Closing summary
Time to wrap up…
The FTSE 100 hit the 10,000 point milestone for the first time, after finishing its best year of gains since 2009.
The FTSE 100 jumped on Friday morning to a high of 10,046, a new peak for the index, before easing back slightly. The milestone marks a stellar 12 months for the “Footsie”, which rose by 21.5% over the course of last year.
The Chinese car-maker BYD has overtaken Tesla as the top seller of electric cars around the world.
Tesla delivered 1.64 million cars in 2025, down 9% from 2024, it said on Friday. Meanwhile the Shenzhen-based BYD sold 2.26 million electric cars in 2025, up 28% compared with the year earlier after an aggressive expansion push in Europe.
UK house prices unexpectedly fell in December after a ‘soft’ month, the lender Nationwide said.
The average property price slumped by 0.4% to £271,068 compared with November, according to Nationwide, confounding City forecasts of a 0.1% rise.
The UK’s biggest building society also said that the rate of annual house price growth slowed to 0.6% in December, the weakest year-on-year reading since April 2024.
Uber rewrites contracts with drivers to avoid paying UK’s new ‘taxi tax’
Uber has swerved paying millions of pounds to the UK exchequer under Rachel Reeves’s new “taxi tax” after the ride-hailing app rewrote contracts with its drivers.
Tesla loses crown as world's top electric car seller to BYD
The Chinese car company BYD has officially overtaken Tesla as the top seller of electric cars in the world.
The latest figures from Tesla show it delivered 1.64 million cars in 2025, down 9% from 2024. It compares with 2.26 million electric cars sold by BYD in 2025, up 28% compared with the year earlier after an aggressive expansion push in Europe.
Earlier this week Tesla took the unusual step of publishing sales forecasts before its official figures, in an apparent move to manage market expectations.
Investors in Tesla are hoping that chief executive Elon Musk, who has an estimated fortune of $623bn, will be able to turn the company into a leader across self-driving technology, robotics and AI.
