OIL
Oil prices have risen over fears the Israel-Hamas fighting could involve more nations in the Middle East. The cost of a barrel of Brent crude, the benchmark for oil prices, was at $89 earlier this morning, before falling back to $86. While the price is down compared to the past month, it was a more than 3% rise following the Hamas attacks on Israel and the strikes on the Gaza strip. More expensive oil has a knock-on effect for the price of petrol and diesel, rising prices can in turn stoke inflation.
DEALS
Waitrose is understood to be in talks with Amazon for a third-party deal to sell groceries via the internet marketplace, in an attempt to attract more shoppers and bolster market share. Amazon struck a similar deal with the supermarket Iceland recently, it also has third-party deals with the Co-op and Morrisons, selling their groceries on its website and delivering them from local branches.
FINANCE
Metro Bank has raised nearly £1bn (£925m) through debt and funding which its chief executive says marks a new chapter and facilitates the “delivery of continued and profitable growth” over the coming years. It has raised £325m in new funding and refinanced £600m of debt. The so-called challenger bank, which became the first new lender to open on Britain’s high streets in more than 100 years when it launched in 2010, now has 2.7m customers, making it one of the top ten largest banks in Britain.
INVESTMENT
Risk-averse UK investors have retreated from fixed income and bond funds, as turmoil in the bond markets in the UK and US dents confidence. Thirty-year gilt yields this week rose to their highest levels since the disastrous Liz Truss mini-budget of September 2022. While the yield on 30-year US Treasuries reached a 16-year high, as markets digested the possibility of higher interest rates for longer and more government borrowing. Figures from the Investment Association show that retail investors pulled a net £356m from fixed income funds in August.
EMPLOYMENT
Companies hiring intentions have fallen to their lowest level in almost ten-years as recession looms, according to figures from advisory firm BDO. Its employment index has declined for a third consecutive month to the weakest level since 2014. BDO monitors business trends by carrying out polls using business surveys and economic indicators and it says companies are struggling to maintain staffing numbers “amid higher borrowing costs, elevated wage growth and weaker consumer demand” the advisory firm said.
GENDER GAP
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel has been awarded to US economist Claudia Goldin, for her work on women’s participation in the labour market. Claudia Goldin, the Harvard-based economics professor, has won the biggest prize in economics “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”. Goldin is a pioneer in the field of gender economics, examining why the gender pay gap still exists today. She has shown that gender gaps will not necessarily close with economic development, and that economic growth does not always improve female labour market outcomes.
ECONOMY
Labour has vowed to reinstate a 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars within months, if it gets into power after the next general election. The shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds has said in an interview with the Financial Times that the party will also set targets for local authorities to roll out EV charging points. This is the first of several sectoral plans that will underpin the party’s industrial strategy, which Reynolds will set out in his speech to the party’s annual conference in Liverpool.
TECH
Google’s antitrust trial, the biggest case in decades, is heading into its fifth week in Washington, with the US justice department painting the tech giant as a “deep-pocketed villain” outspending every rival to buy its prominence for its search engine on mobile phones, reports Bloomberg. Google says it simply had a better product, thanks to its team of scientists and continued investment. However, arguably the fight is not just about Google’s positioning in online search, it’s also about its dominance in the future too and how much it will be allowed to lead in the next frontier of artificial intelligence (AI).
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