News updates from July 11: Biden says he will stay in the race at press conference; US inflation falls to 3%

Joe Biden lost the support of another Democratic member of Congress just after the press conference ended.

Jim Himes, a House member from Connecticut, said that the president’s legacy is secure and “he must not risk that legacy” by staying in the 2024 race, in a post on X.

“I hope President Biden will step away from the presidential campaign”, Himes wrote. “The 2024 election will define the future of American democracy, and we must put forth the strongest candidate possible to confront the threat posed by Trump’s promised MAGA authoritarianism. I no longer believe that is Joe Biden”.

As Joe Biden left the stage, predictive traders saw the news conference as a modest success for his re-election campaign. His implied odds of securing his party’s nomination now sit on the PredictIt market at 44 per cent, tied with those of his own vice-president, Kamala Harris.

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Biden, who is trailing Donald Trump in nearly all national and swing-state polls, pushed back on suggestions that he is poised to lose in November: “How accurate does anyone think the polls are these days?”

Biden insisted the campaign “hasn’t started in earnest yet,” and bristled at a question about what he would do if his campaign showed him polling to suggest his vice-president, Kamala Harris, would perform better in a hypothetical match-up with Trump.

Asked if such data would make him reconsider his candidacy, he replied: “No, unless they came back and said there is no way you can win . . . No one is saying that. No poll is saying that.”

Biden said that his pledged delegates would not abandon him at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.

When asked if his delegates would be free to vote their conscience, the president said “they’re free to do whatever they want. But I get overwhelming support.

“Overwhelming support I won. I forget how many votes I won in the primary —[it was] overwhelming,” he added.

“If all of a sudden I show up at the convention, everybody says, ‘we want somebody else’, that’s democratic process.” But “ it’s not gonna happen”.

Biden said that he needs to be in public to “allay fears” among voters and Democratic lawmakers.

“I’m determined on running, but I think it’s important that I allay fears by [letting] them see me out there,” Biden said.

“For the longest time it was, you know, ‘Biden’s not prepared to sit with us, unscripted. Biden’s not prepared to in any way.’”

He added that he’s doing “major events” in swing states such as Wisconsin and North Carolina “to demonstrate that I’m going out into the areas where you think we can win, where we can persuade people to move our way”.

Asked by an NPR reporter about what had changed since 2020 — when Biden insisted his candidacy would be a "bridge" to a future generation of the Democratic party, the president replied: "What changed was the gravity of the situation I inherited in terms of the economy, our foreign policy and domestic division."

He added: "If tomorrow, if you — if we had a circumstance where there was a lineup and I did, hadn't inherited what I did, and we just moved things along. Anyway, it's gonna change."

“We have a chance now. It's time to end this war. It doesn't mean walk away from going after Sinwar and Hamas,” US president Joe Biden said when asked about progress towards a ceasefire.

Just a vibe check here — Biden's answers are a bit rambling and meandering as time goes on.

Biden also said he was disappointed that his much touted temporary pier project failed. Earlier today the Pentagon said the project would soon end.

“I was hopeful that would be more successful,” Biden said.

Thus far, predictive traders think this news conference has somewhat helped Biden's chances of securing his party's nomination.

He has just now surpassed the implied odds of his own vice-president, Kamala Harris. Each is on just over 40 per cent.

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President Biden redirected questions about his stamina to how he sees communications with some of America’s adversaries.

“I am prepared to talk to any leader who wants to talk, including [if] Putin called me and wanted to talk,” he said.

Biden said he last spoke to Putin about trying to convince him not to field nuclear weapons in space, “and that didn’t go very far.”

The questions about president Biden's stamina continue.

He says he's ready to deal with Chinese president Xi Jinping now and in the future.

As for Russian president Vladimir Putin, he said there is no reason to talk to him now.

Donald Trump has taken to his Truth Social platform to post about Biden’s vice-presidential flub, where the president mixed up his Republican rival and Kamala Harris.

“Crooked Joe begins his ‘Big Boy’ Press Conference with, ‘I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president, though I think she was not qualified to be president.’ Great job, Joe!”, Trump wrote.

Asked how he would disrupt the burgeoning relationship between Russia and China, Biden suggested some European countries would scale back their business relationships with Beijing.

“Some of our European friends are going to be curtailing their investment in China as long as China continues to have this indirect help to Russia in terms of being able to help their economy,” he said.

Biden has now faced several questions about his fitness to serve another four years in the Oval Office. At one point, he urged voters to ask whether he was “getting the job done”.

“Can you name me somebody who’s gotten more major piece of legislation passed in three and a half years? I’ve created 2,000 jobs just last week. So if I slow down, I can’t get the job done. That’s a sign that I shouldn’t be doing it, but there’s no indication of that yet. None.”

Still, Biden has stumbled in some of his answers. In response a question about Ukraine, the president — who is commander-in-chief of the US military — said: “I am following the advice of my commander-in-chief.”

President Joe Biden, making his case on foreign policy, said his opponent Donald Trump favours autocrats.

“Foreign policy has never been his strong point,” Biden said of Trump. “That worries Europe, that worries Poland.”

The Financial Times’ Felicia Schwartz asked the president how he’d be up for the most straining job in the world given limits he’s acknowledged such as needing to go to bed by 8pm.

“That’s not true,” Biden responded. “Look, what I said was, instead of my every day starting at seven and going to bed at midnight, it’d be smarter for me to pace myself a little more.”

“If you looked at my schedule since I made that stupid mistake in the debate. I mean, my schedule has been full bore,” while Trump has “been riding around [in] his golf cart.”

He said that for “the next debate, I’m not going to be traveling into 15 time zones a week before. Anyway, that’s what it was about.” He added that he loves his staff and that he’s “catching hell from my wife.”

Biden has sidestepped a question from a CBS News reporter about what it would mean for his legacy should he lose to Trump in November.

Biden replied: "I am not in this for my legacy. I am in this to complete the job I started," before launching into a long and at times rambling discussion of his economic policy agenda, rather than addressing concerns about whether he can beat Donald Trump at the ballot box.

Biden laughed when asked about his earlier flub on Thursday mixing up Presidents Volodymr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin.

“Did you see any damage or standing in my lead in this conference? Have you seen a more successful conference? What do you think?” Biden asked. He added that he had corrected himself right after the gaffe.

Biden flubbed the answer to his first question, after a reporter from Reuters asked him about the possibility that vice-president Kamala Harris would replace him at the top of the ticket should he suspend his re-election campaign.

He appeared to mix up Harris and Donald Trump, saying: “I wouldn't have picked vice-president Trump to be vice-president that I think she was not qualified to be president. So let's start there.”

The gaffe came barely an hour after Biden mixed up Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

This is the most optimistic I’ve heard a senior US official on the chances of ending the Gaza war, though there are still details to be worked out.

“The trend is positive, I’m determined to get this deal done,” Biden said.

Biden is touting the latest inflation report.

“Just this morning, we had a great economic report showing inflation is down. Overall, prices fell last month. Core inflation is the lowest it's been in three years. Prices are falling for cars, appliances and airfare. Grocery prices have fallen since the start of the year. We're going to keep working to take down corporate greed to bring those prices down further", he said.

The economy has consistently been one of the president’s weakest issues on the campaign trail.

Now a not-so-veiled jab at Trump — "My predecessor has made it clear he's not committed to Nato."

Biden said: "I've made it clear a strong Nato is essential to American security and I believe the obligation to Article 5 is sacred," in reference to the part of the Nato treaty that treats an attack on one as an attack on all. "I will keep Nato strong," he added.

Biden has begun speaking. He’s reading off a teleprompter, mostly without incident, though a few stumbles.

He took a veiled jab at former president Donald Trump who has questioned US commitments to Nato’s collective security agreement.

“For those who thought Nato’s time had passed, they got a rude awakening when Putin invaded Ukraine,” Biden said.

Biden does not often hold solo press conferences — tonight will be his first since November 2023, when he held a session with the press after meeting Xi Jinping at a summit outside San Francisco.

At that event, Biden told assembled journalists that the two nations had decided to resume military communications, following a period of growing concern about a potential clash over Taiwan.

Hello from inside the room where Joe Biden’s candidacy hangs in the balance. The event was originally slated for 5.30, then 6.30, and we are now about an hour behind that!

Many notable faces from the administration are present, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, among others. There’s a tension in the air as we all await to see, can Biden pull this off?

We’ll be monitoring and graphing Joe Biden’s odds of winning the Democratic party nomination, minute by minute, according to the political prediction market PredictIt. Those odds currently stand at only 35 per cent, trailing vice-president Kamala Harris on 55 per cent.

Things can change quickly. Here’s how Biden’s implied chances of re-election fell — dramatically — over two hours on the evening of his June 27 debate with Donald Trump.

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On Thursday, the final day of the Nato summit in Washington, former president Donald Trump was set to meet Hungary’s leader and summit participant Viktor Orbán in Florida.

Orbán, who is a supporter of Trump and the EU’s most pro-Russia leader, attended a White House dinner on Wednesday where he told other leaders that Nato allies who thought Joe Biden still had a chance at re-election “were like people on the Titanic playing violins as the ship went down”, according to people briefed on his remarks.

Trump had originally been set to be sentenced today after his conviction in the New York “hush money” case. But that has been adjourned until September as he seeks to set aside the verdict following the US Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity.

Ahead of Biden’s make-or-break press conference, the Financial Times examined his post-debate poll numbers. Here’s what we found.

National polling averages between Biden and Donald Trump were tied ahead of the June 27 debate, but Trump has pulled ahead since then, holding a 2.3-point lead, according to FiveThirtyEight.

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Biden’s advanced age is a concern for many voters. Fifty per cent of registered voters think his age was “such a problem that he is not capable of handling the job of president”, according to a New York Times/Siena poll conducted the week after the debate. That figure was up from 45 per cent the week before.

Ahead of the high-stakes press conference, US President Joe Biden bungled the introduction of his Ukrainian counterpart at an event for the Ukraine Compact, referring to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “President Putin”.

“Ukraine will prevail in this war and we’ll stand with them every single step of the way. That’s what the Compact says loudly and clearly. And now I want to hand it over to the President of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he has determination. Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin”, Biden said.

Vladimir Putin is the president of Russia.

Biden quickly realised his mistake, and said: “President Putin? We’re going to beat President Putin,” before correcting himself to say Zelenskyy. “I’m so focused on beating Putin, we’ve got to worry about it,” Biden added.

US President Joe Biden is set to field questions from reporters in a highly anticipated press conference tonight, a make-or-break moment for the US president as he seeks to reassure his own party that he is fit to take on Donald Trump.

The press conference at the end of this week’s Nato summit in Washington comes as a crisis over Biden’s candidacy engulfs the party, and the White House and the president’s re-election campaign struggle to stem calls from lawmakers, influential donors and party operatives for him to step aside.

It will also be a rare forum for Biden, who has held far fewer press conferences as president than any of his modern predecessors. Biden has averaged just 10.5 press conferences per year since he became president, compared to Trump’s average of 22 per year, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California Santa Barbara.

In the year to date, Biden has had no “solo” press conferences, and just three “joint” appearances with fellow world leaders, according to UCSB.

A US effort to deliver aid to the besieged Gaza Strip using a makeshift pier in the Mediterranean will soon be wound up after American troops tried and failed to reattach it to the shore this week.

The US installed the pier earlier this year after the UN warned that Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza and restrictions on trucked aid supplies into the strip threatened widespread starvation across the enclave’s civilian population.

But bad weather halted the marine facility in late June, the third time waves had disrupted its operations since it was completed on May 17. US officials said on Thursday that they planned to end the project for good.

Read more here

Citigroup’s new head of investment banking, Vis Raghavan, is getting more than $40mn worth of shares in his new employer’s stock.

The enormous stock grant, even by Wall Street standards, was made earlier this week and disclosed by the bank in a filing on Thursday. The shares will vest over seven years.

Raghavan, who joined Citi in June, was the head of investment banking at rival JPMorgan Chase before making the jump to Citi. He is one of the high-profile hires Citi chief executive Jane Fraser has made in the past year to beef up the underperforming bank’s management ranks.

Andy Sieg, who joined Citi last year from Bank of America to head Citi’s wealth division, received shares worth $11mn last year, the bank had previously disclosed.

A multi-day rally for the S&P 500 came to an end after cooler-than-expected inflation data for June pushed traders to bet on more interest rate cuts this year.

The benchmark index closed down 0.9 per cent on Thursday, ending a seven-day winning streak that had been its longest rally in 2024. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite closed down nearly 2 per cent.

Analysts explained that the move in equities was mostly a rotation out of mega-cap stocks like Big Tech groups, and into smaller companies, which investors bet would benefit from lower interest rates. The Russell 2000, which tracks smaller companies, rose 3.6 per cent, marking its best day since November. 

Cooler-than-expected inflation data for June sent Treasury yields lower and prompted traders to bet that the Federal Reserve would cut interest rates as soon as September.

The Bureau of Labour Statistics on Thursday reported that US inflation fell faster than forecast to 3 per cent in June, an encouraging sign for the Fed. Traders in the futures market added to rate cut bets this year, with two or three reductions now priced in, and a first move in September now fully expected.

The two-year Treasury yield, which moves with interest rate expectations, fell to a four-month low of 4.49 per cent. Stocks, however, tumbled, with the S&P 500 down 0.8 per cent and the Nasdaq Composite down 1.8 per cent.

Brazil’s spy agency illegally monitored senior judges, politicians and journalists during Jair Bolsonaro’s tenure, federal police said on Thursday after arresting four men in connection with the plot.

The Brazilian Intelligence Agency, known as Abin, set up a parallel structure to spy on political opponents of the hard-right former president, with a view to gathering politically sensitive information and spreading disinformation, according to the police investigation.

Police also accused the arrested individuals of using the agency’s surveillance and communications systems to incite the violent anti-government riots that shook Brasilia a week after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office last year.

Four Supreme Court justices, the speaker of the lower House of Congress, several lawmakers as well as prominent journalists were monitored illegally by the agency, police said.

The top US House Democrat will meet his leadership team to “figure out the next step” amid growing calls on Capitol Hill for Joe Biden to end his re-election campaign against Donald Trump.

Hakeem Jeffries, the party’s leader in the House, told reporters on Thursday that he intended to speak with each of the more than 200 House Democrats before talking with his top team to plot a path forward, as a crisis over Biden’s candidacy engulfs the party.

Jeffries has confronted growing calls from within his caucus for the 81-year-old Biden to step aside as concerns mount that the president is ill-equipped to beat Trump in November and serve another four years in the White House.

Read more here

Nato diplomats have confirmed a report that Russia plotted to assassinate the head of Europe’s largest arms manufacturer over his company’s support for Ukraine as concern rises about the Kremlin’s sabotage campaign.

Two senior alliance diplomats said the alleged conspiracy against Armin Papperger, chief executive of Düsseldorf-based Rheinmetall, was being treated as part of Russia’s wider sabotage and hybrid attack campaign against European Nato states.

Papperger told the Financial Times that the German government had established a “great level of security around my person”, as he indicated he believed a CNN report that US intelligence had discovered a Russian plot to kill him.

Read more here

Traders in the futures market have fully priced in a quarter-point interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve in September following cooler-than-expected inflation data for June released Thursday. 

Pricing in the futures market indicated that traders were betting on between two and three interest rate cuts this year, starting in September. Prior to the inflation figures, traders put the odds of a September cut at around 72 per cent, and were only banking on two reductions. 

The Bureau of Labour Statistics on Thursday reported that US inflation fell faster than forecast to 3 per cent in June, an encouraging sign for the Fed. 

Labour will outline plans to release thousands of prisoners earlier than planned in order to ease the jail capacity crisis, as the prime minister warned there are “simply not enough” prison spaces left.

Justice secretary Shabana Mahmood is expected to say that the government will lower the automatic release point for non-violent offenders from 50 per cent of time served to 40 per cent, according to one official.

Sir Keir Starmer on Thursday said that urgent action was required because prisons in England and Wales had been left to deteriorate under the previous government.

“This is a total failure of the last government . . . to have left a situation where there are simply not enough prison places for the number of prisoners,” he told the BBC.

Sir Keir Starmer has insisted Joe Biden was “absolutely across all the detail” and “on really good form” at a Nato summit, dismissing questions about the US president’s mental agility.

The UK prime minister said on Thursday that Biden had shown “incredible leadership” at a gathering to mark the alliance’s 75th anniversary in Washington.

Asked by the BBC whether Biden appeared to be senile, as some critics have implied, Starmer said: “No, we had a really good bilateral yesterday, we were billed for 45 minutes, we went on for the best part of an hour, we went through a huge number of issues at pace. He was actually on really good form.”

Starmer side-stepped a question on actor George Clooney’s suggestion on Wednesday that Biden needed to be replaced as the Democratic presidential candidate. “I'm giving you my readout of the meeting we had. As I say, we've covered a lot of strategic ground,” he said when asked if Clooney’s assessment was fair.

US tech stocks fell while small-caps surged in late morning trade in New York following cooler than expected June inflation data.

The Nasdaq Composite fell 1.2 per cent on Tuesday, with all of the Magnificent Seven tech stocks except Tesla in negative territory. Nvidia fell 3 per cent, Meta fell 2.1 per cent and Microsoft lost 2.5 per cent.

The benchmark S&P 500 fell 0.5 per cent.

The Russell 2000 index, in contrast, rose 3.1 per cent as traders rotated into small-caps. The index has climbed just 4.3 per cent so far this year compared with the Nasdaq’s 23 per cent gain.

Market leader Tesla’s share of US electric vehicle sales has fallen below 50 per cent for the first time, according to Cox Automotive, the auto research company.

Tesla’s share of domestic EV sales in the April to June quarter dipped to 49.7 per cent, down from 59 per cent a year earlier, owing to increased competition that has led to “continued price pressure”, said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, Cox Automotive’s insights director.

Tesla’s Model Y and Model 3 are now up against new entries, including the BMW i5, Cadillac Lyriq, Honda Prologue and Kia EV9 SUV, noted Cox Automotive.

Tesla has been contacted for comment.

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US jobless claims, a proxy for lay-offs, hit a six-week low, contrasting recent data that suggested the labour market was cooling and had raised hopes the Federal Reserve could begin cutting interest rates this year.

New applications for state unemployment aid totalled 222,000 in the week ending July 6, the labour department said on Thursday, from an upwardly revised 239,000 in the previous seven-day period. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 236,000 claims.

The relative strength of the US labour market has been a primary reason why the Fed has not rushed to commence a rate-cutting cycle. But last week’s non-farm payrolls report, which showed the unemployment rate in June hit its highest level since November 2021, prompted traders to raise bets on rate cuts this year. Jobless claims data can be volatile, and although on an upward trend in recent weeks, are still at levels consistent with a resilient labour market.

The new Labour government is considering applying its planned ban on new oil and gas licences to applications that are already in the pipeline, marking a radical break from its predecessor less than a week after taking office.  

Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, could block a handful of outstanding applications made as part of a licensing round that opened in late 2022, with a government source saying it was “working through” the process alongside the regulator. 

Labour had pledged during the general election campaign to stop issuing new oil and gas licences while not revoking existing ones. 

But the potential move not to allow applications in the pipeline to go forward risks a clash between the new government and unions, which are concerned about job losses in the sector.  

Wall Street stocks rose to fresh all-time highs after US inflation fell faster than expected in June, boosting the case for interest rate cuts later this year.

The blue-chip S&P 500 advanced less than 0.1 per cent shortly after the opening bell in New York, leaving the index on track for its eighth consecutive session of gains — its longest run since November — and trading at a new record high. The tech-dominated Nasdaq Composite rose 0.1 per cent.

Investors responded to June’s lower than expected inflation figures by upping their bets on a quarter-point rate cut in September. A measure of the dollar’s strength against a basket of six major currencies fell 0.8 per cent.

Kenya’s president William Ruto has dismissed almost all of his cabinet in the wake of mass protests that have forced him to withdraw a finance bill that proposed large tax rises. 

In a statement on Thursday, Ruto said that after “a holistic appraisal of the performance of my cabinet and its achievements and challenges”, all cabinet secretaries and the attorney-general would be dismissed with immediate effect, with the exception of the prime cabinet secretary and foreign secretary.

The president would consult on forming a new government “that will assist me in accelerating and expediting the necessary, urgent and irreversible implementation of radical programmes” to tackle economic and social issues, Ruto said, and “slay the dragon of corruption consequently making the government lean, inexpensive, effective and efficient”.

Sterling rose to its highest level against the dollar in almost a year on Thursday, after the UK economy grew more than expected in May while lower than forecast US inflation drove a broad retreat in the greenback.

The pound was up 0.7 per cent at $1.2941, the highest level since late July 2023, following official figures which showed that the UK economy grew 0.4 per cent, having flatlined in April.

The British currency was also supported by a broader decline in the dollar after US inflation came in below expectations in June at 3 per cent. That pushed the dollar down 0.8 per cent against a basket of currencies.

Treasury yields dropped and stock futures rose following the report of cooler than expected inflation figures, as investors added to bets on interest rate cuts this year.

Traders in the futures market added to bets on two cuts this year following the data, according to LSEG, with the first coming in either September or November. The odds of a September cut were 92 per cent following the CPI data, compared with 72 per cent previously. 

The two-year yields, which move with interest rate expectations, fell 0.11 percentage points to 4.52 per cent. S&P 500 stock futures rose.

US inflation fell to 3 per cent in June in an encouraging sign for the Federal Reserve as it debates how quickly to cut interest rates from their 23-year high.

The year-on-year rise in the consumer price index was lower than economists’ expectations of 3.1 per cent, according to forecasts compiled by Bloomberg, and followed a 3.3 per cent increase in May.

The data, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday, comes as the Fed looks for further evidence that price pressures are easing in the world’s largest economy.

Read more here

PepsiCo has tweaked its earnings guidance for the year after beating second-quarter profit expectations but slightly missing revenue forecasts, as it continues to see the adverse impact of “tighter household financial conditions” in its all-important North American market. 

The fizzy drinks and snacks maker reported net income for the period of $3bn, surpassing market expectations of $2.98bn. It said on Thursday it expected to deliver “approximately” 4 per cent revenue growth for the year, having previously forecast “at least” 4 per cent. 

Sales volumes declined in its North American Frito-Lay division, which makes snacks such as Cheetos, as consumers baulked at higher prices.

Pepsi posted group revenues of $22.5bn for the second quarter of 2024, narrowly missing market forecasts of $22.6bn.

Pfizer is planning to advance a daily weight loss pill to mid-stage trials later this year, hoping that the experimental drug will help it break into a market that is projected to be worth more than $100bn a year.

The pharmaceutical group said on Thursday that it had selected a once-daily oral medicine to test in phase 2 studies in the second half of this year.

The compound used in the Pfizer product is similar to that used in the already approved weight loss injections Wegovy and Zepbound, produced by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly.

Those two companies are already testing weight loss pills in phase 3 trials.

Delta Air Lines reported record adjusted revenue of $15.4bn on strong demand in the second quarter, with transatlantic air travel boosted by the strong US dollar, said chief executive Ed Bastian.

Transatlantic travel is stronger than the US domestic market given the summer season, he added, noting young US travellers were boarding flights to see pop star Taylor Swift play in Europe. Yet tourists are avoiding Paris, deterred by the Olympic Games.

Delta’s adjusted operating income dropped 9 per cent to $2.3bn, compared with the June quarter of 2023. Last year marked a record, Bastian said, and the drop was more “stabilising at a high level”.

The UK government will have 18 months to turn around the prison system if it opts to release prisoners earlier in their sentences, according to the former justice secretary.

Alex Chalk told the BBC that Labour’s plans to lower the automatic release point for non-violent offenders to 40 per cent of time served would ease some pressure.

“[It] will buy you 18 months but it won’t buy you any more than that,” he said. “You have to, as new justice secretary, be very frank and credible about the long term.”

Chalk said that Shabana Mahmood, lord chancellor, would need to weigh whether the government could afford to build more capacity at a time when other public services required investment.

Hong Kong-listed CK Infrastructure, controlled by the family of the territory’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, is considering a secondary listing on the London Stock Exchange.

The company said in a filing on Thursday that it would consider a “potential second and additional listing” on an overseas market, such as the London Stock Exchange. CKI’s investments in the UK include UK Power Networks and Northumbrian Water.

The announcement came as the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority announced an overhaul of listing rules to boost growth.

Inflation: Price pressures in the US are expected to have eased in June, with the consumer price index forecast to be up 3.1 per cent annually from May’s reading of 3.3 per cent, according to economists polled by Reuters. Annual growth in “core” CPI, which strips out volatile food and energy costs, is projected to stay at 3.4 per cent.

PepsiCo: Investors will be paying attention to what insights on consumer demand the fizzy drinks and snack maker will provide when it reports results before Wall Street’s opening bell. The market may also be on the lookout for whether growth at its Frito-Lay division has picked up after a sluggish first quarter. Analysts expect PepsiCo to report that group revenue in the second quarter rose 1 per cent from a year earlier.

Jobless claims: Initial applications for US state unemployment aid — a proxy for lay-offs — are expected to have fallen to 236,000 last week from 238,000 the previous week, as official statistics for June suggest the country’s labour market is showing signs of cooling. 

Delta Air Lines: The carrier will report second-quarter earnings before the market opens. The airline, which was relatively unaffected by Boeing’s production and delivery issues, enjoyed a record first quarter.

Brussels has accepted a series of measures from Apple that give the iPhone maker’s rivals access to its contactless payments technology system, avoiding a hefty fine for the company and ending a long-running antitrust probe.

The US tech giant, as a concession to EU demands, will allow developers to enable its “tap-and-go” technology or near-field communication (NFC) to use Apple Pay and Apple Wallet as “an easy, secure and private way to pay, as well as present passes”, it said on Thursday.

Apple will thus avoid a penalty from Brussels of as much as $40bn and a formal accusation that it has broken EU law. The move marks a brief truce between the two after a number of antitrust accusations from European regulators.

Read more here

The waiting list for routine hospital treatment in England has risen for the second month in a row, highlighting the challenge faced by the new Labour government.

Patients were waiting for almost 7.6mn appointments at the end of May, compared with 7.57mn at the end of April, NHS England data showed on Thursday.

Efforts to cut waiting times have been hampered by a post-Covid backlog of cases, and by strikes by junior doctors over pay levels.

The number of children affected by the UK’s contentious two-child limit on benefits has increased by 8.5 per cent over the past year, official data shows, increasing pressure on the new Labour government to scrap the policy.

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In the year to April 2024, the number of children impacted by the policy, which restricts child welfare payments to the first two children in most families, rose to 1.6mn from 1.5mn, according to data from HMRC and the Department for Work and Pensions. 

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has refused to commit to ending the policy, despite data showing it as the primary driver of the UK’s rising child poverty rates. 

Big share price moves in Europe today include UK utility Pennon, Swiss chocolate maker Barry Callebaut and Norwegian bank DNB: 

• Pennon Group: Shares in the UK owner of South West Water surged 6.5 per cent on Thursday, leading gains on the region-wide Stoxx 600 index, after it announced finance chief Steve Buck would be replaced by Laura Flowerdew, on the same day as regulator Ofwat announced its decision on price rises across the industry. 

• Barry Callebaut: Shares in the Swiss chocolate maker led losses on the Stoxx 600, falling 7.8 per cent, after the company reported flat sales volumes as surging cocoa prices damped customer demand. 

  

• DNB Bank: Shares in the Norwegian financial services group rose 4.8 per cent after it reported better than expected second-quarter profits. 

European stocks rose while Wall Street futures slipped on Thursday ahead of the release of key US inflation data.

The region-wide Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.4 per cent in early trading, as did Germany’s Dax, while France’s Cac 40 rose 0.3 per cent. London’s FTSE 100 was up 0.2 per cent after UK GDP for May came in higher than expected.

Contracts tracking Wall Street’s blue-chip S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 both fell 0.1 per cent ahead of the New York market open. Data due out later today is expected to show annual consumer price inflation of 3.1 per cent in June, down from 3.3 per cent in May.

BHP is suspending its Western Australia nickel operations from October, as the company struggles to compete with low-cost alternatives from countries such as Indonesia.

The announcement comes amid a glut in the supply of nickel, which is critical for making electric vehicle batteries. Under Indonesia’s outgoing President Joko Widodo the country became the world’s dominant supplier of the metal.

“Since FY2020 BHP has invested approximately US$3bn (A$4.4bn) to sustain Western Australia Nickel as an ongoing business . . . Western Australia Nickel has recorded negative cash flow every year during this period,” BHP said in a statement.

Operations will be suspended from October and BHP will review the decision “by February 2027”.

The chief executive of the UK’s water regulator has said there is a “strong case” for extending criminal sanctions to senior leaders at ailing companies.

Ofwat on Thursday ruled that water companies could increase customer bills by an average of £19 a year over the next five-year period, less than the utilities had wanted. 

The regulator also placed Thames Water into a special “turnaround oversight regime” that will require the company to overhaul its business plan.

David Black said the watchdog already had several powers to impose penalties on ailing companies, including criminal sanctions. When asked on Sky News on Thursday whether these should be extended to individuals, Black said there was a “strong case”, adding: “We have to be careful, I don’t see that as a magic bullet.”

Buoyant demand has lifted Jet2’s full-year profit, prompting the UK travel company to purchase further Airbus aircraft.

Its pre-tax profit for the year ended March 31 surged 43 per cent year on year to £529mn, as the London-listed company booked record passenger numbers of 17.7mn. Jet2’s revenue of £6.2bn was an increase of 24 per cent.

The strong performance enabled the holiday company, which has budget airlines and the tour operating arm, to exercise the remaining 36 purchase rights of its Airbus aircraft order, with a delivery stream of 146 A321neo aircraft through 2035.

But the company signalled rising price competition, saying flights and package holidays were showing a “modest” increase in order to remain attractive for customers who were now booking “much closer to departure”. 

Heathrow airport will be forced to trim the landing fees it charges airlines following an intervention by the competition regulator. 

The UK Civil Aviation Authority on Thursday said charges will be capped at £23.73 per passenger in 2025 and £23.71 in 2026, about 6 per cent lower than planned.

It changed its calculations following a ruling from the Competition and Markets Authority in October, which intervened in a long-running and acrimonious row between the UK’s hub airport and its main airline customers. 

The CMA in October gave its qualified backing to the CAA’s original decision on charges, but determined there were some issues to re-examine, including how pension payments were reflected in the charges.  

Stock markets in Hong Kong and mainland China surged on Thursday after the country’s securities regulator announced new restrictions on short selling, with the country’s two benchmark indices leading gains among Asian bourses.

The Hang Seng index rose 1.9 per cent while mainland China’s benchmark CSI 300 index climbed 1.1 per cent.

The Hang Seng Technology subindex added 2.5 per cent and the CSI 2000, an index of small-cap companies, gained 3.2 per cent.

Equities in Japan, Korea and Taiwan also rose while Indian stocks edged down in early trading.

In currency markets, the Korean won strengthened 0.3 per cent against the dollar after the country’s central bank held rates.

Water regulator Ofwat has placed Thames Water into a special “turnaround oversight regime” that will require it to re-evaluate its business plan and limited the increase in the utility’s household bills.

Thames Water can raise household bills from an average of £436 this year to £535 by 2030, Ofwat said on Thursday, well short of the £627 that the utility has said is needed to help attract critical new funding from investors and overhaul its ailing infrastructure.

The ruling came in Ofwat’s response to Thames’ business plan, which water companies are required to submit to the regulator every five years.

The UK economy grew 0.4 per cent in May, double the expected figure.

The month-on-month rise followed zero growth in April, the Office for National Statistics said on Thursday.

It also exceeded a 0.2 per cent forecast for May by economists polled by Reuters.

Labour, which swept to power in last week’s general election, has said growth is now the government’s “national mission” and is hoping planning reforms will help lift an economy that has underperformed its peers since the financial crisis.

Chinese authorities have opened an investigation into the transport of cooking oil after local media reported that tankers used for hauling fuel were used without being cleaned.

An undercover video report from state-backed Beijing News last week showed numerous fuel tanker trucks also carrying cooking oil. “I haul sugar, honey, molasses, cooking oil, motor lubricant,” a driver said in the video. “I haul everything.”

A second truck driver said he usually didn’t pay the Rmb400-Rmb500 ($55-$70) to wash his truck’s tank before switching liquids. It was an “open secret” in the industry, another said. 

Multiple Chinese agencies on Tuesday announced a joint investigation led by the food safety commission.

Events: Ofwat, Britain’s water regulator, announces its draft decision on how much household bills will be allowed to rise over the next five years. Buckingham Palace opens its State Rooms and East Wing to visitors until September 29.

Central banks: Banque de France governor François Villeroy de Galhau speaks on the balance of payments report.

Economic data: All eyes are focused on May’s gross domestic product data, which will indicate if the UK economy has revived after failing to grow in April. Italy releases April international tourism figures.

Corporate news: Low-cost airline Jet2 announces preliminary full-year results.  Jet2holidays, the UK’s largest tour group, is expected to provide a fuller outlook for the all-important summer season. Updates are also due from Galliford Try, Hays, Severn Trent, Wood Group and Workspace Group.

Shares of Tencent-backed South Korean game developer Shift Up surged nearly 50 per cent in its stock market debut on Thursday after a Won425bn ($320mn) initial public offering.

The start-up was valued at about Won4.6tn after a heavily oversubscribed IPO.

“There is ample room for the stock to rise after the IPO,” said Lee Ji-eun, an analyst at Daishin Securities, in a recent report, citing the company’s strong intellectual property and diversified platforms.

Shift Up posted a Won111bn operating profit last year on sales of Won169bn, helped by popular mobile and PC games such as Goddess of Victory: Nikke and console game Stellar Blade. 

Chinese equities rose in early trading on Thursday after the country’s securities regulator announced new restrictions on short selling ahead of the third plenum meeting next week.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission announced on Wednesday that it had “approved China Securities Finance Corporation’s application to suspend its securities lending business”.

The suspension of China’s largest facilitator of short trades went into effect on Thursday.

The CSRC also raised the margin ratio for short selling and announced further regulations on quantitative trading.

Mainland China’s benchmark CSI 300 rose 0.5 per cent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index added 1.3 per cent.

Beijing first limited short selling in January amid a prolonged sell-off in the country’s stock markets.

Events: Thailand’s foreign minister Maris Sangiampongsa begins a visit to India, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev arrives in Pakistan and Vietnam’s President To Lam leads a delegation to Laos.

Central banks: South Korea and Malaysia’s central banks announce interest rate decisions.

Economic data: Japan publishes data on machinery orders for May and Thailand publishes its consumer confidence index. New Zealand releases its June food price index. The OECD presents the new Economic Survey of Korea, which assesses economic performance and outlook and offers policy recommendations.

Corporate updates: Uniqlo owner Fast Retailing and 7-Eleven owner Seven & i Holdings announce quarterly earnings.

Cathie Wood has acknowledged that her fund firm Ark Investment Management’s volatile performance has been “challenged” in 2024 but insisted a return to profitability is in sight.

In a nearly 4,000-word letter to investors published on Wednesday afternoon, Wood thanked investors for sticking with her, despite a losing run to start the year while the broader US equities market has enjoyed sizeable gains, putting it on track for a potential third losing year out of the last four.

In 2021 and 2022, Wood’s flagship exchange traded fund had performed worse than virtually all of its peers, though she had beaten the field in 2020 and 2023, according to Morningstar.

Read more here

Costco, the US’s third-biggest retailer and a beneficiary of bargain-hunting consumers who have sought refuge from inflation, will raise the price of its annual membership for the first time since 2017.

Starting in September, the retailer will raise its standard yearly membership fee by $5 to $65, and the price of its executive membership will increase from $120 to $130.

Costco, which sells bulk products at a discount at its more than 600 US locations, has benefited from a surge in inflation.

The company also reported that its sales in June, excluding petrol, rose 6.3 per cent year on year.

Citigroup will pay $136mn to US banking regulators for failing to comply with a 2020 cease and desist order that called for the lender to correct long-standing data management and risk control issues.

The fine, announced on Wednesday, was issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve, and comes on top of the $400mn that the bank paid for the same issue in 2020.

The penalty is the latest black eye for Citigroup’s chief executive Jane Fraser who got the top job at Citi in part because she pledged to resolve the errors that led up to the 2020 settlement.

A New York jury has found former Wall Street trader Bill Hwang guilty of fraud and market manipulation, three years after the implosion of his Archegos fund sent tremors through global equity markets and left big banks nursing billions of dollars in losses.

The verdict on Wednesday came after prosecutors sought to prove that Hwang “deceived the market” with strategies that allowed him to drive up the share price of media and technology groups, before adverse events led to a sudden sell-off in 2021.

Lawyers for Hwang accused the US government of having “no theory” as to how he would have stood to benefit from building outsized positions in specific companies.

Read more here

Nato has demanded China cease its support of Moscow’s war machine, in the military alliance’s strongest-ever condemnation of Beijing.

“China has become a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine through its so-called “no limits” partnership and its large-scale support for Russia’s defence industrial base,” Nato’s 32 leaders said in a joint statement agreed at its annual summit in Washington on Wednesday.

“This increases the threat Russia poses to its neighbours and to Euro-Atlantic security,” they added.

Demanding Beijing “cease all material and political support to Russia’s war effort”, Nato said China “cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history without this negatively impacting its interests and reputation”.

The benchmark US index rose 1 per cent on Wednesday, its biggest jump in five weeks, with the materials and technology sectors the gauge’s best-performing sectors. More than 80 per cent of S&P 500 stocks advanced.

The Nasdaq Composite added 1.2 per cent to close at a record high for the seventh session in a row, with every Magnificent Seven group rising. The small cap focused Russell 2000 gained 1.1 per cent.

Treasury activity was quiet ahead of Thursday’s inflation report for June, which economists expect will show a slight decline from May. Analysts are also preparing for the start of corporate earnings season, with banks set to unofficially kick off proceedings on Friday.