- FTSE 100 rises 125 points to 10,806
- HSBC tops risers on back of results, raised outlook
- Diageo falls after slashing dividend to fund reset
- UK energy price cap cut by 7%, including for fixed tariffs
4.55pm: 11,000 in sight
It was another record-breaking day for the FTSE 100, which added 125 points to close at 10,806.
“There seems to be no stopping the FTSE 100. Another week like this and the index will top 11,000, just weeks after it first crossed the magic 10,000 level,” IG chief market analyst Chris Beauchamp said.
“It has the winning combination for investors right now – a lower valuation than pricey US markets, and key sectors driving that are much less vulnerable to AI-driven panic selloffs.”
4.15pm: FTSE flying down the finishing straight
Oof, a final push and the Footsie is above the 10,800 milestone to top off another of its series of 100-plus sessions this year.
(I suppose 100 points becomes steadily less impressive the higher the index goes but still.)
A whopping 7.5% gain for HSBC has catapulted the Asia-focused bank back to take the crown as the largest company in the index from AstraZeneca.
Miners, led by Fresnillo, Antofagasta and Glencore, are also fueling the rise, up around 3-6.5%.
Also, rebounds for those damaged by the AI-fear trade are helping, with RELX up 6.5%, Experian up 4%, LSE up 1.1%, banks too, with Barclays, Lloyds and NatWest all up at least 1.5%.
Biggest fallers today are Diageo and Haleon. The former is down 12.7% after halving its interim dividend as new CEO 'Drastic' Dave Lewis looks to give himeself some more financial flexibility for a reset.
Haleon, meanwhile, has fallen 6.7% after the toothpaste and headache tablet maker reported revenue growth of 3% compared to its own 4-6% medium-term range.
3.41pm: Centrica's infrastructure is key, says RBC
RBC reckons nuclear power is doing the heavy lifting in Centrica's revised growth story, leading analysts to lift their own price target.
The British Gas owner formally extended the operating lives of four of its five nuclear facilities, adding around £300 million to projected EBITDA by 2030.
The infrastructure buildout is the cleaner part of the thesis, with stakes in Sizewell C, Isle of Grain, and smart meters giving the business a growing base of contracted, long-life cash flows that analysts can model with reasonable confidence.
Elsewhere, Shore Capital's Clive Black argues UK supermarkets are well placed as defensive cash generators, with grocery sales growth of 3-4% expected to outpace new store space of 1-1.5%, supporting higher sales densities and free cash flow for dividends and buybacks.
Food inflation is forecast to ease to 2-2.5% by Christmas as commodity pressures stabilise, while the impact of weight-loss drugs may trim volumes but improve product mix and margins.
With Tesco, Sainsbury’s and M&S carrying relatively low debt versus more leveraged rivals, Black sees the listed players well positioned, flagging M&S as a valuation outlier on 11.8 times 2027 earnings.
3.16pm: Anthropic's own tensions
More thoughts, from Citi, on the Anthropic 'Enterprise Agents' briefing this week and how it reveals how AI labs are grappling with the same problem that has tripped up enterprise software vendors for decades: change management.
The event was less a product launch than a positioning exercise, with the Claude developer showcasing various customer stories: Spotify cut engineering time on complex code migrations, Novo Nordisk improved clinical study documentation timelines, Salesforce reduced turnaround times in Slack.
While the subtext was that Anthropic is trying to embed Claude Cowork as the default "thinking engine" for knowledge work, Citi analyst Heath Terry has flagged a structural tension.
"Today's feature improvements heavily emphasize admin controls, extensibility, and auditability," he notes.
"These announcements, coupled with Anthropic's partnerships with global systems integrators and more niche, AI-focused SIs, suggest frontier AI model providers also face the classic enterprise bottleneck of change management and must meet enterprises where they are in order to drive successful implementations, prove out ROI and continue to generate demand for the same unit of intelligence as rising inference costs impact margins and, potentially, the pace of adoption."
2.47pm: Wall Street opens in green
US stocks have opened higher, led by tech stocks.
The Nasdaq has climbed 0.9%, with ther S&P 500 rising 0.6% and the Dow Jones up 0.4%.
All but three of the Nasdaq's largest 20 stocks were in green, with top risers on the exchange including Axon Enterprise on the back of earnings, Strategy on the back of a bitcoin bounce, Western Digital and Seagate Technology up as storage companies get some support.
On the Dow, IBM and Visa were the top risers, rebounding from falls earlier in the week.
1.24pm: Aston Martin to cut 20% of staff
Aston Martin Lagonda said it is planning to axe a fifth of its workforce in order to try and cut about £40 million of costs.
Alongside a profit warning last week (its second in six months), the company said it had started consulting on its latest round of redundancies.
Today, its intention was revealed to trim staff numbers by around 500, having last year cut 170 jobs.
"Having undertaken at the start of 2025 a process to make organisational adjustments to ensure the business was appropriately resourced for its future plans, we had to take the difficult decision at the end of 2025 to implement further changes," Aston Martin said.
"This latest programme will ultimately see the departure of up to 20% of our valued workforce."
12.32pm: European shares on the rise, London out in front
London's blue-chip index is outperforming European peers on Wednesday, with the 1% gain compared to 0.5% for Germany's DAX, 0.4% for France's CAC and 0.7% for Spain's IBEX, which is also pushing its own record highs.
The Footsie hitting fresh record highs comes with a big hand from the 5.2% surge in HSBC, the index's second largest company.
Miners are also doing some heavy lifting, with Fresnillo (up 6.8%), Antofagasta (up 5%), Anglo Amercian (5%), Rio Tinto (3.2%) and Endeavour (2.8%) also a dominant presence at the top of the leaderboard.
St James's Place and Hiscox, elsewhere in the financial sector, are also on in the top 10 after their results were well received.
"As a whole, the positive sentiment seen throughout Europe does look to be a reflection of the upbeat tone seen in both the US and Asia, with indices all moving higher in tandem," says Joshua Mahony at Scope Markets.
"The banking sector found itself in the limelight after recent claims that AI advances would slash their margins and erode profits through new tools that would automatically search and switch to the most competitive products."
Japan's Nikkei also notched up a fresh record high as the yen lost ground off the back of Prime Minister Takaichi nominating two dovish academics to the Bank of Japan and with reports expressed her concerns over any potential additional rate hikes in a meeting with the governor of the central bank last week.
"Coming at a time where fiscal stimulus was expected to be counterbalanced by tighter monetary policy, Takaichi clearly wants to see the economy firing on all cylinders despite inflation fears.
"This flies in the face of the latest comments from the former BoJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda, who sees it necessary to hike twice in both 2026 and 2027, while warning that higher spending and lower taxes would spark higher inflation."
11.39am: Impact of UK energy bills
Some analysis and opinion on the energy price cap, which will be falling by £117 for the average household from early April.
The lower energy price cap may boost the chances of a March interest rate cut from the Bank of England, says Kathleen Brooks at XTB.
She notes that there has been a "mild scaling back" of rate cut bets for next month's meeting, following BoE testimony to the Treasury Select Committee this week, which sounded concerned about the strength of service price inflation.
"The energy price cap dip in April is down to lower wholesale energy prices. It should underpin hopes for a rate cut in the coming months," says Brooks.
"While a cut is still expected in either March or April, the timing of a second cut is in question, the second cut is now not expected until November, which suggests that he path for inflation in the coming months is important for the timing of future rate cuts, and the deteriorating labour market is not the only concern on the mind of BOE policymakers."
Danni Hewson at AJ Bell says many households may wonder why the £117 savings coming in April fall short of the £150 cut that chancellor Reeves promised in November, especially as wholesale energy costs have also fallen slightly.
"The rising cost of maintaining and improving the network is worrying," she says. "This is especially the case as demand for electricity is set to continue rising as data centres, EVs and households switch away from gas heating and alter the UK’s energy requirements."
It will potentially be a "bitter pill to swallow" for many who have cut their energy usage back, as households that use the most power are due to save the most from the changes.
Looking back at where things stood last year, the price cap is £200 lower, but the price cap is "staying much higher than historic levels".
11.07am: Aston Martin tyres further deflated
Aston Martin shares opened higher on the back of this morning's prelims but have scraped a new low as the morning has worn on.
Having already warned on profits last week, the supercar maker told investors it expects a material improvement in financial performance this year as the Valhalla supercar ramps and cost actions take effect.
The shares nudged up 1.85% to 57.95p initially before falling to 55.35p a new all-time low, down 49% over the past 12 months.
10.43am: Copper bottomed gains
More on copper, where Citi says LME prices are set to touch $14,000, driven by Chinese supply-chain restocking after Lunar New Year holidays and continued dip-buying from investors.
The bank sees a "bullish risk-reward skew" despite difficulty calling price direction with conviction. Three key factors support upside: investor appetite to price in cyclical growth optimism, increasing hard asset exposure tied to de-'dollarisation' and resource security themes, and potential supply disappointments.
Chinese manufacturers returning from CNY holidays have historically created demand spikes as factories rebuild inventories.
This year's restocking phase coincides with broader investor interest in commodities as inflation hedges and dollar alternatives.
Citi maintains its $13,000 per tonne average forecast for 2026, unchanged from previous guidance. The bank believes this level will broadly balance global physical copper markets throughout the year, though near-term momentum could push prices higher before settling.
Supply disruptions remain a wild card that could accelerate gains beyond current projections.
10.18am: FTSE levels off at new high
After hitting a high of 10,785 for a short while ago, the FTSE is levelling off just below there.
The FTSE 250 is also on the front foot this morning, up 0.6% to the bigger sibling's 0.9% gain.
Hiscox is top of the blue-chip leaderboard now, up 5.85% after publishing final results showing premium growth accelerating to 6.3%, EPS is ahead of consensus and announced another buyback, of $300 million, that was 43% above forecasts.
Analyst Teik Derald Goh at Jefferies says that delving deeper into the growth trends, he note that while Hiscox USA continues to lift its growth momentum, "the pace is lagging consensus".
Looking across the London market as a whole, analyst Susannah Streeter at Wealth Club says: "London’s Footsie is in a footloose mood again, with higher metals prices buoying mining stocks and corporate results from financial giants surprising on the upside.
"The index has scaled fresh heights in early trade, with investors showing enthusiasm for London-listed stocks amid global uncertainty."
She says mining stocks have ramped higher as "tense trade and geopolitics [is] keeping up enthusiasm for precious metals, while demand for copper has increased".
Gold is up 0.8% at $5,180 an ounce, silver has surged 4.2% to $90.7/oz, and copper has risen another 0.4%, pushing up Antofagasta in early trade after the end of the Chinese lunar holiday saw a raft of buying
"Traders are continuing to see upside for copper, given that, under current new US tariffs, China’s metal exports will benefit from lower duties."
Streeter says there were "no big surprises" in President Trump’s State of the Union address, with his unwillingness to change course on trade policy hitting the dollar while another warning to Tehran, saying that while his preference was diplomacy, he would “never” allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon helped push up the price of crude oil.
9.44am: IPF deal has some support
International Personal Finance is up 6.6% after US private equity group BasePoint Capital raised its recommended bid and the company simultaneously reported a stronger-than-expected full-year result.
The revised offer from BasePoint's acquisition vehicle comprises 235p in cash plus a 15p special dividend, bringing the total consideration to 250p per share, compared with 235p previously. It also is in addition to the final dividend of 9p per share, which
shareholders will be permitted to retain.
The shares are bang on that level now, having earlier traded half a penny above the offer to suggest some investors are either holding out for a further sweetener or positioning on the small but non-zero possibility that a competing bid emerges before the scheme completes.
The deal requires court sanction and approval from IPF shareholders at meetings scheduled for 11 March, with two institutional shareholders having already lined up behind the scheme.
Analyst Gary Greenwood at Shore Capital says the revised terms imply a price 1.2 times tangible net asset value, representing around a 40% premium to the undisturbed pre-offer price of 179p.
He had previously had a 'sell' recommendation on the shares, "predicated on the risk that the initial offer would be rejected in the absence of an improved bid and it wasn’t clear whether Basepoint had the funding in place to go higher; while we were correct on the need for a higher price, the offer has now been increased to a level we believe is likely to secure shareholder approval and, crucially, to the level we had consistently suggested (>250p) would be required to get the deal done".
9.24am: Trainline falls as CEO is leaving
Trainline shares are down 6% after the ticketing app developer said that chief executive Jody Ford was disembarking.
Ford, who has led Trainline for more than six years, will remain in post while the board conducts a formal search for his successor. No timeline for the transition was given.
Chair Brian McBride credited him with transforming Trainline into what the company describes as Europe's leading independent rail travel platform, serving 27 million customers.
Ford framed the timing as deliberate rather than forced, saying he and McBride had agreed that as Trainline enters its next multi-year growth phase, a leadership change made sense. "I will work closely with the Board and my outstanding team over the coming months to ensure a smooth transition," he said.
8.56am: AI fear latest
There is a "better tone to risk sentiment" this morning, says market analyst Kathleen Brooks at XTB, which she puts down to fears about AI easing and news that UK household energy bills will fall by 7%.
She says the better mood on Wall Street overnight saw tech and consumer discretionary stocks rally, with software and service providers clawing back recent losses.
After Applovin, Oracle, Adobe, and IBM all rose more than 2%, they are still deeply in the red in the year to date.
And following another new Anthropic AI plug-in to work with software providers to help automate work in HR and investment banking, Brooks says this news "might reinforce hope that AI will integrate with software providers rather than replace them.
"This could be a powerful message that helps soothe investors who have been caught in an existential crisis about the future of the global economy in the age of AI.
"It will be interesting to see if the latest Anthropic development, with AI becoming a partner to industry and tech firms rather than a threat, can also calm fears around private credit."
Analysts at Wedbush watched the new Claude demos and said the market's AI disruption trade is based on a misunderstanding.
Another source of angst for markets has been around the future of private credit.
UBS has published a report that said private credit defaults could reach 15% in a worst-case scenario, with the potential trigger for such an event being "a rapid, severe AI disruption".
Strategist Matthew Mish, refreshing a report on the sector from November, said: "While default rates remain contained, stress indicators are rising. Private credit defaults are reportedly between 3% and 5%, and signs of strain – such as interest paid-in-kind – are nearing post-pandemic highs."
Various metrics "suggest that while the market is not in crisis, it is increasingly kicking the can down the road and vulnerable to macroeconomic deterioration, sectoral disruptions or liquidity shocks".
8.33am: Diageo slumps
Diageo shares are down 6.1%, the biggest faller on the Footsie.
The dividend cut to 20 cents was expected by many, says analyst Edward Mundy at Jefferies, though the City consensus was still at 43c versus the prior year at 40.5c.
First-half organic revenues were worse than expected but EBIT was not as bad as feared.
He does expect the full-year profits and EPS forecasts to move materially today but "there could be some modest shaving to F27 given the weaker topline dynamic".
With the conference call with analysts and media will be at 9.30am possibly providing more info. he says the "key areas of debate today will be the divi cut and weaker than anticipated topline, in particular in US.
"Commentary from in-coming CEO points to an appropriate level of impatience and plenty of opportunities to drive stronger top and bottom line, however as expected, 1H was never going to be the strategic reset. Market will question whether a further earnings reset could come at a later stage for F27."
8.15am: FTSE opens higher as HSBC and miners rally
The FTSE 100 has surged 83 points higher at the open to new highs above 10,764.
HSBC is leading the way after results beat expectations, with its shares up 5.4%.
Copper miner Antofagasta and precious metals miner Fresnillo are next, both up over 4.5%.
8am: Jet2 says profits on track
Jet2 says full-year profits will be in line with market expectations as it prepares to open its new London Gatwick base next month.
The package holiday specialist expects operating profit for the year to end-March 2026 to match consensus forecasts of £439 million, which includes around £10 million of start-up costs linked to the Gatwick launch next month.
Winter 2025-26 seat capacity is 5.5 million, up 7.4% on the previous winter, with pricing having followed a similar trend to last summer.
7.46am: HSBC delivers beat and raise
HSBC has reported a smaller decline in profits than forecast and lifted its targets for medium-term income and returns.
Pre-tax profit for the year fell by 7.4% to $29.9 billion, but this was ahead of the average analyst forecast of £28.9 billion.
The profit decline was mainly due to a $4.9 billion adverse impact from 'notable items', including $2.1 billion of losses linked to its stake in China’s BoCom, $1.5 billion from the sale of its French loan book, $1.0 billion of restructuring costs and $1.4 billion of legal provisions, including to the Bernie Madoff lawsuit.
Chief executive Georges Elhedery said the bank is raising its ambitions and targeting a 17% RoTE or better in each year from 2026 to 2028.
7.27am: Diageo halves dividend as new CEO Lewis begins reset
Investors have been waiting to see what new Diageo CEO 'Drastic' Dave Lewis would do, and he has kicked things off by halving the interim dividend and resetting the dividend policy in order to get more flexibility to capture what he sees as “significant opportunities” to drive higher growth.
This was alongside first-half results where weaker US spirits demand and softness in Chinese spirits led to net sales falling 4% to $10.5 billion in the six months to end-December, with organic sales down 2.8%.
Lewis signalled a broader strategic reset, outlining a renewed focus on category strategy, customer execution and a redesign of Diageo’s operating framework, saying the group is seeking to deliver stronger and more sustainable returns.
Not for this year or the next few though, with the interim dividend cut to 20 cents from 40.5 cents a year earlier and the payout policy cut to 30-50% of earnings, with a minimum 50 cents per year.
7.21am: Energy bills cut
UK domestic energy bills will fall 7% from April, regulator Ofgem has confirmed this morning.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves had announced in the Autumn Budget that to help cut the cost of living, an average of £150 would be cut from the costs of energy bills from this spring.
This is being done by ending funding for the Energy Company Obligation scheme, as well as removing 75% of costs for the Renewables Obligation scheme from residential energy bills.
Ofgem has today confirmed the energy price cap for April, which limits bills for those on standard variable tariffs for gas and electricity.
Energy suppliers have confirmed that the savings will be passed on in full to customers on fixed price tariffs, so even households already on a fixed tariff on 1 April this will be amended so that savings are applied. Energy companies should be contacting customers to confirm new rates.
7.15am: FTSE 100 called higher as metals rally
The FTSE 100 should get off to a stronger start on Wednesday, most probably led by miners as metals like gold and copper rallied.
London's blue-chip index is showing a gain of 42 points on the futures market, after an essentially flat day yesterday, ending four points lower at 10,680.59.
US stocks bounced back overnight as investors shrugged off the start of Donald Trump’s new tariffs, with the Nasdaq adding 1% and both the Dow Jones and S&P 500 rising 0.8%.
Asian markets are in green this morning, led by a 2.2% surge for Tokyo’s Nikkei 225, while Hong Kong, Shanghai and Mumbai are showing solid gains of around 0.5-0.7%.
Market analyst Kyle Rodda at Capital.com highlighted the "narrative somersaults relating to artificial intelligence" were ongoing, with Claude developer Anthropic holding a webinar and said its technology enhances rather replaces existing software systems, "easing the fears ostensibly triggered by a research note from a day earlier describing a labour market cataclysm caused by AI".
"Ultimately, the fundamental questions remain unanswered when it comes to AI, the tech sector and the broader market. AI disruption is real, so what will that mean? AI spending is high, so will that disruption be monetised at a rate that delivers sufficient ROI?"