Financial Times - 04.11.2026 — 2026-11-05

FINANCIAL TIMES

WEDNESDAY 4 NOVEMBER 2026

How a \$20bn fraud burnt Turkey's investors BIG READ, PAGE 21

UK £3.70; Republic of Ireland €4.10

Will the AI boom differ from any other mania?

MARTIN WOLF, PAGE 23

US midterms Trump awaits voters' verdict

Voters cast their midterms ballots yesterday in West Columbia, South Carolina. Millions of voters headed to the polls for congressional races – from Maine to Alaska, and Texas to Michigan – set to deliver a verdict on Donald Trump's second term.

The president's Republican Party was at risk of defeats in both chambers of Congress as voters soured on his handling of the economy, his war against Iran, his abrasive style and his family's enrichment while in office.

More than 59mn ballots had been cast before yesterday in postal votes, a figure suggesting turnout on the day would be high. Polls close from 6pm EST, with the first results expected soon after and continuing into the early hours as voting closed in the west. There were also 36 gubernatorial races and votes on policy ideas, such as a wealth tax in California. Trump's Israel pledge page 4

Sam Wolfe/Reuters

Nvidia demands cut in clients' China dealings to protect American AI lead

\- Chipmaker curbs cloud providers

• Most partners must be non-Chinese

• Blow to Beijing's tech goals

ZIJING WU — HONG KONG

DEMETRI SEVASTOPULO — WASHINGTON

ELEANOR OLCOTT — LONDON

Nvidia has ordered its data centre partners to reduce their exposure to Chinese customers, further hampering China's ability to keep up with the US in the AI superpower race.

The world's largest chipmaker has told cloud computing clients they must sell at least 51 per cent of their services to non-Chinese companies, according to people with knowledge of the matter. No restrictions existed previously.

The instructions have been communicated verbally and conveyed by Nvidia's sales teams rather than spelt out in documents, the people said.

The move means Chinese tech companies face a new threat to their AI ambitions as Washington moves to restrict the access to advanced US chips they had through overseas cloud computing deals. Many Chinese groups had relied on such leases for advanced AI tasks, including model training.

The compliance rules apply to Nvidia's clients globally and not just data centres in Asia, two of the people said. They affect future contracts rather than existing leasing agreements.

"Longstanding US policy encourages

Customers struggle to comply as it is 'difficult to find enough non-Chinese clients outside the US'

every cloud to build on American infrastructure and to win business everywhere they can," Nvidia said. "America's longstanding policy has always supported the build-out of American infrastructure worldwide, bringing prosperity, influence, and jobs home."

Nvidia imposed the requirement over the summer in an effort to reduce the criticism it receives regularly from US lawmakers and other critics of its approach to China, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The US is seeking to clamp down both on intermediaries that have helped create a thriving black market for Nvidia's chips in China, and on Chinese companies' access to advanced chips through overseas leasing deals.

Cloud providers have, however, struggled to comply with the curbs because it is “difficult to find enough non-Chinese clients outside the US”, said a Singapore-based group. “If strictly implemented, it will definitely hurt business.”

Nvidia's crackdown has also fuelled a severe shortage of advanced computing power for Chinese tech companies. A rack of Nvidia's B300 chips, which sells for about \$600,000, last month fetched Rmb18.5mn (\$2.8mn) in China because of their scarcity, according to a person with knowledge of the deal.

Nvidia had already more than halved the number of Asian customers authorised to buy its AI chips after it created a “white list” of groups that had passed tough compliance checks aimed at preventing the products from reaching China. That meant fewer Nvidia chips being smuggled into China, forcing more Chinese groups to pursue leasing deals with overseas cloud providers.

The US and China are by far the largest sources of demand for computing power, while Chinese tech groups have been the biggest clients for data centres in regions such as south-east Asia.

Nvidia's move has also prompted data centres outside the US to search desperately for clients that are not Chinese. They could be forced to shrink the scale of their operations if they cannot do so.

Nvidia shares have fallen more than 13 per cent in the past month but remain 7 per cent higher this year. The recent dip in the stock means Jensen Huang's group has been overtaken by Apple as the world's most valuable company.

FT View page 22

Briefing

▶ Poundland owners face grilling from angry MPs

US distressed investor Gordon Brothers will be hauled before members within days to explain its role in the discount retailer's looming insolvency. One of the biggest high street failures puts 12,000 jobs at risk.— PAGE 12

▶ Push for leaders' meeting

Officials are discussing a possible meeting later this month between Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin when the three leaders attend the Apec summit in Shenzhen, China.— PAGE 4

▶ Binance lifts lid on heist

The crypto exchange has said the attackers who stole \$6.3bn last week set up fake job interviews to trick one of its software engineers into installing malicious code.

— PAGE 9; MARKETS INSIGHT, PAGE 14

▶ Lifetime pension offer

Private sector workers will be given the automatic right to a lifetime pension income under plans that unwind moves to give pensioners freedom over their money in retirement.— PAGE 2

▶ Bill backs green energy

An “energy independence bill” is to be presented to parliament that forces green energy groups to invest in communities hosting their projects, in a bid to rebuild support for net zero.— PAGE 2

▶ Apollo \$114bn AI splurge

The New York private capital group has poured premiums from its insurance clients into the AI boom at a frenzied pace, lending a record \$114bn in the third quarter.— PAGE 10; FT VIEW, PAGE 22

▶ Trump to cut Israel aid

The US president has said that Washington will stop providing military aid at the year's end. The US gives \$4bn annually to Israel in a 10-year agreement that is set to expire in 2028.— PAGE 4

Australia raises rates The central bank has increased interest rates to an 18-year high as it warned inflation remained above target in an economy grappling with joblessness and a house price collapse.—PAGE 8

'Big draw' Cameron enlisted to charm donors and build on Badenoch revival

Rio targets toad army that threatens jump in costs

Rio Tinto is joining the fight to stop one of Australia's most invasive species wreaking havoc on wildlife. The mining group is spending \$20mn working with scientists to forge a 40km by 400km 'kill zone' for the marauding cane toad, which was introduced a century ago to feast on a sugarcane-eating beetle but ended up devouring everything. By attacking biodiversity in the iron-rich Pilbara area, they would make Rio's mine applications harder and costlier. Toad invasion ▶ PAGE 10

LUCY FISHER AND JULIE STEINBERG

The Conservatives have turned to Lord David Cameron to rally supporters and boost fundraising, with the former prime minister wooing donors with top billing at party events.

Cameron, who took the Conservatives into power in the 2010 general election, has also been speaking regularly to party leader Kemi Badenoch, according to people familiar with the matter.

His return coincides with the Tories' overtaking Reform UK in the polls for the first time in almost two years, a milestone in the party's nascent recovery after the rout at the last election.

The Tories climbed to an average of 22.1 per cent, up from a low of 16 per cent last autumn, according to the FT's poll tracker, passing Reform on 21.9 per cent, for the first time in 22 months.

The party still lags behind Labour, which continues to enjoy stronger support under Andy Burnham, rising to 29.2 per cent in the FT's poll of polls.

Cameron had already been asked to assist Badenoch with Prime Minister's Questions, as reported by the FT this year, and has been credited in part for her improvement at the despatch box at the weekly Commons showdown.

He has now been calling existing and lapsed Tory donors to entice them back into the tent and to open their wallets.

"If an election is called soon, the Tories suffer from a very damaged brand but they need financial resources to stand any chance of being competitive," said a person familiar with matters.

Cameron is the star attraction at next month's Cities of London and Westminster Conservative Association event, for which tickets cost up to £345 a seat. Billing it as “a rare chance to hear [Cameron’s] reflections on leadership, Britain’s place in the world and the Conservative future”, the association website invites donations alongside bookings.

Cameron is also set to address the annual pre-Christmas lunch of centre-right think-tank Onward.

"I've noticed that David seems to be doing more," said Sir Simon Clarke, Onward director. "He's a big draw and the only person still alive who's led the Conservatives back into government, so he is uniquely qualified to talk about that journey and make sure we get the policy as well as the politics right."

People close to Cameron said he supported the party and Badenoch and had a history of helping fundraising efforts.

The Conservatives did not respond to requests for comment. Cameron's office declined to comment.

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STOCK MARKETS | Nov 03 | Prev | %chg | S&P 500 | 7580.85 | 7541.40 | 0.52 | Nasdaq Composite | 25351.86 | 25164.36 | 0.75 | Dow Jones Ind | 51806.64 | 51983.98 | -0.34 | Euro Stoxx 50 | 6144.56 | 6176.06 | -0.51 | FTSEurofirst 300 | 2573.69 | 2589.34 | -0.60 | FTSE 100 | 10638.43 | 10761.33 | -1.14 | FTSE All-Share | 5746.54 | 5808.28 | -1.06 | CAC 40 | 8020.31 | 8047.69 | -0.34 | Xetra Dax | 25864.62 | 25981.09 | -0.45 | Nikkei | Closed | 63081.86 | - | Hang Seng | 23525.97 | 23393.32 | 0.57 | MSCI World | 4885.00 | 4865.00 | 0.41 | MSCI EM | 1578.20 | 1553.50 | 1.59 | MSCI ACWI | 1122.30 | 1116.40 | 0.53 | World Markets

CURRENCIES | Pair | Nov 03 | Prev | Pair | Nov 03 | Prev | $/€ | 1.119 | 1.119 | €/$ | 0.893 | 0.894 | $/£ | 1.342 | 1.341 | £/$ | 0.745 | 0.746 | £/€ | 0.834 | 0.834 | €/£ | 1.198 | 1.198 | ¥/$ | 158.445 | 157.815 | ¥/€ | 177.371 | 176.619 | ¥/£ | 212.562 | 211.669 | £ Index | 86.310 | 86.30 | Sfr/€ | 0.919 | 0.915 | Sfr/£ | 1.101 | 1.097 | CRYPTO | Nov 03 | Prev | %chg | Bitcoin | 77650.90 | 77403.41 | 0.32 | Ethereum | 2294.85 | 2267.10 | 1.22 | Nov 03 | Prev | %chg | Oil WTI | 95.97 | 96.46 | -0.51 | Oil Brent $ | 103.46 | 104.77 | -1.25 | Gold $ | 3927.06 | 3967.51 | -1.02 | GOVERNMENT BONDS | Yield (%) | Nov 03 | Prev | Chg | US 2 Yr | 4.63 | 4.59 | 0.04 | US 10 Yr | 4.96 | 4.88 | 0.08 | US 30 Yr | 5.33 | 5.25 | 0.08 | UK 2 Yr | 4.85 | 4.79 | 0.06 | UK 10 Yr | 5.26 | 5.20 | 0.06 | UK 30 Yr | 5.70 | 5.63 | 0.07 | JPN 2 Yr | 1.86 | 1.86 | 0.00 | JPN 10 Yr | 2.80 | 2.79 | 0.01 | JPN 30 Yr | 3.94 | 3.94 | 0.00 | GER 2 Yr | 3.04 | 3.03 | 0.01 | GER 10 Yr | 3.31 | 3.29 | 0.02 | GER 30 Yr | 3.69 | 3.66 | 0.03 | Prices are latest for edition Data provided by ICE. www.ice.com

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NATIONAL

Renewables

Green energy groups to invest in local areas

Bill will place legal duty on projects to provide funds for communities

JIM PICKARD AND RACHEL MILLARD

LONDON

Renewable energy companies will be legally obliged to invest in the communities where they build projects as ministers seek to boost public support for net zero at a time of fracturing political consensus on tackling climate change.

Communities would also be given the right to buy up to 20 per cent of a renewable energy project near them — up from the current 5 per cent — and would also apply to smaller schemes of at least 1 megawatt for the first time.

A new “energy independence bill” will be laid before parliament today to set out the measures, which mark a change from the existing system of voluntary support.

It follows the government's announcement last week that its priority was "first and foremost cheaper energy, with clean power key to achieving this" in an apparent scaling back of the "mission" to decarbonise the entire power system by 2030.

According to the latest public attitudes tracker conducted by the business department this summer, almost eight in 10 people were concerned about climate change, while 51 per cent expected the long-term impact of net zero to be positive. Seventy-nine per cent supported the use of renewable energy.

But both the Conservatives and Reform UK have pledged to scrap the legally binding target of decarbonising the entire economy by 2050 – signed into law in 2019 by then prime minister Theresa May — arguing that doing so would help bring down energy costs.

Under the measures to be included in the bill, community benefit funds will be mandatory for all such schemes over 5MW. Groups will have to strike legally binding agreements with communities, which then decide how money is spent.

At present, some developers fund sports fields or community centres or other infrastructure when they build solar farms or onshore wind farms, but the system is an ad hoc “patchwork approach” to support.

The government will propose that eligible projects must provide a minimum amount of compensation, with £5,000 per megawatt of power a year for wind projects and £700 per megawatt for solar schemes. That money can go towards projects picked by local leaders, ranging from football pitches to skills training for young people or household grants to tackle fuel poverty.

“Currently, there is a patchwork approach to how communities benefit from hosting renewable energy projects,” one official said. “Some receive financial support, while others see little in return, despite hosting the clean power Britain needs to protect households from volatile global fossil fuel markets.”

Officials reassured the industry that further secondary legislation will be needed to implement these measures.

The legislation will also be used to put a new body called Great British Grid, part of Great British Energy, on a statutory footing. GBG will compete with the FTSE 100 company National Grid and other network owners to support the delivery of grid upgrades.

The plan to let communities have a stake in local renewable projects is part of Prime Minister Andy Burnham's broader desire to give voters greater control over utilities.

The energy independence bill, announced in the King's Speech in May, comprises a broad mix of energy policies. It is expected to include a legal commitment to Labour's manifesto pledge to end new exploration licences in the North Sea and to ban fracking.

Miatta Fahnbulleh, energy secretary, said the government wanted to make sure local people benefited from projects in their community.

“This means more of the benefits staying in local communities, rather than passing them by,” she said. “Because if your community helps power Britain, it should share in the rewards.”

[Northern Ireland. Politics] DUP damaged by Drumcree parade fallout

Rifts widen in unionist party

after most popular MP quits

in boost for rival Sinn Féin

JUDE WEBBER — DUBLIN

Northern Ireland's biggest pro-UK party is under pressure to prevent further splits after its most popular MP resigned over the handling of a planned Protestant parade through a nationalist area.

The announcement by Carla Lockhart that she was quitting the Democratic Unionist Party to sit as an independent has left the DUP with its lowest number of MPs for 25 years.

Her decision is the latest blow for the DUP as the party struggles to regain momentum against its energised nationalist rival Sinn Féin ahead of regional elections due next May.

The MP for Upper Bann said on Mon-

day she was making the decision

because the party had refused to force

out Michelle O'Neill, the Sinn Féin first

minister, from the region's Stormont

executive over her decision to join pro-

tests blocking a planned Protestant

parade from Drumcree church in a

largely Catholic area of Portadown.

No one has yet followed Lockhart. But what she saw as the DUP's weak response to the parade dispute has left the party "in a considerable mess", said Owen Polley, a unionism commentator.

Lockhart's departure means the DUP, which had 10 MPs in 2017 when its support kept then prime minister Theresa May in power, now has four MPs.

“Her seat was the safest by some margin . . . it suggests there’s a growing problem with the grassroots and just with confidence in what the party’s doing,” Polley added.

Northern Ireland's most contentious Protestant parade had been banned since 1998. But the Orange Order was given the surprise go-ahead to march in September, prompting a nationalist outcry. Weeks of stand-off and legal action ensued before Northern Ireland secretary Sir Chris Bryant halted it last month.

The High Court in Belfast last week upheld his decision.

The DUP and other unionist parties

Out of step: Portadown Orange Lodge marchers. Below, Carla Lockhart Charles McQuillan/Getty

have branded O'Neill a lawbreaker for helping block the parade. It is not yet clear if she will face charges.

Lockhart had wanted the DUP to withdraw its deputy first minister, Emma Little-Pengelly, from Stormont to force out O'Neill, since it is a shared office under Northern Ireland's power-sharing rules. Instead, the DUP has agreed only to cease joint activities.

Sinn Féin, by contrast, has been boosted. The party is the largest in Stormont but has failed to deliver on key concerns of its own voters – such as construction of a Gaelic Games stadium – while the executive has failed to agree a budget.

While Drumcree “has backfired for unionism”, the bounce for Sinn Féin “has made it much easier to evade questions about its record in government”, said Sam McBride, Northern Ireland editor of the Belfast Telegraph.

A More in Common poll last week found Sinn Féin had enjoyed a fillip, rising to 30 per cent in Stormont voting intention. That was 5 points higher than a More in Common poll in July and compared with a five-year low rating of 22 per cent in a Lucid Talk poll earlier this year. The DUP languished on 18 per cent in the More in Common poll.

Furthermore, “you’ve gone from having a really dominant DUP, which you’ve had since the early 2000s, to it now being only a plurality of unionism, rather than a majority of unionism, with 43 per cent of the unionist vote going to the DUP in our poll,” said Conleth Burns, associate director of More in Common.

With Stormont elections looming, the dispute “has acted like a clarion call to loyalists and republicans alike”, said Katy Hayward, professor of political sociology at Queen’s University in Belfast. But while Sinn Féin was turning

'Her seat was the safest by some margin . . . it suggests there's a growing problem with the grassroots'

that into electoral gain, unionists were riven by differences, such as whether to continue or collapse Stormont.

Discomfort among some unionists at sharing power with nationalists “will always be exploited by hardliners to gain political ground. But such ground is always taken from other unionists, not from nationalists,” Hayward said.

A Lucid Talk poll in the summer placed the DUP on 15 per cent, one point behind its smaller, more moderate rival the Ulster Unionist Party.

That result also reflected voter anger at the conviction of former leader Jeffrey Donaldson on child sex and rape charges. He has since been sentenced to 15 years.

Meanwhile, Stormont limps on but has failed to agree a budget over what all parties say is insufficient funding from London. Further talks between the parties and Bryant are due this week.

Retirement

Pensioners to be offered yearly income as a default

ALAN LIVSEY, CHRIS SMYTH AND CALUM KAPOOR — LONDON

Private sector workers will be given the automatic right to a lifetime pension income under government plans that unwind previous moves to give pensioners freedom over their money in retirement.

The shift, outlined in a consultation by the Department for Work and Pensions launched yesterday, aims to ensure older people do not run out of money in the years after they leave the workforce.

Under the new plan, known as a guided retirement, millions of savers' pension contributions would be pooled to offer "a fully managed pension people can rely on for life".

This will provide an option to those retirees who do not want to make investment decisions on their portfolios during their later lives.

David Cameron's Conservative government had granted pensioners greater freedom to build their pension plans as they wished, such as making their own decisions about which assets to invest in. However, the move was criticised for in essence forcing people to become investment experts.

“Too many people reach retirement with no clear plan for turning their savings into a reliable income that will last for life,” according to the consultation.

Ministers have praised the success of pension auto-enrolment in encouraging millions to secure more for retirement and describe the latest proposals as an attempt to apply a similar principle to the same group of savers.

Torsten Bell, pensions minister, said the plan “will offer a simpler way to turn savings into income, regardless of which workplace pension people have”.

DWP estimates that almost half of those savers accessing their pension pots for the first time choose to withdraw the entire amount, with the risk that they will have nothing left near the end of their lives.

“It’s unrealistic to expect millions of individuals to suddenly become retirement income experts,” said Kirsty Ross at the People’s Pension, a workplace pension provider.

Although pensioners have long had the option to use their pension savings to buy an income annuity, the new scheme will mean that members' pension pots will be held in a range of asset classes. This could provide better growth over time than an annuity, most of which are not adjusted for inflation.

Simon Eagle, collective defined contribution pensions expert at consultants WTW, said the scheme is expected to give an income 40 per cent higher on average than a typical annuity.

But Sir Steve Webb, a former Liberal Democrat pensions minister, said that although the government wanted to ensure a certain retirement income, "people don't want to take everything they've got and spread it thin – they want chunks at the start".

Another problem with the proposal, he added, is that pensioners could end up “stuck for life” with a guided retirement scheme if they did not opt out within the first 12 months based on HM Revenue & Customs guidance.

Although the new retirement collective schemes should offer a guaranteed income for life, the amount of potential income is unlikely to be assured.

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'Quiet quitting' likely to be drag on productivity, analysis shows

DELPHINE STRAUSS

British workers are increasingly disengaged from their jobs and have become less willing to go the extra mile to help their employer, according to a survey that lends substance to claims that productivity has suffered from a wave of so-called “quiet quitting” in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Analysis of data from the British Social Attitudes survey, published yesterday by the Resolution Foundation think-tank, shows employees have become more disengaged in the past 10 years and less willing to put in extra effort. There is also a sharp drop in the proportion who want full-time hours — a change that has been driven by men.

One in four workers was not even “fairly” satisfied with their main job – the gloomiest in the survey’s 35-year history and up from one in five when the question was last asked in 2015.

among managers and professionals.

The proportion willing to work harder than required to help their employer succeed, which had previously risen steadily since the 1990s, fell from 69 per cent in 2015 to 55 per cent last year, with the biggest drop in commitment seen

The idea that workers have been “quiet quitting” — a supposed post-pandemic trend of people limiting their efforts to essential duties — “is quite literally what the evidence shows”, said Hannah Slaughter, principal economist at the Resolution Foundation think-tank, which conducted the analysis.

The BSA's findings fitted the post-pandemic zeitgeist of people “feeling they want to prioritise other things in their life”, Slaughter said, and “could have knock-on implications for productivity", helping to explain its recent weakness.

Data problems make it hard to tell how UK productivity growth has evolved since Covid but the latest revisions still point to a period of extreme weakness with only tentative recent improvement.

Many staff are less likely to put in extra effort at work — Toby Melville/Reuters

Slaughter said the post-Covid shift towards working from home could help explain why people felt less committed to their employer. But she noted that people could also be less willing to make extra effort because employers were already asking more of them — even as opportunities for advancement, better pay or more autonomy are drying up.

There are longstanding concerns over work becoming more intense and less secure in low-paid sectors, Slaughter noted.

But the BSA's findings also show a sharp rise over the past decade, from 25 per cent to 36 per cent, in the share of managers and professionals who find it difficult to take an hour or two off for personal reasons — consistent with hybrid workers feeling “always on”.

At the same time, the share of workers who saw opportunities to advance in their job fell from 35 per cent in 2015 to 25 per cent last year.

Slaughter said it was striking how “broad-based” the sense of disengagement was across age groups and occupational groupings, with the sharpest fall in willingness to work harder seen among managers and professionals.

The fall in job satisfaction was far larger among men than women, as was a shift in preference for part-time over full-time hours.

The UK has been ageing more slowly than other countries Share of people aged 70 or over

NATIONAL

Faltering population growth will have a profound effect on Britain

Economic, social and political upheavals expected as rapid increase in numbers comes to an end

High migration= 455,000 net migration yearly; low migration = 105,000 net migration yearly; principal projection = 230,000 net migration yearly and long-term fertility at 1.42; high fertility variant = long term fertility at 1.62; low fertility variant = long term fertility at 1.22

Source: FT analysis of ONS data

Sources: UN population projections; ONS • Fertility rates refer to England and Wales

Source: UN population forecasts, 2026

Source: Department for Work and Pensions

Source: ONS

VALENTINA ROMEI

ECONOMICS REPORTER

In the 1970s, the UK experienced industrial unrest, soaring inflation and a wave of emigration. Its population stopped growing for the first sustained period since the second world war.

Half a century later, the country may be on the verge of a similar moment.

Britain's population – whose robust rise has inflamed politics over the past decade – is on course to grow only marginally over the next few years.

It could peak in the mid-2030s, with far-reaching consequences for the economy and society. Already growth has slowed, with numbers rising just 0.3 per cent to 69.5mn in the year to mid-2025. That was the slowest rate since 1998 excluding the pandemic.

Deaths are expected to outnumber births from 2026, according to official projections, leaving migration as the sole driver of population growth.

But net migration itself is dropping. Last week, the Office for Budget Responsibility cut its forecast for net migration to 120,000 this year and an average of 182,000 a year between 2026 and 2031. That compares with nearly 300,000 forecast a year last November.

"When looking at the next few years, net migration will almost certainly decline because of policy restrictions; fewer people are now coming to the UK," said Ben Brindle, senior researcher at the Migration Observatory. Over the next five years, Brindle doesn't expect "much population change at all".

'Net migration will almost certainly decline; fewer people are now coming to the UK'

In the spring, the Office for National Statistics projected that the UK population would peak in 2054, with the expansion exclusively driven by a net migration of 230,000 a year.

But if these projections are adjusted to take into account the OBR's latest migration forecast, a different picture emerges: the population would grow only marginally then peak in the mid-2030s. By the mid-2070s, it would have fallen about 6mn from its peak.

Some parts of the country, including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, are already seeing populations flatlining. London registered its first decline since the pandemic, in contrast with its rapid expansion during the 2010s.

Whether the total population declines depends on the immigration measures pursued unless there is a rebound in births. That is difficult to predict. Shabana Mahmood, the Labour home secretary, this week softened some restrictions on permanent residency.

The UK-EU youth mobility scheme, under discussion, could increase migration, as could rejoining the EU.

In contrast, Nigel Farage, Reform UK's leader, has called the population "explosion" the country's "single biggest problem", arguing it has damaged quality of life. Should Reform take power, its plans imply at least 2mn people would have to leave.

The UK has so far been relatively insulated from the demographic pressures facing other advanced economies. It has had higher fertility rates than Japan, Italy, Spain and South Korea.

"The ageing trend is more gradual . . . but the need for policy action still exists," said Willem Adema, a senior economist at the OECD.

Perhaps the most noticeable change so far has been school closures, as the number of children falls. Across England, 86 per cent of primary schools had unfilled places.

"We could see people in many

Home secretary Shabana Mahmood has eased some rules

areas disappear, because you can get to a point where there aren't people in those areas to run basic services, things like GP surgeries and schools, but also shops and restaurants," said Brindle of the Migration Observatory.

The population stagnating or declining could ease pressures on housing, infrastructure and the environment, many experts argue. Andrew Scott, professor of economics at the University of Oxford, also points to a “longevity dividend” — the economic and social gains from people living longer, healthier and more productive lives.

But the OECD and other organisations warn that declining fertility rates put future generations' prosperity at risk.

The UK is raising its retirement age to 67. But asking people to work for longer is not straightforward. Britain's employment rate falls from 83 per cent at age 50 to just 58 per cent at age 62.

“Health, social care and pension spending will rise, while the tax base grows more slowly,” said Jonathan

Portes, professor of economics and public policy at King's College London. Persistently low fertility “may also create labour shortages” in crucial sectors.

The OBR warned this summer that UK public debt was on an “unsustainable” long-term path, partly because of demographic shifts. Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced plans to adjust the triple lock on the state pension from 2030 to contain spending and help fund a National Care Service.

Sarah Harper, professor of gerontology at the University of Oxford, called for comprehensive policies to support longer working lives, including life-long learning, alongside affordable childcare and housing, better parental leave and more flexible working arrangements.

One way of offsetting the economic and fiscal pressures is through higher productivity via AI. The technology could help ease labour shortages and boost output per hour worked.

The end of rapid population growth is likely to shift Britain's political debate.

Farage, for example, has started to focus less on the raw numbers of immigrants and more on alleged failures of social integration.

More broadly, politics may react to the fact that voters skew older. That, ironically, may mean it becomes hard to implement the policy changes that experts say are necessary: an older electorate is less likely to vote in favour of pension cuts and help for students.

In the 1970s, the UK's population decline lasted for a few years, with another brief spell in the early 1980s. This time it may be similarly brief. "We could return to [past rates of population growth] after about five years," said Brindle of the Migration Observatory.

As demography changes, government will have an opportunity to respond, said Tony Travers, professor at the London School of Economics. “Enough of the population will accept some immigration, but it has to make sense, and with a very powerful sense that it’s a managed number,” he added.

Brussels summit

'Reset' deal with EU faces delay over tuition fees

PETER FOSTER, GEORGE PARKER AND ANDY BOUNDS

Prime Minister Andy Burnham's promised “reset” deal with Brussels is unlikely to receive a final sign-off at this month's landmark EU-UK summit after the bloc demanded an agreement on cheaper access to British universities be struck first.

A draft joint statement being worked on by EU officials says that while pacts on several issues under discussion could be finalised by the November 20 meeting, they will only be put into effect once the UK reduces tuition fees for EU students.

The statement, seen by the FT, is still being negotiated by the two sides, but British officials concede the implementation of any “reset” package – which will include cutting barriers to trade in food – will be contingent on the issue of university fees being resolved.

The EU wants the UK to allow students from the bloc to pay the same fees as British counterparts and has proposed a deadline of six months for a deal on this to be struck. Brussels is determined any agreement should apply to all EU students and not just those going to the UK as part of a so-called “youth experience scheme”, which will have a cap on the number of places available.

A deal on fees is likely to cost British universities hundreds of millions of pounds as they would no longer be able to charge EU students overseas rates, often three or four times the £9,790-per-year cost for those in the UK.

Both sides are hopeful of finishing talks ahead of the summit to reduce trade barriers for foodstuffs, the linking of carbon markets and the youth mobility scheme, which will allow 18- to 30-year-olds to study, work and travel in each other's countries.

However, the draft joint statement seen by the FT, which has been drafted by the EU but not agreed to by the UK, references the “conclusion of negotiations” on these three deals in the future rather than them being officially signed off at the summit. An EU diplomat said: “The real issue is whether we decide legally on signing and applying [these three deals] only after the tuition-fee negotiations yield results.”

EU ambassadors meeting in Brussels today are likely to back the idea.

A British official signalled the prime minister was engaged in “tough talks” with Brussels but was keen to open university doors to overseas students.

"The prime minister sees real value in helping our universities attract the best students from around the world, and is proud that top international students want to come to our world-class universities," the official added.

There are still issues to resolve in the proposed “reset” agreements, including how many people could access the youth experience scheme annually, according to officials. The EU wants 150,000 visas a year while the UK initially offered 50,000. The UK under Burnham’s predecessor Sir Keir Starmer was willing to compromise on 100,000.

For its part, the UK is seeking to use a deal on tuition fees to push for improved participation in the bloc's “Made in Europe” procurement and subsidy scheme, which Burnham has warned poses a serious threat to UK industries.

The Cabinet Office said it would not comment on leaks or provide a running commentary on live negotiations.

The European Commission has been approached for comment.

Immigration Reforms benefit high-earners but risk deterring students and those with families

DELPHINE STRAUSS AND DAVID SHEPPARD

Home secretary Shabana Mahmood has scrapped her plan to make foreign care workers wait longer to win permanent UK residency – but the concession only softens the edges of what remains a radical reform of the immigration system.

Plans set out on Monday will delay settlement for around half a million people already in the UK, the Home Office estimates.

They will create a new class of people whose status is essentially temporary — with refugees facing waits of up to 30 years if they arrive by unauthorised routes.

It remains unclear whether the reforms will bring the fiscal benefits claimed.

What does this mean for migrants working outside the care sector? Skilled workers with earnings below £50,270 will now face a 10-year wait for permanent residency, as will their dependants – incurring visa fees running into tens of thousands of pounds. This group is estimated to number almost a quarter of a million.

Immigration lawyers say professionals in sectors such as architecture, accountancy and engineering will be affected – and that their employers may struggle to keep them on, as they may have not have budgeted for ongoing visa fees.

"We will definitely have clients in that position," said Katie Newbury, partner at law firm Kingsley Napley.

However, high earners and their employers are potential winners from the reforms, with those in the top tax bracket able to gain the right to live indefinitely in the UK after three years – down from the current five.

High earners' partners, however, will not always be able to settle at the same time, and it remains unclear what the new rules mean for children.

Will this deter people from coming to the UK?

International students in particular could face bigger barriers to settling in the UK in future, as the government has scrapped the “Long Residence” route. That had allowed them to qualify for permanent residency after 10 years, counting time spent on temporary study and graduate visas.

Because visa rules are already much tougher than in the past, many workers who come to the UK in future will be higher-rate taxpayers able to settle after five years, said Marley Morris, associate director at the think-tank IPPR.

However, even the top earners the government wants to attract to the UK may be deterred by uncertainty over the status of family members, lawyers said.

The government's revised plans now leave open a path to settlement for non-working partners, provided joint household income is high enough.

Children who turn 18 while their parents are waiting for settlement will be on the same track – meaning they may be unable to leave home, or attend a UK university on the lower fees available to permanent residents.

Zeena Luchowa, partner at the law firm Laura Devine, said she had already seen “senior individuals” change their minds about coming to the UK halfway through the process, because of the last year's uncertainty over the reforms.

Will the reforms reduce unauthorised migration?

That remains to be seen. The new rules make it harder for many migrants who are granted refugee status to achieve the long-term right to remain in the country, particularly if they arrive via small boats.

That could reduce the incentive for migrants to attempt “small boat” crossings from France.

Asylum seekers who did not come to the UK as part of a formal government resettlement scheme will need to wait 20 years for settlement, though this can be shortened to 10 years if they enter “sustained” work or study. The clock would only start once work or study commences.

Those who tried to circumvent UK border controls, for example by arriving on small boats, will need to wait an additional 10 years. Arrivals by small boats are already down more than 40 per cent so far in 2026, partly due to greater co-operation between Britain and France.

What do the reforms achieve?

The UK estimates the reforms would cut the benefits bill by billions. But the Home Office has not published an impact assessment.

Analysts say claims of big fiscal gains were always overblown, even before the concession to care workers seen as the biggest potential risk to taxpayers.

This is because, although the reforms delay the point at which people claim working-age benefits, the biggest fiscal costs of migration come later, as migrants' children go through school and as people retire.

The Home Office acknowledged that the overall fiscal impact of the reforms would depend on whether they ended up deterring or attracting top earners, and on the incentives they created for refugees and other low-paid migrants to earn more. Some skilled workers will now find it harder to move to a better-paid job, if they rely on employers sponsoring a visa.

Do the reforms signal a change of political direction by Andy Burnham? The prime minister has already softened the government's position on immigration: he said on Sunday it was "difficult to say" if migration was now "too high or too low".

Mahmood also hinted she may support a change in direction, saying yesterday that the government had promised to get migration down “and we have”.

Burnham has appeared open to discussing the return of freedom of movement with the EU, although not until after the next general election.

Nigel Farage's anti-immigration Reform UK has slipped behind Labour and the Conservatives in the polls, having led for much of this parliament.

Even so, the combined vote of Reform and the far-right anti-immigration Restore UK still puts them close to Labour in the polls.

That suggests that, if Burnham believes the salience of immigration has waned for voters, he is taking something of a gamble.

INTERNATIONAL

Defence gaps

Moscow pounds Ukraine's energy facilities

Drone and missile assault targets power plants and substations before winter

FABRICE DEPREZ — KYIV

A massive Russian drone and missile attack targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure across the country overnight yesterday, as Moscow ratchets up its deadly air campaign ahead of winter.

More than a dozen energy facilities were hit across nine regions, according to Ukrainian authorities. The country's air force reported intercepting just three of the 17 Russian ballistic missiles fired by Moscow, highlighting Kyiv's acute shortage of air-defence interceptors. "Ukraine must be helped to defend its skies, otherwise Russia will never stop," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said yesterday. The assault continued during the day and represents "one of the largest attacks on Ukraine's energy", state grid operator Ukrenergo said.

Ukraine's largest private energy company DTEK said three of its power plants were knocked offline by “dozens of missiles and drones”. Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi said power plants and substations had been hit in nine regions.

Russia “is dangerously escalating its efforts to deny Ukrainians critical services like energy this winter”, DTEK executive Maxim Timchenko told the FT.

Moscow's intensifying campaign against Ukraine's energy infrastructure has already led to power outages in Kyiv, sometimes lasting more than 10 hours, and in several other regions.

"This year, the Russians have adopted a new tactic: they're striking not only power generation facilities but also carrying out strikes against the power grid, against energy distribution infrastructure," Zelenskyy said in a video address on Monday.

An attack on a village near the front-line in the Zaporizhzhia region also killed dozens of civilians on Monday. A first wave of gliding bombs pushed civilians to seek shelter within a closed school used as a humanitarian distribution point. Nine three-tonne gliding bombs levelled the building, with footage showing craters several metres deep and a few slabs of concrete where the building stood. The bombing took place as locals were gathering for distribution of humanitarian aid announced a day earlier on social media.

Officials said the strike killed at least 31 people, including two emergency workers, with 48 still unaccounted for. Deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime under international law.

"The timing and location of the humanitarian distribution were well publicised," Danielle Bell, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said yesterday. "This attack seems to have violated the most fundamental principles of international humanitarian law."

The UN's monitoring mission in Ukraine said it had confirmed 328 civilian deaths in September, a sharp rise from the 249 people killed last year in the same period.

Bolstered by the mass production of a new generation of jet-powered drones and cheap cruise missiles, the Russian attacks have also expanded beyond energy to target Ukrainian logistics and business infrastructure.

Multiple drones also targeted the train station in the nearby city of Dnipro last week, killing 15 people when one of the drones hit a railway platform.

[Central Europe. Public safety] Russian air threat disrupts daily life in Poland

Drone and missile warnings test nerves in region after Warsaw raises alert level

RAPHAEL MINDER — LUBLIN

In Poland's eastern city of Lublin, popular with tourists for its medieval gates and pastel facades, residents are growing used to warning sirens and the roar of fighter jets scrambled in response to the threat of Russian drones or missiles.

Locals have been receiving text alerts about possible Russian air incursions since early September, while the city's airport suspended civilian flights six times that month to make room for the military to protect Poland's airspace.

Lublin's experience shows how five years into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the war has started to intrude on everyday life in neighbouring Poland. Warsaw has raised the alert level in its eastern regions of Lublin and Subcarpathia after Moscow escalated its bombing of western Ukraine in recent months by using more jet-powered drones and missiles capable of reaching as far as Polish territory. A Russian helicopter also violated Polish airspace near the Russian military base of Kaliningrad in September.

"We had perhaps been thinking too long of this war as something that could happen only on the other side of our border," said Dariusz Krzysztofik, deputy director of the public safety department in Lublin, which is located $100\mathrm{km}$ from the Ukrainian border.

“Russia is now putting a lot of effort into getting us also to panic, although I’m confident that the Russians are actually increasing our resilience and making us more conscious that we really have to help Ukraine.”

In Wąwolnica, a village 35km further west of Lublin, mayor Marcin Łaguna said residents were becoming increasingly nervous about Russia, but also frustrated by “an information overload” of emergency text messages.

“We have no strategic assets worth destroying here, and in any case everybody knows that we don’t have the money to build a shelter to protect us against a big attack,” he said. “The problem is that when people keep getting warnings, they end up ignoring them.”

Ewa Lenartowicz, a resident of Wąwolnica, said she disregarded alerts sent to her phone, but could not sleep

Clockwise from left: Dariusz Krzysztofik, deputy director of the public safety department in Lublin, at the city's crisis management centre; text alerts from the Polish government; and the entrance to a designated underground shelter

Aleksandra Kossowska/FT

Baltic Sea

KALININGRAD (RUSSIA)

POLAND

Warsaw

Łuków

Wawalzie

SUBCARPATHIA — LUBLIN

100km SLOVAKIA

MapLibre ©Mapcreator ©OpenStreetMap through the sound of military aircraft overhead. “We grew up under communism, so my family has always kept food and other emergency reserves in the cellar . . . but it’s a new kind of stress to get woken up by fighter jets,” she said.

Poland has this year allocated almost 5 per cent of GDP to defence, making it proportionately Nato's biggest military spender. Warsaw has ordered aircraft, helicopters and tanks, but investment in civilian protection has lagged behind.

This year, Lublin opened its first fully sealed shelter, capable of housing about 200 people against chemical warfare and radioactive particles. The city plans to upgrade another 101 shelters within three years. “Until 2024, we had no [government] money for such investments,” Krzysztofik said. “We now have some money, but we still need the time.”

Lublin has enough underground car parks and other shelters to protect the population of the greater metropolitan area of more than 450,000 against a Russian drone attack. But only 38,000 residents could now find refuge in shelters designed to withstand a more powerful strike from a Russian Oreshnik ballistic missile, Krzysztofik said.

The city is also racing to expand its network of warning sirens, which can be heard by about 70 per cent of residents, to cover the whole of greater Lublin by year-end. “Everybody is still enjoying a normal life in Lublin, but I think there’s now a different atmosphere than in Warsaw,” said Krzysztofik.

'The problem is that when people keep getting warnings, they end up ignoring them'

In October, Lublin's authorities started putting green-and-orange signposts on buildings to mark evacuation routes and shelter locations. One recent meeting on emergency procedures attracted 250 people, compared with 10-20 residents attending such events before the summer, Krzysztofik said.

The Polish government is reinforcing its military presence around Lublin in response to Russia's airspace violations but also hybrid warfare attacks. Warsaw has attributed several acts of sabotage to Russia since last November, when

Poland narrowly avoided a train crash after an explosive device damaged Lublin's main railway to the capital.

Last month, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, defence minister, announced that Patriot air-defence batteries would be deployed around Lublin airport for the first time. A new helicopter base will also be established, alongside three extra military units, including a counter-drone brigade in nearby Łuków.

The reinforcements are intended in part to bring Lublin up to the level of Rzeszów in the south-east, whose airport has served as a hub for military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine since Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion.

The army presence may reassure residents, but local officials worry militari- sation could undermine corporate investments in eastern Poland.

In Wąwolnica, the army is renovating a bridge to meet its transport standards. Mayor Łaguna welcomes this but is pessimistic about the economy. “Investors calculate whether a region is safe, so we have plenty of reasons to worry now also about losing out economically,” he said. “The risk of war with Russia is never going to be attractive.”

Financial support

President says US will end military aid to Israel by end of year

AMY MACKINNON — WASHINGTON

JAMES SHOTTER — JERUSALEM

Donald Trump has said the US will stop providing military aid to Israel at the end of the year, saying the country “no longer needed it”, and describing it as a “bad talking point” as voters headed to the polls for midterm elections.

"Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayed when [Israelis] don't need it?" the president said yesterday morning, referring to Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who has been a sharp critic of US support for Israel.

The US provides almost \$4bn in annual military assistance to Israel as part of a 10-year agreement that is set to expire in 2028. The funding has been a focus of intense debate due to Israel's devastating offensive in Gaza and has featured prominently in midterm campaigning.

It was not immediately clear whether the president can unilaterally halt the funding, which is appropriated by Congress. While Trump has broad authority to pause weapons transfers, any attempt to cancel funds allocated by lawmakers could face restrictions.

The move is also likely to face significant pushback from within Trump's Republican Party.

Support for military aid to Israel has fallen sharply among Democrats but a poll last month by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that 68 per cent of Republicans favour continuing or increasing military aid to the country.

Trump claimed yesterday that he had reached an agreement with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, to cut off the aid.

"He brought it up. He said, 'I think it would be appropriate if we do not receive aid', because he understands that this is one of their points of contention," Trump said.

Netanyahu's office and the Israeli embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Netanyahu has recently warned that US aid to Israel could be scaled back, saying last month it was “only a matter of time” before Washington’s funding for Israel’s military was cut.

In a US television interview this year, he said he and Trump had discussed gradually weaning Israel off US military aid. But he said he had proposed scaling back the aid over the course of a decade, and has given no public indication that he had agreed for aid to cease as soon as this year.

US support has played a significant role in helping Israel finance the war in Gaza, which was triggered by Hamas's October 7 2023 attack, and has become Israel's longest and most expensive conflict, triggering a surge in military spending.

Under the terms of the agreement between the two countries, which was signed under the administration of Barack Obama, the US provides Israel with \$3.3bn in annual funding, which it can use to purchase US weapons.

The arrangement also includes \$500mn annually for joint projects such as the Iron Dome and David's Sling air-defence systems, which protect against drones and missiles.

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Trilateral talks

Meeting weighed between Trump, Putin and Xi at China summit

DEMETRI SEVASTOPULO — WASHINGTON

MAX SEDDON — BERLIN

JOE LEAHY — BEIJING

US, Chinese and Russian officials are discussing a possible meeting between Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin this month when the leaders attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the Chinese city of Shenzhen.

People familiar with the situation in Washington, Beijing and Moscow said officials had been holding serious talks about arranging the first trilateral meeting between the heads of state in two weeks' time.

“Work is under way on organising such a meeting,” Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson, told the FT.

Later yesterday, Peskov told reporters there was a “general understanding among the participants of this possible meeting that it would be worthwhile and extremely useful”.

Asked about the prospects of a trilateral summit, China's foreign ministry said Beijing was "in communication with relevant parties regarding the meeting between the Chinese and Russian heads of state" but omitted any mention of Trump. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump will travel to Shenzhen in two weeks to attend the Apec summit and hold his third meeting this year with Xi. Before his visit, he will fly to Manila to attend the annual meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Xi and Trump are expected to hold a fourth meeting next month when the Chinese leader visits Miami for the G20. Putin and Xi have met more than 40 times in total, according to Chinese state media, including at least three times this year.

It remains unclear if the three sides are talking together or if Beijing is instead holding bilateral talks with Washington and Moscow. People familiar with the situation warned that China, which would convene the meeting as the host of the Asia-Pacific economic forum, had not yet decided whether to proceed.

One person familiar with the talks said Washington and Moscow were pressing China to agree to a meeting. The Chinese foreign ministry last month said it had “no information to provide” about a possible trilateral summit.

Germany's President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Sunday said Xi seemed confused when he asked him about a possible trilateral summit when they met in China last week. He said Xi asked about the origin of the rumours.

One challenge to hosting a three-way meeting is setting an acceptable agenda for the leaders.

Steinmeier said Xi stated there were no plans for a trilateral meeting to discuss the war in Ukraine and that the Chinese leader added Europeans should be at the table given the war was a European conflict. David Shullman, vice-president at the Asia Society Policy

Possible talks: from left, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping

Institute, said the symbolism of Xi hosting a meeting between Washington, Beijing and Moscow officials would be “striking” even without a substantive agenda.

“Xi, whose support has been indispensable to Russia’s ability to sustain its war of aggression against Ukraine for the past four and a half years, would have an opportunity to present himself as the responsible, pivotal statesman bringing the US and Russia together in pursuit of stability,” said Shullman, who until recently led the US intelligence community’s strategic analysis on China.

"It would be a remarkable diplomatic coup," Shullman added.

A person familiar with Russia's thinking said that Moscow did not expect substantive talks on Ukraine during the mooted summit.

Russia thought China did not want to take a leading role in ending Putin's nearly five-year invasion, instead only taking credit once a peace settlement was in sight, the person said.

Trump has said he is open to holding a trilateral meeting in Shenzhen but has stressed the need to focus on nuclear arms control.

frontline.

As nations rush to upgrade their digital defences, critical AI infrastructure is emerging as the new frontline. Rethink Defence at LombardOdier.com

rethink everything.

17 96

LOMBARD ODIER

LOMBARD ODIER DARIER HENTSCH

PRIVATE BANKING ASSET MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY

Companies' debt levels remain low

INTERNATIONAL

Japan's fast-rising interest rates risk starting a ‘war between generations’

While older savers are in line to benefit, younger people will find it difficult to buy homes and goods

Younger households have fewer assets and more housing debt, leaving them more exposed to interest rate rises

Households with two or more people. Assumes 1 percentage point increase in the policy rate, with fixed pass-through ratio from the policy rate to each interest rate

Sources: Oxford Economics; Ministry of Internal Affairs

Sources: Oxford Economics; Ministry of Finance • Data from 1985-2026

Property prices in central Tokyo, below, have risen at nearly double the national average Philip Fong/AFP/Getty Images

DAVID KEOHANE, HARRY DEMPSEY AND JANA TAUSCHINSKI — TOKYO

Japan may still have some of the lowest interest rates in the world, but the rapid increase expected by economists will have far-reaching implications for a population still coming to terms with the end of an era of deflation.

At 1.25 per cent, the Bank of Japan's main policy rate is already at its highest in 30 years. That is still well below annual inflation, but substantial rate increases could end the erosion of the value of bank savings, mostly held by older Japanese, while making it harder for younger people to buy homes and consumer goods.

The rapid increase in interest rates is shaping up to be a “war between generations”, as much as between rich and poor, said Shigeto Nagai, chief Japan economist at Oxford Economics.

“For households overall, interest rate increases are going to be positive because of the massive deposits they hold,” said Sota Takano, senior economist at Itochu Research Institute. “But if you are aged 30 to 40, and you want to get a mortgage but have not built up the kind of assets older people have, then you are going to be hit the hardest.”

Goki Masui, a 46-year-old legal professional, certainly feels like a winner. He bought a home in Greater Tokyo, where property prices have risen much more than in many areas of Japan, and is untroubled by the prospect of higher borrowing costs.

"I own a home and its value has skyrocketed since 2011. Looking at my balance sheet, I feel there's no problem at all," Masui said. "But for young people, interest rates are going up, money is hard to borrow and house prices themselves are high, so they can't buy them."

For Yuto Horiguchi, 30, the very idea of taking out a housing loan is laughable. "I don't have that sort of luxury," he said. "I need my wages to go up."

While Japanese wages are at last rising faster than inflation, Horiguchi is one of many people of his age in Tokyo who have not seen their incomes keep up with property prices.

Nationwide, residential property prices rose 4.4 per cent in 2025, broadly in line with wage growth among younger workers, according to Takano at Itochu. But in central Tokyo, property prices jumped 8.3 per cent.

"The main challenge for younger homebuyers until now has been the sharp rise in property prices," Takano said. "From here, rising mortgage rates are likely to make home ownership increasingly difficult as well."

The vast majority of Japanese take out variable-rate mortgages due to the recent history of rock-bottom rates. Roughly 75 per cent of new mortgages in Japan are variable, a far higher proportion than in the euro area, US or UK.

Even as rates look set to rise, many borrowers are unwilling to abandon variable-rate mortgages. According to Mogecheck, a mortgage broker in Tokyo, such mortgages currently carry average interest rates of about 1.3 to 1.6 per cent compared with 3.8 per cent for 35-year fixed-rate loans. Japan's headline consumer price annual inflation rate was 2.1 per cent in September.

A 28-year-old finance sector worker who declined to be named said he took out a 35-year, ¥47mn (\$300,000) housing loan in September at a variable rate of 1 per cent. His monthly payments of ¥110,000 would have risen significantly at the 3 per cent rate offered under a fixed-rate mortgage.

"I wanted to take advantage of those low borrowing costs and build up my assets," he said. "Stock prices have been rising recently so I'm hoping that the assets I have invested there will grow."

Some borrowers are also pushing out the length of mortgages, even taking out 50-year loans.

A Cabinet Office simulation found a one percentage point increase in mortgage rates would leave holders in their thirties with an average additional annual interest burden of about ¥240,000, equivalent to roughly 4 per cent of disposable income.

Under repayment terms offered by many lenders, monthly payments stay unchanged for five years even if interest rates rise. But since borrowers repay less principal per month, that pushes any problems further down the road.

Takashi Shiozawa, an executive with Mogecheck, said that while inflation-adjusted mortgage rates remained negative, the BoJ was narrowing that gap. He warned that banks had begun tightening lending standards for 50-year mortgages in recent months. “People are increasingly wondering whether they should buy now because they’re worried that, as mortgage rates rise, property prices could fall,” Shiozawa said.

Japan remains a low-leverage economy, but higher rates will still affect consumer borrowing from car purchases to luxury goods.

According to the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, cash remains the most common way to buy a car, with conventional loans and automakers' financing each used by about 15 per cent of buyers.

'People are wondering whether they should buy now because they're worried that, as mortgage rates rise, property prices could fall'

Carmaker Nissan said rising funding costs had forced lenders to increase rates after years of keeping them steady. Dealers were finding financing discussions increasingly difficult as cars became more expensive, it said.

The squeeze is also emerging in other areas of consumer spending. Second-hand luxury goods retailer Allu said in August it was cutting the number of interest-free instalments available on some shopping loans from 60 to 24 because of rising rates, shortening the period over which customers could spread the cost of purchases.

Takahiro Yamaguchi wants to expand his rice farm in Ibaraki Prefecture north-east of Tokyo by 50 per cent, the kind of shift to larger-scale agriculture that would help Japan address its low self-sufficiency in food as its workforce contracts. But a slump in rice prices and rising interest rates on loans to buy autonomous tractors and other machinery make Yamaguchi cautious. A loan for a warehouse is becoming a burden.

“We’d like to push ahead as fast as we can but there is a possibility we could be stopped in our tracks,” he said. “Taking today’s interest rates into account, we might end up delaying it a year.”

Small businesses are among Japan's more vulnerable companies as interest rates rise. Oxford Economics estimates a one percentage point increase in borrowing rates could push the proportion of lossmaking small businesses from 27 per cent to 31 per cent.

Economists said lower profits could have knock-on negative effects on capital spending, and therefore small enterprises' competitiveness and ability to raise wages for the 70 per cent of the Japanese workforce they employ.

Masaki Nakano at the Research Institute of Japan Finance Corporation, a government-owned lender, said strong demand for semiconductors and AI was outweighing the tightening effect of higher interest rates. But further increases could lead to a “widening of the gaps” between stronger and weaker companies, he said.

Masayuki Fujino, who runs Fuji Seiki, a precision manufacturer in Tokyo, said higher rates were “like the damage from a series of jabs in boxing, gradually having more and more of an effect”.

A more vibrant economy liberated from deflation could eventually outweigh any short-term pain from higher rates for younger Japanese, who are already saving and investing more. Households headed by someone under 30 have the fastest growth in financial assets of any age group – jumping 62 per cent between 2019 and 2024 to an average of ¥3.2mn, government data shows.

But they remain substantially poorer than households headed by someone in their sixties, which hold an average of ¥23.4mn in financial assets.

Takeo Kondo, 77-year-old owner of a signage business, is one of the many elderly Japanese who would benefit from better returns on their savings.

"There aren't really any downsides for me," he said.

With returns on even five-year bank deposits still well below inflation, the finance ministry says some older retail investors have been moving money into higher-yielding government bonds and the rising stock market.

Across Japanese households, the proportion of financial assets held in cash and deposits fell five percentage points in the year to June 2026, while the share held in securities rose six points, according to the Japan Research Institute.

US veteran

OpenAI hires former army secretary to promote AI military use

DEMETRI SEVASTOPULO — WASHINGTON

GEORGE HAMMOND — SAN FRANCISCO

OpenAI has hired Dan Driscoll, the former US Army secretary who resigned following tensions with defence secretary Pete Hegseth, as the military seeks to expand its use of AI to enhance national and cyber security.

The Iraq war veteran and close friend of vice-president JD Vance will join the group in a newly created role as senior counsellor for national security modernisation, OpenAI told the FT.

The San Francisco-based group added that Driscoll would focus on working with American allies to advance the responsible use of AI.

“Dan will work with OpenAI teams and leaders across governments, industry, academia and allied institutions to advance practical modernisation initiatives to advance the build-out of democratic AI,” the company said. It added that Driscoll would help its teams “understand the operational needs of global national security institutions”.

At the Pentagon, Driscoll drove reform efforts aimed at introducing new technology more quickly and making weapons more interoperable. Earlier this year, he organised a hackathon called Operation Jailbreak to improve communications between weapons using lessons learnt in Ukraine.

The 40-year-old former defence official who clashed with Hegseth over the Pentagon chief's firing of several widely respected army officers has been tipped to play a senior role in any potential Vance 2028 presidential campaign.

“National security requirements are changing faster than at any time in the past 50 years,” Driscoll said. “I’m joining OpenAI to help the US and our allies put this technology to work responsibly, for the people who keep us safe.”

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said the US had an opportunity to work with countries to spread the adoption of democratic AI and that Driscoll would “strengthen American leadership and help us do that”. OpenAI said Driscoll would advise public and private sector partners on modernising policy and ways to “unlock practical uses of AI to improve national security and . . . support democratic principles”.

OpenAI has provided cyber defence in several European countries, including France, Germany and Poland, with access to its models. It has also allowed the Ukrainian government to access a programme called Daybreak designed to help identify software vulnerabilities.

The tools being developed by OpenAI and its rivals are regarded as critical to US national security, both as a form of defence and as a potential vulnerability.

Earlier this year, OpenAI expanded its relationship with the Pentagon, agreeing to deploy its AI models in classified settings following the collapse of talks between rival Anthropic and Hegseth.

OpenAI was widely expected to go public this year, having confidentially filed its initial public offering prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June. But it has deferred its listing until next year and is instead seeking to raise \$20bn in a private funding round this month.

Adam Tooze see Opinion

Theft accusations

Serbia arrests owner of bank linked to regime

MARTON DUNAI — BUDAPEST

Serbian authorities have detained the owner of Alta Bank and accused him of emptying the deposit vault after Aleksandar Vučić's recent election loss.

Davor Macura and two other bank officials were arrested following searches at the bank's premises and Macura's home, Serbian police said yesterday. Macura is suspected of illegally removing more than €380mn worth of cash from the bank's vault, they added.

The National Bank of Serbia on Saturday revoked Alta Bank's operating licence, saying it had come under a financial and liquidity strain after its clients, many of Russian nationality, made large withdrawals and millions of euros left the country last week.

Alta Bank and Macura were among the first targets of an anti-corruption drive following the fall of Vučić, whose authoritarian 12-year rule ended when a student-led movement defeated his SNS party in October 25 elections. Vučić had called the snap vote after resigning as president, hoping to retain power.

Macura's alleged accomplices, the director of Alta's treasury and cash management department and a treasury operations associate, “handed [Macura] their access cards to the vault or enabled him to enter the ‘Depo’ vault without authorisation by using their own cards and accompanying him”, the prosecutors said. “During these unauthorised entries, [Macura] allegedly removed money from the vault, thereby obtaining an unlawful financial benefit of approximately 45bn dinars.”

'[Macura] allegedly removed money from the vault, obtaining an unlawful financial benefit'

Alta's parent company has faced scrutiny from the European Central Bank over suspected money laundering as part of an attempt to acquire an Austrian lender, Addiko, with the ECB questioning whether the bank could verify the legitimate origin of deposits. Alta had said the ECB found no wrongdoing.

Ljiljana Borovic, a Belgrade criminal defence lawyer, said that Alta had grown from a small money exchange office on the outskirts of Belgrade into a systemic bank after it acquired a Serbian state-owned lender and took on government business.

The bank was also the only one that catered to Russian businesses and individuals alike, growing its balance sheet after the arrival of tens of thousands of Russians following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

"The bank's rapid growth, the enormous increase in the number of its branches and offices, and the expansion of its operations into other business sectors and neighbouring countries within an exceptionally short period of time raised legitimate concerns among financial and banking experts," Borovic said.

The National Bank of Serbia and Vučić's SNS party did not respond to requests for comment. Macura has denied wrongdoing, telling the FT before his arrest that his bank was a target of “a sustained campaign of hostile briefing, leaks and insinuation”.

Austrian lender Raiffeisen Bank International, which had been selected to take over Addiko and sell some Addiko assets to Alta in a carve-out, said it “expects to remain owner of all of Addiko’s subsidiaries, including the one in Serbia” as it no longer expected Alta “to get regulatory approval”.

Central bank

Tight deadline set for ECB chief nominations

OLAF STORBECK — FRANKFURT

PAOLA TAMMA — BERLIN

Brussels has given Eurozone governments just days to nominate candidates to be the next president of the European Central Bank, signalling that the race to find Christine Lagarde's successor could come to a head quickly.

Kyriakos Pierrakakis, president of the Eurogroup and Greek finance minister, called on the bloc's 21 member states to submit their nominations by Friday, a spokesperson for the body co-ordinating Eurozone policy said yesterday.

Lagarde announced last week that she will step down as ECB president on February 7, nine months before the end of her eight-year term.

The change in leadership at Europe's most powerful monetary authority comes as the region is in the throes of another wave of inflation and growing investor concern over the state of France's public finances and political stability in the run-up to its presidential elections in April.

Lagarde said last week that she wanted “greater freedom to express her views” on matters other than monetary policy. She has also been in talks with the World Economic Forum over becoming its next chair.

The ECB president and the five other members of its executive board are appointed by the leaders of the 21 countries that use the euro, after consulting with the European parliament and the ECB. A successful candidate needs the support of at least 16 countries representing 65 per cent of the euro area's population.

EU leaders, who will meet twice this month and again in December, are expected to make a decision before the end of the year on both Lagarde's replacement and two other seats on the executive board that will also become vacant in 2027.

Departing head: Christine Lagarde will step down on February 7

ECB executive board member Isabel Schnabel will leave to join the IMF in January, while the central bank's chief economist Philip Lane's eight-year term will expire in late May.

Pablo Hernández de Cos, general manager of the Bank for International Settlements, and Klaas Knot, the former Dutch central bank governor, are seen as frontrunners to become the fifth ECB president from February.

Hernández de Cos is viewed as a more dovish economist while Knot has a hawkish reputation. However, people familiar with their views stress that both are pragmatists who are keen to forge consensus among policymakers and are not wedded to ideological positions.

After Germany last month signalled that it would not seek the ECB presidency, the odds on a surprise outside candidate to replace Lagarde widened.

But observers warn that new names could still emerge at the eleventh hour. According to people familiar with discussions in various capitals, France is eyeing the ECB chief economist role, seen as the second most important.

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Central bank

Australia raises rates to highest since 2008

RBA's fifth increase this year comes as inflation remains above target

NIC FILDES — SYDNEY

Australia's central bank has raised interest rates to an 18-year high as it warned inflation remained above target in an economy grappling with high unemployment and a collapse in house prices.

The Reserve Bank of Australia yesterday opted to raise interest rates by 0.25 percentage points to 4.85 per cent, its fifth increase this year, as it said the inflation outlook was now “materially higher”, with fuel, commodities and AIrelated investments driving up prices. The bank said it did not expect inflation to drop into its target range of 2 to 3 per cent – which it has been above for two years – until late next year, three quarters later than previously forecast.

Official data released last week showed underlying inflation – which strips out volatile items such as fuel – hit 3.6 per cent in the year to September, a slight rise on the month before, while overall inflation was up 4.3 per cent.

RBA governor Michele Bullock told reporters the central bank's fifth rate rise in 2026 reflected a worsening inflation outlook. “I know this is not the news many Australians wanted to hear but it is what is needed,” she said.

Bullock added that high inflation affected everyone, not just mortgage holders. "This is the right thing for the Australian economy," she said.

The Australian dollar weakened as much as 0.35 per cent to under US\$0.70 following the announcement of the rise, which was widely expected, and was decided in a 6-3 vote.

The latest rate move, which arrived shortly before the start of the Melbourne Cup horse race, one of Australia's biggest annual sporting events, added to growing concerns about the health of the economy with house prices slumping and unemployment rising to 4.7 per cent last month.

It will also heap pressure on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's government, which has signalled that it is preparing to cut public spending next month. The government has repeatedly pointed to external factors, including the war in the Middle East, as key factors driving inflation. Paul Bloxham, chief economist at HSBC Australia, said there was “a risk the Australian economy tips into recession”, adding: “We put the risk at a 50-50 chance.”

Bullock said the central bank's baseline forecast did not foresee a recession but warned that, with house prices tumbling and unemployment rising, many Australians may perceive one had arrived. "I think that is going to make people feel like it's a recession because they feel poorer," she said.

Shane Oliver, chief economist at AMP, said the cumulative rate rises would increase annual mortgage interest payments for many homeowners by A\$6,600 (US\$4,610) a year. “We may be close to a tipping point for some mortgage holders,” he said in a note.

The rate move also put the RBA out of step with other central banks, such as the US Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, which opted to hold rates at recent meetings.

Bullock said the bank's aggressive strategy was needed to reduce excess demand in the Australian economy. She added the disparity between the RBA's inflation targets and monthly readings was broadly similar across different markets. "I wouldn't say we're completely Robinson Crusoe here," she said.

[Australia. Price correction] Reforms puncture booming house market

Sources: Cotality; FT calculations • \* Data for Brisbane includes Gold Coast. Data as of Oct 29 2026

Australia has experienced several house price corrections since 1980

Measures aimed at cooling demand risk tipping economy into recession, say economists

NIC FILDES — SYDNEY

Australia's attempt to fix its housing crisis in May included a tacit understanding that the measures would lead to a lowering in prices in one of the world's most expensive property markets as investors left the market.

Nearly six months since the authorities unwound incentives that had fostered a housing boom and against a backdrop of higher inflation and rising interest rates, the impact has been more severe than expected.

The country is facing its worst housing correction in 40 years, which some economists fear might turn into an economic crisis. “Since 1982 there have been nine price corrections in the Australian market but this current one is potentially the mother of them all,” said Barrie Harrop, a property developer since the 1970s.

House prices have fallen 5.2 per cent since March, when the government of Anthony Albanese ended tax breaks and a capital gains discount that benefited people who owned multiple homes, according to Cotality, a property research company.

Analysts predicted that prices would drop by between 5 and 10 per cent as houses lost their appeal as the main source of investment for many well-off Australians.

But some economists now project a peak-to-trough decline of up to 15 per cent by the end of next year.

The Reserve Bank of Australia yesterday raised interest rates for a fifth time this year after inflation hit 4.3 per cent in the year to September, up from 4 per cent in the year to August, well above its target range.

Shane Oliver, chief economist and head of investment strategy at AMP, said the rate rise would probably push the property price decline towards the 15 per cent level heading into next year and could increase the number of distressed sellers.

"Prices are being hit by a perfect storm of rate hikes, tax hikes on investors, poor confidence and poor affordability depressing demand," he said.

That is evident in the weekly auctions held across the country. Data from

The median value of houses in Sydney plunged by more than A\$82,000 in the three months to September

Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg

Cotality suggests that more homes are being put up for auction as the weather has become warmer but also that the number of listings was 40 per cent below the levels of last year.

Meanwhile, agreed sales have fallen below 50 per cent in three of the past four weeks across Australian cities.

Domain, a property listings company, said the steepest quarterly decline in house prices since the early 1990s was recorded in the three months to September.

The median value of houses in Sydney plunged by more than A\$82,000 (\$57,800) in that period.

Atypically, the house price decline hit capital cities in all states, ranging from A\$20,000 over the quarter in Darwin to almost A\$90,000 in Perth.

Morgan Stanley said Australia's housing market would suffer its biggest correction since 1982 if prices dropped by 12.5 per cent. That would rank alongside housing busts during the depressions of the 1890s and 1930s.

The bank also cut its forecast for GDP growth next year to 1.1 per cent from 1.4 per cent and predicted that unemployment would rise to 5.1 per cent from 4.7 per cent.

Stephen Koukoulas, managing director of Market Economics and a former adviser to the Labor government of Julia Gillard, said that lower house prices were “desirable” to improve affordability but warned of risks.

“Falling house prices are a big deal. I am as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs,” he said. “The government does not want a recession but each week it is getting closer.”

On the deteriorating economic conditions, he added: "People will be pissed off and they will blame someone."

Jim Chalmers, Australia's treasurer, has blamed rising interest rates for the slump and argued that buying a house is a long-term investment with modest price rises expected in the coming years.

He has, however, admitted that the government has “lost some political paint” and has started to signal potential public spending cuts ahead of a mid-year budget due next month.

Since the measures were introduced, Chalmers' net public approval rating has fallen by nine percentage points to

'Falling house prices are a big deal. Each week a recession is getting closer'

Stephen Koukoulas, Market Economics

minus 23 points in a recent poll by the Australian Financial Review.

The opposition Liberal Party has warned that many first-time buyers who took out loans to buy houses ahead of the tax changes are at risk of negative equity. Shadow treasurer Tim Wilson blamed Labor for the worsening economic outlook and, after last week's inflation figures, said that “Australians can barely to afford to keep their homes”.

Even trophy houses are not immune. Rothesay, a Gothic mansion dating to 1868, was sold last month for A\$12.8mn (\$9mn) only four years after its previous owner paid nearly A\$20mn, a then-record for the area.

The price slump also has implications for the construction industry. Harrop, the property developer, warned that tens of thousands of planned developments were no longer viable.

Harrop has fielded calls from developers looking to sell projects at a steep discount in recent weeks but said that the malaise could persist for at least another two years. "To say it is chaotic is an understatement," he said.

Wealthy expats

Meloni's exit tax proposal creates doubt over Italy's appeal to rich

AMY KAZMIN — ROME

JAMIE JOHN AND JOSH SPERO — LONDON

Giorgia Meloni's plan to impose an "exit tax" on wealthy people who leave Italy risks driving away expatriates drawn to cities such as Milan over the past decade, experts have warned.

In its draft budget, the prime minister's coalition proposed a 26 per cent tax on paper profits accrued by people with assets of €800,000 or more who decide to leave Italy.

Private wealth lawyers warned that the move, if approved by parliament, would reduce Italy's attractiveness to the super-rich and discourage those already resident from remaining.

"It is a really significant move, and one that is going to have a lot of clients who have relocated there, or based there generally, very nervous," said Charlie Sosna, head of private wealth and tax at law firm Mishcon de Reya.

The exit tax, which Meloni's government said was aimed at the “super-rich”, would apply to people who were tax residents in Italy for six of the 10 years before their departure. It could be refunded if financial assets were not liquidated for some years after they left.

Over the past decade, Italy has tried to tackle the problem of departing wealth with tax incentives to encourage affluent professionals to stay and rich expatriates to settle there. Under its “flat tax” regime, expatriates moving to Italy pay a single annual levy on their total overseas assets and income for 15 years.

When the scheme began in 2017, the fee was fixed at €100,000 a year.

Rome has also offered tax breaks to newly arrived working professionals, including returning Italians, who pay income tax on just a portion of their salaries for five years. But in the past two years, amid an outcry over super-rich expats in Milan, Meloni's coalition has twice raised the flat tax, which is now levied at €300,000 a year.

“Clients were [already] anxious about a relocation to Italy as they saw it as unpredictable,” said Sosna. But with changes to the flat tax “and now the mention of an exit tax”, they are going to be “really considering their options”.

Rome will raise €3.7mn from the exit tax next year, rising to just over €6.7mn for the next four years, and then falling again to €3.4mn a year from 2032, as those who left can start to claim refunds.

Maurizio Fresca, a senior tax lawyer at Rome-based law firm Chiomenti, said many aspects of the proposal were ambiguous, including how it would relate to the flat tax and other incentive schemes – and whether it would apply only to assets held in Italy or worldwide.

Tim Stovold, head of tax at Moore Kingston Smith, said the proposal might encourage people to leave Italy before hitting the six-year residency threshold that would trigger a potential exit levy.

"It is going to make Italy a much less popular destination for individuals to make their long-term home," he said.

Italy's finance ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Many other countries impose an exit tax on rich individuals who relocate. In the US, those with a net worth above \$2mn who give up their green cards or citizenship pay capital gains tax on the paper gains of assets across the world. See Lex

Peacekeepers

UN exit spurs fears of fresh conflict in Western Sahara

HEBA SALEH — CAIRO

UN peacekeepers are wrapping up a 35-year mission in Western Sahara after the Security Council failed to renew their mandate, in a development that analysts warned could lead to open conflict between Morocco and Algeria.

The mission's mandate expired on Sunday after the Security Council hit a deadlock on Friday when both the US and Russia presented competing resolutions, neither of which was adopted.

Russia vetoed a US proposal that would have ended any possibility of the UN mission organising a long-stalled referendum on Western Sahara's self-determination, in effect handing sovereignty to Morocco, which already controls much of the territory. Russia's resolution to extend the mission's mandate by a year failed to get enough votes.

While Morocco claims sovereignty over Western Sahara, Algeria hosts and backs the Polisario Front, a group fighting for independence for the territory.

“We are now in uncharted territory,” said Riccardo Fabiani, north Africa director at the International Crisis Group, who said the withdrawal of peacekeepers from a buffer zone meant a miscalculation by either side could more easily ignite a broader conflict.

Morocco and Algeria, which broke off ties in 2021, are arch-foes. Both have been building their militaries, with Algeria ranked Africa's biggest military spender and Morocco acquiring equipment from the US, Israel and France.

A spokesperson for UN secretary-general António Guterres said on Sunday that the peacekeepers' departure did not abrogate the local Sahrawi population's right to self-determination and Guterres was concerned about "the risk of escalation of hostilities".

Oubi Bouchraya Bachir, an adviser to Polisario leader Brahim Ghali, said the Front would “show self-restraint in the field” to allow for a political solution. Morocco’s King Mohammed VI said his country would abide by a ceasefire.

Football

Saudi Asian Cup tournament postponed to end of next year

AHMED AL OMRAN — JEDDAH

The Asian Cup football tournament that was due to be held in Saudi Arabia early next year has been postponed, as the Middle East braces itself for a renewed round of escalation in the Israel and US-Iran war.

The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) confirmed yesterday that the event would be delayed until December 2027, marking the latest event to be cancelled or rescheduled after a series of attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels targeting Riyadh airport and other civilian and energy infrastructure sites in Saudi Arabia.

The country's flagship “Davos in the desert” investment conference that was scheduled to take place in the capital last month was moved to next year after an attack on King Khalid International airport killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 300.

Formula 1 originally postponed its Saudi race from April to November after the start of the US-Israel strikes on Iran, but officials later said the kingdom's race would no longer take place.

The AFC and local organising committee said the decision to postpone the Asian Cup was “in light of the current exceptional circumstances arising from developments in the region, including substantial logistical complexities and travel disruptions”.

The organisers added: “Exceptional circumstances have been created for the organisation and delivery of the competition as originally scheduled, making the postponement necessary in the interest of all participating teams, officials, spectators and other stakeholders.”

Even before the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia over the summer, a combination of security concerns and budgetary constraints had already forced the cancellation of several events in the kingdom, including the Red Sea International Film Festival and electronic music festival MDLBeast.

Security

Seven passenger jets grounded in Europe after bomb threats

PETER CAMPBELL, BARNEY JOPSON, RAPHAEL MINDER AND LAURA DUBOIS

Seven passenger aircraft across Europe were grounded and searched yesterday after a series of bomb threats received within hours of each other.

The authorities said the incidents were found to be hoaxes, but analysts warned airlines should brace for more threats in the coming days as part of what could be a co-ordinated attempt to disrupt aviation across the region.

A Ryanair flight from Manchester received a bomb threat while en route to Murcia in Spain and was quickly evacuated and swept for explosives on landing, while a flight by Polish airline LOT from Heathrow was diverted and forced to land at Warsaw's Modlin Airport for searches. The Warsaw airport was briefly closed but has since reopened.

Also yesterday, an SAS flight from Copenhagen to Warsaw's Chopin Airport, a Wizz Air flight from Bergamo to Sofia, another flight to Sofia from

Dublin and two Ryanair services landing at Rome Fiumicino were searched after separate threats were received. One of the Ryanair flights was escorted by Italian fighter jets while landing.

The incidents, which have not been officially linked, come the day after a Wizz Air flight from Luton was forced to land in Budapest after receiving a bomb threat. Two weeks ago, an Austrian Airlines flight from Israel was also forced to land at Sofia after receiving a threat that turned out to be false.

So far, none of the authorities that searched the planes reported finding any evidence of devices or explosives.

Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, a transport spokesperson for the European Commission, said: "It is too early to draw conclusions on whether the reported incidents are linked. National investigations remain ongoing."

Osprey, an aviation security group, told clients yesterday: "There is a realistic possibility of further bomb threats targeting aviation in the near term."

Big chill Officials assess dangers to Europe's food security after latest wave of cyber attacks on supermarket freezers ➕ PAGE 11

[Companies & Markets] Binance probe reveals hackers broke in after fake interviews

\- Engineer duped into malware attack

• 'Range of techniques' in \$6.3bn heist

NIKOU ASGARI — LONDON

JILL R SHAH — NEW YORK

Binance said the attackers who stole \$6.3bn from the crypto exchange last week set up fake job interviews to trick a software engineer at the company into installing malicious code, as it laid out findings from a probe into the heist.

"It was not a single isolated breach or a simple phishing incident. The attackers combined a range of techniques, including . . . fake recruitment interviews, malicious software downloads" and other methods, Binance said yesterday.

The FBI has blamed TraderTraitor, a group of hackers linked to North Korea, for the biggest heist on record. The attack came as advances in artificial

The episode was 'more advanced and deceptive than previously seen social engineering approaches'

intelligence have driven an increase in such hacks in crypto, revealing vulnerabilities in blockchain technology.

Binance's findings also underscore the significant role of human error in allowing the hackers to gain access to the exchange's systems.

The company said that in June one of its engineers had downloaded a tampered software program. This was detected by Binance's systems and the engineer's device was replaced, but not before the engineer's "role and his related colleagues on our wallet infrastructure team [had been] exposed to the hacker", it said.

In September, a second Binance engineer was contacted through a job-hunting platform by a person claiming to be a project director at what turned out to be a fake company. The engineer took part in what they thought was a job interview, during which the interviewer shared their social media profile “in order to build trust”, Binance said. It said the episode was “more advanced and deceptive than previously seen social engineering approaches”.

At a second interview with a person claiming to be the CEO of the fake company, which took place over a social chat app, the interviewer instructed the engineer to download an interview assignment, which contained malicious code. This download went undetected and allowed the attackers to use Binance's internal AI tools to gain control over some of the exchange's systems.

"The malware employed sophisticated obfuscation and evasion techniques, including replacing a legitimate development tool component with a malicious version to execute commands and establish communication with an attacker-controlled external server," Binance said.

With the malware in place, attackers used the engineer's compromised laptop and a Binance AI tool to control the laptops of the first and a third engineer. The first engineer had the ability to publish code, which the hackers used to their advantage.

On October 29, the day of the hack, the attackers logged on to the third engineer's laptop and "triggered a malicious script to launch the attack". Binance said it had since rebuilt its wallet systems and AI tools, and was working with external cyber security experts to strengthen its security systems.

Binance co-chief executive Yi He said that this year the company had detected and neutralised 57 suspected North Korean cyber threats. "We intercepted many of them, but the cost of failing to stop even one was severe – and this should never have happened," she said. Laundering process page 13

Deal cleared Chinese retailer JD.com to buy Ceconomy after state subsidy ruling by EU

A MediaMarkt store in Germany. The retail chain is one of two brands operated by Ceconomy — Imke Lass/Bloomberg

ANDY BOUNDS — BRUSSELS

FLORIAN MÜLLER — FRANKFURT

JD.com's €2.2bn acquisition of German electronics retailer Ceconomy has been cleared by the European Commission following an investigation in which Brussels determined the Chinese ecommerce group had benefited from state subsidies.

The Commission said yesterday that JD.com had made commitments “which fully and effectively remedy the distortion resulting from the identified foreign subsidies”.

The deal is the first time a Chinese takeover of a European company has been assessed using the EU's foreign subsidy regulation, at a time of trade tensions between the two sides. China had threatened retaliation if the deal was blocked. It comes weeks after Brussels and Beijing agreed to limit Chinese hybrid vehicle exports to the EU to tackle a widening trade deficit.

JD.com, China's largest retailer with annual revenue of \$187.2bn last year, launched its bid for Ceconomy, which operates more than 1,000 stores across Europe under the MediaMarkt and Saturn brands, in July last year.

The Commission said yesterday that JD.com had used preferential financing, tax incentives and grants from Beijing to develop logistics and technological knowhow that would allow Ceconomy to undercut its competitors.

JD.com has pledged to provide technology and logistics, including warehousing, to other retailers on the same terms as Ceconomy. It has also committed to conducting intragroup transactions, including financing, on market terms. The commitments last for 10 years.

EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera said this would prevent “cross-subsidisation of the parties’ European operations”. She added: “Consumers benefit from a competitive retail and ecommerce sector, with a level playing field for companies."

The closure of the deal comes about five months behind the companies' target completion date and a week before a hard "long-stop date", after which either party had the right to walk away if all regulatory clearances had not been obtained. Ceconomy shares rose 2.7 per cent yesterday.

JD.com chief Sandy Xu said: "Our goal is to support Ceconomy in accelerating its growth sustainably, further strengthening its competitive position in Europe and continuously driving innovation in an evolving retail market."

Remko Rijnders, chief executive of Ceconomy, said: “Customers will benefit from a wider selection, including faster deliveries, as well as access to exciting new technologies that will help bring innovations to market more quickly.”

Walter weighs Delaware Life sale in wake of investigation

LEE HARRIS — LONDON

ANTOINE GARA — NEW YORK

Mark Walter has explored a sale of \$71bn-in-assets insurer Delaware Life following a federal probe into the billionaire financier's investment empire.

Walter has weighed selling the insurer in a deal that could form part of a broader restructuring of his holding company TWG Global, according to three people familiar with the matter. The planning was at an early stage and might not result in a deal, the people said.

“TWG is not running a sales process for Delaware Life, nor has TWG retained external advisers, legal or financial, to advance a sale,” the company said in a statement.

“TWG has also not approached bidders about a possible sale. We remain focused on TWG’s commitment to the affiliated investments reduction plan, and we are pleased that the plan continues to progress.”

Delaware Life did not respond to a request for comment.

A sale would be the latest in a series of disposals by the chief executive of investment firm Guggenheim Partners. Walter has rushed to raise cash since a probe by US prosecutors revealed \$16bn in misclassified private investments at Delaware Life and billions more at another insurer he controlled.

Walter has struck deals in recent months to sell his stakes in the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team and London's Chelsea Football Club. His TWG Global stated that the Lakers sale was not part of a “fire sale” and had denied wrongdoing.

Delaware Life had \$71bn in assets under management as of June, according to the company, and more than 380,000 active annuity and life insurance policies.

"He may be forced to sell it at some point, so he's trying to get ahead of it," one of the people said of plans to sell down TWG's controlling stake in Delaware Life.

Walter has faced growing pressure on his businesses since Delaware Life and Clear Spring Life and Annuity, both of which he controls through TWG, revealed in June that they had received subpoenas in connection with an investigation by the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

TWG said in August that Walter's insurers planned to "promptly eliminate all of the affiliate exposure".

London Gateway's rise shows that if you build it, they will come

BUSINESS INSIGHT

EUROPE

John

Gapper

ocation matters in logistics, as the view from halfway up one of the 16 tall cranes at London Gateway shows. The Thames flows by on one side, a huge

Tesco distribution centre rises in the distance, and a fifth cargo ship berth is being built. This will soon become the UK's largest container port.

Most ports are historic but London Gateway is new. Perched on the north bank of the Thames Estuary 25 miles east of the capital where a Shell oil refinery used to be, it started construction in 2010. It expects to overtake Felixstowe in Suffolk by 2028 as it draws the biggest ships from China and Asia, loaded with steel boxes.

Dubai Ports World has invested £3bn since inheriting the project as part of its £3.9bn takeover of the ports and ferries group P&O 20 years ago. The scale of the Emirati group's ambition is obvious as one turns off the A13 and drives past the Essex town of Stanford-le-Hope. Pot-holed roads recede and 1,500 acres of development appear.

The Abidjan, owned by the world's largest container shipping group MSC, was being unloaded when I visited last week, before it sailed on to Rotterdam. Its containers were lifted by Chinese 138-metre-high cranes before being moved on electric shuttles to automated stacking cranes. The cranes hoisted the steel boxes again, placing them on the rear of waiting trucks.

London Gateway was a big bet on the adage if you build it, they will come. In this case, DP World had to persuade container carriers plying global routes from Asia to Europe to put in there, rather than Felixstowe or Southampton. Although the nearby port of Tilbury handles some containers, it is not deep enough for the world's largest ships.

DP World, which operates a container terminal at Southampton, also had to reverse the 60-year tide away from London. Inner London's docks and wharves declined in the 1960s amid the move from dry-bulk cargo to containers. Felixstowe became the main gateway port into the UK, despite being 90 miles from the capital.

But the decision to build a modern, deep-water port on

deep-water port on an expanse of brownfield Thames-side land is working. London Gateway pulled closer to Felix-stowe last year when Gemini, a

The port expects to overtake Felixstowe as it draws the biggest ships from China and Asia, loaded with steel boxes

global shipping alliance of Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, moved its Asia to Europe traffic there. After the fifth berth opens next year and a sixth by 2030, it will employ 1,600 people.

“Felixstowe has been the UK’s primary port for decades but it is slowly losing its crown,” says Eirik Hooper of the maritime consultancy Drewry. Felixstowe is owned by CK Hutchison, the Hong Kong-based conglomerate, and Southampton by Associated British Ports, the UK’s largest operator. The Australian group IFM Investors took a majority stake in ABP last month, valuing it at £10bn.

London Gateway has been helped by a surge in imports as Chinese-made electric vehicles take a larger share of the UK market. Cars usually travel on roll-on/roll-off ferries but demand is now so high that they are being packed in containers. The number of deep-sea containers handled by UK ports last year rose by 12 per cent, with most of the increase in London.

The port's allure is a matter of logistics as well as location. There is an adjacent logistics park for companies such as Tesco and UPS to bring goods straight into their facilities. Modelled on the Jebel Ali free zone in Dubai, it is a barrier to competition. If customers of shipping companies want them to dock there, it is hard to switch.

Britain's trade imbalance means most of the containers leaving the port are empty. London Gateway must find places to store them temporarily around the port before they can be shipped out to Asia again. It is now building an automated facility to stack 27,000 units 16 high to reduce congestion, part of an investment it expects to reach £4bn by 2030.

The port depends on logistics beyond its gates. About a third of the containers leaving are carried by train, but this was disrupted by a freight train derailment on the day I visited. Local roads are visibly ageing. “It’s not the best, although it is also not the worst,” Kris Adams, chief executive of DP World’s UK ports, observed diplomatically of Britain’s transport network.

But the UK is an attractive export market and London Gateway is in a good position. There are signs of more ships, such as the Abidjan, stopping there before heading on to European ports, rather than the other way round. Once they come, keep building.

john.gapper@ft.com

Legal Notices

IN THE MATTER OF THE COMPANIES ACT (2026 REVISION)

NOTICE OF DISSOPTION APPLICATION

SAAO GROUP FINANCIAL SERVICES COMPANY LIMITED AND/OR ANY INFORMATION CONTACT THE "COMPANY"

GRAND COURT CAUSE NO. FSD0089 of (2014) (MRHCJ)

TAKE NOTICE THAT, by way of Summons, the Joint Official Liquidators of the Company shall not be entitled to the Grand Court of California for an order that the Company shall be dismissed pursuant to section 152 of the Companies Act (2026 Revision) ("the Dissolution Application"). The Company shall not be entitled to seek that the Dissolution Application is intended to seek that the Dissolution Application be dealt with by the Court administratively, i.e., on the papers without the need for a formal hearing, and should not be intended to seek that any remainder of the Company intends to object to the Dissolution Application being dealt with administratively and/or who intends to appear or otherwise be heard by the Court. The Company shall not be entitled to seek that the Dissolution Application of their intention to do so by 27 November 2026, along with the Details of the Directors' views relating to contacting the Joint Official Liquidators using the details provided below.

Dated 4 November 2026

August Madkins, Joseph J. J. Legal Liquidator

Contact for Enquiries:

Michal Segal

Email: michal.legal@j.dcg.com

(34) 545 526 8905

Address for Service:

Grant Thornton Specialist Services (Cayman) Limited

All the Chief Executive Yard, Cricket Square, Grand Cayman KY-14006,

Cayman I Bandis

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IN THE MATTER OF THE COMPANIES ACT (2026 REVISION)

NOTICE OF DISOLUTION APPLICATION

SAAD INTERNATIONAL BANK LIMITED

(BN JOURNAL ASSOCIATIONS) (CHINA GRAND)

GRAND COURT CAUSE NO. FSD0090 of 2014 (MRHCJ)

TAKE NOTICE THAT, by way of Summons, the Joint Official Liquidators of the Company shall not be issued to the Grand Court of Bayern, Inc. for an order that the Company shall be dissolved pursuant to section 152 of the Companies Act (2026 Revision) (the "Dissolution Application"). AND FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, the Company shall not intend to seek that the Dissolution Application be dealt with by the Court administratively, i.e., on the papers without the need for a formal hearing, and should not be intended to seek that the Company shall not intend to object to the Dissolution Application being dealt with administratively and/or who intends to appear or otherwise be heard by the Court. The Company shall not be able to contact the Joint Official Liquidators of their intention to do so by 27 November 2026, along March 31th, in relation to the President's contact to contacting the Joint Official Liquidators using the details provided below.

Dated 4 November 2026

Margot Mackinson, Joseph J. Chief Financial Liquidator

Contact for Enquiries:

Michal Segal

Email michal.segal@ajcgj.com

(84) 526-8955

Address for Service:

Grant Thornton Specialist Services (Cayman) Limited

Berkshire, Department of Treasury, Ward, Cricket Square, Grand Cayman KY-9006,

Cayman Islands

Apollo has now lent more than \$350bn over the past 12 months – nearly a third more than the year before

ceutical conglomerate Bayer and the New York Yankees baseball team.

While Apollo has been willing to lend billions against AI chips, some of its rivals have been reticent to follow it into the nascent market. Ares Management chief Michael Arougheti recently told his shareholders the firm had avoided lending money against AI chips because he did “not know how to underwrite the decline in depreciation curves on that type of technology.”

Some large commercial banks also fear becoming overexposed to individual technology giants in their loan books after a multitrillion-dollar borrowing binge, making them reluctant to lend more money over fears of growing overly reliant on any single customer.

While Apollo lent record sums in the third quarter, its quarterly results were mixed, with higher interest rates and heavy competition causing some of its activity to fall short of Wall Street forecasts.

Apollo wrote down its sprawling \$1tn investment portfolio by \$3.2bn to reflect the rise in interest rates, which hit the value of some of its fixed income and private equity investments. Spread profits at its vast insurance operations also declined because of higher funding costs from rising interest rates.

It also pulled back from writing new business at the unit due to intense competition that ate into potential profits. Quarterly inflows into the unit fell to \$19bn, the lowest figure this year.

Apollo is on track to attract about \$80bn in new insurance cash this year, roughly the same as last year.

The group recorded a net loss of \$1bn overall when accounting for markdowns to its debt portfolio, a temporary fluctuation in the accounting value of its portfolio that analysts often dismiss. Adjusted net income, used by analysts as a better proxy for its cash flows, was \$1.3bn, a bit worse than expected.

'Kill zone'

Rio Tinto acts

to halt cane

toad invasion

Cane toads threaten the biodiversity of the Pilbara region, where Rio operates, by diminishing the availability of food for indigenous species

Joshua Prieto/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

Rio Tinto is joining the battle against a marauding cane toad that is threatening to encroach on Australia's iron ore-rich Pilbara region and wreak havoc on the area's wildlife and economy.

The mining group will spend A\$28mn (\$20mn) working with scientists to turn a stretch of land between the Indian Ocean and the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia into a “kill zone” to stop the march of one of Australia’s most destructive invasive species.

Cane toads do not pose a direct threat to Rio's iron ore mining operations in the Pilbara. However, the impact on the unique biodiversity of the region by endangering several species – including reptiles, ghost bats and mammals such as quolls and little red kalutas – would make future planning applications more difficult and increase compliance costs.

Tim Dempster, a marine biologist with Deakin University in Geelong, Victoria, said that the cost for mining companies to comply with environmental measures could rise significantly if action is not taken.

"The Pilbara is the heartland for Rio so it's the right thing to do, but it's an important thing to do for their business as well," he said. "It is the first time the toads are predicted to have a significant economic impact.

We have to plan for how the toads will shift the landscape and how companies can respond."

Six years ago Rio Tinto was scarred by international condemnation of its decision to blow up two 46,000-year-old caves sacred to Aboriginal people in Western Australia. Then chief executive Jean-Sébastien Jacques later told MPs that the “destruction of the Juukan rock shelters should not have occurred” and apologised unreservedly to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people.

The toads pose a cultural threat to the indigenous population of Australia as their spread has diminished the

availability of traditional food such as goannas that die after trying to eat the poisonous amphibians. There are now hundreds of millions of cane toads in the country, which are on track to reach Broome, on Western Australia's northern coast, in about two years and Pilbara by 2045.

In an effort to stop the invasion, a “kill zone” between Broome and Port Hedland is being created. Toads perish within days without access to water, so all 200 or so water sources used by cattle farmers in the 40km by 400km containment area will be made toad-proof. Dempster described the water sources as “stepping

MapLibre ©Mapcreator ©OpenStreetMap

Sources: FT research; sciencedirect.com; toadfree.zone stones for the toad invasion". Ben Phillips, a population biologist at Curtin University in Perth, said that the Rio partnership extended to the planning and management of creating the waterless border, which he compared with a "firebreak". "Rio do large infrastructure projects – the average ecologist doesn't," he said.

Chris Osborn, Rio Tinto's managing director of iron ore, rail, port and services, said 25 native species could be significantly threatened if the toads were not stopped. "Through our environment strategy we are working to protect the Pilbara's unique biodiversity," he said in a statement.

Rio is working with academics, farmers and the local indigenous community to establish and maintain the waterless barrier, which could provide lessons for turning back the toad in other areas.

“Most other approaches to invasive species have targeted the animal. This is about adapting the environment to make it uninhabitable for them. If we get it right then we won’t have to touch a toad,” Dempster said.

Cane toads were introduced almost a century ago to eat a beetle causing problems for sugarcane farmers in Queensland. The poisonous toads — native to South America — failed to eat many beetles but ate everything else. Nic Fildes in Sydney

Technology

Apple warns of squeeze from surging chips cost and muted services gains

MICHAEL ACTON — SAN FRANCISCO

Apple has warned that the “unprecedented” rise in memory chip prices and the cost of serving its AI tools would squeeze its margins even as it forecast better than expected sales for the crucial Christmas season.

Shares in Apple fell almost 2.5 per cent in lunchtime trading yesterday after the company warned of rising component costs and gave a weaker outlook for its high-margin services business.

Apple also predicted gross margins of 45 to 46 per cent in the fourth quarter of the year, less than analyst forecasts of 47 per cent.

The hit from the surging cost of memory chips overshadowed Apple's forecasts for iPhone sales for the holiday season.

Apple said that sales would rise between 7 and 10 per cent in the final quarter of this year, better than Wall Street forecasts of 6 per cent.

Chief executive John Ternus pointed to the shortage of memory chips as the boom in data centre building swallows up supply. "What we are seeing with memory pricing right now is unprecedented," he said.

Apple sales held up in the three months to the end of September, the final quarter of the company's financial

‘What we are seeing with memory pricing right now is unprecedented’

John Ternus, chief executive

year, with better than expected revenue of \$114.5bn.

Despite a record fiscal year for the company, investors were more focused on its financial outlook for the holiday season as consumers digest recent price increases and a rocky launch for the foldable iPhone Duo, which has been adversely affected by long delivery delays and reports of cracks in its screen. Apple insists the screen issues have affected only a limited number of devices.

Monday's earnings were also the first since Ternus, Apple's former hardware boss, took over as CEO in September. He has taken the reins when Apple's revenue growth is slowing from the robust pace set earlier in the year and as memory chip costs finally catch up with the consumer electronics group.

"I feel like it was a bit of a slow start for Ternus," said Melissa Otto, head of research at S&P Global's Visible Alpha. "The investment community is probably asking: Is this the best we can do for this level of valuation? Unfortunately, that happened to coincide with the new CEO's first earnings call."

Otto also noted that Apple's robust sales projections for the Christmas quarter appeared to be “priced to perfection” given worsening economic conditions and consumers facing a higher cost of living.

Apple reported solid performance in the third quarter, with iPhone revenue rising 17 per cent to \$57.6bn. Mac sales were better than expected at \$10.8bn.

Revenue for Apple's services business, which includes the App Store, Apple Pay and iCloud, was \$31.6bn, in line with estimates. However, it forecast services growth for the current quarter of between 8 and 9 per cent, well below the 12 per cent Wall Street expected. Net income was \$30.7bn.

Gross margin was 47.9 per cent in the third quarter, in line with its previous forecast of 47-48 per cent.

Healthcare

Cinven agrees €2.6bn deal to buy Theramex

IVAN LEVINGSTON — LONDON

Carlyle and PAI have agreed to sell women's health business Theramex to private equity group Cinven in a deal worth €2.6bn, valuing it at almost double what the buyout groups paid for the company four years ago.

Carlyle and PAI acquired London-based Theramex, which specialises in areas such as menopause and osteoporosis, for about €1.4bn in 2022. They are jointly selling the business to Cinven, a statement released yesterday shows.

The deal valued Theramex at about €2.6bn, said people familiar with the matter, marking a strong return for its backers at a time when the private equity industry is struggling to offload assets within typical timelines.

Investors at the two companies said they had expanded Theramex's existing business, streamlined its supply chain and added new products, including via acquisitions, during their ownership.

“Women’s health is a bit of an overlooked segment in healthcare and a lot of pharma companies equate women’s health and contraception,” said Sébastien Veil, a partner at Paris-based PAI and head of its healthcare team.

“Within women’s health there are some segments like menopause, osteoporosis, endometriosis where there is a very strong social need . . . and at the same time a very significant unmet demand,” he added.

Theramex treatments span fertility, contraception and uterine health, with operations in more than 80 countries across Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. That includes providing hormone replacement therapy products for menopause symptoms.

"One part of the growth is us taking the franchise we had and doubling down and working within the market to grow the actual treatment and the diagnostic rate," said Lubna Qunash, a partner who leads European healthcare at Carlyle. "The second aspect was the successful launch of innovative new products."

The sale follows a string of European healthcare deals involving private equity groups in recent years. Those include CapVest's €10bn acquisition of German drugmaker Stada from Bain Capital and Cinven, and GTCR's €4.1bn takeover of Zentiva from Advent.

Cinven said Theramex was well positioned for further European and international growth, adding that women's health was a “structurally growing segment of speciality pharma, with significant populations still undiagnosed and undertreated”.

Pharmaceuticals

Pfizer raises profit outlook on strong demand

PATRICK TEMPLE-WEST — NEW YORK

Pfizer raised its profit and revenue outlook on the back of strong demand for medicines including cancer treatments and a blockbuster blood thinner, helping to offset sinking sales of the US drugmaker's Covid-19 products.

In third-quarter earnings yesterday, New York-based Pfizer said that it was expecting annual sales of between \$62bn and \$64bn, up from previous guidance of \$60.5bn to \$62.5bn, on rising revenue from non-Covid medicines.

The group also upgraded its forecast for adjusted earnings per share to between \$2.95 and \$3.05, up from guidance in August of between \$2.80 and \$3.

The upgrade makes Pfizer the latest pharma group to have lifted its outlook in recent days. Yesterday BioNTech – Pfizer's partner on its main Covid vaccine – raised the lower end of its revenue guidance despite falling vaccine sales. Obesity drugmaker Eli Lilly, Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb all lifted their own revenue forecasts in earnings last week.

Pfizer is under pressure to find new sources of growth to offset slumping sales of the Covid jab that powered its earnings during the pandemic and has turned to acquisitions, including in oncology and obesity.

The company posted flat year-on-year revenue in the three months to the end of September as a 7 per cent rise in sales of non-Covid medicines offset a 29 per cent drop in revenue from its Comirnaty Covid shot and a 63 per cent fall in sales of antiviral pill Paxlovid, at constant exchange rates.

Pfizer's non-Covid medicines include blood thinner Eliquis, which brought in \$2.5bn in the quarter, boosted by higher net prices for the drug in the US. Revenue from its oncology drugs, including bladder cancer treatment Padcev, brought in \$4.3bn.

It acquired Padcev as part of its \$43bn acquisition of Seagen in 2023, giving it a portfolio of oncology medicines.

Pfizer is building its pipeline as it faces looming patent expiries between this year and 2030, including for Eliquis and breast cancer treatment Ibrance. Spending on research and development rose 18 per cent year on year.

Evan Seigerman, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said that Pfizer's results were supported by “commercial execution beyond Covid” and added: “Investors will be looking for evidence that the pipeline can help offset upcoming patent losses following recent mixed [trial results].”

COMPANIES & MARKETS

Freezer attacks create EU food security puzzle

Officials weigh how to prevent further incidents after unidentified hackers ruin supermarket stock worth millions of euros

TOM WILSON — LONDON

LAURA DUBOIS — BRUSSELS

Freezers at dozens of supermarkets across Europe were targeted on Monday in the second spate of so-called freezer hacks in a month, leaving investigators questioning who would target the continent's frozen food in one of the most mysterious cyber attacks in recent years.

All told, incidents have been reported this week in almost 100 stores operated by a variety of retailers across Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Estonia.

The attacks, which saw hackers remotely turn up the temperature in refrigeration units to as high as 55C, followed a similar series of hacks targeting 700 supermarkets in France during one night in October.

The incidents, which ruined food worth millions of euros, have been described by EU officials as a deliberate assault on the continent's food security. Yet no group has claimed responsibility.

Attacks on industrial hardware, known in the cyber security industry as operational technology or OT, have been documented since the early 2000s.

However, such attacks have typically required specialised knowledge and been targeted at specific infrastructure in particular countries. Perhaps the most famous OT attack involved the US and Israel launching a piece of malware known as Stuxnet against Iran's nuclear programme in 2009.

Refrigeration units have been hit before. Last year, the US justice department accused a pro-Russian hacking group of disabling refrigeration systems at a meat-processing plant in California in November 2024. However, OT cyber security specialists say they have never seen hundreds of similar targets attacked at the same time.

Robert Lee, chief executive of cyber security company Dragos and a leading expert on OT attacks, said large language models had made it easier for hackers to access the expertise needed to target niche industrial hardware. Attackers were aided, he added, by the fact that more equipment was now connected to the internet to allow for remote operations.

“Adversaries have always wanted to go after OT,” he said. “It’s the changes we’ve made in our industry like connectivity and moving to homogeneous infrastructure as well as the advancements in adversary knowledge and capabilities that have opened the attack surface and made this possible.”

The attack was not technically complex. Hackers used known vulnerabilities to penetrate the systems that remotely control each unit's temperature.

Among the suppliers affected during the French attacks was Danfoss, a Danish company, which then told its customers to update hardware and software to patch a security gap in its control systems. Meanwhile, supermarkets were advised to update their internet security settings.

“Since we were aware of this vulnerability, the supermarket chains and all the cooling companies started to remediate the vulnerabilities, but not all shops yet made the necessary steps to have a secure internet connection,” said

Spoiled food at a retailer in Sweden following the latest freezer hacks on almost 100 European stores. Below: Ireland's Supervalu was a target of the attacks as well as an ICA supermarket in Stockholm, bottom Johan Nilsson/EPA/Shutterstock

Stephan Moelans, the chief executive of Belgian refrigerator company Sabcobel.

This allowed hackers to use “a backdoor to enter into the controller and change the settings of the cooling installations” in those retailers that were not using a secure internet connection, Moelans said. About 20 shops using his equipment were affected in the most recent hacks, including Carrefour, Spar and Delhaize supermarkets, he added.

The shops that had put up additional security measures, such as disconnecting from the public internet or using virtual private networks that shield the connection, had not been vulnerable despite the backdoor, said Moelans.

Danfoss confirmed that its systems were compromised and reiterated that it had told customers to disconnect systems from public IP addresses, update to the latest firmware and use “appropriate network protection”.

Blackstone-backed industrials company Copeland, which makes the Dixell brand, confirmed yesterday that “certain” monitoring systems used to control refrigeration at supermarkets were “impacted by the reported cyber security vulnerability” this week.

Following the French supermarket attacks in October, cyber security experts said the hackers might be anyone from disaffected western teenagers to a state-backed adversary with a strategic goal.

Whereas hacks of IT systems often leave some form of digital footprint, attacks on OT systems leave fewer traces, making attribution harder.

Tom Hegel, a cyber threat researcher at security group Sentinel, said he suspected that the attacks actually started in August with a series of hacks of freezers at several US military bases. Given the similarities, Hegel said the three sets of attacks were “very likely” associated with the same group and that the group was most likely linked to Russia.

The objective for Russia would be to cause deniable economic and psychological damage in Europe, he said. "It's a very affordable hack that has massive financial impacts to the targets," he continued. "This is something that anyone can pull off in terms of technical sophistication and capabilities yet has lasting financial and psychological impact."

Had the attacks been committed by a different group, Hegel would have expected them to claim responsibility either publicly or on private hacker forums. Russia, meanwhile, has increasingly adopted “ambiguity” as a tool of its cyber warfare, he said: “They want all of these nations to be confused about who could have done this and that creates domestic chaos, political chaos.”

The European Commission is set to debate the issue and EU food and agriculture commissioner Christophe Hansen is set to meet retail group Ahold Delhaize to discuss the attacks.

"I will continue to follow developments closely and seek a comprehen-

'This is something that anyone can pull off . . . yet has lasting financial and psychological impact'

sive overview of the preparedness plans retailers have in place to respond to such incidents," Hansen said.

KINDNESS & LEADERSHIP

Such equipment should be run on “a virtual network where systems can only communicate in a limited space”, he said, noting there were obvious challenges in sectors that lacked big cyber security budgets and technical expertise. “There is always a cost. You have to configure it, you have to maintain it.”

Miguel De Bruycker, head of Belgium's Centre for Cybersecurity, advised that companies in sectors such as retail, manufacturing and utilities should avoid connecting industrial equipment to the open internet.

The risk, however, had risen dramatically in the past six months, he continued. "Almost everyone is vulnerable and can be a victim of an attack." See Markets and Markets Insight

Boehly insurer lends \$3bn to property project

Financials

We encourage the leaders of today and tomorrow, no matter their role or background, to #LeadWithKindness

LEE HARRIS

Todd Boehly's insurer has built up more than \$3bn in lending linked to a Beverly Hills real estate project he is developing, highlighting the investor's use of policyholders' funds to finance his wider empire.

Boehly owns Security Benefit through his holding company Eldridge Industries, whose property affiliate Cain is a lead developer of One Beverly Hills, a residential, retail and hotel project in the Californian city.

Eldridge on Monday disclosed that as of September, Security Benefit had \$1.6bn in outstanding loans to Eldridge entities “supported by their holdings” in One Beverly Hills, along with \$1.4bn in project debt.

The investments represent an unusually concentrated bet by the \$67bn insurer and come amid growing regulatory scrutiny of potential conflicts of interest when insurers lend to businesses linked to their owners.

Andrew Granato, an insurance and securities law professor at the University of Texas, said it was striking that Security Benefit was investing in “an affiliated entity that also needs a vast amount of debt in order to conduct its own operations”.

Taken together, the loans are equivalent to roughly 4.5 per cent of Security

Benefit's \$67bn in admitted assets.

50 LEADING LIGHTS UK

Kansas, where the insurer is regulated, requires such a company to give regulators an opportunity to review certain investments if they exceed 3 per cent of its assets.

Regulatory filings show Security Benefit has lent more than \$1bn to five trusts that each own 20 per cent of OBH PE Investor, an entity affiliated with the insurer. The insurer said: "Security Benefit is well aware of the limitations that the Kansas Insurance Holding Company

Act places on entering into affiliated transactions, and we are in full compliance with those limitations and all other applicable laws and regulations."

Taken together, the loans are equivalent to roughly 4.5% of Security Benefit's \$67bn in admitted assets

One senior insurance lawyer told the FT that 3 per cent was “a magic number for regulators – whether you divide those up in five different [special purpose vehicles] doesn’t make any difference”.

Security Benefit declined to say whether the more than \$3bn in loans represented the full extent of its exposure to One Beverly Hills, or whether it had obtained regulatory approval for the investments.

The insurer, which last year counted more than 900,000 active policies and retirement accounts in force, has for years been one of the largest investors in affiliated assets – holdings linked to entities with ties to an insurer's owner.

Such investments have faced increased scrutiny since a federal investigation this year into Mark Walter, a longtime business partner of Boehly, revealed that insurers Walter controlled had misclassified more than \$20bn in affiliated private investments by stating they were unaffiliated.

Three industry analysts and one lawyer, who all asked not to be named, suggested the lending to OBH PE Investor through five trusts may have helped Security Benefit avoid triggering a regulatory review.

Its investments in One Beverly Hills include mortgage loans and so-called collateral loans, which are backed by other assets.

Collateral loans have faced criticism from regulators in recent months, with one state regulator describing the structure as a form of “capital arbitrage” that was “being actively exploited”.

Security Benefit is by far the largest user of collateral loans among US life insurers, accounting for almost half the industry's loans at the end of 2025.

2026 LISTEES ANNOUNCED

Nevelina Aleksandrova, Lead Engineer, Public Library of Science (PLOS)

Dr Samreen Ashraf, Associate Head of Business School, Bournemouth University

Nathan Atkinson, Co-Founder, Rethink Food CIC

Surosh Azizi, Head of Finance, Gailarde

Tessa Baker, Professor of Cosmology, Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth

Jenny Barron, Director, EY

Roo Begom, Director, Committed Support

Christopher Box, Global Relationships Partner, PwC

Charlene Braithwaite, Student Disability & Wellbeing Officer, London College of Contemporary Music (LCCM)

Edward Brooks, Executive Director, The Oxford Character Project

Sharon Butler, Global Head of HR, Onnec

Kimberley Canning, Employee Experience Lead UK & IRE, Teleperformance (TP)

Katerina Chantzi, Facilitator & Organisational Development/ Learning & Development Consultant

Jenni Dunman, Founder & CEO, Daisy First Aid

Christina Dymioti, Founder, Fashion Heritage Network Cyprus

Cathy Elliott, Head of Streatham & Clapham High School, GDST

Bamidele Farinre, Agile Project Manager, Openclassrooms

Rebecca Henley, Senior Campaign Manager, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

Tyler Hinkson, Partnership & Development Lead, TRIYBE

Darren Hopgood, Youth Football Coach, Harwell & Hendred Youth Football Club

Dex Hunter-Torricke, President, The Center for Tomorrow

Jacqueline Johnston-Fisher, Head of Services DJK House, Vitality Homes

Sana Kardar, Biomedical Scientist and Policy Innovator, House of Commons

Nicole Knott, Partner, PwC UK Pam Ledward, Director for Social Care Practice, Family Rights Group

Susie Ma, Founder and CEO, Tropic

Anne-Marie McBrien, Director of Faculty Services, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

Jo Middleton, Director, International Institute for Canine Ethics

Koyesha Mukherjee, Founder and CEO, The Leading You(n)th

Dr Nitha Naqvi, Consultant Paediatric Cardiologist, Royal Brompton Hospital & Evelina London Children's Hospital part of GSTT (Guy's and St Thomas's NHS Foundation Trust)

Amy Nicholas, Director, Morgan's Butchery Ltd

Carolyn Pepper, Partner, Reed Smith LLP

Vince Pizzoni, Associate Professor, University of Nottingham

Flavia Popescu, Founder & CEO, The Manor of Oak

@kindnessrules\_

in @KindnessRules

kindnessrules.co.uk

Roxanne Potts, Chief Partnerships Officer, Inner Spark, Goyal Foundation

Dr James Punch, Positive Behaviour Support Lead, IBC Healthcare

Promila Raina, Youth Engagement Manager, Essex Cricket

Hayley Roffey, Co-CEO, Global Fund for Children

Nicola Rollock, Professor of Social Policy & Race, King's College London and Director of NIANRO Consulting

Sasha Samjic, Director and Therapeutic Lead, First Steps Care

Isaac Samuels, Head of Partnerships, Campaigns & Influence, People's Voice Media

Gillian Sandstrom, Associate Professor in the Psychology of Kindness, University of Sussex

Fiona Severs, Director of Community, Keystone Law

Ramsha Shahid, Partner, Privity Legal

Serene Singh, Welfare Officer, St Peter's College, University of Oxford

Julie Stephens, People Director, UK Insurance and Functions, Bupa

Carien van der Hoop, Global Lead, OTC Infrastructure, London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG)

Payal Walker, Founder & Co CEO, Women on Boards CIC

Sandra Wiggins, Founder & Co - CEO, Women on Boards CIC

Fareeha Zeshan, Chief Empowerment Officer, Million Smiles Global

UK COMPANIES

(No text to output)

Retail

Poundland owners to face public probe

Gordon Brothers chiefs will be brought before MPs for questions over demise

JIM PICKARD

DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR

Poundland's owners will be hauled before MPs within days to explain their role in the discount retailer's looming insolvency after the business select committee agreed yesterday to call in executives from distressed investor Gordon Brothers.

Labour MP Liam Byrne, chair of the influential committee, said it would kick off an inquiry into Poundland's demise, which has prompted ire across the political spectrum. The committee has written to Gordon Brothers summoning its executives for public scrutiny in the House of Commons.

"All the reports are that Poundland is a viable, profitable business, not a business to crash, burn, break off and sell off piece by piece," Byrne told the FT. "So we are asking Gordon Brothers to appear to clear up the mystery of what's stopping taking the deal on the table to save over 12,000 jobs."

Poundland last week filed a notice of intent to appoint administrators at the High Court, setting the stage for one of the biggest high street failures of recent years.

Gordon Brothers was accused by MPs yesterday of “predatory capitalism” and behaving like a “vulture” after turning down a rescue deal from Martin Property Group, a Northern Ireland-based real estate investor and developer.

In addition to the select committee hearing, business secretary Jonathan Reynolds will meet Gordon Brothers' executives within days.

Kate Dearden, a junior business minister, said that Reynolds had arranged a meeting with Gordon Brothers “to press our concerns and establish the facts”.

Dearden said the government wanted an outcome “that protects as many jobs as possible”.

The collapse of Poundland, which trades from about 600 stores, would represent a setback to Prime Minister Andy Burnham's pledge to revitalise the country's high streets. The likeliest outcome is chunks of the retailer's store estate are taken on by other retailers but that hundreds of shops close for good.

Gordon Brothers' insistence that bidders repay a £30mn loan in full diminished the chances of a rescue deal, according to people familiar with the matter. It inherited the loan from Poundland's previous owner when it bought the retailer for less than £1 last year.

Gareth Snell, Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central, said the investor was guilty of “predatory capitalism”.

Poundland was set up 36 years ago and became renowned for selling a range of items from plates to detergent at a uniform price of £1. The company, which has struggled with fierce competition and rising costs, reported an £85.2mn loss for the year to September 2025 on revenue of £1.5bn.

Gordon Brothers told the government it supported Poundland with “£85mn of additional financing” since buying it. It blamed factors including inflation, higher staffing costs and “severe levels of shoplifting” for its plight.

Gordon Brothers did not respond to a request for comment. Additional reporting by Laura Onita in London

Energy

Drax teams up for project to power vast data centre

RACHEL MILLARD

Drax and Brookfield have announced plans to develop vast data centre capacity at the energy group's wood-fired power station in North Yorkshire with Qatari backing.

The arrangement could see Drax's biomass plant powering AI models by next decade, although initially the electricity would come from the broader grid through an existing connection.

The UK energy group and the Canadian infrastructure investor Brookfield said they were joining forces to try to get up to 100 megawatts of data centre capacity up and running by 2028, increasing to 500MW by 2031 and up to 1 gigawatt in the 2030s.

The second phase would bring the data centre “behind-the-meter”, meaning it would take electricity directly from the biomass plant. The plans were likely to require investment of up to £2.5bn in its first phase and up to £20bn in total, Drax said.

A joint venture between Brookfield and Qai, a subsidiary of the Qatar Investment Authority, will provide initial investment for the project. Brookfield's UK AI platform Radiant will develop the project with Drax.

London-listed Drax has been looking for revenue to replace its current government subsidies, which are provided on the basis of biomass being a renewable source of electricity. The government extended the backing last year to 2031 on the basis that the Drax plant was needed to maintain the UK's "near-term security of supply" for electricity.

Data centre developers are looking to set up in the UK but have challenges accessing sufficient power supplies and land – both of which Drax can offer.

The government wants to attract data centres and announced in last week's Budget a “covenant” aimed at helping large projects get up and running.

The Drax and Brookfield partnership is at an early stage: the companies will need to secure government approvals as well as a data centre tenant for the site.

Drax's chief executive Will Gardiner said the project would "help secure the long-term future of the site and protect hundreds of jobs".

Drax shares closed up 6.6 per cent yes- terday.

Debt pressure VMO2 to axe thousands of jobs by 2029

Virgin Media O2 has lost more than 55,000 customers this year, having shed 138,400 last year. The broadband provider employs about 16,000 people glosszoom/Alamy

Virgin Media O2 is to cut thousands of jobs and slash spending as the UK telecoms group moves to ease investor concerns over a £22bn debt pile.

The UK's second-largest broadband provider said yesterday that it would cut £300mn in staff costs by 2029, equivalent to about 30 per cent of the total, as part of a wider £800mn cost-cutting programme.

VMO2, which employs about 16,000 people, declined to comment on how many jobs would be cut.

The move comes after the telecoms group, which is jointly owned by Liberty Global and Telefónica, was rocked by a sell-off in its bonds in the summer over concerns that fierce price competition from small fibre network operators was hitting its ability to service its debt.

The price of VMO2's safest debt was trading at about 71 pence in the pound on Monday, down from about par at the beginning of the year.

Some of the group's riskier debt – about £1.7bn of complex credit instruments called vendor financing notes – reached the equivalent of 41 pence in recent weeks.

Lutz Schüler, chief executive, said the “tough” decisions were necessary for the company’s “future success and growth”.

“Given the market conditions we face, the regulatory backdrop in fibre and the technological changes sweeping across all areas of the

The cost-cutting measures were ‘simply a necessity’ given ‘the pressures on broadband pricing’

economy, standing still and doing what we've always done is not an option," he said.

The FT reported in September that VMO2's owners were targeting hundreds of millions of pounds in cost cuts in a bid to ease investor concerns over the company's finances.

The cuts were announced yesterday alongside VMO2's third-quarter results, which showed the company lost 23,000 broadband customers between July and September.

The company has now shed more than 55,000 customers this year, having lost 138,400 last year.

VMO2 also confirmed an FT report from last week that it would scrap a planned upgrade of its cable network to newer fibre technology to cut spending.

James Ratzer, an analyst at New Street Research, said the new cost-cutting measures were “simply a necessity to try to stand still against competitors given the pressures on broadband pricing”.

In addition to the cuts, VMO2 said it would be exploring opportunities to use other companies' broadband networks in areas its own 19mn infrastructure did not reach.

The FT reported last week VMO2 was in advanced talks with BT over a deal to use its 25mn home fibre network. The company did not comment on the talks yesterday. Kieran Smith in London

Retail

Asda appoints ex-Morrisons boss Potts to revive sales as its next CEO

LAURA ONITA AND ASHLEY ARMSTRONG

Asda has appointed David Potts, the former boss of rival Wm Morrison, as chief executive to turn round the fortunes of the UK's third-largest supermarket.

Potts joined the Leeds-based grocer with immediate effect yesterday, succeeding retail veteran Allan Leighton, who becomes non-executive chair after almost two years leading the business.

Leighton said Potts's experience was "exactly what we now require for the next stage of our transformation", adding that Asda had "stabilised" under his own leadership.

The group, which was bought by private equity firm TDR Capital and the billionaire Issa brothers in a £6.8bn deal agreed in 2020, has struggled with falling sales and widening losses while ceding market share to larger rivals Tesco and J Sainsbury as well as discounters Aldi and Lidl. It has also been weighed down by a heavy debt burden since its leveraged buyout.

Potts, who has spent the bulk of his career at Tesco, said he would draw on a “lifetime [of] experience” to run the supermarket chain, acknowledging that Asda had been through “a challenged moment”. “Our job is to listen to what

Potts, who has spent the bulk of his career at Tesco, said he would draw on a 'lifetime [of] experience'

customers want," he told the FT.

customers want, he told the FT.

The news comes amid heightened speculation over consolidation in the fiercely competitive UK grocery industry. The FT reported last month that Sainsbury's and Morrisons held merger talks this year, before the former walked away. Industry executives have said that the possibility of a union between Asda and Morrisons should not be discounted.

Potts's "excellence in operational execution" would be a good fit with Leighton's "pizzazz", according to a person close to the recruitment process.

Since returning to Asda as executive chair in November 2024, Leighton has sought to restore its value credentials by investing heavily in price cuts while improving product availability, store standards and the overall shopping experience.

There have been tentative signs of recovery under his tenure. Like-for-like sales excluding fuel rose 0.2 per cent in the seven weeks to August 18 — the first growth in more than two years, according to the company.

But the recovery remains fragile. Sales fell 0.5 per cent in the 12 weeks to October 4, while market share slipped to 11.5 per cent from 11.8 per cent a year earlier, according to data from Worldpanel by Numerator.

Asda's problems have been compounded by a botched separation of its IT systems from former owner Walmart, which disrupted product availability and delayed its turnaround.

“David’s record in the industry speaks for itself, and having recently worked with [some of the] Asda executive team and other colleagues, I know he will quickly make an impact,” Leighton said.

Retail & consumer

Unilever plans €1bn of savings after spin-off

LAURA ONITA — LONDON

Unilever has unveiled plans to cut a further €1bn of costs and changes to its operating model as the maker of Dove soap seeks to convince investors the separation of its food business has set the stage for faster growth.

The consumer goods group said yesterday that it planned to make productivity savings of €1bn by the end of 2029 by cutting “stranded costs” arising from the spin-off and making savings through “organisational simplification, process redesign and technology initiatives”.

Unilever will provide investors with more details of its plans at an investor day today.

Last year, the FTSE 100 company's board abruptly replaced former chief executive Hein Schumacher with its chief financial officer, Fernando Fernandez, after losing patience with the pace of his turnaround.

Since taking the top job, Fernandez has agreed a \$66bn deal to combine Unilever's food division with spice maker McCormick, uniting Hellmann's mayonnaise and French's mustard into one portfolio.

Activist investor Nelson Peltz, a Unilever shareholder who joined the company's board in 2022, spent years

Fernandez has promised a 'sharper' group centred on beauty, personal care and home care

agitating for a break-up of the conglomerate.

The deal, which is expected to complete by the middle of next year, received a lukewarm reception from investors when it was announced in March.

Fernandez has since promised a “sharper, more focused” group centred on beauty, personal care and home care.

Unilever said yesterday that it would operate under the principle of “global strategy, local execution" with a focus on simplifying processes across its business. A "lean" central function will be supplemented by local teams more accountable for their performance.

The group will prioritise faster-growing beauty and wellness brands and markets such as India and the US.

The new cost-cutting target comes after Unilever hit its previous goal, set in 2024, of achieving €800mn of annual savings by the end of 2026.

The company said that it expected its results in 2027 to be in line with its medium-term target for annual underlying sales growth of between 4 and 6 per cent, underlying volume growth of at least 2 per cent and modest improvement in its underlying operating margin.

Analysts at RBC Capital Markets said the targets for volume and sales growth were challenging but largely expected by the market. “We don’t expect a significant share price reaction from the [capital markets day] if this is the shape of what is to come,” they added.

Oil & gas

Shell to sell Australian gas stake for \$1.45bn

NIC FILDES — SYDNEY

Shell will sell its stake in Australia's largest gasfield to the investment arm of Abu Dhabi's national oil company for \$1.45bn as part of a strategy to shed its mature assets.

The Anglo-Dutch oil major said yesterday that it had agreed to sell its 16.7 per cent share of the North West Shelf project to XRG, the energy investment arm of Adnoc.

"The sale realises value from a mature, non-operated asset and supports Shell's strategy by focusing investment on advantaged integrated gas positions, as NWS transitions in the future towards a third-party toll-processing model," said Cederic Cremers, head of Shell's integrated gas operations.

Shell has been an investor in the North West Shelf, which is operated by Woodside Energy and sits off the coast of Western Australia, since the 1960s. The offshore gasfield has helped Australia become one of the world's most significant energy exporters, with much of the shipments going to trading partners in the Asia-Pacific region.

Shell put its North West Shelf stake on the block this year after selling out of Browse, another Woodside offshore gas project under development, in 2023.

The sale is part of Shell's strategy to offload mature assets. It also reflects the North West Shelf's transition to processing gas for third-party companies from its liquefied natural gas terminal in Karratha.

The North West Shelf stake will be sold to Adnoc's investment arm

XRG signalled its interest in Australia's energy market when it made a failed \$18.7bn bid for Santos, the country's second-largest oil and gas developer, last year. The company was established by Adnoc in 2024 to acquire international assets in gas, chemicals and low-carbon energy.

"This investment advances XRG's strategy to build a leading international gas business serving growing demand across Asia-Pacific," said Mohamed Al Aryani, president of XRG International Gas.

The Australian government approved an extension of the North West Shelf project to 2070 last year, which angered environmental groups.

Chevron, BP and Japan's Mitsui and Mitsubishi are also shareholders in the project.

Last month Infineum, a UK-based chemicals group backed by Shell, said it was exploring an \$8bn sale as the energy major tried to refocus on its core oil and gas operations by offloading more peripheral parts of its business.

COMPANIES & MARKETS

Crypto. Blockchains

Binance hackers start process of laundering stolen billions

North Korean group suspected of heist will take months to offload assets, say analysts

NIKOU ASGARI — LONDON

North Korean hackers are expected to take months to launder the billions of dollars of tokens they stole last week from crypto exchange Binance, say analysts, despite using sophisticated automation in an attempt to hide their tracks.

The FBI has blamed the heist on TraderTraitor, a hacker group linked to the secretive state, saying it expected the stolen assets to be widely laundered before being cashed out. Of the \$6.3bn initially stolen, about \$3.3bn remains under the group's control after some tokens were frozen.

Although the thieves began laundering the stolen crypto immediately and are using automated tools to carry out thousands of transactions, cryptotracing experts say the process will take months or longer.

The stolen tokens are visible to law enforcement on public blockchains, but the hackers are embarking on a long and complex process to shift them in small quantities through numerous venues as they try to make tracing the flow of funds as difficult as possible.

"This is going to be weeks, months and maybe even years . . . They will sit on them for a long period of time and try to identify opportunities to cash out," said Phil Larratt, senior director of global services at Chainalysis, a blockchain-tracing company that is working with Binance.

Jonathan Levin, co-founder of Chainalysis, said the hackers had “too much money for their trusted laundering venues to handle”, so the funds were being broken down into smaller chunks and sent “to a wider network of services”.

Key to the laundering effort are decentralised finance lending markets and crypto swapping services – used to swap one type of crypto for another without owners having to sell any tokens – which the hackers are using to convert the stolen tokens into other assets. They are using sophisticated automation methods to split up and send the funds to thousands of new wallets in an attempt to speed up the movement of money and make tracing harder.

The Tron blockchain, created by crypto mogul and Donald Trump donor Justin Sun, is regarded as an important tool for money launderers. The Anti-Money Laundering Network has called Tron “a notorious platform for sophisticated money laundering schemes”, favoured by criminals because of its “high-speed transactions and low fees”.

Analytics company Elliptic said each dollar's worth of tokens that the hackers laundered through Tron had already moved nine times by the weekend, underlining the scale of the operation. At the height of the activity on Saturday, one transaction was sent every three seconds, it said.

Experts said that conventional software automation was being used, rather than agentic AI. "It looks like scripts run by people," said Tom Robinson, cofounder of Elliptic, and that there had been "pauses that looked like human working patterns".

Binance is still investigating how the

The path of the money stolen from Binance Estimated flows between Oct 29 and Nov 2\* hackers managed to compromise its systems, but yesterday revealed that the attackers had set up fake job interviews to trick a software engineer into installing malicious code on its systems. It is also working with the FBI and blockchain analytics companies to trace the funds.

\* Figures may not sum between start and end dates due to fluctuation in crypto/USD exchange rates \*\* Swapped for ETH through DEXs and lending protocols; swapped for TRX through DEXS, then bridged

Source: Elliptic, data as at Nov 2, 7am

One way the hackers are seeking to hide the source of funds is by converting them into other tokens through decentralised finance platforms.

So-called DeFi platforms are unregulated and often involve automated contracts carrying out functions such as lending and borrowing, rather than traditional intermediaries such as banks and brokers. Diehard crypto enthusiasts relish the fact that DeFi protocols have little oversight and many do not require customers to submit to identity checks.

For example, minutes after the theft, the hackers had swapped \$434mn worth of USDT for ethereum on decentralised exchanges and borrowed \$45mn worth of ethereum against stolen USDT posted as collateral on the decentralised lending platform AAVE, according to Elliptic.

They used another decentralised exchange called SunSwap to convert \$234mn of USDT into TRX, the native token of the Tron blockchain.

About \$215mn worth of TRX tokens were split up and sent to about 7,700 newly created crypto wallet addresses, Elliptic said. On the way, some of the TRX was swapped for USDD, a stable-coin created by Sun in 2022 that bills itself as “freeze-free”, meaning that, unlike Circle and Tether’s stablecoins, no one can freeze it.

The hackers then used so-called cross-chain bridges including THOR-Chain and Bitget Swap to convert those funds into ethereum. Cross-chain bridges move assets from one blockchain to another by taking the token on

Crypto assets displayed on the Binance app. The exchange is working with the FBI and blockchain analytics companies to trace the stolen funds — SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg

Our global team gives you market-moving news and views, 24 hours a day ft.com/markets

the first blockchain and paying it out in the form of new tokens on the destination blockchain. At least \$147mn had been bridged out of Tron, Elliptic said. It currently sits in hundreds of new crypto wallets.

To cash out, the hackers will eventually use crypto exchanges or brokers that carry out no customer checks.

Last year, the FBI blamed TraderTraitor for a \$1.5bn theft from crypto exchange Bybit in what was at the time the biggest ever crypto hack.

"The funds will probably be cashed out in similar ways to Bybit and earlier North Korean hacks, through [over-the-counter] brokers, often Chinese-language traders," said Robinson of Elliptic, adding that such services asked "little or no questions" of their customers.

The stolen Bybit funds were eventually converted into USDT and then cashed out, with the hackers paid in traditional currencies. "Much of that happens off-chain, which makes the final steps hard to see. It is also a point of weakness for them, because USDT can be frozen," Robinson added.

North Korea yesterday denied involvement in the Binance hack. “The FBI is trying to brand the DPRK as a ‘cyber criminal state’,” the country’s official KCNA news agency quoted Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as saying.

"It is a grave political provocation against the DPRK that the US misleads the international public opinion as if all the cyber crimes in different parts of the world are our deeds."

Binance has promised to reimburse all tokens stolen by the hackers. It has said it will pay this out of its own resources, including about \$1bn worth of bitcoin held in its emergency fund. Additional reporting by Song Jung-a in Seoul

See Markets Insight

Commodities

Japan groups spend \$21bn to strengthen gas supplies

HARRY DEMPSEY — TOKYO

STEPHANIE FINDLAY — HOUSTON

MALCOLM MOORE — LONDON

Japanese companies have embarked on a \$21bn global deal spree to strengthen their grip on gas supplies following the market turmoil triggered by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.

The investments since 2023 have been concentrated on shale resources in the US Gulf Coast, supporting Japan's energy security drive and Donald Trump's goal for US energy dominance, according to energy data analytics firm Enverus.

Japan is the world's second-largest buyer of liquefied natural gas after China. As well as seeking to replace disrupted Middle Eastern supplies and declining reserves in Asia, Japanese companies also have ambitions to insert themselves at the heart of the US power build-out for AI data centres and to act as a bridge to bring American LNG to developing Asian markets.

Japan has now overtaken the UK, Canada and Australia as the primary source of foreign investment in US gas resources, accounting for two-fifths of the total over the previous four years.

"A paradigm shift has taken place for Japanese energy procurement in the wake of the Iran war with a return to bolstering diversity of supply chains, even if it comes at an additional cost,"

'A paradigm shift has taken place for Japanese energy procurement . . . even if it comes at an additional cost'

said Saul Kavonic, senior analyst at MST Financial.

Alongside substantial investment in US shale, Japanese LNG buyers have strengthened positions in gasfields in Australia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea in the past six months.

“For the gas markets this is a rearrangement caused by geopolitical circumstances,” said José Luis Vittor, oil and gas practice lead at Womble Bond Dickinson. “For the Japanese, it’s having control of the resources.”

Tokyo sent a key policy signal in its foundational energy plan, adopted last year. It stated that gas would maintain a crucial role in the power system beyond 2040 and encouraged utilities to secure long-term LNG contracts and invest in gas resources and export infrastructure.

Jera, Japan's largest power generator and the world's biggest LNG buyer, spent \$1.5bn last year to acquire the South Mansfield shale gasfield in Louisiana. Global chief executive Yukio Kani said the US was previously under-represented for a “global supply portfolio”.

Japan has had a troubled history of investing in US shale. A bout of ill-timed dealmaking in 2010-12 caused widespread impairments across the trading houses as gas prices fell.

Many are convinced that a supercycle in gas demand to power AI data centres means this time will be different.

Katsuya Nakanishi, chief executive of Mitsubishi Corporation, said the trading house's \$7.5bn deal this year for US shale gas producer Aethon would allow the group to ship gas to Europe but that its main goal was to supply American customers.

"The objective with Aethon is to capture US demand through local production for local consumption," he said.

Equities

China halts listings and large stake sales in push to reverse prolonged downturn in stocks

ZIJING WU AND WILLIAM SANDLUND

HONG KONG

Chinese regulators have told banks to hold fire on company listings and large share sales in an effort to bolster the country's struggling stock markets.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has held meetings with investment banks and given informal instructions – or “window guidance” – in the past few days about pausing initial public offerings, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions.

Large sales by existing shareholders have also been temporarily suspended until the markets have recovered.

The CSI 300, mainland China's benchmark index, fell 8.5 per cent in October for its worst month in more than a decade. It is down 15 per cent this year, while the S&P 500 has gained 10 per cent.

Chinese equities have been mired in a prolonged downturn since the summer, pressured by macroeconomic issues and mounting scepticism about AI investment. A tax crackdown on offshore trusts has also prompted some billionaires to sell stocks to pay their tax bills, further weighing on markets.

Earlier interventions, ranging from state-backed fund purchases in July to recent regulatory measures limiting share sales, have failed to reverse the decline.

Chinese policymakers have previously slowed the pace of IPOs during market downturns as part of attempts to preserve liquidity.

The move threatens to put the brakes on dealmaking in China's equity markets, which had shown signs of revival after a prolonged downturn. IPO deal volume this year has reached more than Rmb292bn (\$44bn) – the highest since 2023 – according to Bloomberg data. Chipmaker YMTC is one company that had been expected to list this year but is yet to do so.

The new measures are in addition to earlier guidance last month that included stabilisation methods such as accelerated share buybacks and asking investors to curb equity sales, according to the people.

The moves were “unlikely to generate a lasting turnaround unless paired with something that addresses the structural challenges more directly”, said Thomas Mathews, Asia-Pacific head of markets at Capital Economics. “That means boosting earnings growth, which in the near term probably means monetary or fiscal support."

On Monday the CSRC, People's Bank of China and National Financial Regulatory Administration said they had held meetings with securities brokerages and fund companies on ways to stabilise stock markets. Measures include cutting the rate on its relending facility for share buybacks to 1 per cent from 1.25 per cent, boosting swap operations and encouraging share buybacks.

Market reaction was muted yesterday, with the CSI 300 ending 0.2 per cent lower and the tech-focused Star 50 index down 3.8 per cent, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 0.6 per cent.

Sam Konrad, investment manager at Jupiter Asset Management, said: “This is an example of why we don’t have a fundamentally positive view on the long-term outlook for Chinese equity markets. It’s a suggestion that Chinese equity markets are reliant on government support to try and boost them.”

He added: “Over the long term Chinese equity markets have been some of the worst-performing equity markets in the world. We think the economic system in China means growth is not translated into earnings growth.”

Jason Lui, head of Asia-Pacific equity and derivative strategy at BNP Paribas, said: "While these policies may not trigger an immediate reversal of sentiment similar to September 2024, they present medium-term opportunities for investors seeking to accumulate China A-share exposure."

Chinese stocks rebounded in September and October 2024 after regulators unleashed a wave of stimulus, including two central bank liquidity facilities designed to help brokers and institutional investors buy shares.

The rally gained further momentum early last year as DeepSeek's breakthrough prompted global investors to revalue Chinese technology stocks. Confidence was then shaken by US President Donald Trump's tariff war, prompting Beijing to mobilise state-backed funds, known as the “national team”, to help set a floor for China's stock markets from April last year.

Rounds of sales in the national team's ETF and stock holdings in the first quarter of this year renewed doubts about the rally's sustainability.

The CSRC did not respond to a request for comment.

Jeff Weinstein

Partner

FJ Labs

AI cyber breach of a big bank is close at hand

Anil Kashyap Markets Insight

he cyber heist at Binance already offers a number of lessons for investors, regulators and policymakers. Policymakers, routinely

Policymakers routinely plan, via war games and stress tests, for a variety of financial stability risks. One thing that sets cyber attacks apart from most other risks is that it is a question of when a major financial institution will be compromised, not if.

One parlour game among financial stability experts is to speculate about why we have not yet had a massive breach. The Binance debacle suggests one possibility — maybe banks and conventionally regulated financial infrastructure are no longer the most inviting targets.

If the crypto ecosystem has been sufficiently careless about guarding against attacks, then that is where those seeking to profit from cyber crime will shift.

But there should not be much comfort to be taken from that.

Major banks are under constant attack. The law of large numbers, coupled with the way increasingly advanced AI empowers attackers, suggests it is only a matter of time before a substantial attack succeeds.

It is sometimes said that the rise of AI will allow institutions to fight back against cyber attacks on an equal footing. That is too optimistic.

AI can and should be used to identify vulnerabilities and will be part of the efforts to address them. But as the recent hack of the AI model and data repository Hugging Face makes clear, we cannot trust to technology alone.

Efforts to address deficiencies will depend on humans, who can't work and adapt as quickly as AI. Hence defence efforts will lag behind the attackers.

The early reports on the Binance hack point to the potential involvement of state-sponsored attackers.

Individual institutions will never have sufficient resources to battle such actors, and it's unreasonable to expect that they can. While there is some cooperation among major financial institutions to share information, governments have a vital role to play in creating standards that protect their citizens' best interests.

For the banking system, there is an oversight regime in place to help address the risks of an AI attack. The same is not true in the crypto

Some have said AI will allow institutions to fight back on an equal footing. That is too optimistic

ecosystem. The lack of rigorous oversight might promote innovation, but it also makes crypto companies vulnerable. Right now, a Binance-type attack may not undermine faith in the broader financial system. But if the crypto ecosystem continues to grow and become more integrated with the traditional financial system, the impact could be far more devastating. One truism about cyber risks is that an organisation (or a financial system) is only as strong as its weakest link.

Another reason to worry is that criminals and other hostile actors could use the crypto ecosystem to train AI agents on how best to hack financial institutions. AI is improving by leaps and bounds. Different institutions use different defences. But learning how to hack one system can provide insights into how to attack another.

If the functioning of a major financial institution, or a key part of the established financial infrastructure, is compromised, that could quickly sow widespread distrust of the financial system. Trust is the grease that allows the financial system to function and to support businesses and households.

If it is badly damaged in a cyber attack instigated by a hostile nation or non-state actor, it will not be easily regained. The systemic ramifications could be far-reaching.

Banks invest heavily in guarding against these risks, and the US Treasury department and bank regulators have been working with regulated financial institutions to promote preparedness. But both the size and the nature of private sector investments are going to fall short of what is required to protect the resilience of the financial system.

Policymakers should recognise the attack on Binance for what it is: a warning shot of potentially far worse things to come.

Guarding against hacks that steal billions of dollars and undermine faith in finance requires the public sector to work closely with the private sector to enhance resilience and to develop plans should things go awry.

And allowing the crypto world – a large and growing part of finance – to remain subject to minimal oversight compromises our national wellbeing. Innovation is good but it needs to be coupled with appropriate oversight.

Anil Kashyap is a professor of economics and finance at Chicago Booth. Kathryn Judge, professor at Columbia Law School, contributed to this piece

Exploring Cyprus as a hub for fund management in a fragmented landscape

The day in the markets

What you need to know

\- US stocks edge higher as voters go to the polls for midterm elections

• Oil prices extend decline on hopes of progress in US-Iran peace talks

• Treasury yields rise after jobs data raises fears of overheating US economy

US stock markets rose yesterday, with tech shares rebounding from their recent rout as voters across the country cast their votes in the midterm elections.

The blue-chip S&P 500 rose 0.5 per cent by early afternoon in New York, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index advanced 0.9 per cent, buoyed by semiconductor stocks. Advanced Micro Devices rose 4.9 per cent, Nvidia was up 3.2 per cent and the broader Philadelphia Semiconductor Index of US chip stocks rose 3.3 per cent.

The advance in US equities marked a return to stability following a sell-off over the past week and came as oil prices extended a decline on Monday that was prompted by an unconfirmed report of diplomatic progress in peace talks between the US and Iran.

Brent, the global benchmark for crude, fell 1.3 per cent to \$103.50 a barrel.

The dollar was up 0.1 per cent against a basket of other major currencies on the day that Americans went to the polls.

Prediction platform Polymarket was pricing a 75 per cent chance that the Democrats would take the Senate and an even higher probability of a majority in the House of Representatives.

"Markets would intuitively treat a strong result for Republicans as bullish for equities and bearish for bonds, and the opposite for a Democratic sweep,"

said Gabriele Foà, global credit portfolio manager at Algebrais Investments.

In Europe, the Stoxx 600 index fell 0.5 per cent whilst the FTSE 100 declined by 1.1 per cent, erasing four days of gains.

In Asia, South Korea's Kospi index fell 3.6 per cent whilst the Nikkei 225 slipped 0.3 per cent.

Official data yesterday showed that job openings in the US rose by 333,000 in September, while the figure for August was revised higher. Data tracking factory orders also rose more than economists expected. Analysts from Goldman Sachs added 0.1 percentage point to their

estimate of expanding third-quarter US GDP following the two data releases, taking the figure to 3.5 per cent.

Government bonds, which have come under pressure in recent months amid signs of overheating in the US economy, weakened further after the data. The two-year US Treasury yield rose 0.03 percentage points to 4.61 per cent.

Bond markets also weakened globally. The UK 10-year yield rose 0.05 percentage points to 5.24 per cent, and 10-year Bund yields were up 0.05 percentage points at 3.34 per cent.

Abigail Tobias

Markets update | US | Eurozone | Japan | UK | China | Brazil | Stocks | S&P 500 | Eurofirst 300 | Nikkei 225 | FTSE100 | Shanghai Comp | Bovespa | Level | 7580.85 | 2573.69 | 63081.86 | 10638.43 | 3608.10 | 165288.62 | % change on day | 0.52 | -0.60 | Closed | -1.14 | -0.82 | -1.57 | Currency | $ index (DXY) | $ per € | Yen per $ | $ per £ | Rmb per $ | Real per $ | Level | 101.84 | 1.119 | 158.445 | 1.342 | 6.67 | 5.496 | % change on day | 0.10 | -0.022 | 0.361 | -0.007 | 0.34 | 1.057 | Govt. bonds | 10-Year Treasury | 10-year-Bund | 10-year JGB | 10-Year Gilt | 10-year-bond | 10-year-bond | Yield | 4.96 | 3.31 | 2.80 | 5.26 | 1.63 | 15.85 | Basis point change on day | 0.08 | 0.02 | 0.01 | 0.06 | -0.02 | 0.39 | World / Commods | FTSE All-World | Oil - Brent | Oil - WTI | Gold | Silver | Metals (LMEX) | Level | 731.46 | 103.46 | 95.97 | 3927.06 | 49.69 | 5756.40 | % change on day | -0.06 | -1.25 | -0.51 | -1.02 | -1.88 | 1.25 | Main equity markets

Biggest movers

Prices taken at 17:00 GMT Nov 03 | Eurozone | Koninklijke Philips | 4,81 | Ferrari | 4,47 | Bayer | 3,64 | LVMH | 1,99 | ABB | 1,63 | Stellantis | -3,88 | Fresenius Medical Care | -3,60 | Adidas | -2,75 | Adyen | -2,75 | Logitech | -2,75 | Based on the constituents of the FTSE Eurofirst 300 Eurozone

The Ground Truth image displays a single, solid horizontal line, which is a stylistic or background element (like a rule line on paper). According to Rule 2, such lines must be ignored by the OCR result. The OCR content provided is "", which consists of no characters. Since the OCR output correctly ignores the stylistic line, it complies with Rule 2. Therefore, the OCR result is consistent with the Ground Truth. | UK | International Workplace Gp | 8.57 | Drax Group | 6.61 | Rank Group | 4.02 | Baltic Classifieds Group | 3.38 | Hiscox | 2.97 | THG | -5.53 | Wetherspoon (JD) | -4.92 | Endeavour Mining | -4.74 | Barratt Redrow | -4.66 | Atalaya Mining Copper | -4.41 | All data provided by ICE. www.ice.com

[Asset management] Marshall Wace and Millennium shed gains in ‘ugly’ run for AI investments

COSTAS MOURSELAS AND

IAN SMITH — LONDON

AMELIA POLLARD — NEW YORK

Marshall Wace and Millennium Management were among the hedge funds hit last month as investor worries over the sustainability of the AI boom triggered a sharp reversal in Wall Street's tech rally.

Marshall Wace, the \$80bn hedge fund co-founded by billionaires Paul Marshall and Ian Wace, saw its two key strategies fall in October, according to people who had seen the numbers.

The Eureka strategy, which is managed by a team of portfolio managers, was down 5.4 per cent in October, trimming its year-to-date gain to 5.3 per cent. The data- and model-driven Tops strategy lost 3.6 per cent, remaining up 1.3 per cent for the year.

Meanwhile, Izzy Englander's Millennium, which manages \$95bn, was down 2.3 per cent last month, leaving it with a 5.7 per cent gain for the first 10 months of the year.

Global hedge funds, in aggregate, lost 3 per cent last month, according to data provider PivotalPath, with equity strategies faring worst as they bore the brunt of the tech sell-off. Year-to-date gains for the industry stand in the mid-single digits, according to PivotalPath.

Billionaire Ken Griffin's hedge fund giant Citadel bucked the trend, with its

Global hedge funds, in aggregate, lost 3% last month, with equity strategies faring worst

flagship Wellington fund rising 1.7 per cent for the month and up 15.3 per cent for the year.

Hedge funds, which use leverage to magnify gains, have had to navigate financial markets that have been simultaneously whipsawed by the war in Iran, AI bubble fears, rising interest rates and the US midterm elections.

The Nasdaq 100 index tumbled into correction territory last week after falling 10 per cent from its October 6 record high, as lacklustre tech earnings fuelled fears about how long it will take for the vast investments in AI to turn a profit.

Intel, in which the US government has a minor stake, was among the biggest losers, falling 29 per cent in the chip-maker's worst one-day drop since 1974.

“It’s been an ugly week all around,” said one prime broker after the Nasdaq dropped 3.5 per cent on Friday, describing how hedge funds had fared in the market upheaval.

Bond markets also endured a volatile month, particularly in the Eurozone, as oil prices climbed and France's political crisis deepened, feeding nerves about the outlook for its sovereign debt. French and Italian bonds sold off against haven German Bunds and against equivalent-duration euro interest rate swaps, resulting in big moves for relative value and spread trades that are popular with hedge funds.

Marshall Wace, Millennium and Citadel all declined to comment. | 27190.86 | 25351.86 |

AMERICAS

Stock Market movements over last 30 days, with the FTSE All-World in the same currency as a comparison

[WORLD MARKETS AT A GLANCE] Change during previous day's trading (%)

Dow Jones Ind

MARKET DATA

FTSE 100

FTSE EuroFirst

-0.60%

-1.14%

Nikkei

Closed

Day ▷ -0.34% Month ▷ 1.36% Year ▷ 9.59% | Country | Index | Latest | Previous | Australia | All Ordinaries | 9308.90 | 8977.20 | Australia | S&P ASX 200 | 8886.80 | 8856.50 | Australia | S&P ASX 200 Res | 7107.30 | 7162.40 | Austria | AIX | 6396.13 | 6430.27 | Belgium | BEL 20 | 5837.52 | 5876.76 | Belgium | BEL Mid | 6448.92 | 6470.71 | Brazil | Bovespa | 165288.62 | 167921.60 | Canada | S&P TSX 60 | 2117.03 | 2135.53 | Canada | S&P TSX Comp | 35554.91 | 35801.69 | Chile | SS&P/OLX IGPA GEN | 56920.02 | 56920.02 | China | China FSE A200 | 10001.78 | 10067.56 | China | China Shanghai A | 3763.02 | 3814.59 | China | China Shanghai B | 2867.4 | 2768.98 | China | China Shanghai Comp | 3608.18 | 3638.03 | China | Shenzhen A | 2169.01 | 2194.18 | China | Shenzhen B | 1134.60 | 1137.44 | Croatia | CROBEX | 4407.77 | 4425.65 | Cyprus | CSE M&P GEN | 305.61 | 310.31 | Hang Seng

Day ▷ -0.34% Month ▷ 1.96% Year ▷ -0.72% | Country | Index | Latest | Previous | Czech Republic | Czech Republic PX | 2645.31 | 2638.01 | Denmark | DMX Copenhagen 20 | 1648.67 | 1646.11 | Egypt | EGX 30 | 49255.70 | 48403.10 | Estonia | OMX Tallinn | 2240.78 | 2240.51 | Finland | OMX Helsinki General | 12950.96 | 12988.77 | France | French CAC40 | 8020.31 | 8047.69 | France | SIB 120 | 6076.49 | 6094.49 | Germany | M-OAX | 30743.36 | 30855.37 | Germany | Tec-Dax | 4092.59 | 4115.74 | Germany | XETRA Dax | 25864.62 | 25881.09 | Greece | Athens | 2618.12 | 2602.41 | Greece | FTSE/ASIA | 6697.84 | 6659.10 | Hong Kong | Hang Seng | 23525.97 | 23393.32 | Hong Kong | HS China Enterprises | 7943.10 | 7906.11 | Hong Kong | HSCC Red Chip | 3961.37 | 3911.75 | Hungary | Bux | 146075.44 | 145330.02 | India | BSE Sensex | 76917.85 | 75692.78 | Indonesia | Jakarta Comp | 4904.29 | 5096.83 | Oct 02 - Nov 03 | Xetra Dax Frankfurt | 25231.2 | 25864.62 | Country | Index | Latest | Previous | Ireland | ISEQ Overall | 14353.34 | 14417.86 | Israel | Tel Aviv 125 | 3922.18 | 3837.93 | Italy | FTSE Italia All-Share | 52549.75 | 52585.45 | Italy | FTSE Italia Mid Cap | 61431.16 | 61593.73 | Italy | FTSE MIB | 49941.83 | 49947.94 | Japan | Nikkei 225 | 63081.86 | 63081.86 | Japan | Tokix | 3930.28 | 3930.28 | Kuwait | KSK Index Index | 8412.35 | 8300.82 | Latvia | OMX Riga | 999.34 | 993.68 | Lithuania | OMX Vilnius | 1487.02 | 1450.18 | Luxembourg | Lux | 1903.79 | 1904.29 | Mexico | PC Mexico City | 70603.90 | 69779.20 | Malaysia | FTSE Bursa KLD | 1621.85 | 1619.51 | Morocco | MASI | 16390.89 | 16517.12 | Netherlands | AEX | 1121.76 | 1132.54 | Netherlands | AEX All Share | 1492.60 | 1508.28 | New Zealand | NZX 50 | 13720.26 | 13698.63 | Nigeria | SE All Share | 254289.35 | 254245.21 | STOCK MARKET: BIGGEST MOVERS

FTSE All World

\$ per €

Day ▷ -0.01% Month ▷ -0.80% Year ▷ 15.86% | Country | Index | Latest | Previous | Norway | Oslo All Share | 2514.81 | 2533.67 | Pakistan | KSE 100 | 168018.86 | 166564.07 | Philippines | Manila Comp | 5624.17 | 5680.35 | Poland | Wig | 155849.62 | 156383.04 | Portugal | PSI 20 | 9233.89 | 9326.46 | Portugal | PSI General | 6276.04 | 5288.08 | Romania | Romania BET Index | 34803.25 | 35086.93 | Russia | Russia Traded Index in USD | 988.10 | 988.10 | Saudi Arabia | TAHANUL All Share Index | 9676.13 | 9882.85 | Singapore | FTSE Snabs Times | 5269.29 | 5303.83 | Slovakia | SAX | 319.87 | 320.30 | South Africa | SBI TOP | 2958.51 | 2958.51 | FTSE/JSE All Share Index | 109275.30 | 109527.80 | South Africa | FTSE/JSE Res | 61397.63 | 61751.40 | South Africa | FTSE/JSE Top 40 | 101192.33 | 101438.67 | South Korea | Koqi | 5648.79 | 5859.08 | South Korea | Koqi 200 | 885.67 | 920.63 | Spain | Spain BRX 35 | 18807.20 | 18957.80 | EURO MARKETS

ACTIVE STOCKS

UK MARKET WINNERS & LOSERS

Day ▷ -0.82% Month ▷ -6.09% Year ▷ -9.26% | Country | Index | Latest | Previous | Sweden | DMX Stockholm 30 | 3294.44 | 3287.02 | Sweden | DMX Stockholm AS | 1136.89 | 1138.00 | Switzerland | SMI Index | 14743.09 | 14802.52 | Taiwan | Weighted Stock Index | 43307.54 | 44520.14 | Thailand | Bangkok SET | 1481.01 | 1507.20 | Turkey | BIST 100 | 11023.55 | 10961.67 | UK | FTSE 100 | 10038.43 | 10761.33 | UK | FTSE 4Good UK | 9296.13 | 9396.65 | UK | FTSE All Share | 5746.54 | 5608.28 | UK | FTSE techMARK 100 | 9761.22 | 9753.47 | U.S.A. | Dow Jones Composite | 16438.56 | 16467.22 | U.S.A. | Dow Jones Industrial | 51808.64 | 51983.69 | U.S.A. | Dow Jones Transport | 20895.94 | 20842.92 | U.S.A. | Dow Jones Utilities | 430.94 | 431.33 | U.S.A. | Nasdaq 100 | 28172.20 | 27989.82 | U.S.A. | Nasdaq Composite | 25051.86 | 25164.36 | U.S.A. | NYSE Composite | 24363.13 | 24372.07 | U.S.A. | S&P 500 | 7560.85 | 7541.40 | \$ per £ ¥ per \$

0.3610% | AMERICA | ACTIVE STOCKS | stock traded m's | close price | Day's change | Intel | 73.03 | 61.02 | 1.05 | Nvidia | 43.66 | 208.79 | 6.73 | Palantir | 33.25 | 174.54 | -3.80 | Apple | 32.24 | 331.33 | -6.99 | Super Micro Computer | 18.21 | 31.75 | - | Alphabet CI A | 16.43 | 280.37 | 1.38 | Amazon.com | 14.39 | 248.56 | 2.93 | Keurig Dr Pepper | 14.01 | 34.95 | -1.86 | Advanced Micro Devices | 13.30 | 492.54 | 25.70 | Tesla | 13.09 | 397.27 | -6.54 | ACTIVE STOCKS | stock traded m's | close price | Day's change | Intesa Sanpaolo | 58.34 | 5.99 | 0.03 | Stellantis | 40.98 | 4.08 | -0.16 | Banco Santander | 19.74 | 10.23 | -0.15 | Royal KPN | 14.42 | 4.32 | - | Banco De Sabadell | 11.25 | 3.48 | - | Nokia | 10.22 | 7.65 | -0.03 | Enel | 10.14 | 9.32 | -0.01 | Telefonica | 8.00 | 3.34 | -0.04 | ING Group | 7.86 | 27.71 | -0.42 | Eni | 7.74 | 26.04 | -0.48 | ACTIVE STOCKS | stock traded m's | close price | Day's change | Lloyds Bkg Gp | 199.62 | 0.94 | -0.02 | Barclays | 78.64 | 4.20 | -0.05 | BP | 62.82 | 5.89 | -0.11 | Haleon | 37.22 | 3.26 | 0.02 | HSBC | 35.07 | 12.58 | -0.25 | Rolls-Royce | 29.66 | 12.61 | -0.16 | Glencore | 27.31 | 5.04 | -0.15 | Vodafone | 24.88 | 1.17 | - | NatWest Group | 18.91 | 5.80 | -0.12 | Taylor Wimpey | 17.55 | 0.82 | -0.02 | BIGGEST MOVERS | Close | Day's | Day's | ACTIVE STOCKS | stock traded m's | close price | Day's change | Advantest | 0.00 | 35770.00 | - | Aeon Co | 0.00 | 1204.50 | - | AGC | 0.00 | 5481.00 | - | Ajinomoto | 0.00 | 5128.00 | - | Alps Alpine | 0.00 | 1856.50 | - | Amada Co | 0.00 | 2418.50 | - | ANA Holdings | 0.00 | 3075.00 | - | Aozora | 0.00 | 2981.00 | - | Archion | 0.00 | 275.00 | - | Asahi Group | 0.00 | 1671.00 | - |

FT.COM/MARKETSDATA | FTSE 100 | price(£) | % Chg week | % Chg ytd | Winners | 3i Group | 25.62 | 7.74 | -21.48 | AstraZeneca | 137.60 | 7.32 | -0.22 | Whitbread | 27.80 | 7.25 | 9.02 | Hiscox | 19.39 | 6.36 | 36.26 | ICG | 19.12 | 5.75 | -6.91 | Reckitt Benckiser | 55.10 | 5.60 | -11.87 | Prudential | 9.44 | 5.57 | -17.50 | Babcock Intl | 10.47 | 5.51 | -15.73 | WPP | 4.13 | 5.49 | 22.43 | BT Group | 2.23 | 4.45 | 21.11 | Day $\gg$ 1.62% Month $\gg$ 6.96% Year $\gg$ -8.41%

Oil Brent \$ | Country | Index | Latest | Previous | Venezuela | IBC | 8468.10 | 8479.81 | Vietnam | Viet Nam Index | 1689.02 | 1710.72 | Cross-Border | Euro Stoxx 50 (Eur) | 6144.95 | 6176.06 | Netherlands | Euronext 100 ID | 1870.83 | 1879.99 | Cross-Border | FTSE Food Global ($) | 20885.40 | 20856.02 | Cross-Border | FTSE All World ($) | 731.92 | 731.91 | Cross-Border | FTSE £300 | 2573.69 | 2589.34 | Cross-Border | FTSE Eurotop 100 | 4942.13 | 4977.12 | Cross-Border | FTSE Global 100 ($) | 5563.13 | 5534.58 | Cross-Border | FTSE Gold Min ($) | 5071.33 | 5071.33 | Cross-Border | FTSE Latibank Top (Eur) | 5542.60 | 5738.60 | Cross-Border | FTSE World ($) | 1370.23 | 1370.61 | Cross-Border | FTSEurofirst 100 (Eur) | 7024.23 | 7073.68 | Cross-Border | FTSEurofirst 80 ID | 8363.45 | 8403.85 | £ per € | Losers | Haleon | 3.26 | -13.40 | -13.13 | Endeavour | 35.57 | -10.70 | -8.14 | NatWest Group | 5.80 | -8.57 | -11.02 | Lloyds Bkg Gp | 0.94 | -8.27 | -4.62 | Ithaca Energy | 2.81 | -8.11 | 69.48 | Polar CapTech | 5.83 | -7.31 | 25.75 | Glencore | 5.04 | -6.92 | 24.04 | Barratt Redrow | 3.19 | -5.59 | -16.29 | Antofagasta | 31.38 | -5.22 | -4.30 | Rio Tinto | 60.78 | -5.03 | 1.40 | -0.0120% | FTSE 250 | price(£) | % Chg week | % Chg ytd | Winners | Rank Group | 0.91 | 14.83 | -8.76 | International Workplace Gp | 2.14 | 13.33 | -7.43 | Saga | 9.10 | 7.06 | 132.44 | Savills | 11.32 | 6.59 | 13.65 | FirstGroup | 2.34 | 6.45 | 22.98 | Drax Group | 8.62 | 6.35 | 3.05 | Entain | 4.79 | 5.83 | -37.50 | Qinetiq Group | 5.50 | 5.07 | 24.43 | Pets At Home | 2.55 | 4.77 | 28.59 | Morgan Advanced Materials | 2.67 | 4.72 | 22.25 | BIGGEST MOVERS | Close price | Day's change | Day's change% | Ups | Koninklijke Philips | 25.70 | 1.18 | 4.81 | Ferrari | 375.00 | 16.05 | 4.47 | Bayer | 51.84 | 1.82 | 3.64 | LVMH | 401.50 | 7.85 | 1.99 | ABB | 72.50 | 1.16 | 1.63 | Downs | Stellantis | 4.08 | -0.16 | -3.88 | Fresenius Medical Care | 39.04 | -1.46 | -3.60 | Adidas | 168.10 | -4.75 | -2.75 | Adyen | 827.80 | -23.40 | -2.75 | Logitech | 76.36 | -2.16 | -2.75 | Gold \$ | BIGGEST MOVERS | Close price | Day's change | Day's change% | Ups | Advantest | 35770.00 | - | - | Aeon Co | 1204.50 | - | - | AGC | 5481.00 | - | - | Ajinomoto | 5128.00 | - | - | Alps Alpine | 1856.50 | - | - | Downs | Advantest | 35770.00 | - | - | Aeon Co | 1204.50 | - | - | AGC | 5481.00 | - | - | Ajinomoto | 5128.00 | - | - | Alps Alpine | 1856.50 | - | - | BIGGEST MOVERS | Close price | Day's change | Day's change% | Ups | Fiserv | 58.15 | 6.22 | 11.98 | Revity | 169.05 | 17.45 | 11.51 | GE Vernova | 920.68 | 58.43 | 6.78 | Oracle | 126.79 | 7.57 | 6.35 | Hewlett Packard Ent | 54.15 | 2.96 | 5.78 | Downs | Sysco | 74.80 | -6.94 | -8.49 | Ball Corp | 64.06 | -4.01 | -5.89 | Apollo Global Mgmt | 113.21 | -6.25 | -5.23 | Keurig Dr Pepper | 34.95 | -1.86 | -5.07 | Archer Daniels | 72.16 | -3.61 | -4.76 | BROSEET MOWERS | Close price | Day's change | Day's change% | Ups | International Workplace Gp | 2.14 | 0.17 | 8.57 | Drax Group | 8.62 | 0.54 | 6.61 | Rank Group | 0.91 | 0.04 | 4.02 | Baltic Classifieds Group | 1.98 | 0.06 | 3.38 | Hiscox | 19.39 | 0.56 | 2.97 | Downs | THG | 0.40 | -0.02 | -5.53 | Wetherspoon (JCI) | 10.25 | -0.53 | -4.92 | Endeavour Mining | 35.57 | -1.77 | -4.74 | Barratt Redrow | 3.19 | -0.16 | -4.66 | Atalaya Mining Copper | 8.24 | -0.38 | -4.41 | Losers | 13 | Hunting | 3.78 | -11.16 | 2.02 | 14 | Allianz Tech | 6.46 | -10.15 | 22.58 | 12 | Metro Bank | 1.53 | -9.49 | 26.53 | 52 | Softcat | 16.12 | -6.77 | 13.76 | 48 | Pan African Res | 1.04 | -6.67 | -14.38 | 75 | Atalaya Mining Copper | 8.24 | -6.52 | -3.57 | 34 | Raspberry Pi Holdings | 5.21 | -6.38 | 73.55 | 29 | Energean | 7.17 | -5.97 | -19.07 | 30 | AEP Plantations | 1.54 | -5.64 | 12.41 | 40 | BlackRock World Mining Trust | 8.40 | -5.51 | 4.48 | FTSE Small Cap | price(£) | % Chg week | % Chg ytd | Winners | Mobico Group | 0.44 | 12.02 | 90.81 | Speedy Hire | 0.14 | 9.89 | -44.00 | Evoke | 0.47 | 9.30 | 111.71 | VH Global Energy Infrastructure | 0.63 | 6.06 | -4.26 | C&C Group | 1.07 | 5.73 | -20.74 | PureTech Health | 1.24 | 5.08 | -0.80 | PayPoint | 7.58 | 4.98 | 60.19 | Stelrad Group | 1.55 | 4.73 | 10.32 | Chrysalis Investments | 0.67 | 4.72 | -44.03 | The Beauty Tech Group | 5.10 | 4.72 | 75.86 | CURRENCIES | Industry Sectors | price(£) | %Chg week | %Chg ytd | Winners | Real Estate Investment & Svcs | 2215.83 | 4.60 | 3.46 | Electricity | 15106.14 | 3.88 | 15.19 | Nonlife Insurance | 6249.08 | 3.50 | 35.81 | Consumer Digital Services | 193.64 | 2.94 | 1.30 | Investment Banking & Brokerage | 14805.55 | 2.91 | -4.31 | Travel & Leisure | 10805.93 | 2.91 | 7.58 | Life Insurance | 8208.15 | 2.66 | 0.76 | Finance & Credit Services | 15105.65 | 2.52 | 4.31 | Health Care Providers | 11096.67 | 2.17 | 39.83 | Industrial Support Services | 11232.44 | 1.93 | 2.94 | Losers | 2.02 | Vanquis Banking Gp | 0.45 | -35.81 | -62.3 | 22.58 | Ibstock | 0.74 | -13.52 | -47.1 | 26.53 | Capita | 2.54 | -13.31 | -37.3 | 13.76 | The Smarter Web Company | 0.40 | -13.12 | 23.0 | 14.38 | Ecora Royalties | 1.38 | -10.65 | 19.6 | -3.57 | City Natural Resources G&I | 3.55 | -8.97 | 73.55 | Geiger Counter | 0.43 | -8.23 | -27.5 | 19.07 | Tullow Oil | 0.10 | -7.95 | 58.6 | 12.41 | Capital | 1.07 | -7.73 | -5.7 | 4.48 | Blackrock Latin American Inv Tst | 3.78 | -7.13 | -6.4 | Losers | 62.37 | Precious Metals & Mining | 28356.89 | -7.87 -17.87 | 47.10 | Tech Hardware & Equip | 105.16 | -6.38 73.56 | 37.36 | Alternative Energy | 28.21 | -5.26 28.30 | 23.08 | Industrial Metals & Mining | 8351.09 | -5.15 12.54 | 19.86 | Basic Materials | 9236.85 | -5.11 9.87 | - | Banks | 7985.34 | -3.45 0.76 | 27.50 | Energy | 12711.02 | -2.35 39.14 | 58.84 | Oil Gas & Coal | 12097.30 | -2.34 39.18 | -5.70 | Hhold Goods & Home Const | 8860.95 | -2.09 -17.84 | -6.44 | Leisure Goods | 37260.91 | -1.95 -16.92 | Nov 03 | DOLLAR | EURO | POUND | Closing Mid | Day's Change | Weeks Mid | Closing Mid | Day's Change | Weeks Mid | Closing Mid | Argentine Peso | 1547.7844 | 4.0119 | 9.1219 | 1732.6449 | 4.1052 | 17.9467 | 2076.4034 | Australian Dollar | 1.4330 | 0.0078 | 0.0115 | 1.6041 | 0.0084 | 0.0200 | 1.9224 | Bahraini Dinar | 0.3772 | -0.0001 | -0.0001 | 9.4223 | -0.0002 | 0.0017 | 0.5061 | Bolivian Boliviano | 12.0903 | -0.0200 | 9.0708 | 13.5342 | -0.0255 | 0.1386 | 1.0193 | Brazilian Real | 5.4963 | 0.0575 | 0.1561 | 6.1529 | 0.3630 | 2.0214 | 7.3736 | Canadian Dollar | 1.3991 | 0.0026 | -0.0046 | 1.5663 | 0.0026 | 0.0019 | 1.8771 | Chilean Peso | 988.6500 | 4.0200 | -0.2250 | 1091.7887 | 4.2560 | 4.6414 | 1315.5971 | Chinese Yen | 6.6761 | 0.0302 | 0.0082 | 7.4736 | 0.0321 | 0.0424 | 8.9564 | Colombian Peso | 3246.2200 | 51.3000 | 88.8400 | 3633.9811 | 56.6291 | 115.2388 | 434.9867 | Costa Rican Colon | 451.5250 | -1.3450 | -1.8600 | 505.4601 | -1.6188 | 3.1948 | 605.7440 | Czech Country | 21.7274 | 0.0080 | -0.0071 | 24.3340 | -0.0035 | 0.0151 | 3.6119 | Danish Krone | 6.6761 | 0.0014 | -0.0305 | 7.4735 | - | -0.0006 | 8.9563 | Egyptian Pound | 55.3100 | -0.0400 | -0.7900 | 61.9188 | -0.0586 | -0.6038 | 74.2031 | Hong Kong Dollar | 7.8469 | -0.0002 | 5.0010 | 8.7520 | -0.0022 | 0.0460 | 1.0427 | Hungarian Forint | 325.6286 | 0.3183 | -3.1210 | 364.5250 | -2.7590 | -1.8500 | 436.8471 | Indian Rupee | 94.7525 | -0.1437 | -0.3713 | 106.0707 | -0.1847 | 0.0600 | 127.1152 | FTSE ACTUARIES SHARE INDICES | DOLLAR | EURO | POUND | WeeksChange | Nov 03 | Closing Mid | Day's Change | WeeksDec | Closing Mid | Day's Change | WeeksChange | Closing Mid | 28.0006 | Indonesian Rsupiah | 18140.0000 | -5.0000 | -10.0000 | 20306.8230 | -10.1340 | 79.5550 | 24335.7180 | 0.0300 | Israeli Shekel | 3.1627 | 0.0219 | 0.1387 | 3.5405 | 0.0237 | 0.1704 | 4.2430 | Japanese Yen | 158.4450 | 0.5700 | 0.5800 | 177.3173 | 0.5986 | 1.4386 | 212.5618 | 0.2172 | Kamaranja | 129.6500 | -0.0500 | 0.0500 | 145.4735 | -0.0884 | 0.7420 | 1.3850 | 0.2642 | Kuwait Dinar | 0.3110 | 0.0003 | 0.0003 | 0.3488 | 0.0001 | 0.0019 | 0.4180 | 0.0083 | Malaysian Ringgit | 4.0770 | 0.0085 | -0.0170 | 4.5640 | 0.0063 | 0.0071 | 4.5695 | 0.7388 | Mexican Peso | 18.7270 | 0.1614 | 0.0880 | 20.9460 | 0.1760 | 0.1917 | 21.1232 | 0.0794 | New Zealand Dollar | 1.7798 | 0.0032 | 0.0233 | 1.9925 | 0.0031 | 0.0349 | 2.3877 | 151.5465 | Nigerian Naira | 1344.9600 | 2.4500 | -15.6100 | 1505.6166 | 2.4074 | -10.6722 | 1804.3209 | 2.1521 | Norwegian Krone | 9.2983 | 0.0154 | -0.0335 | 10.4090 | 0.0150 | 0.0092 | 12.4142 | 1.0626 | Pakistan Rupee | 1.1093 | - | -0.1093 | 208.6679 | -0.0691 | 1.2171 | 371.1064 | 0.0278 | Persuvian New Sol | 3.4652 | 0.0075 | 0.0174 | 3.8792 | 0.0076 | 0.0388 | 4.6487 | -0.4649 | Philippine Peso | 63.4600 | -0.2750 | -0.7250 | 71.0403 | -0.3238 | -0.4906 | 85.1347 | 0.7187 | Polish Krone | 3.3594 | -0.0085 | -0.0055 | 4.1410 | -0.0088 | 0.0515 | 21.0850 | -0.8173 | Romanian Lira | 4.7726 | 0.0052 | -0.0282 | 3.3472 | 0.0046 | -0.0076 | 4.6227 | 0.4769 | Russian Ruble | 81.5500 | 0.4250 | 1.0000 | 91.2192 | 0.4555 | 1.5222 | 109.4035 | FTSE SECTORS: LEADERS & LAGGARDS | Nov 03 | DOLLAR | EURO | POUND | Closing Mid | Day's Change | Weeks Change | Closing Mid | Day's Change | Weeks Change | Closing Mid | Day's Change | Weeks Change | Closing Mid | Saudi Riyal | 3.7534 | 0.0004 | -0.0002 | 4.2017 | -0.0004 | 0.0186 | 5.0534 | 0.0002 | 0.0032 | 0.0382 | Singapore Dollar | 1.2810 | 0.0020 | 0.0003 | 1.4340 | 0.0019 | 0.0068 | 1.7185 | 0.0025 | 0.0135 | 0.0135 | South African Rand | 16.5950 | 0.0113 | -0.0025 | 18.5773 | 0.0085 | 0.0082 | 22.2630 | 0.0135 | 0.1668 | 0.1668 | South Korea Won | 1349.9500 | -2.6300 | 17.5000 | 1501.1365 | -3.3024 | 26.2076 | 1789.9015 | -3.6895 | 37.0424 | 0.0014 | Swedish Krona | 9.7867 | 0.0017 | -0.1317 | 10.9670 | -0.0035 | -0.1033 | 13.1428 | 0.0014 | -0.0814 | 0.0014 | Swiss Franc | 0.8308 | 0.0011 | -0.0078 | 0.9189 | -0.0010 | -0.0047 | 1.1012 | 0.0014 | -0.0020 | 0.0014 | Taiwan Dollar | 32.8450 | 0.1930 | 0.3880 | 36.7683 | 0.2079 | 0.5754 | 44.0632 | 0.2557 | 0.8279 | 0.8279 | Thai Baht | 33.7500 | -0.0145 | -0.0125 | 37.7814 | -0.0246 | 0.1549 | 45.2773 | -0.0229 | 0.3292 | 0.3292 | Tunisian Dinar | 2.9971 | -0.0075 | -0.0115 | 3.3552 | -0.0091 | 0.0042 | 4.0208 | -0.0104 | 0.0124 | 0.0124 | Turkish Lira | 49.9973 | 0.0265 | 0.2100 | 55.9695 | 0.0172 | 0.4941 | 67.0738 | 0.0305 | 0.7921 | 0.7921 | UAE Dirham | 3.6730 | 0.0003 | — | 4.1118 | -0.0005 | 0.0184 | 4.9276 | — | — | 0.0376 | Pound Sterling | 0.1454 | 0.0001 | -0.0057 | 0.8345 | -0.0001 | 0.0027 | 1.0000 | — | — | — | United States Dollar | 1.8000 | — | — | 1.1195 | -0.0002 | 0.0050 | 1.3416 | -0.0001 | 0.0103 | 0.0103 | Vietnamese Dong | 2576.0000 | -10.0000 | -68.0000 | 28843.7490 | -17.6390 | 53.0470 | 34566.3780 | 15.9930 | 173.5730 | — | Euro | 0.8933 | 0.0002 | -0.0040 | 1.0000 | — | 1.1984 | — | 0.0001 | 0.0038 | — | Year to date percentage changes | £ Strig No-3m chg% | Day's chg% | Euro Index | £ Strig Nov 2 | £ Strig Oct 3 | Year ago | Div Yield | P/E ratio | XD adj | Total Return | FTSE 100 (100) | 10638.43 | -1.14 | 9536.83 | 10716.31 | 107279.78 | 9331.38 | 3.07 | 2.43 | 13.40 | 282.09 | FTSE 100 ex Investment Trusts (F5) | 3480.97 | -1.15 | 3251.40 | 3521.32 | 3511.46 | 3251.79 | 3.11 | 2.31 | 13.94 | 93.40 | FTSE 250 (251) | 24674.91 | -0.49 | 23347.60 | 24758.95 | 24453.36 | 22470.38 | 3.11 | 1.74 | 11.75 | 653.06 | FTSE 250 ex Inc to (164) | 25954.32 | -0.46 | 24242.64 | 26073.90 | 25607.63 | 23306.14 | 3.09 | 1.70 | 18.99 | 710.58 | FTSE 350 (351) | 56034.89 | -1.07 | 5426.35 | 5807.28 | 5648.23 | 5409.23 | 3.07 | 2.47 | 13.20 | 153.97 | FTSE 350 ex Investment Trusts (359) | 5746.28 | -1.09 | 5367.32 | 5689.72 | 5567.12 | 5351.90 | 3.10 | 2.26 | 14.24 | 154.37 | FTSE 350 ex Capital Ex Ltd (34) | 5142.49 | -1.23 | 4284.88 | 5284.04 | 5204.04 | 4826.04 | 3.07 | 2.09 | 13.27 | 103.04 | FTSE 350 Lower Yield (217) | 5638.91 | -0.93 | 5454.66 | 5894.39 | 5638.76 | 5465.00 | 1.80 | 3.24 | 17.13 | 102.10 | FTSE SmallCap (174) | 8136.08 | -0.39 | 7589.49 | 8169.13 | 8111.67 | 7537.89 | 4.02 | 1.54 | 16.19 | 254.80 | FTSE SmallCap ex Inc to (95) | 6919.31 | -0.45 | 6462.98 | 6950.26 | 6886.46 | 6260.89 | 3.71 | 0.44 | 61.12 | 179.59 | FTSE SmallCap Financials ex Inc to (13) | 142.29 | -0.85 | 139.04 | 143.52 | 141.33 | 150.06 | 5.67 | 1.54 | 11.42 | 7.00 | FTA All-Share (525) | 5746.54 | -1.06 | 5367.56 | 5680.28 | 5784.20 | 5350.38 | 3.09 | 2.45 | 13.23 | 152.66 | FTA All-Share ex Inc to (354) | 5642.20 | -1.09 | 5270.10 | 5704.25 | 5681.92 | 5253.82 | 3.11 | 2.25 | 14.31 | 151.55 | FTSE Hedging (41) | 12511.99 | -0.13 | 11686.82 | 12527.91 | 12606.75 | 13026.03 | 5.81 | -10.13 | -1.70 | 310.26 | FTSE Hedging ex Inc to (21) | 16398.18 | -0.71 | 15307.39 | 15065.16 | 16643.25 | 24338.62 | 6.10 | -0.95 | -17.25 | 6808.74 | FTA All-Small (215) | 5630.70 | -0.38 | 5267.76 | 5661.60 | 5624.09 | 5246.47 | 4.16 | 1.17 | 21.00 | 175.94 | FTA All-Small ex Inv Co (118) | 5180.51 | -0.45 | 4682.96 | 5207.18 | 5143.73 | 5745.73 | 3.79 | 0.91 | 68.07 | 153.38 | FTA AM All-Share (526) | 754.92 | -0.44 | 704.81 | 757.92 | 753.08 | 766.39 | 1.83 | -200.74 | -0.02 | 11.59 | FTA All-Share Technology (19) | 2105.17 | -1.26 | 2050.40 | 2223.17 | 2212.71 | 2154.29 | 2.25 | 1.84 | 24.09 | 47.46 | FTA All-Share Telecommunications (5) | 2141.72 | -0.59 | 2000.47 | 2154.32 | 2172.30 | 1838.12 | 3.28 | 0.81 | 37.66 | 41.30 | FTA All-Share Health Care (12) | 17510.16 | -0.33 | 16355.77 | 17568.32 | 17680.40 | 17767.22 | 2.26 | 1.75 | 37.35 | 360.33 | FTA All-Share Financials (231) | 7915.53 | -0.94 | 7383.50 | 7990.70 | 7910.99 | 7738.99 | 3.78 | 3.08 | 8.55 | 270.65 | FTA All-Share Real Estate (37) | 816.28 | -0.58 | 797.61 | 821.00 | 805.48 | 775.49 | 4.02 | 1.09 | 23.19 | 32.42 | FTA All-Share Consumer Discretionary (68) | 6288.54 | -1.48 | 5873.61 | 6383.03 | 6240.52 | 6097.31 | 2.32 | 2.05 | 21.08 | 132.08 | FTA All-Share Consumer Staples (28) | 21235.75 | -1.23 | 19891.30 | 21561.67 | 21344.58 | 20151.95 | 3.68 | 1.42 | 19.08 | 620.04 | FTA All-Share Industrials (88) | 11970.67 | -0.57 | 11122.33 | 11975.40 | 11788.26 | 10802.88 | 1.60 | 2.04 | 33.52 | 189.95 | FTA All-Share Industrial Materials (23) | 10914.24 | -0.67 | 10000.00 | 10900.00 | 10900.00 | 10900.00 | 1.60 | 1.94 | 17.62 | 178.12 | FTA All-Share Energy (13) | 12465.85 | -1.54 | 11662.71 | 12680.68 | 13114.61 | 9861.27 | 3.32 | 3.68 | 8.19 | 314.11 | FTA All-Share Utilities (9) | 11552.70 | -0.75 | 10790.81 | 11639.74 | 11686.03 | 10509.92 | 3.54 | 1.52 | 18.53 | 289.41 | FTA All-Share Software & Computer Socs (17) | 2378.52 | -1.27 | 2221.66 | 2409.07 | 2397.13 | 2341.56 | 2.27 | 1.83 | 24.02 | 51.83 | FTA All-Share Tech Hardware & Equip (2) | 3889.82 | -0.32 | 3633.29 | 3902.48 | 3994.60 | 2276.41 | 0.00 | 3.53 | 0.73 | 5463.78 | FTA All-Share Telecoms Svc Providers (5) | 3336.29 | -0.59 | 3116.26 | 3355.92 | 3384.02 | 2963.35 | 3.28 | 0.81 | 37.66 | 64.34 | FTA All-Share Health Care Providers (2) | 11764.16 | 0.30 | 10988.32 | 11785.81 | 11579.80 | 8413.29 | 0.99 | 1.36 | 74.13 | 28.78 | FTA All-Share Medical Equipment & Socs (2) | 5724.92 | 0.47 | 5347.37 | 5668.25 | 5697.26 | 6125.00 | 2.54 | 2.12 | 18.58 | 145.18 | FTA All-Share Pharmaceuticals & Boston (8) | 25218.94 | 0.37 | 23556.60 | 25313.49 | 25449.91 | 25560.62 | 2.25 | 2.56 | 17.24 | 514.99 | FTA All-Share Food & Drug Retailers (7) | 7879.94 | -1.59 | 7487.94 | 7887.94 | 7887.94 | 7887.94 | 2.25 | 2.56 | 17.24 | 514.99 | FTA All-Share Finance & Credit Services (7) | 12984.72 | -0.73 | 12126.39 | 13076.61 | 13333.35 | 12503.51 | 1.89 | 1.71 | 27.65 | 246.71 | FTA All-Share Inv Banking & Brokerage Socs (31) | 12636.71 | -0.32 | 11803.32 | 12596.26 | 12308.63 | 13207.98 | 3.96 | 2.85 | 8.85 | 414.96 | FTA All-Share Closed End Investments (171) | 15415.21 | -0.62 | 14146.39 | 15239.27 | 15113.39 | 14072.94 | 2.68 | 6.62 | 5.64 | 324.36 | FTA All-Share Life Insurance (5) | 8557.17 | -0.37 | 7806.02 | 8326.36 | 8294.20 | 8294.18 | 4.65 | 1.15 | 77.88 | 401.46 | FTA All-Share Nutrile Insurance (4) | 7013.98 | 0.89 | 6551.41 | 6951.99 | 6935.73 | 57115.05 | 3.32 | 1.27 | 23.64 | 224.06 | FTA All-Share Real Estate Inv & Socs (5) | 2005.15 | 1.80 | 1947.67 | 2048.29 | 1988.52 | 2360.18 | 2.15 | 1.84 | 25.33 | 42.58 | FTA All-Share Real Estate Investment Trusts (28) | 2020.91 | -0.92 | 1885.20 | 2047.87 | 2012.15 | 1926.13 | 5.29 | 0.97 | 19.60 | 86.82 | FTA All-Share Automobiles & Parts (1) | 919.88 | -4.29 | 893.21 | 961.11 | 973.84 | 1437.94 | 0.00 | 0.00 | -0.82 | 105.18 | FTA All-Share Consumer Services (3) | 4115.18 | 2.86 | 3844.72 | 4237.42 | 4148.16 | 3886.56 | 2.05 | 1.77 | 84.25 | 3550.60 | FTA All-Share Real Estate Goods & Home Comt (8) | 7205.49 | -1.87 | 7188.77 | 7388.77 | 7388.77 | 7388.77 | 2.83 | 1.77 | 84.25 | 3550.60 | FTA All-Share Leisure Goods (2) | 39805.50 | -0.67 | 37190.33 | 40076.48 | 39659.68 | 47968.76 | 2.83 | 1.55 | 22.83 | 1185.49 | FTA All-Share Personal Goods (3) | 15204.99 | -0.86 | 14203.23 | 15363.50 | 15070.60 | 15672.83 | 0.25 | 1.15 | 34.19 | 37.50 | FTA All-Share Media (8) | 12409.69 | -0.70 | 11666.94 | 12576.44 | 12414.61 | 12267.37 | 3.20 | 1.74 | 17.96 | 399.86 | FTA All-Share Retailers (19) | 2878.30 | -1.68 | 2688.48 | 2927.40 | 2889.52 | 2591.68 | 2.62 | 1.46 | 62.63 | 41.53 | FTA All-Share Travel & Leisure (24) | 10449.67 | -0.61 | 9760.51 | 10514.29 | 10239.51 | 9962.99 | 1.86 | 1.36 | 39.40 | 163.08 | FTA All-Share Beverages (5) | 17874.69 | -2.06 | 16695.86 | 18250.25 | 17863.06 | 15618.32 | 2.17 | 2.13 | 21.64 | 327.38 | FTA All-Share Food Producers (10) | 8044.83 | -1.28 | 7517.64 | 8150.73 | 8054.49 | 7556.92 | 2.69 | 1.94 | 13.14 | 119.54 | FTA All-Share Tobacco (2) | 497593.07 | -1.67 | 46477.44 | 50259.33 | 50321.25 | 47515.58 | 5.42 | 1.30 | 14.16 | 2030.05 | FTA All-Share Construction & Materials (16) | 16529.71 | -0.40 | 15459.58 | 16589.57 | 16205.31 | 14300.58 | 2.69 | 2.22 | 16.77 | 489.99 | FTA All-Share Energy & Defense (7) | 2349.87 | -0.85 | 2248.77 | 2388.77 | 2349.87 | 2289.87 | 3.09 | 2.63 | 23.87 | 239.87 | FTA All-Share Electrical & Electrical Equip (12) | 16810.93 | -0.26 | 15702.26 | 16854.43 | 16733.89 | 14821.05 | 3.00 | 3.32 | 13.32 | 17632.36 | FTA All-Share General Industries (6) | 6038.43 | -0.72 | 5640.19 | 6060.47 | 6004.67 | 5275.72 | 2.20 | 1.64 | 28.04 | 114.59 | FTA All-Share Industrial Engineering (8) | 15718.59 | -1.18 | 14681.95 | 15906.81 | 15509.58 | 15129.60 | 2.26 | 1.59 | 27.72 | 355.81 | FTA All-Share Industrial Support Socs (26) | 10815.36 | -0.39 | 10102.09 | 10859.57 | 10737.49 | 10512.10 | 2.13 | 1.49 | 31.47 | 202.32 | FTA All-Share Industrial Transportation (7) | 7345.95 | -0.24 | 6881.49 | 7328.57 | 7320.62 | 5999.34 | 3.74 | 1.79 | 14.96 | 224.75 | FTA All-Share Precious Metals & Mining (5) | 28691.07 | -3.36 | 25183.00 | 27897.56 | 27481.72 | 32669.13 | 3.32 | 2.77 | 10.91 | 911.89 | FTA All-Share Chemicals (7) | 9407.29 | -0.34 | 8736.88 | 9438.99 | 9327.56 | 7671.18 | 3.55 | 0.80 | 35.26 | 282.48 | FTA All-Share Oil & Gas & Distillers (1) | 12131.14 | -1.55 | 11332.96 | 12333.64 | 12744.95 | 8705.65 | 3.32 | 3.68 | 8.17 | 305.59 | FTA All-Share Alternative Energy (1) | 17.75 | 4.28 | 13.12 | 12.23 | 12.21 | 994.40 | 0.00 | 0.00 | -13.96 | 0.00 | FTA All-Share Energy & Power (4) (2) | 15071.94 | -1.04 | 14277.98 | 15074.94 | 15227.44 | 13884.44 | 3.09 | 1.79 | 24.91 | 266.23 | FTA All-Share Financials ex Inv Co (6b) | 192.38 | -1.02 | 187.98 | 194.36 | 192.24 | 190.33 | 4.05 | 2.51 | 9.82 | 7.17 | FTA All-Share Gas Water & Multi-unitless (7) | 10008.08 | -0.93 | 9348.05 | 10102.22 | 10125.55 | 9258.32 | 3.83 | 1.45 | 18.06 | 270.48 | FTA All-Share Industrial Metals & Mining (11) | 9005.02 | -2.51 | 8411.14 | 9236.76 | 9085.28 | 80083.68 | 2.85 | 2.05 | 16.87 | 256.85 | FTA All-Share Penc Care Drug & Constrg Strs (1) | 5065.05 | -1.04 | 4731.01 | 5118.36 | 5055.04 | 4902.73 | 3.25 | 1.35 | 22.90 | 136.67 | NON FINANCIALS (24) | 6528.74 | -1.11 | 6098.17 | 6601.93 | 6589.02 | 5966.82 | 2.81 | 2.13 | 156.41 | 1342.91 | Tech Hardware & Equip | 73.56 | Health Care Providers | 39.83 | Oil Gas & Coal | 39.18 | Energy | 39.14 | Nonlife Insurance | 35.81 | Alternative Energy | 28.30 | Industrial Transportation | 24.59 | Chemicals | 21.67 | Construction & Materials | 17.10 | Telecomms Soc Providers | 16.52 | Telecommunications | 16.52 | Electricity | 15.19 | General Industrials | 14.47 | Beverages | 14.46 | Industrial Metals & Mining | 12.54 | Electronic & Electrical Equip. | 12.43 | Aerospace & Defense | 11.39 | Retailers | 10.53 | Utilities | 9.92 | 73.56 | Basic Materials | 89.83 | Industrials | 89.18 | Gas Water & Multi-utilities | 99.14 | Closed End Investments | 55.81 | Travel & Leisure | 26.30 | Biotechnology | 24.59 | Food Producers | 21.67 | Real Estate Investment Trusts | 17.10 | Consumer Staples | 16.92 | Consumer Services | 16.92 | Real Estate | 15.19 | Tobacco | 14.47 | Finance & Credit Services | 14.46 | Media | 12.54 | Industrial Engineering | 12.43 | Real Estate Investment & Secs. | 11.38 | Personal Care Drug & Grocery | 10.53 | Consumer Discretionary | 9.92 | Industrial Support Services | FTSE GLOBAL INDICES

UK RECENT RIGHTS ISSUES | Nov 02Regions & countries | No ofstocks | US$/indices | Daily%Chg | Monthly%Chg | YTD%Chg | UTS$/Total Ret | YTD%Total Ret | Gr DivYield | FTSE Global Industries | Global | 10208 | 1225.46 | -0.18 | -2.28 | 9.42 | 2121.55 | 11.03 | 1.66 | Global Large Cap | 1742 | 1142.63 | -0.41 | -3.62 | 9.58 | 2035.51 | 10.12 | 1.56 | Global US | 2458 | 1434.04 | -0.40 | 2.61 | 13.42 | 2354.64 | 11.31 | 1.97 | Global Small Cap | 6008 | 1397.04 | 0.51 | -0.07 | 8.18 | 2117.50 | 10.49 | 1.85 | Global ex Eurozone | 9602 | 1302.21 | -0.30 | -2.37 | 9.99 | 2196.77 | 11.52 | 1.57 | Global ex China | 7955 | 1446.83 | -0.22 | -2.21 | 10.38 | 6877.85 | 12.00 | 1.64 | Global ex US | 8666 | 786.30 | 0.29 | -2.41 | 8.12 | 1569.62 | 10.66 | 2.58 | Global ex UK | 9886 | 1298.64 | -0.24 | -2.48 | 9.46 | 2200.05 | 11.03 | 1.61 | Global ex Japan | 8860 | 1281.33 | 0.15 | -2.13 | 9.18 | 2235.19 | 10.75 | 1.63 | FTSE Regional Industries | Americas | 1984 | 1714.50 | -0.40 | -2.04 | 10.17 | 2672.59 | 11.27 | 1.21 | Asia Pacific | 8425 | 869.09 | -0.15 | -6.66 | 11.60 | 1569.11 | 13.84 | 2.25 | Asia Pacific ex Japan | 5077 | 1082.09 | 0.33 | -6.71 | 10.79 | 2162.80 | 12.97 | 2.30 | Europe | 1432 | 687.38 | 0.74 | 2.07 | 4.74 | 1482.18 | 7.66 | 2.86 | Europe ex UK | 1211 | 788.68 | 0.81 | 1.39 | 3.73 | 1642.01 | 6.62 | 2.80 | Eurozone | 606 | 697.44 | 1.01 | -1.07 | 2.32 | 1489.10 | 5.09 | 2.82 | Asian | 402 | 703.30 | -0.92 | -5.03 | -0.34 | 1569.18 | 3.58 | 4.85 | FTSE Developed Industries | Developed | 5366 | 1278.17 | -2.08 | -1.93 | 10.23 | 2186.64 | 11.78 | 1.57 | Developed ex North America | 3607 | 745.47 | 0.19 | -1.80 | 10.22 | 1508.91 | 13.00 | 2.66 | | Nov 02Sector | No ofstocks | US$/indices | Daily%Chg | Monthly%Chg | YTD%Chg | UTS$/Total Ret | YTD%Total Ret | Gr DivYield | Company Name

Petra Diamonds Ltd

Pennon Group PLC | Digital Information Services | Software & Computer Services 526 | 3377.68 | -1.53 | -8.36 | -5.92 | 4112.94 | -5.46 | 0.59 | Media | 153 | 785.21 | 1.05 | 4.22 | -13.75 | 1130.17 | -13.07 | 1.08 | Technology | Semiconductors | 298 | 809.12 | -2.14 | -16.52 | 29.71 | 886.39 | 30.30 | 0.63 | Tech Hardware & Equip | 765 | 6367.70 | -10.08 | -14.29 | 31.41 | 9031.65 | 32.03 | 0.61 | Industrials | 1291 | 4572.05 | -1.87 | -12.10 | 14.01 | 6006.81 | 14.56 | 0.60 | Biotechnology | 216 | 125.43 | -1.27 | 2.01 | 18.23 | 128.12 | 18.61 | 0.28 | Telecommunications Equip | 111 | 498.35 | -1.20 | -14.85 | 49.06 | 581.96 | 51.64 | 1.77 | Gel technologies | 256 | 486.57 | -0.44 | -10.25 | 20.19 | 1234.84 | 23.27 | 1.09 | Telecomms Svc Providers | 145 | 418.24 | 0.53 | -3.73 | -4.65 | 939.54 | -1.33 | 3.78 | Electronic & Electrical Equip | 359 | 1912.02 | 0.11 | -11.27 | 12.03 | 2760.91 | 13.08 | 1.04 | Financials | Finance & Credit Services | 111 | 903.74 | 1.08 | 10.69 | -8.80 | 1418.71 | -7.56 | 1.46 | Financials | 1160 | 701.73 | 0.72 | 1.65 | 6.19 | 1469.71 | 9.06 | 2.86 | Life Insurance | 71 | 659.85 | 0.24 | 3.25 | 10.96 | 1384.97 | 14.60 | 3.35 | Banks | 497 | 503.86 | 0.31 | -1.73 | 8.01 | 1179.29 | 11.38 | 3.50 | Mortgage Real Estate Inv Tts | 7 | 81.68 | 1.36 | -0.03 | 22.09 | 107.12 | -13.65 | 1.30 | Nonlife Insurance | 125 | 1123.26 | 0.88 | 10.03 | 8.76 | 2032.86 | 12.14 | 2.54 | Inv Banking & Brokerage Svcs | 349 | 1225.25 | 1.46 | 3.33 | 2.78 | 1975.25 | 4.37 | 1.69 | Transaction Processing Services | 55 | 160.05 | 2.81 | 14.66 | 7.30 | 168.05 | 8.11 | 0.77 | Real Estate | Real Estate | 641 | 917.77 | 0.97 | 4.68 | 0.57 | 1127.96 | 3.70 | 3.83 | Real Estate Investment & Svcs | 319 | 332.80 | 1.39 | 3.26 | -12.27 | 686.64 | -10.11 | 2.83 | Real Estate Investment Trusts | 322 | 548.65 | 0.64 | 5.13 | 5.36 | 1515.37 | 8.87 | 4.14 | Commodicals & Services | Consumer Digital Services | 94 | 282.83 | -0.14 | -15.44 | -12.90 | 286.91 | -12.66 | 0.38 | Consumer Discretionary | 1486 | 1206.98 | 1.88 | 5.03 | -3.65 | 1755.42 | -2.64 | 1.21 | Consumer Services | 70 | 1230.87 | 2.12 | 3.07 | -8.36 | 1816.79 | -7.71 | 0.90 | Consumer Staples | 612 | 1039.93 | 0.98 | 10.02 | 9.68 | 1850.00 | 12.59 | 2.80 | Retailers | 263 | 1967.81 | 2.31 | 5.01 | 3.85 | 2711.89 | 4.58 | 0.81 | Pers Care Drug & Grocery | 196 | 588.00 | 0.77 | 9.08 | 5.62 | 989.58 | 8.14 | 2.44 | Personal Goods | 136 | 769.86 | 1.18 | 6.00 | -16.52 | 1198.49 | -15.03 | 2.16 | Travel & Leisure | 153 | 638.60 | 1.60 | 0.66 | -1.54 | 154.40 | -0.24 | 1.47 | Travel & Leisure | 291 | 1148.03 | 2.55 | 8.54 | -2.10 | 1750.11 | -0.82 | 1.59 | Rights Issue: 10 for 17 at 16.5p p.s., payable in full by Nov. 21 (xr 07.11.25).

Rights Issue: 7 for 15 at 250p p.s., payable in full Oct. 26 (xr 12.10.26).

Data provided by ICE, www.ice.com

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FTSE 100 SUMMARY | 9.87 | Financials | 2.24 | 9.13 | Consumer Digital Services | 1.30 | 8.12 | Technology | 1.20 | 7.56 | Financials ex Inv Co. | 1.10 | 6.51 | Software & Computer Svcs. | 1.03 | 6.48 | Banks | 0.76 | 5.76 | Life Insurance | 0.76 | 5.63 | Pharmaceuticals & Biotech | -1.33 | 5.37 | Health Care | -1.45 | 4.77 | Personal Goods | -2.99 | 4.27 | Investment Banking & Brokerage | -4.31 | 3.75 | Medical Equipment & Svcs | -6.53 | 3.46 | Leisure Goods | -16.92 | 3.23 | Hold Goods & Home Care | -17.84 | 2.94 | Precious Metals & Mining | -17.87 | Nov 02Regions & countries | No ofstocks | USStim stocks | USDSailyChg | MonthlyChg | %YTD% Chg | YTDTotalRet | USSTotal Ret | YTDTotalRet | Gr DivYield | Developed ex Canada | 5149 | 1282.51 | -0.27 | -2.09 | 10.21 | 2188.43 | 11.75 | 1.55 | Developed ex Europe | 4153 | 1486.10 | -0.42 | -2.62 | 11.28 | 2378.86 | 12.56 | 1.33 | Developed ex Eurozone | 4760 | 1372.84 | -0.35 | -2.00 | 10.97 | 2278.48 | 12.41 | 1.46 | Developed ex US | 3824 | 778.13 | 0.22 | -1.31 | 10.29 | 1563.52 | 12.99 | 2.59 | Developed ex UK | 5146 | 1383.92 | -0.28 | -2.14 | 10.31 | 2278.50 | 11.71 | 1.51 | Developed ex Japan | 4018 | 1348.08 | -0.19 | -1.73 | 10.02 | 2322.21 | 11.52 | 1.53 | Developed Ex Asia Pacific ex Japan | 2301 | 806.88 | 0.50 | -6.39 | 18.55 | 1458.91 | 21.14 | 2.41 | Developed Asia Plac ex Jap | 953 | 1043.39 | 0.34 | -8.50 | 25.56 | 2306.16 | 28.69 | 2.74 | Developed Europe | 1213 | 705.37 | 0.74 | 2.17 | 4.77 | 1520.17 | 7.68 | 1.86 | Developed Europe ex UK | 991 | 101.16 | 0.18 | 1.50 | 3.74 | 1706.64 | 8.44 | 2.14 | Developed Eurozone | 606 | 692.83 | 1.00 | -1.07 | 2.11 | 1479.17 | 4.88 | 2.82 | Developed Europe Asia Plac | 3514 | 747.50 | 0.20 | -1.74 | 10.24 | 1479.17 | 4.88 | 2.82 | FTSE Emerging Indices | Emerging | 4842 | 1016.22 | 0.44 | 5.44 | 2.31 | 1979.80 | 4.47 | 2.56 | Emerging Asia Pacific | 4124 | 1144.36 | 0.32 | 5.08 | 3.38 | 2096.64 | 5.21 | 2.04 | Emerging Europe | 220 | 300.10 | 0.97 | -6.63 | -2.93 | 883.31 | -0.41 | 3.18 | Emerging Plus Korea | 5264 | 3991.28 | 0.64 | -7.75 | 9.49 | 7367.08 | 11.67 | 2.40 | Emerging Korean and Poland | 2703 | 4509.39 | 0.47 | -8.39 | 29.44 | 8565.47 | -1.46 | 2.63 | Advanced Emerging | 1196 | 1417.35 | 0.43 | -8.61 | 30.08 | 3090.92 | 32.94 | 2.63 | Secondary Emerging | 3646 | 935.69 | 1.26 | -2.26 | -15.36 | 1661.14 | -13.62 | 2.50 | UK COMPANY RESULTS | Company | Turnover(£) | Associated British Foods | Fin 19.6bn (19.5bn) | AstraZeneca $* | 3Q 16.2bn (15.2bn) | BlackRock Greater Europe Inv Tst | Fin - (-) | BP $* | 3Q 69.9bn (49.3bn) | dotDigital Group | Fin 90.9m (83.9m) | Focusrite | Int 90.3m (88.0m) | Gattaca | Fin 443.3m (398.9m) | International Biotechnology Tst | Fin - (-) | Pacisco $ | Fin - (-) | Shell $* | 3Q 92.8bn (68.2bn) | Nov 02Sector | No of stocks | US$ Indices | Daily %Chg | Month %Chg | YTD %Chg | US$ TotalReit | YTD %TotalReit | Gr Div Yield | Household Goods & Home Cons119 | 536.73 | 3.27 | 5.60 | -0.03 | 925.85 | 1.79 | 2.13 | Tobacco | 13 | 1504.28 | -0.25 | 12.78 | 21.92 | 4807.66 | 26.15 | 4.18 | Health Care | Health Care | 841 | 1260.75 | -0.39 | 9.53 | 13.64 | 1997.83 | 15.36 | 1.49 | Health Care Providers | 114 | 1863.19 | -1.25 | 6.71 | 14.35 | 2334.74 | 15.81 | 1.49 | Medical & Biotech | 531 | 1121.28 | -0.65 | 10.23 | 19.79 | 1955.45 | 21.89 | 1.67 | Medical Equipment & Vnc | 196 | 1779.18 | 0.87 | 8.73 | -2.02 | 2184.77 | -1.14 | 0.94 | Agricultural Food & Beverages | Food Producers | 300 | 651.43 | 0.85 | 8.07 | 3.45 | 1172.73 | 6.47 | 3.06 | Beverages | 103 | 919.92 | 2.19 | 11.82 | 16.17 | 1658.47 | 18.83 | 2.67 | Energy | Energy | 376 | 736.04 | -2.74 | 5.80 | 37.57 | 1600.45 | 41.05 | 2.86 | Electricity | 252 | 664.51 | 0.44 | 5.54 | 2.49 | 1568.14 | 4.81 | 2.87 | Alternative Energy | 90 | 92.85 | 0.85 | -2.85 | 0.45 | 116.00 | 2.65 | 3.63 | Personal Energy | 69 | 342.24 | -0.40 | -8.55 | -8.00 | 145.60 | -7.78 | 2.44 | Oil & Gas Coal | 307 | 770.15 | -2.99 | 6.53 | 40.52 | 1744.01 | 44.28 | 2.97 | Gas Water & Multi-Utilities | 119 | 723.65 | 0.28 | 6.87 | 6.47 | 1831.16 | 9.52 | 3.48 | Utilities | 412 | 701.74 | 0.47 | 6.51 | 4.11 | 1681.60 | 6.57 | 2.91 | Transportation | Automobile Parts | 299 | 1078.10 | 1.03 | 4.25 | -11.33 | 1777.51 | -10.10 | 1.51 | Industrial Transportation | 383 | 1422.93 | 1.22 | 4.16 | 13.57 | 2491.08 | 15.86 | 2.29 | Industrials | Aerospace & Defense | 105 | 2792.22 | 2.07 | 1.21 | -1.54 | 4271.58 | -0.76 | 0.96 | Industrial Engineering | 347 | 2111.35 | 0.34 | -10.94 | 8.15 | 3359.86 | 9.76 | 1.59 | Industrial Materials | 93 | 272.61 | 0.89 | -0.48 | -2.00 | 543.35 | 0.22 | 2.92 | Industrial Metals & Mining | 388 | 979.31 | 0.58 | -8.02 | 7.77 | 1960.36 | 9.93 | 2.54 | Industrial Support Services | 232 | 1398.50 | 1.64 | 13.42 | 8.82 | 2056.68 | 10.17 | 1.21 | Industrials | 2097 | 1532.82 | 1.25 | 0.10 | 6.93 | 2455.22 | 8.33 | 1.46 | General Industrials | 202 | 925.81 | 1.05 | -1.98 | 13.19 | 1665.30 | 14.86 | 1.65 | Resources & Materials | Basic Materials | 1036 | 975.03 | 0.90 | -4.60 | 6.36 | 1819.03 | 8.38 | 2.28 | Chemicals | 457 | 1088.73 | 0.62 | 2.82 | 17.71 | 1960.49 | 19.99 | 2.08 | Construction & Materials | 469 | 1368.16 | 1.86 | 0.12 | 3.25 | 2677.39 | -1.77 | 1.11 | Waste & Disposal Services | 41 | 449.64 | 1.46 | 13.47 | 9.25 | 4975.19 | 10.46 | 1.19 | Precious Metals & Mining | 98 | 1292.45 | 1.99 | -9.70 | -9.04 | 2301.91 | -7.60 | 2.02 | Close (p) | %Chg | 3i Group | 2562.00 | 1.34 | Aberdeen Group | 223.80 | -0.44 | Admiral | 3872.00 | -0.26 | Airtel Africa | 263.60 | -1.42 | Alliance Witan | 1349.00 | -0.66 | Anglo American | 3717.00 | -2.80 | Antofagasta | 3138.00 | -3.54 | Assoc. Brit. Foods | 1900.00 | -2.21 | AstraZeneca | 13760.00 | -0.72 | Autotrauder Group | 544.60 | -0.33 | Aviva | 729.40 | -0.11 | Babcock Intl | 1047.50 | 1.55 | BAE Systems | 2075.00 | 0.10 | Balfour Beatty | 873.00 | -0.23 | Barclays | 419.55 | -1.05 | Barnett Redrow | 319.00 | -4.66 | BP | 589.30 | -1.78 | Brit. Amer. Tobacco | 4529.00 | -0.98 | British Land | 431.00 | -1.28 | BT Group | 222.90 | -2.11 | Bunzl | 2864.00 | -0.97 | Burberry | 1063.00 | -0.23 | Centrica | 150.25 | 0.23 | Coca-Cola Europec | 8390.00 | -2.10 | Coca-Cola HBC AG | 4766.00 | -0.87 | Compass | 2497.11 | -2.86 | Computacenter | 5045.00 | 1.10 | Convatec | 243.60 | -0.89 | Croda International | 3636.00 | -0.87 | DCC Energy | 6455.00 | 0.08 | Diageo | 1763.00 | -2.35 | Diploma | 7220.00 | -0.62 | easyJet | 679.80 | -- | Endeavour Mining | 3557.00 | -4.74 | Experian | 3013.00 | -0.33 | F&C Inv Trust | 336.60 | -0.47 | Fresnillo | 2206.00 | -2.18 | Games Works | 15790.00 | -0.82 | Glencore | 504.30 | -2.83 | GSK | 1827.50 | 0.16 | Haleon | 325.80 | 0.74 | Halma | 3476.00 | -0.60 | Hiscox | 1939.00 | 2.97 | Howden Joinery | 825.00 | -1.20 | HSBC | 1258.00 | -1.98 | ICG | 1912.00 | 0.42 | IG Group | 952.50 | -0.21 | IMI | 2890.00 | -0.34 | Imperial Brands | 2937.00 | -1.41 | Informa | 835.00 | -1.46 | Close (p) | %Chg | InterCont'l Hotels | 12690.50 | -0.66 | Intl Cons Airlines | 417.30 | -0.14 | Intersink Group | 5035.00 | -0.08 | Investec | 605.00 | -0.25 | Ithaca Energy | 281.00 | -1.33 | JD Sports Fashion | 94.36 | -2.03 | Kingfisher | 362.80 | -1.04 | Land Securities | 675.00 | -1.32 | Legal & General | 306.20 | 0.16 | Lion Finance | 12110.00 | 0.50 | Lloyds Big Gp | 93.70 | -1.60 | LondonMetric Prop | 186.10 | -0.80 | Lon Stock Ex | 9454.00 | -0.73 | M&G | 323.10 | 0.09 | Marks & Sons | 414.20 | -0.20 | Melrose Ind | 473.40 | -0.50 | Metlen Energy | 3973.63 | 0.07 | Natl Grid | 1240.50 | -0.92 | NatWest Group | 580.00 | -2.06 | Next | 15095.00 | -2.08 | Pearson | 1285.50 | -0.62 | Pershing Square Hldgs | 3872.00 | -0.62 | Polar CapTech | 583.50 | -1.77 | Prudential | 944.20 | 1.18 | Reckitt Benckiser | 5510.00 | -1.15 | RELX | 2952.00 | -1.53 | Rentokil Initial | 354.30 | -0.73 | Rio Tinto | 6078.00 | -1.00 | Rolls-Royce | 1260.60 | -1.22 | Sainsbury UJ | 345.40 | -1.46 | Scot Mort Inv Tst | 1499.50 | -0.89 | Segro | 909.00 | -0.63 | Severn Trent | 3260.00 | -1.45 | Shell | 3863.50 | -1.47 | Smith & Nephew | 1117.50 | 1.13 | Smiths Gp | 2709.00 | -0.99 | Sprax Group | 7470.00 | -1.71 | SSE | 2581.00 | -0.81 | Standard Chartered | 2053.00 | -0.10 | Standard Life | 929.50 | -0.27 | St James's Place | 1081.00 | -0.55 | Tesco | 538.60 | -1.17 | The Sage Gp | 1159.00 | -1.70 | Tritax Big Box | 147.70 | -0.54 | Unilever | 4857.00 | -0.90 | Utd. Utilities | 1517.00 | -1.56 | Vodafone | 117.20 | 0.30 | Weir | 2630.00 | -1.28 | Whitbread | 2780.00 | -1.00 | WPP | 413.20 | 1.27 | UK RECENT STOCK ADDITIONS | Close (p) | %Chg | Close (p) | %Chg | 1947 Oil & Gas | 9.28 | -1.01 | Meanitime Resources | 985.00 | 1.03 | Abenoejar Tungsten | 100.00 | - | Mendell Helium | 3.14 | -4.85 | Aimia | 141.00 | - | Meridian Mining | 86.80 | -2.69 | Brawara Solutions | 164.50 | - | Rift Helium | 6.25 | -6.01 | Chaleit Holdings | 69.00 | - | Roundhouse AI | 6.13 | -2.00 | Coastal Africa Group | 225.00 | - | Serval Resources | 23.50 | 2.17 | Dauchl Corp | 342.00 | -5.00 | Sunbelt Rentals | 6168.00 | -2.41 | EDX Medical Group | 7.00 | -3.45 | Tapir Holdings | 43.50 | - | Halo Minerals | 6.88 | -5.17 | TEKA Group | 330.00 | - | iForex Financial | 142.50 | - | The Smarter Web Co | 40.00 | 3.80 | United Kingdom (USD)

FT GLOBAL 500: THE WORLD'S LARGEST COMPANIES | Stock | 52 Week | Price | +/Chg | High | Low | Yld | P/E | MV (lb) | Australia (AUD) | ANZ Group Holdings | 40.56 | -0.25 | 41.33 | 33.36 | 5.36 | 20.83 | 122.33 | BHP Group | 56.74 | -0.82 | 68.77 | 40.17 | 4.26 | 29.31 | 288.48 | Commonwealth Bank | 165.05 | -1.67 | 185.59 | 146.98 | 3.05 | 25.29 | 276.20 | CSL Ltd | 201.16 | 0.43 | 202.12 | 90.00 | 2.02 | 31.28 | 96.53 | Macquarie Group | 251.33 | -1.11 | 267.90 | 187.31 | 3.20 | 25.67 | 96.42 | National Australia Bank | 40.91 | -0.60 | 49.45 | 35.48 | 4.16 | 18.51 | 127.54 | Westfarmers | 77.12 | 0.43 | 93.25 | 70.80 | 2.88 | 30.43 | 87.55 | Westpac Banking | 37.19 | 0.37 | 43.32 | 33.46 | 4.14 | 18.66 | 127.20 | Belgium (EUR) | Atneuscher busch Indev | 74.00 | 2.04 | 76.30 | 51.60 | 1.32 | 27.92 | 132.99 | Brazil (BRL) | Itau Unibanco Holding | 43.06 | 55.43 | 34.77 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 241.90 | Itau Unibanco Holding Prfd | 38.69 | 50.85 | 37.35 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 209.28 | Petroleo Brasileiro | 60.01 | 66.49 | 30.99 | 0.00 | 53.19 | 446.61 | Petroleo Brasileiro Prfd | 52.71 | 59.79 | 29.53 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 287.09 | Vale | 62.02 | 91.62 | 59.42 | 0.00 | 69.88 | 263.94 | Stock | Price | 52 Week | +/-Chg | High | Low | Yld | P/E | Finland (EUR) | Nordex Bank Abp | 15.79 | 0.13 | 18.11 | 14.15 | 0.00 | 11.36 | France (EUR) | Air Liquide | 182.04 | 1.14 | 189.80 | 154.86 | 1.85 | 34.89 | Aarhus | 196.08 | 3.68 | 221.30 | 157.42 | 1.63 | 36.58 | AAA | 42.97 | 0.37 | 45.66 | 36.55 | 5.40 | 11.97 | BNP Paribas A | 87.04 | 1.39 | 113.82 | 65.12 | 6.66 | 9.10 | Compagnie de Safran Gobot | 70.40 | 2.52 | 91.30 | 63.52 | 3.27 | 10.51 | Crédit Agricole | 14.94 | -0.05 | 20.40 | 14.69 | 0.00 | 6.85 | Doverne | 66.06 | 0.54 | 60.14 | 57.26 | 3.41 | 25.51 | Dassault Synnes | 25.62 | 0.36 | 25.59 | 15.82 | 1.65 | 28.47 | ENSE | 23.46 | 0.03 | 20.88 | 20.26 | 4.26 | 15.43 | EssilorLuxottica | 166.90 | 2.60 | 323.80 | 138.30 | 2.14 | 35.94 | Hermes International | 1320.50 | 27.00 | 2300.00 | 1229.00 | 1.36 | 30.06 | L'Oréal | 436.50 | -0.45 | 442.35 | 338.85 | 1.65 | 34.34 | LMVMI Met Hennessy | 383.65 | 6.65 | 654.70 | 375.65 | 3.30 | 18.01 | Safran | 288.20 | 12.50 | 366.50 | 262.60 | 1.16 | 37.92 | Sorfixi | 80.63 | 0.89 | 90.79 | 69.75 | 5.11 | 10.30 | Schneider Electric | 240.45 | 2.95 | 312.30 | 220.40 | 1.75 | 27.99 | TotalEnergies | 83.61 | -1.82 | 85.94 | 52.48 | 0.00 | 12.13 | Vinci | 110.30 | 1.70 | 143.15 | 104.25 | 4.58 | 12.75 | Argoic Eagle Miners | 238.41 | 7.62 | 349.84 | 188.48 | 1.05 | 20.34 | 121.46 | Amerization-Cuarte-Teck | 82.14 | 1.16 | 95.15 | 68.30 | 1.05 | 28.23 | 75.40 | Bank of Montreal | 242.03 | 2.81 | 259.20 | 168.92 | 2.83 | 27.53 | 168.16 | Bank of Nova Scotia | 131.61 | 0.56 | 134.50 | 91.28 | 3.46 | 27.08 | 162.07 | Brookfield | 57.95 | 3.08 | 68.44 | 50.76 | 0.67 | 103.48 | 129.36 | Brookfield Asset Mgmt. | 71.96 | 4.49 | 77.99 | 58.09 | 3.90 | 41.12 | 114.94 | Canadian Imperial Bank | 163.60 | 0.65 | 172.87 | 114.80 | 2.62 | 21.84 | 148.54 | Canadian National Railway | 177.35 | 4.54 | 185.25 | 126.05 | 2.06 | 31.22 | 107.14 | Canadian Natural | 75.12 | -3.30 | 78.60 | 41.67 | 3.33 | 18.32 | 154.86 | Canadian Pacific Airways | 127.90 | 2.57 | 133.38 | 96.50 | 0.81 | 40.35 | 111.22 | Constellation Software | 3447.02 | 53.63 | 3170.98 | 2198.00 | 0.16 | 1160.51 | 73.05 | Enbridge | 68.62 | -0.29 | 80.65 | 62.42 | 5.64 | 36.03 | 156.07 | FleetBoston Financial | 62.38 | -0.39 | 63.98 | 47.88 | 1.38 | 26.08 | 137.38 | Royal Bank of Scotland | 286.21 | 2.23 | 306.38 | 201.76 | 2.46 | 26.00 | 397.77 | Shopify Inc. | 217.64 | -2.73 | 255.95 | 129.01 | 0.00 | 146.07 | 263.03 | Suncor Energy | 105.50 | -5.61 | 112.80 | 54.55 | 2.27 | 27.55 | 123.40 | TC Energy | 89.05 | -1.11 | 100.18 | 69.41 | 3.94 | 35.62 | 89.05 | The Toronto-Dominion Bank | 175.00 | 0.96 | 178.95 | 112.26 | 2.51 | 21.19 | 295.66 | Waste Connections | 263.33 | 6.49 | 263.12 | 203.46 | 0.82 | 59.04 | 65.88 | Germany (EUR) | adidas AG | 172.85 | 4.30 | 188.80 | 129.95 | 1.62 | 23.17 | Allianz | 440.40 | 1.70 | 454.60 | 338.80 | 3.88 | 15.39 | BASF | 53.55 | 0.09 | 55.05 | 41.48 | 2.20 | 29.42 | BMW | 58.86 | 1.06 | 97.92 | 51.98 | 7.48 | 4.95 | Deutsche Bank | 30.59 | 0.51 | 35.84 | 23.82 | 3.27 | 9.68 | Deutsche Bors | 313.60 | -6.90 | 321.50 | 200.10 | 1.34 | 47.59 | Deutsche Telekom AG | 25.84 | -0.25 | 34.36 | 23.57 | 3.83 | 13.12 | DHL Group | 59.20 | -0.10 | 59.08 | 37.35 | 3.71 | 19.16 | Deutschland Technologien | 52.00 | 1.44 | 88.83 | 31.27 | 0.67 | 67.53 | Mercedes-Benz Group | 41.16 | 0.47 | 62.34 | 38.89 | 8.50 | 4.04 | Merck | 150.00 | -1.30 | 152.10 | 100.70 | 1.47 | 23.47 | Muenchenen Braeck | 568.00 | 1.00 | 572.60 | 437.40 | 4.23 | 27.13 | Porsche | 46.41 | -0.31 | 50.66 | 35.62 | 2.18 | 11.75 | Rheinmetall | 1000.00 | -37.60 | 1966.00 | 900.20 | 1.15 | 60.57 | SAP | 210.50 | -0.75 | 231.05 | 127.50 | 1.19 | 34.28 | Siemens | 270.35 | 4.70 | 291.70 | 198.00 | 1.98 | 25.67 | Siemens Energy | 130.00 | 3.08 | 191.66 | 100.30 | 0.54 | 206.35 | Siemens Healthineers | 43.40 | 0.51 | 49.25 | 32.81 | 2.30 | 22.72 | Volkswagen | 69.80 | 0.65 | 110.20 | 66.05 | 7.45 | 5.25 | Volkswagen Privat | 70.24 | 0.62 | 109.15 | 65.92 | 7.49 | 5.29 | Kuwait Finance House | 0.74 | -0.01 | 0.85 | 0.73 | 3.23 | 22.34 | 14.71 | Mexico (MXN) | America Movil B | 23.05 | 24.49 | 17.48 | 2.34 | 0.00 | 1433.36 | Wai Mart de Mexico | 50.39 | 63.97 | 44.90 | 2.30 | 0.00 | 879.12 | Netherlands (EUR) | Adyen | 851.20 | 24.30 | 1530.00 | 772.40 | 0.00 | 46.74 | 26.98 | ASML Holding | 1408.00 | -4.80 | 1741.00 | 822.20 | 0.57 | 70.72 | 546.51 | Heineken | 81.48 | 1.92 | 80.44 | 63.90 | 2.36 | 17.48 | 46.07 | ING Groep | 28.14 | -0.12 | 32.40 | 20.98 | 4.04 | 14.21 | 80.84 | Prosus N | 35.19 | 0.90 | 63.94 | 33.32 | 0.80 | 6.65 | 76.94 | The Magnum Ice Cream Co | 18.02 | 0.32 | 18.12 | 11.02 | 0.00 | 37.55 | 11.04 | Universal Music Group NV | 17.11 | 0.03 | 23.70 | 13.92 | 3.04 | 39.79 | 31.46 | Norway (NOK) | Stock | 52 Week | Price | +/Chg | High | Low | Yld | P/E | Shin-Etsu Chemical | 5821.00 | -45.00 | 7930.00 | 4366.00 | 2.30 | 23.43 | SoftBank | 234.90 | 0.70 | 252.90 | 202.80 | 3.75 | 20.70 | SoftBank Group | 4410.00 | -71.00 | 27375.00 | 3365.00 | 0.25 | 5.05 | Sony Financial Group | 143.80 | 0.60 | 180.40 | 129.30 | 5.56 | 18.07 | Sony Group | 3966.00 | 8.00 | 4776.00 | 3643.00 | 0.88 | 72.50 | Sumitomo Mitsui Financial | 3155.00 | -75.00 | 7260.00 | 2999.00 | 2.85 | 15.32 | Takeda Pharmaceutical | 6647.00 | 4.00 | 6712.00 | 4102.00 | 3.07 | 68.70 | Tokio Marine Holdings | 575.60 | -3.80 | 8468.00 | 501.00 | 2.84 | 30.91 | Tokyo Electron | 10005.00 | 491.00 | 81260.00 | 8860.00 | 1.91 | 39.87 | Toyota Motor | 3051.00 | -19.00 | 4000.00 | 2686.00 | 3.28 | 10.33 | Kuwait (KWD) | Equinor | 427.90 | -19.60 | 454.60 | 226.40 | 3.34 | 220.57 | 1023.00 | Republic of Korea (KRW) | LG Energy Solution | 356000.00 | -3500.00 | 497500.00 | 206500.00 | 0.00 | 77.64 | 83304.00 | SAMSUNG BIOLOGICS | 1422000.00 | -85000.00 | 1987000.00 | 1150000.00 | 0.00 | 59.43 | 65825.73 | Samsung Electronics | 229000.00 | 4000.00 | 374500.00 | 94500.00 | 0.74 | 34.67 | 0.00 | Samsung Electronics Pref | 177000.00 | 2900.00 | 243500.00 | 71000.00 | 0.95 | 167.36 | 142019.70 | Samsung Epis | 312000.00 | 2500.00 | 773000.00 | 297500.00 | 0.00 | 247.03 | 7763.51 | SK hynix | 1472000.00 | 54000.00 | 2987000.00 | 501000.00 | 0.86 | 23.73 | 0.00 | Agricultural Bank China A | 7.47 | -0.01 | 8.68 | 5.79 | 3.48 | 9.56 | 23.85 | Bank of China A | 7.04 | -0.05 | 7.25 | 5.23 | 3.35 | 9.51 | 16.80 | Bank of Communications A | 8.57 | -0.06 | 8.63 | 5.37 | 3.93 | 9.94 | 496.25 | China Construction Bank A | 12.06 | 0.08 | 12.13 | 8.52 | 3.35 | 9.28 | 255.47 | China Life Insurance A | 35.00 | 0.40 | 51.92 | 32.32 | 2.79 | 6.42 | 728.82 | China Merchants Bank A | 43.18 | -0.37 | 43.79 | 35.28 | 4.67 | 7.58 | 890.76 | China Petroleum Chemical A | 5.90 | 8.11 | 4.43 | 3.68 | 22.52 | 572.53 | China Shenhua Energy A | 51.84 | -0.15 | 51.99 | 38.73 | 3.88 | 19.49 | 949.29 | China Yangtze Power A | 29.50 | -0.24 | 30.00 | 25.38 | 3.39 | 20.92 | 721.81 | OTIC Securities A | 25.56 | 1.26 | 30.25 | 23.77 | 3.27 | 13.04 | 311.84 | Cont Amurex Tech A | 240.19 | 7.27 | 468.75 | 216.51 | 1.49 | 14.88 | 1058.99 | East Money Information A | 18.71 | 1.11 | 25.87 | 17.18 | 0.53 | 24.46 | 296.03 | Fascotian Int'l Med A | 44.39 | -0.61 | 84.95 | 42.99 | 2.21 | 24.94 | 880.88 | IDC A | 8.69 | -0.06 | 8.83 | 6.85 | 3.68 | 8.69 | 2.34 | Industrial Bank A | 19.60 | -0.05 | 21.90 | 16.44 | 5.44 | 5.66 | 414.79 | Jiangsu Hengpu China A | 49.33 | -0.23 | 49.57 | 36.57 | 2.15 | 10.37 | 100.00 | Lia Finance Group A | 1439.11 | 47.05 | 1568.00 | 1151.01 | 3.61 | 21.92 | 1798.99 | Luxshare Precision In Of | 45.27 | -0.33 | 81.78 | 43.56 | 0.00 | 19.77 | 332.61 | Middle Group A | 87.66 | -1.52 | 89.50 | 71.77 | 4.91 | 15.11 | 610.34 | PetroChina A | 14.02 | 0.18 | 13.88 | 8.59 | 3.64 | 16.30 | Ping An Insurance Group A | 53.12 | 0.32 | 74.88 | 46.90 | 5.14 | 6.92 | 566.26 | Postal Savings Bank China A | 5.72 | -0.01 | 5.97 | 4.76 | 3.99 | 7.64 | Shenzhen Mind Bio-Med A | 179.29 | -2.46 | 216.89 | 130.66 | 2.34 | 26.70 | 217.26 | Wuling Tian A | 74.25 | -0.45 | 122.50 | 68.68 | 6.95 | 32.19 | 288.21 | Zijin Mining Group A | 26.84 | -0.76 | 44.94 | 24.42 | 2.98 | 13.76 | 552.95 | BioNTechHong Kong (HKD) | 87.53 | -0.64 | 124.00 | 79.52 | 0.00 | 41.88 | 22.13 | AIA Group | 75.40 | 92.15 | 68.00 | 2.63 | 127.58 | 780.14 | HKEX | 372.80 | 5.40 | 444.80 | 360.00 | 3.74 | 26.53 | 472.65 | Saudi Arabia (SAN) | ACWA Power | 151.50 | -3.60 | 249.50 | 145.10 | 0.30 | 61.34 | 116.12 | Al Rajhi Bank | 60.15 | 0.40 | 109.90 | 58.55 | 5.00 | 15.42 | 360.90 | Saudi Arabian Mining | 55.65 | -0.70 | 79.90 | 53.15 | 0.00 | 29.14 | 216.41 | Saudi Arabian Oil | 26.10 | 0.18 | 27.96 | 23.29 | 5.20 | 18.12 | 63.16 | Saudi Basic Industries | 47.00 | -0.08 | 62.50 | 43.36 | 5.53 | 5.47 | 141.00 | Saudi National Bank | 36.50 | 0.60 | 45.24 | 34.34 | 6.30 | 9.03 | 219.00 | STC Co | 41.50 | 0.34 | 45.10 | 40.36 | 5.30 | 13.97 | 207.50 | India (UNIV) | Bajra Finance | 956.15 | 18.95 | 1177.60 | 788.40 | 0.63 | 50.29 | 5985.40 | Brah Amrit Ltd | 1988.40 | 16.40 | 2174.70 | 1726.05 | 1.21 | 151.75 | 12398.13 | HCL Technologies | 1430.00 | 2.00 | 1770.00 | 1030.00 | 4.20 | 22.29 | 3880.54 | HECIC Bank | 699.50 | 7.20 | 1017.90 | 668.90 | 1.86 | 14.13 | 10379.70 | Hindustan Unilever | 1896.15 | 32.15 | 2487.75 | 1758.60 | 2.16 | 43.35 | 4455.18 | ICICI Bank | 1385.25 | -8.75 | 1479.90 | 1187.55 | 0.87 | 21.92 | 3947.45 | Infosys | 1163.00 | -19.00 | 1727.85 | 980.30 | 4.39 | 18.03 | 47178.78 | Lithia Inc. | 286.00 | -4.00 | 426.50 | 252.80 | 5.45 | 9.57 | 3333.49 | Lithia Minderika Bank | 459.00 | 3.00 | 435.00 | 345.00 | 0.14 | 11.67 | 12631.25 | Lancor & Toubro | 2935.00 | 77.00 | 4440.00 | 3288.65 | 0.97 | 33.65 | 5414.15 | Life Insurance Corp | 388.30 | 4.30 | 936.60 | 377.10 | 2.58 | 13.65 | 4911.99 | Maruti Suzuki India | 11660.00 | 247.00 | 17371.60 | 10984.90 | 1.20 | 24.97 | 3665.93 | Reliance Industries | 1299.00 | 135.45 | 1611.20 | 1152.30 | 0.46 | 25.24 | 15758.77 | State Bank of India | 887.00 | 26.00 | 1234.80 | 930.25 | 1.76 | 11.36 | 9110.77 | Sun Pharmaceutical Inds | 1768.00 | -10.25 | 2047.55 | 1586.60 | 0.90 | 38.77 | 4241.92 | Tata Consultancy Svs | 2495.10 | -0.90 | 3336.70 | 1976.00 | 2.65 | 18.59 | 9037.49 | Singapore (SGD) | DBS Group Holdings | 71.71 | -1.42 | 79.05 | 52.85 | 4.43 | 18.67 | 203.94 | Oversea-Chinese Banking | 28.32 | -0.97 | 32.57 | 16.75 | 3.71 | 1737.42 | 127.87 | United Overseas Bank Ltd | 40.66 | -0.71 | 45.15 | 33.25 | 3.91 | 14.73 | 67.56 | Singapore (USD) | JOYY A | 79.33 | -0.99 | 85.15 | 54.24 | 6.78 | 317.32 | 51.80 | Sea /Singapore A | 75.48 | 1.24 | 159.80 | 71.53 | 0.00 | 28.48 | 41.25 | South Africa (ZAR) | Agricultural Bank China | H-75 | -0.20 | 6.98 | 5.08 | 4.48 | 8.65 | 207.33 | Alibaba Group Holding | 99.45 | 2.40 | 174.20 | 88.65 | 1.04 | 119.82 | 1979.25 | Bank of China | 5.86 | -0.28 | 6.29 | 4.30 | 4.75 | 7.92 | 490.03 | Bank of Communications | 8.52 | -0.08 | 8.70 | 6.35 | 4.66 | 7.89 | 298.30 | BPO H | 70.45 | 2.20 | 113.40 | 67.00 | 0.58 | 19.68 | 259.50 | China CITIC Bank | 8.16 | -0.53 | 8.76 | 6.50 | 5.61 | 6.80 | 121.51 | China Construction Bank Inc | 10.14 | -0.12 | 10.30 | 7.37 | 4.70 | 7.80 | 24.38 | China Life Insurance | 24.80 | 0.92 | 36.16 | 22.24 | 4.54 | 4.55 | 184.54 | China Merchants Bank of China | 53.00 | -1.55 | 54.80 | 43.34 | 4.29 | 9.30 | 243.32 | China Petroleum Chemical Inc | 4.89 | 0.03 | 5.70 | 3.98 | 5.13 | 18.68 | 115.89 | China Shenhua Energy Co | 42.70 | 0.14 | 49.62 | 38.20 | 5.44 | 15.65 | 144.22 | CITIC Securities Inc | 21.02 | 1.14 | 30.82 | 19.37 | 4.70 | 10.72 | 71.97 | ICBC H | 7.78 | -0.12 | 7.92 | 5.96 | 4.78 | 7.78 | 674.82 | JD.com A | 101.60 | 1.20 | 132.50 | 95.80 | 3.86 | 14.75 | 253.65 | Meituan B | 73.05 | 1.45 | 108.00 | 63.65 | 0.00 | 19.02 | 408.81 | Middle Group H | 97.50 | 0.85 | 101.70 | 77.65 | 5.08 | 16.81 | 63.46 | NetEase | 177.50 | 0.80 | 232.60 | 168.80 | 2.59 | 16.76 | 570.14 | Norgo Spring H | 43.46 | 1.12 | 56.25 | 37.90 | 2.60 | 30.80 | 218.81 | PetrolChina H | 10.81 | -0.01 | 12.22 | 7.86 | 5.44 | 12.57 | 228.08 | Ping An Insurance Group L | 50.30 | 0.56 | 74.70 | 47.68 | 6.25 | 6.55 | 374.61 | Prestar Savings Bank China | 5.43 | -0.18 | 5.78 | 4.48 | 4.96 | 7.45 | 107.92 | Tencent Holdings | 392.20 | 8.60 | 662.00 | 375.20 | 1.35 | 15.85 | 3566.14 | Xiaomi Corp B | 28.10 | 1.62 | 45.08 | 21.30 | 0.00 | 17.35 | 600.41 | Zijin Mining Group H | 27.24 | -0.62 | 46.99 | 26.58 | 3.38 | 13.97 | 163.14 | Average (USD) | Full Truck Alliance | 6.72 | 0.35 | 13.14 | 7.46 | 2.65 | 290.67 | 162.63 | Fidis Holdings A | 103.15 | 4.70 | 202.53 | 80.50 | 2.47 | 9.87 | 79.01 | Hindi Holdings B | 81.69 | 3.07 | 139.12 | 71.94 | 0.00 | 32.67 | 465.01 | Bank Central Asia | 4980.00 | 8700.00 | 4740.00 | 0.00 | 10.66 | 6139.10 | PT Bantis Renewables | 2070.00 | 275.00 | 10725.00 | 1730.00 | 0.20 | 0.00 | 769.37 | Italy (EUR) | Assicurazioni Generali | 42.93 | 0.46 | 46.24 | 32.06 | 3.82 | 17.67 | 65.88 | Enel | 9.34 | 0.02 | 10.31 | 8.58 | 5.25 | 25.23 | 92.77 | Eni | 26.52 | -0.62 | 27.76 | 15.55 | 4.15 | 18.80 | 80.29 | Ferrari | 358.95 | 3.85 | 377.50 | 269.00 | 0.83 | 51.95 | 63.63 | Intesa Sampaolo | 5.95 | 0.06 | 6.94 | 4.81 | 6.32 | 25.88 | 103.18 | Stellantis | 4.24 | 0.10 | 10.49 | 3.50 | 0.00 | 5.70 | 12.28 | UniCredit SpA | 74.40 | 1.35 | 86.42 | 57.36 | 4.23 | 14.57 | 116.19 | Japan (JPY) | Canon | 49/27.00 | -72.00 | 5033.00 | 3967.00 | 3.42 | 16.11 | 6221.34 | Omega Pharmaceutical | 69/43.00 | 21.00 | 10700.00 | 5074.00 | 1.93 | 25.95 | 11485.79 | Daichi Sankyo | 28/30.5 | 138.50 | 3945.00 | 2390.00 | 3.48 | 19.13 | 5388.42 | FAST REITING | 75/30.00 | 20.00 | 6666.00 | 6260.00 | 1.19 | 42.92 | 23981.13 | Hitachi | 49/27.00 | 10.00 | 10700.00 | 5074.00 | 1.93 | 21.13 | 7254.67 | Honda Motor | 17/99.00 | 12.50 | 1331.00 | 1236.00 | 3.89 | 16.96 | 8154.67 | HOYA | 247/75.00 | 1435.00 | 30430.00 | 22165.00 | 1.33 | 33.30 | 8295.61 | ITOCHU | 22/11.00 | -55.50 | 9999.00 | 1802.00 | 1.94 | 17.74 | 17396.42 | Japan Tobacco | 73/44.00 | 117.00 | 7750.00 | 5260.00 | 3.69 | 25.63 | 14730.00 | KDDI | 20/39.50 | 3.00 | 3121.00 | 2423.50 | 2.96 | 15.47 | 11379.16 | Keyence | 74/80.00 | 3110.00 | 6750.00 | 51510.00 | 0.67 | 40.80 | 18212.62 | Mitsubishi | 47/12.00 | -33.00 | 6012.00 | 3482.00 | 2.82 | 22.92 | 17708.64 | Mitsubishi Heavy | 33/30.00 | 55.00 | 5708.00 | 3390.00 | 0.86 | 34.02 | 11435.98 | Mitsubishi UFJ Geni Corp | 33/30.00 | 64.00 | 3813.00 | 2238.00 | 2.84 | 15.67 | 40148.47 | Nippon A & Co | 49/11.00 | -1.00 | 4911.00 | 3482.00 | 1.95 | 16.95 | 11488.68 | Mizuho Financial Group | 75/67.00 | -102.00 | 6963.00 | 4818.00 | 1.98 | 15.09 | 18340.90 | Nintendo | 81/49.00 | -140.00 | 14030.00 | 6544.00 | 1.99 | 22.36 | 10498.88 | NTT | 174.50 | 1.20 | 181.90 | 142.60 | 3.09 | 13.84 | 15601.03 | Recruit Holdings | 17319.00 | -1230.00 | 19560.00 | 6040.00 | 0.14 | 51.38 | 26480.90 | Naspers N | 695.05 | 16.45 | 1289.52 | 60.56 | 0.73 | 82.38 | 517.77 | Spain (EUR) | Banco Santander | 10.39 | 0.27 | 13.12 | 8.62 | 1.97 | 11.41 | 151.18 | BBVA Spor | 21.58 | 0.52 | 25.57 | 17.10 | 3.64 | 83.00 | 118.92 | CaixaBank | 11.46 | 0.26 | 13.55 | 8.83 | 3.65 | 33.69 | 79.91 | Berdrolsa SA | 22.25 | 0.07 | 22.29 | 17.39 | 2.56 | 40.31 | 148.48 | NxtEx | 57.50 | 1.36 | 59.42 | 46.07 | 2.47 | 130.38 | 179.21 | Sweden (SEK) | Atlas Copco A | 187.15 | 3.25 | 214.10 | 149.45 | 1.60 | 34.47 | 628.37 | Atlas Copco B | 162.80 | 2.40 | 186.50 | 134.00 | 1.84 | 29.98 | 254.11 | FST | 319.00 | 10.00 | 383.00 | 256.00 | 1.57 | 515.25 | 416.92 | Investor B | 428.20 | 1.10 | 429.80 | 306.70 | 1.31 | 6.33 | 780.15 | Volvo B | 309.00 | -1.00 | 374.50 | 255.00 | 4.21 | 18.24 | 492.33 | Switzerland (CHF) | ABB | 71.34 | 0.66 | 89.14 | 53.78 | 1.32 | 27.54 | 130.06 | Alcon | 60.42 | 1.32 | 68.34 | 47.80 | 0.46 | 58.10 | 30.19 | Civic Financiers Richening | 166.95 | 1.15 | 202.20 | 127.20 | 1.98 | 35.60 | 89.75 | Gravisden | 4000.00 | 27.00 | 4015.00 | 2566.00 | 1.80 | 44.93 | 36.93 | Holcim | 71.10 | 2.14 | 82.54 | 60.10 | 2.39 | 22.08 | 40.30 | Lorsus Group | 648.20 | 4.00 | 650.00 | 454.60 | 0.77 | 72.59 | 45.52 | Nestle | 84.64 | -0.06 | 87.09 | 70.29 | 3.66 | 24.11 | 218.08 | Merck | 131.52 | -2.26 | 135.06 | 98.61 | 2.81 | 43.12 | 267.62 | Roche Holding | 406.60 | -4.60 | 415.60 | 270.80 | 1.71 | 25.13 | 43.38 | Roche Holding Pref | 397.20 | -6.20 | 405.90 | 291.00 | 2.47 | 24.55 | 279.06 | Sika | 184.75 | 5.65 | 197.60 | 120.35 | 2.00 | 28.42 | 29.65 | Swiss Re | 153.65 | 0.30 | 154.75 | 114.05 | 4.10 | 11.77 | 45.90 | UBS Group | 39.79 | 0.55 | 45.04 | 28.25 | 2.15 | 20.30 | 130.42 | Zurich Insurance Group | 823.60 | -2.00 | 630.00 | 521.00 | 4.81 | 19.50 | 94.30 | Hon Hai Precision | 251.00 | 5.50 | 314.00 | 187.50 | 2.86 | 18.44 | 3533.01 | MediaTek | 3970.00 | 55.00 | 5480.00 | 1130.00 | 1.23 | 60.01 | 6371.66 | Taiwan Semicon Mfg | 2330.00 | -40.00 | 2590.00 | 1375.00 | 1.12 | 35.1660422.42 | United Arab Emirates (AED) | United Kingdom (GBP) | 3i Group Plc | 25.62 | 0.34 | 44.03 | 18.25 | 3.30 | 4.75 | 26.15 | AstraZeneca | 137.60 | -1.00 | 157.32 | 98.92 | 1.74 | 27.97 | 213.43 | BAE Systems | 20.75 | 0.02 | 23.60 | 15.29 | 1.82 | 30.16 | 62.23 | Barclays | 4.20 | -0.05 | 5.54 | 3.61 | 2.74 | 9.58 | 55.83 | BP | 5.89 | -0.11 | 6.39 | 4.13 | 4.34 | 92.56 | British Amer Tobacco | 45.29 | -0.45 | 53.26 | 37.44 | 5.41 | 12.90 | 97.59 | Compass Group | 24.97 | -0.74 | 25.96 | 20.00 | 2.03 | 30.43 | 42.46 | Diageo | 17.63 | -0.42 | 19.04 | 12.96 | 2.11 | 30.28 | 39.27 | Experian | 30.13 | -0.10 | 36.16 | 22.03 | 1.72 | 24.57 | 26.49 | Glencore | 5.04 | -0.15 | 7.07 | 3.32 | 2.51 | 59.10 | Stock | Price | +Chg | High | Low | Yld | P/E | MV (bl) | GSX | 18.27 | 0.03 | 22.82 | 16.90 | 3.83 | 12.95 | 73.93 | Haleon | 3.26 | 0.02 | 4.34 | 3.10 | 2.24 | 17.51 | 28.63 | HSBC Holdings | 12.58 | -0.25 | 16.10 | 10.28 | 4.44 | 13.95 | 215.55 | Lloyds Banking Group | 0.94 | -0.02 | 1.23 | 0.85 | 4.28 | 13.39 | 53.66 | London Stock Exchange Grp | 94.54 | -0.70 | 101.40 | 66.84 | 1.67 | 39.66 | 45.40 | National Grid | 12.40 | -0.12 | 14.29 | 10.96 | 3.91 | 18.94 | 62.36 | NatWest Group | 5.80 | -0.12 | 7.88 | 5.04 | 6.03 | 10.84 | 45.88 | Reckitt Benckiser Group | 55.10 | -0.64 | 65.23 | 36.64 | 3.93 | 11.77 | 34.89 | RELX | 29.52 | -0.46 | 34.48 | 19.91 | 2.33 | 26.22 | 51.39 | Rio Tinto | 60.78 | -1.18 | 91.17 | 51.59 | 5.73 | 13.29 | 76.30 | Rolls-Royce Holdings | 12.61 | -0.16 | 15.86 | 9.90 | 0.87 | 18.16 | 104.24 | Shell | 38.63 | -0.57 | 41.10 | 25.54 | 2.98 | 17.11 | 220.13 | Unilever | 48.57 | -0.44 | 55.42 | 36.44 | 3.29 | 13.44 | 104.64 | COMMODITIES | INTEREST RATES: OFFICIAL | Rate | Current | Since | Last | US | Fed Funds | 3.75-4.00 | 16-09-2026 | 3.50-3.75 | US | Prime | 7.00 | 16-09-2026 | 6.75 | US | Discount | 4.00 | 16-09-2026 | 3.75 | Euro | Repo | 2.65 | 16-09-2026 | 2.40 | UK | Repo | 3.75 | 18-12-2025 | 4.00 | Japan | O'night Call | 1.25 | 18-09-2026 | 1.00 | Switzerland | SNB | 0.00 | 19-06-2025 | 0.25 | INTEREST RATES: MARKET | | Overnight | Change | OneMonth | ThreeMonth | SixMonth | OneYear | Day | Week | SOFR | 3.950 | 0.010 | 0.020 | 3.903 | 4.041 | 4.164 | 4.376 | EURIBOR | - | - | - | 2.448 | 2.714 | 2.994 | 3.304 | ESTR | 2.441 | 0.001 | 0.000 | 2.445 | 2.552 | 2.683 | 2.886 | SARON | -0.047 | 0.010 | 0.012 | -0.049 | -0.049 | -0.045 | -0.047 | SONIA | 3.735 | 0.000 | 0.002 | 3.964 | 4.036 | 4.224 | 4.525 | Ame HoldingsUnited States (USD) | 196.79 | -9.18 | 452.70 | 100.02 | 0.00 | 231.52 | 208.38 | 3M Co | 178.36 | 4.02 | 184.90 | 139.34 | 1.75 | 26.46 | 92.16 | Abbott Laboratories | 110.16 | 1.96 | 132.03 | 81.97 | 2.29 | 35.54 | 180.62 | AbbVie | 288.84 | -6.05 | 298.74 | 190.75 | 2.52 | 81.59 | 510.41 | Accenture Plc | 260.94 | 2.70 | 291.09 | 118.15 | 2.62 | 19.10 | 154.15 | Adobe | 251.47 | 1.24 | 362.71 | 190.12 | 0.00 | 14.03 | 97.87 | Aflac | 124.59 | 0.70 | 130.22 | 105.48 | 1.96 | 13.38 | 62.46 | Air Products & Chemicals | 316.03 | -0.40 | 316.64 | 229.11 | 2.29 | 33.30 | 70.38 | Airtel A | 171.11 | 6.72 | 193.45 | 110.81 | 0.00 | 45.63 | 71.79 | Alphabet A | 278.99 | -0.85 | 408.61 | 270.70 | 0.32 | 14.41 | 1637.11 | Alphabet C | 278.04 | -0.18 | 404.47 | 271.41 | 0.32 | 14.36 | 1536.73 | Altira Group | 77.17 | -0.86 | 79.81 | 54.70 | 5.75 | 15.91 | 128.37 | Amazon.com | 245.63 | 5.28 | 287.20 | 196.00 | 0.00 | 19.46 | 2649.44 | AMD | 466.84 | -37.96 | 658.52 | 188.22 | 0.00 | 117.59 | 762.10 | American Electric Power | 130.33 | 0.12 | 140.58 | 112.53 | 2.98 | 21.05 | 70.97 | American Express | 327.98 | 8.87 | 387.49 | 290.97 | 1.16 | 21.28 | 219.93 | American International | 82.40 | 0.50 | 87.29 | 71.25 | 2.43 | 14.90 | 43.09 | American Tower Intl | 198.30 | 0.50 | 203.20 | 175.00 | 0.00 | 14.50 | 100.00 | American Square | 504.31 | 13.48 | 572.56 | 422.37 | 1.35 | 11.21 | 43.78 | AMETEK Inc | 241.91 | 0.79 | 261.16 | 188.47 | 0.56 | 35.26 | 55.46 | Amgen | 465.45 | -0.56 | 475.64 | 288.00 | 2.17 | 28.70 | 251.64 | Amphend A | 79.84 | 0.54 | 178.52 | 71.44 | 0.75 | 32.99 | 197.15 | Analog Devices | 412.85 | -4.26 | 445.91 | 223.47 | 1.07 | 48.74 | 200.05 | Aon Plc A | 333.38 | 11.71 | 382.34 | 266.33 | 0.98 | 18.17 | 70.73 | Apollo Global Mgmt | 119.46 | 3.62 | 153.29 | 99.56 | 1.88 | 42.06 | 70.55 | Apple | 338.32 | -6.31 | 351.73 | 243.42 | 0.32 | 38.62 | 4937.50 | Applied Materials Inc | 374.53 | -15.56 | 739.67 | 203.40 | 0.57 | 32.07 | 297.23 | Applivin A | 228.85 | 0.35 | 738.01 | 225.19 | 0.00 | 17.52 | 69.67 | Ares Management | 132.96 | 4.61 | 181.19 | 95.80 | 4.06 | 60.99 | 29.78 | Arista Networks | 164.14 | -4.72 | 217.41 | 114.52 | 0.00 | 50.99 | 207.02 | Arthur J. Gallagher | 278.69 | 2.82 | 277.44 | 160.75 | 1.00 | 45.72 | 71.51 | At&T Corp | 39.80 | 0.50 | 393.52 | 230.00 | 0.00 | 18.47 | 100.00 | Atlassian Corp A | 187.08 | -4.64 | 229.96 | 56.01 | 0.00 | 890.86 | 29.51 | Autodesk | 257.91 | 8.30 | 320.00 | 185.50 | 0.00 | 33.19 | 53.90 | Auto Data Processing | 298.78 | 4.94 | 309.40 | 188.16 | 2.28 | 26.42 | 117.95 | AutoZone | 2523.01 | 83.19 | 2996.24 | 2730.65 | 0.00 | 20.84 | 52.36 | Baker Hughes A | 53.05 | -2.18 | 70.41 | 44.26 | 1.73 | 18.11 | 52.68 | Bank of New York Mellon | 147.78 | 0.67 | 165.84 | 105.42 | 1.71 | 16.19 | 99.44 | Becton Dickinson | 198.60 | 0.72 | 213.08 | 140.11 | 2.11 | 34.24 | 54.10 | Berkeley Hathaway A | 26480.73 | 19047.3 | 67405.16 | 88800.00 | 0.00 | 93.75 | 42.08 | Berkeley Hathaway B | 558.11 | 13.62 | 550.47 | 464.01 | 0.00 | 21.44 | 77.91 | BlackRock Finance | 1167.15 | 19.61 | 1187.17 | 917.39 | 1.96 | 27.54 | 180.76 | Blackstone | 120.14 | 1.63 | 165.14 | 101.73 | 3.10 | 26.88 | 91.32 | BlackLia A | 77.08 | 0.86 | 66.92 | 48.21 | 0.00 | 132.90 | 41.69 | Boeing Co | 175.40 | 3.85 | 254.35 | 165.01 | 0.00 | 18.08 | 139.00 | Booking Solutions A | 49.00 | 0.50 | 53.50 | 39.00 | 0.00 | 16.50 | 100.00 | Booking Holdings | 153.75 | 5.82 | 5520.15 | 146.28 | 1.07 | 16.99 | 115.52 | Boston Scientific | 44.32 | 2.34 | 105.65 | 39.57 | 0.00 | 17.80 | 64.23 | Bristol Myers Squibb | 63.02 | 0.54 | 68.64 | 45.20 | 4.00 | 13.88 | 128.82 | Broadcom | 322.23 | -3.85 | 495.00 | 289.96 | 0.81 | 39.93 | 1538.21 | Cadence Design Systems | 329.51 | 1.82 | 416.69 | 262.75 | 0.00 | 64.99 | 90.41 | Capital One Financial | 210.77 | 5.92 | 259.63 | 174.24 | 1.52 | 11.61 | 126.78 | Carrier Global | 55.17 | 1.54 | 76.76 | 50.24 | 1.74 | 25.08 | 45.14 | Cavana A | 72.00 | 3.71 | 486.89 | 55.91 | 0.00 | 29.88 | 52.04 | Caterpillar | 613.62 | -9.13 | 1073.46 | 537.08 | 1.06 | 26.29 | 282.07 | CREB Group A | 136.75 | 7.90 | 174.27 | 121.44 | 0.00 | 35.24 | 39.41 | Cencora | 337.84 | 7.00 | 377.54 | 244.82 | 0.71 | 24.97 | 64.47 | Charles Comms A | 115.54 | 4.05 | 254.11 | 101.11 | 0.00 | 2.97 | 13.24 | Cheniere Energy | 311.67 | -18.65 | 330.73 | 186.20 | 0.80 | 22.14 | 62.64 | Chevron Corp | 227.38 | -1.86 | 293.36 | 180.36 | 0.00 | 22.74 | 49.47 | Chipotle Mexican Grill | 32.91 | 1.02 | 41.42 | 27.31 | 0.00 | 30.76 | 41.63 | Chubb | 368.98 | 4.86 | 369.00 | 273.35 | 1.11 | 103.36 | 140.98 | Cintas | 224.77 | 4.95 | 226.69 | 161.16 | 0.93 | 43.81 | 89.25 | Cisco Systems | 101.61 | -2.90 | 130.37 | 70.54 | 1.65 | 30.24 | 400.61 | Citigroup | 123.10 | 0.46 | 147.96 | 95.83 | 2.18 | 17.31 | 206.49 | Cloudflare Inc A | 265.17 | -15.53 | 370.35 | 158.83 | 0.00 | 457.19 | 85.55 | CME Group A | 306.24 | 3.10 | 329.16 | 218.31 | 3.69 | 25.00 | 109.61 | Cognizant Tech Sci B A | 65.09 | -0.02 | 87.03 | 37.08 | 2.03 | 11.83 | 29.10 | Coinbase Global A | 137.83 | -5.71 | 361.40 | 136.89 | 0.00 | 49.76 | 30.84 | Colgate-Palmolite | 97.43 | 2.14 | 99.33 | 74.55 | 2.18 | 37.91 | 77.45 | Comcast A | 23.87 | 0.65 | 32.85 | 20.48 | 5.53 | 7.51 | 84.54 | ConocoPhillips | 146.84 | -7.19 | 154.28 | 85.57 | 2.29 | 19.42 | 176.40 | Constellation Energy | 257.25 | -5.13 | 388.47 | 228.63 | 0.66 | 25.12 | 91.15 | Constellation Srl A | 31.93 | -0.47 | 34.53 | 23.69 | 0.00 | 24.47 | 42.44 | Corning | 123.20 | -0.11 | 271.78 | 77.39 | 0.91 | 49.28 | 106.12 | Corteva | 11.92 | 0.28 | 90.97 | 11.24 | 1.68 | 7.22 | 7.95 | Costco Wholesale | 1040.55 | 28.27 | 1096.50 | 844.06 | 0.57 | 50.07 | 461.10 | Coupons A | 14.70 | 0.33 | 32.31 | 13.35 | 0.00 | 34.19 | 24.10 | CRH | 96.59 | 5.78 | 131.55 | 78.62 | 1.62 | 19.05 | 64.25 | CrowdStrike Holdings A | 241.81 | -8.62 | 786.00 | 174.14 | 0.00 | 6045.25 | 247.60 | Rates are fixed at 11am UK time.

BONDS: TEN YEAR GOVT SPREADS | BONDS: TEN YEAR GOVT SPREADS | Bid Yield | Spread vs Bund | Spread vs Bond | Bid Yield | Spread vs Bund | Spread vs Bond | Austria | 3.53 | 0.22 | -1.43 | Italy | 4.30 | 0.99 | -0.66 | Australia | 5.10 | 1.79 | 0.14 | Japan | 2.80 | -0.51 | -2.16 | Belgium | 4.30 | 0.99 | -0.66 | Netherlands | 3.36 | 0.05 | -1.60 | Brazil | 15.85 | 12.54 | 10.89 | Poland | 6.23 | 2.92 | 1.27 | China | 1.63 | -1.68 | -3.33 | Portugal | 3.67 | 0.36 | -1.29 | Denmark | 3.11 | -0.20 | -1.85 | Spain | 3.83 | 0.52 | -1.13 | France | 4.95 | 1.64 | -0.01 | Sweden | 3.03 | -0.28 | -1.93 | Germany | 3.31 | 0.00 | -1.65 | UK | 5.26 | 1.95 | 0.30 | Ireland | 3.36 | 0.05 | -1.60 | US | 4.96 | 1.65 | 0.00 | The prices listed are indicative and believed accurate at the time of publication. No offer is made by ICE or the FT. The FT does not warrant nor guarantee that the information is reliable or complete. The FT does not accept responsibility and will not be liable for any loss arising from the reliance on or use of the information. For further information contact newspapers@ice.com