds of thousands of homes were left without electricity after what the National Grid described as a problem with two generators.

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Canada announces regulations to cut price of prescription drugs

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  • Move hailed as ‘crucial step to lower prescription drug costs’
  • New rules were resisted by pharmaceutical companies

The Canadian government has announced regulations to reduce patented drug prices it said would save Canadians C$13.2bn (US$10bn) over a decade, overriding heavy opposition from pharmaceutical companies.

The changes are the biggest reform to Canada’s drug price regime since 1987. They will save money for patients, employers and insurers including the government at the expense of drug company profits. They also could eventually cut the earnings of drugmakers in the United States, the world’s largest pharmaceutical market.

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UK government agrees £300m rescue package for British Steel

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New funds thought to be enough to secure a sale to widening list of interested private bidders

The government has moved to rescue British Steel with a financial support package worth as much as £300m that ministers believe will be enough to secure backing from a private bidder.

It is understood that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has agreed to substantially increase support to bidders for British Steel, which employs more than 4,000 people, after months of wrangling following the company’s collapse into administration.

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Kylie Jenner celebrates birthday on £1m-a-week superyacht

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Cosmetics billionaire and reality TV star boarded vessel in Italy for 22nd birthday

Kylie Jenner, the Keeping up with the Kardashians reality TV star whose eponymous cosmetics empire has turned her into the world’s youngest billionaire, will this weekend spend more than £1m on a party to celebrate her 22nd birthday onboard a $126m (£104m) superyacht.

Jenner has chartered the 91.5m (300ft) yacht Tranquility, which features a swimming pool, jacuzzi, sauna, Turkish bath, an “experiential shower”, a cinema and helicopter landing pad, to party in the Mediterranean this weekend.

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Chase Bank cancels all credit card debt for Canadian customers

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Clients ‘over the moon’ at US lender’s move as it withdraws from market

Chase Bank is forgiving all outstanding debt owed by customers of its two Canadian credit cards as it exits the country’s market.

Customers using the Amazon.ca Rewards Visa and the Marriott Rewards Premier Visa were pleasantly surprised to find the balance on their credit cards had been wiped clean.

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1MDB: Malaysia files charges against 17 current and ex-Goldman Sachs bosses

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Bank has been under scrutiny for its role in helping to raise $6.5bn through bond offerings

Malaysia has filed criminal charges against 17 current and former directors at subsidiaries of Goldman Sachs Group in a multibillion-dollar corruption investigation at state fund 1MDB, the attorney general said on Friday.

Goldman Sachs has been under scrutiny for its role in helping to raise $6.5bn through bond offerings for 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), the subject of corruption and money-laundering investigations in at least six countries.

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Climate crisis may be increasing jet stream turbulence, study finds

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Potential impacts of rise in vertical shear include longer, bumpier and dearer flights

The climate crisis could be making transatlantic flights more bumpy, according to research into the impact of global heating on the jet stream.

Jet streams are powerful currents of air at the altitudes which planes fly. . They result from the air temperature gradient between the poles and the tropics, and reach speeds of up to 250mph (400kmph). They also sometimes meander.

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Surprise rise in Chinese exports boosts shares in Europe and Asia – as it happened

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A degree of calm has returned to world stock markets, after heavy selling earlier this week amid fears that the one-year trade war between the US and China was turning into a full-blown currency war. Washington branded Beijing a currency manipulator after the yuan fell sharply beyond the seven-to-one-dollar mark on Monday. This led to turmoil in financial markets – and US and UK stocks had their worst day this year.

Investors have been cheered today by better-than-expected trade data from China and the stabilisation of its currency. Wall Street has opened higher. In Europe, shares are even further ahead.

On Wall Street, stocks are up after the opening bell, mirroring gains in the UK, where the FTSE 100 index is 0.7% ahead at 7,250.

Gold pulls back after sharpest daily gain in 7 weeks but holds above $1,500 https://t.co/lnRzEbdH4z

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Revealed: how Monsanto’s ‘intelligence center’ targeted journalists and activists

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Internal documents show how the company worked to discredit critics and investigated singer Neil Young

Monsanto operated a “fusion center” to monitor and discredit journalists and activists, and targeted a reporter who wrote a critical book on the company, documents reveal. The agrochemical corporation also investigated the singer Neil Young and wrote an internal memo on his social media activity and music.

The records reviewed by the Guardian show Monsanto adopted a multi-pronged strategy to target Carey Gillam, a Reuters journalist who investigated the company’s weedkiller and its links to cancer. Monsanto, now owned by the German pharmaceutical corporation Bayer, also monitored a not-for-profit food research organization through its “intelligence fusion center”, a term that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies use for operations focused on surveillance and terrorism.

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Passenger anger as tens of thousands hit by BA systems failure

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More than 500 flights cancelled or delayed by IT glitch affecting London airports

British Airways was facing passenger anger on Wednesday as more than 500 flights were cancelled or delayed as a result of a systems failure.

In the latest in a series of operational problems to hit the airline, and the travel plans of tens of thousands with holiday and business plans, London’s Heathrow, Gatwick and City were the airports most affected by the computer failure. BA refused to reveal the number of flights affected but according to Flightstats.com, which tracks arrivals and departures, by 5.30pm the airline had cancelled 140 flights and a further 370 had been delayed.

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Son of Congo-Brazzaville president accused of siphoning off $50m

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Denis Christel Sassou-Nguesso allegedly used money-laundering scheme spanning six European countries

The son of Congo-Brazzaville’s president has misappropriated $50m (£41m) of public money by routing it through shell companies and secrecy jurisdictions, according to a new investigation.

Six countries in the EU, the US state of Delaware and the British Virgin Islands all played a key role in Denis Christel Sassou-Nguesso’s scheme, according to Global Witness. The campaign group said the money was siphoned off through an apparent sham contract Congo-Brazzaville had with a Brazilian infrastructure company.

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European stock markets rise as US-China standoff eases – business live

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The pound is declining again today and is trading close to two-year lows versus the dollar and the euro. It is down 0.21% against the dollar at $1.2145, not far from the 31-month low of $1.2080 reached last week. Against the euro, sterling is 0.12% lower at €1.0855, not far from the 23-month low hit yesterday.

The risk of a no-deal Brexit has increased markedly under Boris Johnson’s government. When he became prime minister a fortnight ago, he said he would take Britain out of the EU at the end of October “do or die”. Investors are also fretting about the possibility of a no-confidence vote in the new Conservative government after the summer recess, or an early general election.

There are many key dates ahead for sterling, but the passing of 5 September without a successful of no confidence in the government will in our view be a further important step along the road of a no-deal Brexit on 31 October.

The mood in financial markets is still fragile. Oil prices have hit a fresh seven-month low as traders worried about the impact of the US-China trade war on the global economy.

Brent crude, the global benchmark, fell nearly 2% to $58.57 a barrel earlier this morning and is now trading down 0.2% at $58.82 a barrel. Prices have tumbled more than 20% since hitting their 2019 peak in April.

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Trump hints he is ready to dig in for long US-China trade war

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Tweet in support of US farmers suggests dispute with Beijing could extend well into 2020

Donald Trump has dropped the broadest possible hint that he is ready to dig in for the long term in the Washington’s trade war with China, after the latest escalation in the long-running dispute between the world’s two largest economies.

The US president said he was ready to provide support for US farmers in 2020 should they face pressure from China, as economists at Goldman Sachs said the standoff could continue until after the US presidential election in November 2020.

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