Closing summary
The European Central Bank has raised interest rates by 75 basis points, as expected, taking the deposit rate to 1.5%, the highest in over a decade, and signalled further rate hikes in the months to come. The euro fell more than 1% below parity with the dollar and is now down 0.6% at $1.0016.
Shell has paid zero windfall tax in the UK despite making record global profits of nearly $30bn (£26bn) so far this year, prompting calls for the government to overhaul a scheme that was supposed to raise billions to tackle the cost of living crisis.
The UK-headquartered oil company said it had not paid the levy and did not expect to throughout 2022, because its British corporate entity did not make any profits during the quarter in part because of heaving spending on drilling more oil in the North Sea.
Profits at Lloyds Banking Group tumbled 26% in the three months to September as the UK’s largest mortgage lender steeled itself for a potential surge in defaults as it predicted house prices would fall 8% next year.
The drop in profits was much larger than the 9.5% analysts had expected, and was the result of having to put aside an extra £668m amid fears that some loan and mortgage customers could default on their debts.
The US economy grew at a 2.6% annual rate from July through September, snapping two straight quarters of economic contraction and overcoming punishingly high inflation and interest rates.
Our other stories:
More than $65bn (£56bn) has been wiped off the market value of Facebook and Instagram’s owner, Meta, after it reported profits halved during the third quarter of the year as advertisers reined in spending amid the global economic downturn.
The 19% tumble in Meta’s share price during after-hours trading knocked an estimated further $10bn off the personal wealth of the company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook while he was at university.
The owner of Marmite, Hellmann’s, Magnum and Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream has warned of further price rises after commodity, labour and energy costs resulted in the biggest quarterly increases in its history.
Unilever said sales revenue rose 10.6% in the three months to September, driven by a 12.5% jump in prices, while the volume of goods sold decreased by 1.6%.
Credit Suisse has disclosed sweeping plans to cut 9,000 jobs and to raise billions of pounds from investors, including from the Saudi National Bank, as part of a company-wide overhaul meant to draw a line under a series of scandals and help it recover from a £3.5bn loss.
The London estate agent Foxtons has flagged a “less certain” sales market, as it reported a 25% rise in third-quarter revenues driven by higher rents and longer contracts for tenants.
One hundred universities in the UK have pledged to divest from fossil fuels, the Guardian can reveal.
This equates to 65% of the country’s higher education sector refusing to make at least some investments in fossil fuel companies, and endowments worth more than £17.6bn now out of reach for the corporations.
Britain’s plan to become a post-Brexit “science and technology superpower” has suffered a significant setback after a fall in research and development investment of almost a fifth since 2014, according to a report.
The Institute for Public Policy Research said the UK’s share of global investment in R&D projects – including in health and life sciences – had fallen sharply from 4.2% eight years ago to 3.4% in 2019 immediately before the Covid pandemic struck.
Global carbon emissions from energy will peak in 2025 thanks to massively increased government spending on clean fuels in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to analysis by the world’s leading energy organisation.
Thank you for reading. We’ll be back tomorrow. Take care! – JK
Updated
Wall Street opened higher after the 2.6% rebound in GDP growth in the third quarter helped ease recession worries, but US stocks soon turned negative.
European stocks are flat to slightly slower.
Updated
