Closing summary
Germany moved closer to gas rationing on Wednesday, after activating an emergency plan designed to help it cope with any disruption in supplies from Russia, ahead of Moscow’s Thursday deadline for gas payments in roubles.
Vladimir Putin has demanded that “unfriendly” countries i.e. Europe and the US pay for their gas shipments in roubles, rather than euros or dollars, but western nations have rejected this demand and accused Russia of breaching contracts. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is particularly reliant on Russia for natural gas.
Amid fears of a looming showdown with Putin over gas flows, Germany’s economy minister, Robert Habeck, convened a crisis team and warned consumers and businesses to reduce consumption, telling them “every kilowatt hour counts”.
Russia’s top lawmaker suggested that Russia should also switch to rouble payments for other commodities. Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, said in a post on Telegram: “If you want gas, find roubles,” before suggesting that rouble payments should be extended to oil, grains, metals, fertiliser, coal and timber for roubles on global markets where it is profitable to do so.
European stock markets are mostly in the red, down between 0.3% (Italy) and 1.4% (Germany), while the UK’s FTSE 100 index has edged 0.26% higher to 7,557. Wall Street has also opened lower, as yesterday’s optimism about the peace talks between Ukraine and Russia evaporated.
Oil prices have risen by more than $4 with Brent crude at $114.41 a barrel, while British and Dutch gas prices jumped amid supply fears.
Glencore, the mining and commodities group, said it had stopped seeking new business in Russia, but will honour its legal obligations under pre-existing contracts. It said there was “no “realistic way” to exit its 10.6% stake in the Russian metals group EN+ and its 0.6% holding in Rosneft “in the current environment”.
Our other main stories today:
Thank you for reading. We’ll be back tomorrow. Bye! – JK
Updated
Starbucks paid just £5.4m in UK corporation tax last year despite making a gross profit of £95m, reports our wealth correspondent Rupert Neate.
The company, which has faced years of heated criticism for paying very little tax in the UK, paid out £26.5m in royalty payments to its parent company - almost five times as much the UK tax it paid, according to accounts filed at Companies House.
The royalty payment helped Starbucks, which is run by the billionaire Howard Schultz, make a global profit of $4.9bn in the same period.
UK division collected sales of £328m from its 1,000 UK stores in the year to 3 October 2021, up from £243m in the previous year when shops were temporarily closed during the pandemic lockdown.
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