Closing summary
Time to recap
Annual house price inflation slowed last month to 11.2%, the latest report from Nationwide shows, and the market may weaken in the coming months.
Rising prices, and turbulence caused by Brexit, has hit business confidence. The IoD reports that directors are the most pessimistic since October 2020.
Global factory growth is slowing, as the Ukraine war hits demand and pushed up costs.
UK manufacturing activity grew at the slowest pace in 16 months, while eurozone factories have suffered their first drop in new orders in almost two years. US factories also reported a slowdown.
British families are facing the highest rise in UK shop prices in more than a decade, driven by more expensive fresh food.
The Bank of Canada hikes interest rates, and warned that further rises will be implemented if necessary to tackle inflation, which it warned was rising globally.
Today the Bank of Canada raised its benchmark interest rate to 1.5%. This marks a second straight increase of half of a percentage point following the raise to 1% in April. pic.twitter.com/fgG3yXnhwi
— Julie Dzerowicz (@JulieDzerowicz) June 1, 2022
🇨🇦The @bankofcanada increased its target for the overnight rate 50bps to 1.5%.
— Gregory Daco (@GregDaco) June 1, 2022
The Bank is also continuing its policy of quantitative tightening (QT)https://t.co/Yopf4qAhl4
Britain’s travel chaos intensified.
British Airways and easyJet cancelled more than 150 flights to and from the UK on Wednesday, as holidaymakers faced further delays going into the extended Queen’s platinum jubilee bank holiday.
Ministers and the aviation industry have clashed over who is to blame for the disruption, with transport secretary, Grant Shapps saying travel firms had “seriously oversold flights and holidays relative to their capacity to deliver”.
Ministers have been told to give the road haulage industry a two-year deadline to upgrade facilities for lorry drivers, with clean showers, healthy food and spaces for female drivers, or else face a new tax.
Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group has swept in to buy the online fashion retailer Missguided out of administration for £20m in cash.
The world’s largest traditional carmakers could improve their profit margins and boost their value to investors by accelerating the transition to electric cars in the next decade, a new analysis has found.
... and Cuthbert the Caterpillar is returning to Aldi’s shelves, after a legal battle over his similarity to M&S’s Colin.
Updated
The number of job vacancies in the US remains near a record high.
Job openings decreased to 11.4 million on the last business day of April, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, down from an upwardly-revised 11.8m at the end of March.
Job openings fell in April to 11.4 million. But that's still close to a record, and March openings (which were already a record) were revised up by more than 300k. #JOLTS pic.twitter.com/nGFUYKxc2i
— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) June 1, 2022
The number of workers voluntarily quitting their jobs was near last month’s record, at 4.4m, suggesting the market remained tight.
Layoffs and discharges hit an alltime low of 1.2m as firms held onto workers amid labor shortages.
JOLTS job openings at 11.4M vs. 11.3M est. & 11.855M in prior month (rev up from 11.549M) … job opening rate fell to 7% vs. 7.3% prior; pace of hiring unchanged at 4.4%; separations ticked down to 4% vs. 4.1% prior; layoffs/discharges at 0.8% vs. 0.9% prior pic.twitter.com/V6LSX5jBHv
— Liz Ann Sonders (@LizAnnSonders) June 1, 2022
