Closing summary
Oil and gold prices have risen following the fall of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who has fled to Russia.
You can follow the latest developments here:
Brent crude futures have gained $1.41 a barrel, or 2%, to $72.52 a barrel, while US crude futures advanced by $1.57 a barrel, or 2.3%, to $68.77 a barrel.
Spot gold, seen as a safe haven, rose by 1.45% and earlier hit a daily high of $2,676 an ounce.
European stock markets are pushing higher while shares on Wall Street slipped. The FTSE 100 index in London rose by 0.65% to 8,362 while Germany’s Dax was flat, France’s CAC climbed by more than 1% and the Italian borsa fell by 0.3%.
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq both fell by around 0.3% while the Dow Jones was flat.
Rachel Reeves has said the UK will face greater barriers to future trade with the European Union, unless there is an improvement in the trading relationship.
Since Brexit the EU has developed new regulations that will impose more costs and red tape on companies outside the bloc, such as carbon tariffs on imports known as a carbon-border adjustment mechanism, to new rules on recycling plastic packaging.
Speaking to journalists ahead of a meeting with eurozone finance ministers today, the first of its kind since Brexit, the chancellor said:
I am not denying that there are barriers [to trade with the EU], and there will be greater barriers in the future, unless we improve our trading relationship with the European Union, which is exactly why I’m here.
She also said that reopening the debate about joining the EU’s single market and customs union would not be good for the country or the economy.
Thank you for reading. We’ll be back tomorrow. Take care! – JK
Updated
Volkswagen workers issue ultimatum and warn of strike escalation
Volkswagen workers said the German carmaker’s management has one last chance to compromise on Monday – or risk strikes on a scale not previously seen by the company, as talks began in a bitter standoff over pay cuts and factory closures.
VW staff downed tools at nine German sites which are under threat, while thousands of workers marched waving flags and blowing whistles to a square to listen to union leaders in Wolfsburg, where the carmaker has its headquarters, Reuters reports.
The latest negotiations come as Europe’s largest carmaker seeks ways to slash costs in Germany to better compete with cheaper Asian rivals that have entered its home market.
Last week’s strikes at VW‘s four carmaking factories cost Volkswagen just under €40,000 euros a minute, a source close to the company told Reuters.
Around 38,000 workers went on strike for four hours in Wolfsburg from the early and middle shifts alone, with the late and night shifts still to follow, the IG Metall union said.
The strikes are already more widespread than the last round of major industrial action at VW in 2018, when more than 50,000 workers went on so-called “warning strikes” over pay at six sites. “Warning strikes” are flagged in advance and of limited duration.
VW‘s management must signal their readiness to make bigger concessions on factors including their own pay and the dividend for unions to take forward negotiations this year, a source said.
Union IG Metall chief negotiator Thorsten Gröger said
Today, the workforce is taking a stand in the form of a nationwide warning strike.
The New Year’s Eve fireworks will be followed by an escalation that this company has never experienced before.
Gröger said management had “one last chance” to get back on track and find a solution this week or next. In the 1970s, a last-minute agreement over pay disputes was reached the night before strikes were due to begin.
Omnicom buys Interpublic to create world's biggest ad agency
Omnicom is buying Interpublic Group in an all-share deal that will create the world’s largest advertising agency with combined annual revenue of almost $26bn.
The New York City agencies have had a hand in iconic marketing campaigns like “Got Milk” for the California Milk Processor Board, “Priceless” for Mastercard, “Because I’m Worth It” for L’Oreal and “Think Different” for Apple.
The combined company will be worth more than $30bn.
Pizza Hut criticised over ‘dangerous’ takeaway promotion including free spins at online roulette
Pizza Hut has been criticised for running a “dangerous” promotion that offered customers “free spins” at online casinos with their takeaway.
Online pizza orders were accompanied by a message congratulating customers for having “unlocked up to 300 free spins at your favourite casino”.
The message continued: “No deposit required! Claim your spins today!”
Online casino games are associated with significantly higher rates of addiction than most other forms of gambling, according to multiple studies. The government recently acted to limit maximum stakes on such games to £5, or £2 for under-25s, a measure that will take effect next year.
The Pizza Hut promotion drew fury from campaigners including the former leader of the Conservative party, Iain Duncan Smith, and Annie Ashton, whose husband, Luke, took his own life after battling a gambling addiction partly fuelled by “free” bets.
Harrogate Spring Water plans to cut down wood planted by schoolchildren
Harrogate Spring Water, which is owned by the multinational Danone,is planning to cut down a wood planted by schoolchildren in order to expand its bottling factory in the North Yorkshire town.
Two primary schools, along with other local volunteers, helped to plant 450 trees in a project organised by the Rotary Club of Harrogate almost 20 years ago.
“They taught us that trees made oxygen and were good for us,” said Lily Stockburn who took part in the tree-planting when she was six years old. “I’m devastated they want to destroy it. To cut down trees to make more plastic bottles goes against everything we learned.”
“It’s lovely woodland. Lots of people walk their dogs there, there’s loads of wildlife,” she added.
Only richest 10% of households can afford average home in England
Only the richest 10% of households can afford to buy an average-priced home in England, according to official figures laying bare the scale of Britain’s broken housing market.
Highlighting the result of decades of house prices outstripping the growth in household incomes, the Office for National Statistics said the cost of buying a home was “unaffordable” in every part of the UK except Northern Ireland.
It said it would take as many as 8.6 years of average annual household disposable income in England, of £35,000, to afford an average-priced home, worth £298,000 last year – almost double the ratio recorded in 1999.
The equivalent ratios were 5.8 in Wales, 5.6 in Scotland and 5 in Northern Ireland, where the average property is only just considered within reach for most families. The ONS defines affordability as a local average house price costing less than five years local average income.
On that basis it said only households with disposable incomes of at least £69,677 – placing them within the top 10% in England – could be considered reasonably able to afford an average-priced home in the country.
In Wales, this applied to households in the top 30%, and in Scotland for the top 40%. Only in Northern Ireland was an average-priced home affordable for a household with an average income.
In London, where house prices have rocketed most in the past two decades, even many households in the top 10% of local earners – with disposable incomes of at least £89,901 – would not be able to afford an average-priced property.
An average home changed hands in the capital for about £530,000 last year, equivalent to 14.1 years of average income. For those in the top 10%, it would take 5.9 years to buy an average property, while it would take 34.7 years for those in the bottom tenth.
Rachel Reeves said reopening the debate about joining the EU’s single market and customs union would not be good for the country or the economy.
Reeves said the deal secured by Boris Johnson was not the best and that she wanted to do “practical things” to improve the trading relationship.
But do we want to reopen a national conversation about our membership of the EU, single market and customs union? Do I think that would be good for us as a country, or indeed good for the economy? I don’t think so. I think those years of uncertainty [during the Brexit negotiations] were bad for the UK, both politically and indeed economically.
At the meeting with the 20 finance ministers of the eurozone, she was expected to discuss the war in Ukraine, global trade and competitiveness. She rejected suggestions that greater closeness to the EU would risk the UK’s relationship with the US under incoming President Donald Trump.
To try and pick a side I think would be very damaging to the UK economy, and we’re not going to do that.
Reeves warns of greater trade barriers with EU unless relationship improves
Rachel Reeves has said the UK will face greater barriers to future trade with the European Union, unless there is an improvement in the trading relationship, reports our Brussels correspondent Jennifer Rankin.
Since Brexit the EU has developed new regulations that will impose more costs and red tape on companies outside the bloc, such as carbon tariffs on imports known as a carbon-border adjustment mechanism, to new rules on recycling plastic packaging.
Speaking to journalists ahead of a meeting with eurozone finance ministers today, the first of its kind since Brexit, the chancellor said:
I am not denying that there are barriers [to trade with the EU], and there will be greater barriers in the future, unless we improve our trading relationship with the European Union, which is exactly why I’m here.
Updated
Bank of England's Ramsden says Bank will be vigilant over greater risk-taking
The Bank of England will be vigilant over the possibility that investors will take greater risks after a year of relative stability in markets, according to Dave Ramsden, deputy governor in charge of markets.
Ramsden said in in the text of a speech at the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, a think tank:
I am also mindful that whilst this has been a year of relative stability, that is never a sign that we should get complacent.
As famed economist Hyman Minsky once said, ‘stability breeds instability’ and the comparatively calmer market conditions of this year could lead to greater risk-taking in future.
Down by the sea: poverty brings Blackpool life expectancy to UK low, writes our North of England editor Josh Halliday.
It is a league table that no one wants to top. For the first time in 20 years, Blackpool, a once-glamorous seaside resort, this week overtook Glasgow to have the lowest average male life expectancy in the UK.
Men born in Blackpool will now live until just after their 73rd birthday on average, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) study, six years less than the average in the rest of England.
The figures highlighted an uncomfortable truism about modern life in Britain: wealth brings health and poverty kills, in what the ONS called a “clear” north-south divide.
Those born in the wealthy Hampshire district of Hart tend to live a full decade longer than those in the poorest areas, while men born in the south-east of England will live three years longer on average than those in the north-east.
Here is our full story on Boohoo:
I’ve seen how declining British high streets can be brought back to vibrant life, writes Holly Lewis, co-founding partner at the research, urbanism and architecture practice We Made That, and town architect for London Borough of Hackney.
If you have been reading anything about high streets recently, the chances are at least some of it included the reporting of another closure or collapse: M&S and Boots shutting stores, banks closing branches, pubs withdrawing. The list is long, and perhaps we would be less concerned if we were all confident that one ailing business would be replaced with another, more dynamic one. But for many of our high streets, that is not the case.
Against that gloomy backdrop, a report published at the end of November by the House of Lords’ built environment committee makes for refreshing reading, opening with evidence of “an optimistic and flourishing future” for our high streets.
Nevertheless, the report is honest about the scale of the problem. High street vacancy remains a persistent challenge in too many town and city centres. Earlier this year, a government consultation on this issue cited 172,000 empty units across the UK, with 80% of those having been vacant for more than two years.
Lebanon dollar bonds rally on hopes of more stability
Lebanon’s dollar-denominated bonds have rallied by more than 1%, after rebels in neighbouring Syria toppled president Bashar al-Assad – amid expectations this could weaken Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and bring political and economic stability.
Lebanon’s 2029 bond gained the most, up 1.05 cents to 11.78 cents on the dollar, its highest level since December 2022, Reuters reported, citing Tradeweb data. Israel’s international bonds also rose slightly.
Lebanese bond prices remain distressed, although the bonds have rallied at several points since Israel began bombing Lebanon, which investors attributed to hopes that a weakened Hezbollah could break political deadlock and enable progress toward sustainable fiscal policies.
In Syria, rebels seized the capital Damascus in a lightning advance over the weekend and Assad fled to Russia following 13 years of civil war and five decades of dynastic rule.
Analysts said this meant Iran had lost a key component of its arc of influence in the region, as well as its overland link with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Hasnain Malik at Tellimer Research told Reuters:
This undermines Hezbollah further, which, in the near term, means lower security risk for Israel and a potentially more market-friendly government in Lebanon,” said .
Hezbollah has played a big part in the power struggle in Lebanon, which has had no head of state or a fully empowered cabinet since ex-president Michel Aoun’s term ended at the end of October 2022, with the country mired in one of the world’s worst economic crises .
The latest events might force a weakened Hezbollah to play a more constructive role, said Tim Ash, senior sovereign strategist at RBC BlueBay Asset Management.
New international focus on a wider Levant reconstruction effort will surely drag Lebanon along with Syrian coattails – assuming some stability and political reform in Syria itself.
Jason Tuvey, deputy chief emerging markets economist at Capital Economics, said:
The fall of Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad has been warmly received by many, at least outside Russia and Iran, but a key lesson from the other Arab Spring countries is that hopes for a shift towards a liberal, Western-style democracy are likely to be dashed.
The implications for the global economy and energy markets from events in Syria are likely to be limited, although these potentially represent another major shift in the geopolitical sands in the region.
Oil and gold prices rise after Assad's fall
Oil prices have climbed by more than 1% after the fall of Bashar al Assad’s regime in Syria injected even greater uncertainty into Middle East politics.
Brent crude futures have gained 78 cents to $71.90 a barrel while US crude futures rose by 87 cents to $68.07 a barrel.
Spot gold, seen as a safe haven, rose by 1% to $2,657.35 an ounce earlier, and is now trading by 0.8% higher.
Stock markets in Europe are mixed, with the FTSE 100 index rising by 19 points, or 0.2%, to 8,327, propelled by mining shares. Germany’s Dax and Italy’s FTSE MiB have both slipped by 0.2% while France’s CAC is 0.36% ahead.
Mining groups, carmakers and luxury stocks LVMH and Richemont all gained after signs of fresh stimulus measures to shore up China’s slowing economy. Beijing will adopt a more proactive fiscal policy and moderately loose monetary policy next year and step up “unconventional” counter-cyclical adjustments, state media reported, citing a Politburo meeting.
Saverio Berlinzani, analyst at ActivTrades, said:
It seems that the Assad regime has fallen in favour of a new Islamic regime, which could change the geopolitical scenarios in the Middle East. Who is behind the jihadist rebels? Someone who wants the end of Russia, Assad’s historical ally?
Trump, meanwhile, has already let it be known that aid to Kiev will decrease. It must be said that, even in such a fragmented context, the markets have held up well for now. The hope is that all this chaos on Europe’s doorstep can find a peaceful solution through international agreements. It is clear that the current change in Syria will bring changes to the geopolitical order of all countries in the area.
Updated
Boohoo wins shareholder advisor support in battle against Ashley
The UK fast fashion retailer Boohoo, aimed at 16- to 30-year-olds, has won the support of an influential shareholder advisor in its battle to prevent Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley from taking over.
This morning, Boohoo published the recommendation of Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) that investors vote against Ashley and another associate joining its board at a meeting on 20 December. Ashley would become chief executive under his plan.
Ashley has made Boohoo as the latest in a long line of targets to become part of his corporate empire. He made his fortune with Sports Direct, but has expanded far beyond trainers and tracksuits through a long string of acquisitions of clothing retailers ranging from House of Fraser to Flannels.
Boohoo has become a target as its value cratered by more than 90% from its peak during the coronavirus pandemic. A surge of online shopping during lockdowns inflated a bubble in internet retailers, only for it to burst as spending moved back to the high street. Boohoo and other British rivals such as Asos have come under particular pressure from Chinese competitors led by Shein, who gained market share by supplying the latest trends even faster, direct from factories.
Boohoo argues that Ashley is seeking to disrupt Boohoo’s turnaround efforts, “destabilising the company and acting only in its own commercial self-interest”.
According to Boohoo, ISS said that “Frasers has offered a superficial view of performance and no specific plans for change and the two Frasers candidates, Mike Ashley and Mike Lennon, have real conflicts of interest”. It concluded that changing Boohoo’s board was not warranted.
Ashley’s Mash Holdings owns 28% of the shares in Boohoo, which was founded in Manchester in 2006 by Mahmud Kamani, who still serves as executive director. Boohoo last month defied Ashley by replacing former chief executive John Lyttle with Dan Finley, who had led the Debenhams brand under Boohoo’s ownership.
Facebook UK cut 700 staff and reduced tax bill last year
Facebook cut more than 700 employees in the UK last year at a cost of £79m, after parent company Meta embarked on its first ever round of redundancies as part of a global cost-cutting drive to offset a disastrous collapse in revenues.
The company – which is one of the most valuable US tech companies behind Apple, the Google owner Alphabet, and Amazon – also reduced its UK tax bill to just over 12% of its pre-tax profits, half the standard 25% corporation tax rate.
Mark Zuckerberg slashed 11,000 jobs globally after admitting that Meta had overinvested at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in the belief the increase in online activity would continue and accelerate even after Covid eased.
UK ‘needs to play catch-up’ in global race to rewire electricity grids
The UK is lagging behind in the race to rewire the world’s power grids by investing four times more on renewable energy projects than on the electricity cables needed to connect them to the grid and consumers, according to a new report.
For every pound the UK has spent on renewables it has spent only 25p on the cables and power lines, claims the report by Bloomberg NEF, which placed the UK eighth in an index of the world’s 10 biggest energy markets.
The UK has trailed its European neighbours in Germany, Spain and Italy in constructing the electricity grids needed for a surge of projects due to its low ratio of grid investment to clean energy spending. It was also behind China, the US, Australia and Brazil in the global league table, but was rated ahead of India and Japan.
Eurostar the worst-performing rail service in Europe, campaigners find
Eurostar is the worst-performing rail service on the continent and Germany’s Deutsche Bahn is one of the least reliable, according to a ranking of 27 European operators.
The report from the campaign group Transport and Environment (T&E) scored Europe’s rail operators on factors such as ticket prices, punctuality and willingness to give refunds. It found that only 11 operators had punctuality rates above 80%.
Eurostar disputed the findings. Deutsche Bahn declined to comment.
Trains emit less planet-heating gas than planes and cars, but on many routes holidaymakers find it cheaper to fly and commuters find it more reliable to drive. Campaigners said the results showed that all rail operators could do better, and encouraged governments to help them.
Updated
UK job vacancies fall at fastest rate since pandemic as business confidence slumps
The number of job vacancies in November fell at the fastest rate since the start of the pandemic, as business confidence slumped to its lowest level in almost two years, according to two new reports.
In a damaging blow to the government efforts to boost growth, the latest monthly report on the job market from accountancy firm KPMG and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) found demand for staff declined at a “sharp and accelerated pace” last month, with the steepest fall in vacancies since August 2020.
November marked the 13th successive month of a fall in staff demand, with an “especially severe” drop among vacancies for permanent workers, in the latest sign of a further deterioration in the UK labour market.
Jon Holt, group chief executive at KPMG, said:
Businesses are having to weigh up the prospect of increasing employee costs following the budget, which has led to an accelerated slowdown in hiring activity across the board.
Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at ING, has looked at the Chinese inflation figures in more detail.
The main reason for the slowdown was food prices, which fell -2.7% month-on-month to bring the year-on-year level to just 1.0%.
Non-food inflation, on the other hand, managed to bounce back to 0.0% YoY after two months of year-on-year deflation. Non-food prices remain under pressure amid high price competition in China.
What does this mean for central bank policy? She says:
The unexpectedly weak November read further confirms our view that there is still plenty of room for monetary policy easing in the months ahead.
Markets have been discussing the possibility of an imminent RRR [reserve requirement ratio] cut which is certainly on the table, but the inflation data shows that there is capacity to bundle an RRR cut with a further interest rate cut as well. We are expecting 30bp of rate cuts and 100bp of RRR cuts before the end of 2025.
We are expecting inflation will remain low in 2025 but to avoid deflation at least in terms of headline CPI inflation thanks to an expected acceleration of monetary and fiscal policy stimulus. While this is still the base case, November’s data does raise the possibility that we could see several months of negative year-on-year growth if food prices continue to come in softer than expected, as non-food prices continue to show deflationary pressure.
Reeves to pledge closer EU ties in pivot from post-Brexit ‘division and chaos’
Rachel Reeves is heading to Brussels for her first meeting with eurozone finance ministers today to reset ties with the EU.
The chancellor will tell them that reducing the UK’s trade barriers with the European Union will improve the growth prospects for both.
She plans to end the UK’s “fractious” post-Brexit accord with the EU, a relationship she said had been defined by “division and chaos”, by promising closer ties in the first speech by a UK chancellor to eurozone finance ministers since 2020.
Reeves will say she wants to adopt a “business-like” approach through an “economic reset” with the EU, offering the goal of driving up trade and growth.
Reeves will tell the meeting in Brussels:
This is the first time a British chancellor has addressed the Eurogroup [of finance ministers] since Brexit.
It is a signal of the new UK government’s commitment to resetting our country’s relationship with the European Union, and the importance I place in realising the economic potential of our shared future.
“I know that the last few years have been fractious. Division and chaos defined the last government’s approach to Europe. It will not define ours.
She will add:
I believe that a closer economic relationship between the UK and the EU is not a zero-sum game. It’s about improving both our growth prospects.
The reset in relations is about doing what is the best interests of our shared economies and those that depend on it. That means breaking down barriers to trade.
Introduction: Markets calm after fall of Assad; Chinese inflation falls to five-month low
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets, and the world economy.
Financial markets are calm after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, where people are celebrating and a new era starts following five decades of dynastic rule.
It comes after political turmoil in France and South Korea, and Asian shares are mixed.
The South Korean stock market tumbled by 2.8% and the country’s currency fell to a 15-month low against the dollar amid uncertainty over the fate of president Yoon Suk Yeol, even though the authorities pledged to stabilise markets. He has been banned from leaving the country, as opposition politicians accused his party of staging a “second coup” by refusing to impeach him over his botched declaration of martial law last week. The opposition leader Lee Jae-myung warned that the political fallout is causing financial market volatility and threatens to damage the economy.
Japan’s Nikkei index rose by 0.3% helped by an upward revision to economic growth and MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan edged 0.15% higher.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose by 2% after China vowed to implement a more proactive fiscal policy and moderately loose monetary policy next year, the state news agency Xinhua reported, citing a Politburo meeting.
The price of gold and crude oil has risen slightly. Brent crude futures climbed by 0.66% to $71.59 a barrel. Spot gold rose by 0.3% to $2,639 an ounce, as China’s central bank resumed gold purchases after a six-month hiatus.
China’s consumer inflation hit a five-month low in November as prices for fresh food pulled back and factory deflation persisted, suggesting Beijing’s efforts to to shore up demand with fresh stimulus measures have not had much of an impact. China braces for new tariffs from the second Donald Trump presidency next year.
The consumer price index rose at an annual rate of 0.2% last month, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, down from October’s 0.3% and less than the 0.5% forecast by analysts. Consumer prices fell by 0.6% in October from September, faster than October’s 0.3% monthly drop.
Core inflation, excluding volatile food and fuel prices, edged higher to 0.3% from 0.2%, though.
This week is packed with central bank meetings.
Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote Bank, said:
The European Central Bank (ECB), the Bank of Canada (BoC), the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Swiss National Bank (SNB) will announce their latest policy verdict throughout this week and all – except the RBA – are expected to lower their rates.
The BoC is expected to cut by 50bp while the SNB and the ECB are expected to announce a 25bp cut. Some investors are convinced that the ECB could announce more than a 25bp cut. Either it could go bigger with a 50bp cut, or cut by 25bp but shift their focus from inflation to economic growth. I believe that the second option is more plausible. If that’s the case, we should not see a significant selloff in the euro post-decision.
The Swiss central bank could also do a bigger 50bp cut, after it has been spending quite a bit to restrain the Swiss franc (its intervention to sell francs for euros is a reason why the euro is not testing parity against the US dollar).
Bruce Kasman, head of economic research at JPMorgan, said:
Incoming data support our call for global growth lift into year-end, despite a slipping euro area and building political stress.
We expect policy rates in Canada, euro area and Sweden to drop to 2% or lower over the coming year, while US and UK rates settle close to 4%. This month’s meetings should point this direction.
The Agenda
1pm GMT: Bank of England deputy governor Dave Ramsden speech on financial stability
Updated
