Closing summary
Grocery price inflation in the UK slowed to an annual rate of 6.7% in December, while retailers enjoyed their busiest Christmas since 2019, according to the data firm Kantar.
Inflation is now at its lowest level since April 2022, but many consumers are still feeling the pinch. Prices for sweets, eggs and frozen potato products rose fastest but prices fell for dairy items, including butter, milk and cream.
The FTSE 100 index is celebrating its 40th birthday today.
HSBC has become the latest big UK lender to announce across-the-board mortgage interest rate cuts, with leading names announcing reductions of up to one percentage point.
The bank’s new deals announced today include a headline-grabbing five-year fixed remortgage deal of 3.94% for those borrowing up to 60% of the property value.
Post Office workers wrongly accused of stealing have highlighted that many of them are still waiting for compensation four years after winning a landmark court case proving their innocence.
Between 1999 and 2015 the Post Office relentlessly pursued branch owner-operators across the UK for alleged theft, fraud and false accounting, despite knowing that there were faults in Horizon IT software they were using, resulting in more than 700 prosecutions.
The scandal, frequently described as the most widespread miscarriage of justice in UK history, has now been dramatised in a series currently airing on ITV.
Ryanair has said that it has seen a drop in the number of tickets it has been able to sell after a number of major online booking websites stripped the budget carrier’s flights from their listings.
Europe’s largest airline said that in early December “most” of the larger online travel agent sites – including Booking.com, Kiwi and Kayak – “suddenly removed Ryanair’s flights from sale on their websites”.
Two exclusives:
Several of the world’s biggest carmakers lobbied the UK government to try to weaken or delay rules to accelerate electric car sales and cut Britain’s carbon emissions.
Toyota, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and Nissan were among the companies to ask for delays in enforcement of the zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate that obliges them to sell increasing proportions of electric cars or face heavy fines, according to documents seen by the Guardian.
However, Volkswagen, Ford and Tesla argued that the ZEV mandate should be tougher.
The government has been accused of breaking its promise to English farmers, with hundreds of millions of pounds missing from the farming budget.
Ministers had promised that by the end of this parliament, they would spend £2.4bn a year on agriculture. This money was to replace the EU’s common agricultural policy, which paid farmers for each hectare of land they managed. Instead, the government promised that farmers could improve the natural environment and be paid handsomely for delivering public goods, thus helping nature and keeping farms in business.
Thank you for reading. We’ll be back tomorrow. Take care, JK
US ISM manufacturing shows further decline
Economic activity at US factories contracted in December for the 14th consecutive month, following a 28-month period of growth, say the nation’s supply executives in the latest manufacturing survey from the Institute for Supply Management.
The index improved to 47.4 from 46.7 but still indicated contraction. It was a tad better than economists had forecast. Any reading above 50 points to growth, any reading below to contraction.
US ISM MANUFACTURING PMI ACTUAL 47.4 (FORECAST 47.1, PREVIOUS 46.7)
— Breaking Market News (@financialjuice) January 3, 2024
US ISM MFG. PRICES PAID ACTUAL 45.2 (FORECAST 49.5, PREVIOUS 49.9)
US ISM MFG. NEW ORDERS INDEX ACTUAL 47.1 (FORECAST 49.1, PREVIOUS 48.3)
US ISM MFG. EMPLOYMENT INDEX ACTUAL 48.1 (FORECAST 46.5, PREVIOUS…
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