Closing post
Time to wrap up…
Thames Water reported its first half earnings this morning, warning that crisis talks to secure its future with lenders are taking “longer than expected” and will drag into 2026 as it faces the prospect of a collapse into government control.
Britain’s biggest water company on Wednesday said it had swung to a profit of £414m for the six months to September helped by bills rising by nearly a third, after losing £149m in the same period in 2024.
Despite the jump in reported profits, the company said there was “material uncertainty which may cast significant doubt” on its status as a going concern. A collapse into government control under a special administration regime (SAR) – a form of temporary nationalisation – “could occur in the very near term” if it is unable to agree the terms of a formal takeover by its controlling lenders.
HSBC has appointed the former KPMG partner Brendan Nelson as its chair after a prolonged search process that left one of the world’s biggest banks without a permanent executive in the top role for months.
The decision to appoint Nelson, who has been serving as interim chair, came as a surprise, after a protracted hunt for a permanent successor for Mark Tucker which involved courting external candidates including the former chancellor George Osborne and the head of Goldman Sachs’ Asia-Pacific division, Kevin Sneader.
HSBC failed to find a permanent chair before Tucker departed at the end of September, raising questions about the succession plans and the board’s effectiveness, having first announced his decision to leave in May.
Elsewhere, the Jaguar Land Rover design boss behind the Range Rover and the polarising Jaguar relaunch has abruptly departed the business just four months after its new chief executive took charge.
Gerry McGovern left the role of chief creative officer on Monday after 20 years at the business in which he oversaw the design of some of the company’s most successful cars as well as the launch of a new-look, pink electric Jaguar that drew the ire of Donald Trump.
Britain’s largest carmaker appointed PB Balaji as chief executive in August. Balaji, an Indian national, was previously the chief financial officer of Tata Motors, the Indian owner of JLR.
Updated
For the second time this week, the Treasury chief secretary James Murray has been on his feet in the Commons answering questions about the budget process and the Office for Budget Responsibility.
On Monday Murray was interrupted by news of the resignation of Richard Hughes as the OBR’s chair.
Nothing quite so dramatic happened during Wednesday’s questioning, though Murray did confirm that his boss Rachel Reeves had approved the decision by the OBR to release details of the private forecasts which it gave to the Treasury in the build up to the budget.
Reports overnight had suggested that James Bowler, the most senior civil servant at the Treasury, had sanctioned the move personally in what could have been interpreted as an undermining of the chancellor’s authority. However Murray insisted this was not the case.
He said:
The chancellor was aware of that letter. She was content for it to be published and she agreed this with the permanent secretary.
Meanwhile he also confirmed that the Treasury had begun a leak inquiry into how the Financial Times discovered on 14 November that Reeves had dropped a plan to raise income tax rates - a story which temporarily caused bond yields to spike.
Prada buys Versace in $1.38bn deal
After more than half a year of negotiations Prada has confirmed that its $1.38bn (£1.04bn) deal to buy rival Italian luxury fashion giant Versace has been completed.
Prada and Versace are often pitted as rivals in the northern Italian fashion capital of Milan – Prada is known for its minimalism, its “ugly chic” and its high-brow intellectualism, whereas Versace is associated with maximalism, hedonism and fun. Now, they will be living under one roof.
On Instagram, Donatella Versace welcomed the deal with a post on Tuesday addressed to her late brother, Gianni Versace, which also marked what would have been his birthday, saying: “Today is your day and the day Versace joins the Prada family. I am thinking of the smile you would have had on your face.”
In March of this year, Donatella Versace had stepped down as the brand’s creative chief after 27 years at the company – she had taken over after the high-profile murder of her brother in 1997 – and into a chief brand ambassador role.
She was replaced by Dario Vitale, formerly the design director for womenswear at Prada’s more youth-focused brand, Miu Miu, with him becoming the first creative director outside the Versace family.
The Prada label, which routinely sparks trends, captures the zeitgeist and keeps fashion lovers’ attention, last year generated over €3.6 billion in sales worldwide, while in the last three months of 2024, Versace reported a 15% drop in sales, to 193 million US dollars, compared to the same period last year.
However, any rivalry between the labels is likely fiction. Miuccia and Donatella are said to be friends.
For Prada, this deal is being seen as an attempt to become a luxury fashion powerhouse to rival the existing French luxury conglomerates: LVMH, which owns a bevy of luxury fashion brands including Celine, Fendi, Givenchy and Louis Vuitton; and Kering, which owns names such as Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga.
Prada, which, alongside Prada and Miu Miu, also owns the footwear brands such as Church’s. But it is Miu Miu, which this year overtook Loewe to become the hottest fashion brand in the world, according to the Lyst Index, that is the jewel-in-the-crown – when the Prada group reported a 9% uplift in sales in October, it was driven by a 41% rise in sales at the cult brand. During the same period, the Prada label reported a 1.6% decline in sales.
It is hoped that the deal will relaunch the fortunes of the Versace after underwhelming results during its time as part of Capri Holdings, which owns Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo.
The deal to buy the company from US fashion conglomerate Capri Holdings had been announced back in March following months of speculation and rumours that, due to market upheaval resulting from Trump’s tariff policies, it would collapse.
Capri had been under pressure to sell Versace off to reduce its debt following a blocked attempt by fellow American fashion group Tapestry, which owns Kate Spade and Coach, to acquire it for $8.5bn was blocked.
Updated
WPP set to fall out of FTSE 100
The advertising group WPP is set to be relegated from the FTSE 100 later today after nearly 30 years, as it struggles to stem an exodus of clients and match the artificial intelligence and data capabilities of rivals.
WPP, once the world’s largest advertising group, has seen its market valuation plummet from about £24bn in 2017 to £3.1bn.
The company has seen its share price plunge two-thirds this year and is expected to be relegated from the blue chip index when the next quarterly reshuffle is officially announced after stock markets close today.
It will mark the loss of another female chief executive, Cindy Rose, from the FTSE 100 group. Other FTSE 100 female bosses have also left their roles this year, including Liv Garfield at Severn Trent and Dame Emma Walmsley at GSK.
You can read my colleague Mark Sweney’s full story here:
The FCA’s decision to lift the pause on motor finance complaint handling at the end of May next year has ruffled feathers in the lending industry, with the leading lobby group saying it was “confused” why it was shorter than originally consulted on.
Shanika Amarasekara, chief executive of the Financing and Leasing Association said:
Today’s announcement from the FCA about ending the pause on the handling of motor finance complaints on 31 May, two months earlier than the previously consulted on date of 31 July, is difficult to understand. This change has created uncertainty for our member firms that have been preparing their operational plans, customer communications, and resourcing on the basis of the original timeline.
We are seeking urgent clarity from the FCA on the rationale for accelerating the date and on the practical implications for firms that now face significant pressures to adjust processes at short notice. In the policy statement the regulator said that 502 out of 519 consumers supported the July deadline.
We want to ensure that the eventual redress programme will be workable in practice, capable of identifying and compensating those who have suffered loss and launched with a credible implementation period to ensure it works smoothly.
More on the latest inflation figures from the services sector…
Elliott Jordan-Doak, senior UK economist at the consultancy Pantheon Macroeconomics, said November’s services PMI showed that most businesses remained resilient “to the torrent of pre-Budget tax-hike speculation and the political circus that came with it”.
He said the budget had settled the nerves of businesses that responded to the survey. In a boost to Rachel Reeves, he said this was clear from the more optimistic responses after the chancellor gave her speech.
He said:
We are particularly encouraged by the large upward revisions to a number of the PMI’s sub-indices. That suggests that businesses responding later to the survey—after the details of the Budget had been announced—were far more optimistic about the pipeline for work than those responding before the chancellor’s announcement.
He said a fall in employment across the services sector suggested firms were anxious about hiring staff “ but it stands in contrast with some other employment data, such as recovering vacancies as measured by the Indeed tracker.
“We expect GDP growth to pick up a little now that the Budget has passed in any case, which will support the demand for labour,” he added.
Matt Swannell, chief economic advisor to the EY Item Club, said the credibility of S&P Global’s early “flash” measure of activity was in question after a hefty revision in the final figures.
There was another large revision to the flash reading, adding to questions about the credibility of the early release. The services PMI has also often been a misleading indicator of activity in the sector as it tends to be overly sensitive to business sentiment.
He said most businesses escaped largely unharmed from the budget and so “an uptick in the December PMI can’t be ruled out”.
But circling back to a more gloomy interpretation, he said:
There is good reason to think that the economy will find it difficult to gain momentum in the near-term.
[Government spending] will continue to tighten, real income growth will continue to slow, and some mortgages still need to be refinanced onto higher interest rates.”
He added that bank of England policymakers will “take confidence from respondents to the S&P Global survey reporting the weakest rise in prices in nearly five years, reinforcing the signal from the recent falls in inflation and pay growth.”
On balance, a rate cut at the December meeting appears slightly more likely than the Bank of England waiting until February, but it is expected to be a close call.”
Coming up to the midday point now, and the stock market looks broadly flat in London. The blue chip FTSE 100 index has slipped 0.1%, with Sainsbury’s its worst performer of the day. Shares in the supermarket are down by almost 4% after its biggest investor laid out plans to sell a chunk of its stake.
The miner Antofagasta is the best performer in London, up 4.6%, on the back of strong copper prices.
Over in Europe, the continent’s Stoxx Europe 600 index is up 0.2%. The Spanish Ibex index is the standout, up 1.6%, helped by some strong numbers out of the Zara-owner Inditex.
City watchdog extends freeze on car finance complaints
The City watchdog has extended its freeze on complaints handling over the car finance scandal by another four months, as it tries to finalise the terms of its compensation scheme.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) had paused complaints handling until 4 December, but will now give lenders until 31 May 2026 to respond to consumers.
That is expected to give companies time to digest the final rules for the FCA’s compensation scheme on the motor finance scandal, which are due to be published in February or March.
However, firms are expected to continue progressing complaints so that they can quickly respond to customers once the pause lifts in the spring, the FCA said.
The FCA said:
If we go ahead with a scheme, we will consider how the rules interact with the end of the complaint handling pause, to avoid firms having to send final responses that would otherwise be dealt with in the scheme.
The deadline for the consultation on a proposed £11bn compensation scheme is next Friday, 12 December.
Inflation in services sector falls to lowest level in five years
Inflation in the services sector has plunged to its lowest level in five years, according to a closely watched survey of private sector activity.
The S&P Global purchasing managers’ index (PMI) showed that intense competition for new contracts in domestic and foreign markets has forced services firms to limit price increases, despite a strong rise in costs, including higher wage rises.
The trend for companies to absorb rising costs and accept lower profit margins will put further pressure on the Bank of England to reduce interest rates when policymakers meet later this month.
Central bank officials have been waiting for services inflation to fall before taking steps to reduce the cost of borrowing.
Obvious signs that the economy is slowing can be seen in rising unemployment and almost stagnant consumer spending.
However, some members of the Bank’s policymaking body, the monetary policy committee (MPC), have blocked cuts in interest rates until services inflation shows signs of weakening.
S&P Global said its survey showed that the PMI eased to 51.3 in November from 52.3 in the previous month. A figure above 50 indicates a period of expansion.
The index rose from the earlier ‘flash’ figure of 50.5, but remained lower than the average for the year, indicating that the services sector, like most parts of the economy, has suffered a slowdown in recent months.
Tim Moore, economics director at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said:
November data revealed an abrupt end to the steady improvement in order books seen since the summer.
Unfavourable demand conditions were signalled in both domestic and export markets. Lower workloads led to a renewed slowdown in business activity growth across the UK service economy, with the latest expansion much softer than the post-pandemic trend.
Moreover, staffing numbers were trimmed to the greatest extent since February.
…Intensifying price competition at home and abroad, combined with weal sales pipelines, contributed to an erosion of margins across the service economy. Input cost inflation accelerated during November, mostly driven by higher salary payments, but prices charged by service sector firms increased at the slowest pace for nearly five years.
Zara-owner Inditex shares rise 8% as sales grow
Shares in Inditex, the retailer behind the high street fashion chain Zara, are up 8% this morning after it beat analyst expectations for the start of its fourth quarter.
The Spanish retailer reported a 10.6% rise in currency-adjusted sales in the four weeks ended 1 December, including the crucial Black Friday weekend, and signalling a strong start to the critical final quarter of the year.
Victoria Scholar, head of investment at the broker Interactive Investor, said:
This is a strong set of earnings from the company behind brands including Zara, Massimo Dutti and Oysho and there are good indications around how the current quarter is performing so far. Its Autumn/Winter collections appear to be hitting the spot with customers while the strength of the Spanish economy has also supported consumer demand.
Despite the fiercely competitive fast fashion backdrop with cheap rivals like Shein, this year’s US tariff uncertainty, and a weaker consumer in many geographies, Inditex has managed to score for investors, highlighting its longstanding strength at tapping into what fashion followers are looking for and speedily delivering new products to stores and online to keep pace with the latest trends.
Sainsbury’s shares fall after Qatari fund prepares to cut stake
Sainsbury’s share price has dropped 4% this morning after the Qatari sovereign wealth fund laid out plans to sell a significant chunk of its stake in the business, in a move that will end its status as the supermarket’s biggest investor.
The fund plans to sell hundreds of millions of pounds worth in Sainsbury’s stock, cutting its stake in the retailer from 10.5% to about 7%. It will mark the end of the Qatar Investment Authority’s long reign as the biggest single investor in the business, having sat in the top spot since it first bought Sainsbury’s shares in 2007.
Daniel Křetínský, the Czech billionaire owner of Royal Mail, will become the top shareholder in Sainsbury’s via his firm Vesa Equity Investments, which holds a 10.3% stake.
The QIA has been gradually selling down its stake in Sainsbury’s, which once stood as high as 25%. Last year it sold about £306m worth in shares.
Sainsbury’s has become one of the most shorted stocks in London, as some investors bet that intense price competition and rising cost pressures mean the shares have further to fall. The stock is down 3.8% this morning, putting it among the worst performers in the FTSE 100 index today, but so far this year it has risen by 14% .
Updated
Smiths sells airport security scanner to private equity for £2bn
The British engineering conglomerate Smiths Group has agreed to sell its airport security scanner unit to private equity firm CVC Capital Partners for £2bn.
The FTSE 100 group said it expects to receive £1.85bn in net cash by selling its Smiths Detection business, which develops tech to screen security threats at ports, borders and other travel hubs.
The company is one of the few remaining large industrial conglomerates in the UK. It started slimming down in 2021, when it offloaded its medical devices business. The group, which first listed on the stock market in 1914, has been restructuring to focus on its John Crane and Flex-Tex businesses, which supply industrial seals and pipes for industries such as oil and gas, pharmaceuticals and construction.
In October it agreed to sell Smiths Interconnect, which manufactures cable and wiring, at a valuation of £1.3bn.
Chief executive Roland Carter said:
Today we have reached another significant milestone for Smiths, with the agreement to sell Smiths Detection to CVC for an enterprise value of £2.0bn. This builds on our recently announced sale of Smiths Interconnect and demonstrates strong execution against the strategic actions we set out in January centred on value creation.
We are focusing Smiths as a premium industrial engineering company specialising in flow management and thermal solutions, and today’s announcement positions us strongly to deliver enhanced growth and returns.
We thank our Smiths Detection colleagues for their significant contribution to Smiths and their help in reaching this milestone.”
Its shares are up about 1.7% this morning and are up by 42.8% so far this year.
Jaguar Land Rover design boss 'escorted out of office' - reports
Gerry McGovern, the designer behind Jaguar’s divisive ad campaign last year, has been dismissed from the carmaker, just weeks after the arrival of the company’s new chief executive.
McGovern was told he was being dismissed with immediate effect on Monday, according to Autocar. It reported that McGovern was “escorted out of the office”, citing an unnamed source.
It comes after PB Balaji, the former boss of Tata Motors, succeeded Adrian Mardell as chief executive.
McGovern had been at JLR for more than two decades, where he led a revamp of Land Rover’s Defender model.
He also led the polarising rebrand of Jaguar last year, with a 30-second clip on X featuring models in brightly coloured clothing set against equally vibrant backdrops, without a car or the company’s traditional cat logo.
The campaign was met with severe backlash, drawing criticism from the likes of Nigel Farage and Donald Trump.
Mardell, who oversaw the rebrand, announced his retirement in August before leaving his job in November.
JLR declined to comment.
Updated
HSBC makes surprise chair appointment
HSBC has unexpectedly appointed Brendan Nelson as its next chair, after a long search to replace Sir Mark Tucker.
Nelson, who has been acting as interim chair since October this year, has been on HSBC’s board since 2023. He will replace Tucker, who stepped down from the role in September to take up the same post at the Hong-Kong based insurer AIA.
Nelson, 76, is a former KPMG executive and has previously been on the boards of BP and NatWest. His appointment will come as a surprise to some, given that his career has been largely focused in the UK and HSBC makes the majority of its profits in Hong Kong and China.
HSBC’s chief executive Georges Elhedery also said at the Financial Times Global Banking Summit yesterday that Nelson did not want to serve a full term of six to nine years.
Before the announcement, Elhedery said on Tuesday that Nelson would stay in the role “for as long as it takes until the board and the nomination committee identify the right chair”.
HSBC said the decision to appoint Nelson was made after a “robust process” that looked at internal and external candidates. Recent reports suggested that HSBC was also considering former chancellor George Osborne and Goldman Sachs banker Kevin Sneader for the job.
Airbus cuts delivery target after more issues with A320 jet
Elsewhere this morning, Airbus lowered its delivery target for commercial aircraft from 820 to about 790 this year, after it confirmed it had discovered a supplier quality issue on fuselage panels on its A320 family of jets.
Airbus engineers found defects on a wider set of A320 fuselage panels, according to Reuters, with around 40% of the affected jets still in assembly lines. The affected parts have the wrong thickness, Reuters reported.
The panel problem comes less than a week after Airbus warned thousands of its A320 jets needed an immediate software fix due to possible corruption from solar radiation. Most of the 6,000 planes affected by the problem received the software update over the weekend.
Thames Water has also warned there was “material uncertainty which may cast significant doubt” on its status as a going concern.
A collapse into government control under a special administration regime (SAR) – a form of temporary nationalisation – “could occur in the very near term” if it is unable to agree the terms of a formal takeover by its controlling lenders.
The supplier, which serves 16 million customers in south-east England, has been on the brink of collapse for years and has been dogged by poor environmental performance, with sewage leaks provoking public and political outrage and adding huge costs in the form of fines.
You can find my colleague Jasper Jolly’s full take on the story here:
Introduction: Thames Water profits surge on the back of higher bills
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.
Thames Water has reported a leap in half-year pre-tax profit to £386m, even as it warned that it faced huge uncertainties over funding that could see it collapse rapidly into government control.
Britain’s biggest water company on Wednesday said it had swung into profit for the six months to September, after losing £230m in the same period in 2024.
Yet despite the reported profits, the company warned there was “material uncertainty which may cast significant doubt” on its status as a going concern. A collapse into government control under a special administration regime “could occur in the very near term” if it is unable to agree the terms of a formal takeover by its controlling lenders.
Thames Water has been on the brink of collapse for more than a year as it has struggled under the weight of £17bn of net debt, built up over decades since privatisation.
Chief executive Chris Weston said:
The first half of this year has been shaped by good progress across all areas of our operational transformation. We saw a 20% drop in pollutions and leakage performance is holding steady despite the extremely dry summer.
Financial performance has improved with strong revenue growth, driven by the regulated price rise, good operational expenditure control, resulting in material Ebitda growth.
We know our infrastructure requires significant investment, and that is why we have launched our biggest upgrade in over 150 years to improve our assets and consequently service to our customers and the environment.
In the first six months of this financial year, we have increased capital investment by 22% to £1.3 billion compared with the same period last year.
This investment has been funded by higher customer bills, which in turn have led to a rise in customer complaints. In response, we have increased the number of households on our social tariffs to 515,348 and launched a successful pilot that automatically enrols customers in London in financial difficulty for assistance they are entitled to, even if they are unaware of their eligibility.
This progress has all been achieved as we also manage the recapitalisation of the business. We continue to work closely with stakeholders to secure a market-led solution that we believe is in the best interests of our customers and the environment.
This in turn will allow the transformation of Thames to continue, a programme that will take at least a decade to complete and will restore the infrastructure and operations of the company.”
Elsewhere, Prada has now completed its acquisition of Versace, bringing the two major Italian luxury fashion houses under one roof.
The deal, which is worth about $1.4bn (£1bn), will build the Prada group of brands, which includes Miu Miu and Church’s, as it seeks to rival larger European luxury conglomerates such as the French LVMH.
Versace’s latest price tag is well below what its former parent company Capri Holdings paid for the brand in 2018, when it was valued at about $2bn. Designer Donatella Versace stepped down as its creative chief in March after almost three decades at the fashion company.
The agenda
9am GMT: Eurozone services PMI
9.30am GMT: UK services PMI
2.15pm GMT: Treasury Committee hearing on the budget with leading economists
4:30pm GMT: FTSE reshuffle announced
