10:27 AM
Amazon’s site also down
Amazon’s retail website is also down, with the company’s home page failing to load.
10:22 AM
Major website outage tied to data centre provider
Speculation is rising that the mass website outage has been caused by a glitch at data centre provider Fastly.
The status page of Fastly confirms an outage. “We’re currently investigating potential impact to performance with our CDN services,” the company said.
10:20 AM
News websites go offline around the world
Major news websites are scrambling to restore their services after their websites went offline, reports Ben Woods.
Users of The New York Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times and social media platform Reddit were hit by error messages when trying to gain access to the websites.
Attempts to access The New York Times and the FT’s websites have been met with a white screen and a “Error 503 service unavailable” statement.
The message indicates that the server is unable to handle a request to access the website.
10:07 AM
Government and media websites knocked offline
The Gov.uk website along with a series of media outlets have gone down this morning, with Bloomberg, the Financial Times, the Guardian and the New York Times all offline.
09:56 AM
A third of pubs’ profits cut by more than half
Profits at a third of pubs have been cut by more than half with furlough rates still higher than average, according to a new ONS report.
Confidence in the pub industry has increased in recent months but 33pc landlords still suffered “significant profit losses” last month. This is significantly worse than in other areas of UK industry, with only 9pc of all UK businesses reporting similar losses.
The ONS stressed that this is an improvement after Christmas restrictions resulted in “huge losses in trade”.
The survey showed that just over a fifth of pub businesses had high confidence of surviving the next three months, compared with around 44pc for all types of company.
More than half (55pc) of all pub staff were also still on furlough in early May, compared with around 8pc of the UK’s wider workforce.
09:43 AM
Sadiq Khan to axe Tube and bus services in brutal cost cuts
Sadiq Khan is preparing to cut Tube and bus services, axe jobs and close departments at Transport for London as he scrambles to fill a gaping hole in the capital’s public transport budget, reports Oliver Gill.
He writes:
The London mayor must save £900m a year under the terms of TfL’s latest bailout from Westminster after its business model was wrecked by Covid.
Boris Johnson’s administration stumped up another £1bn of taxpayer cash to avoid London’s public transport grinding to a halt between now and December, taking TfL’s total bailout since the start of the pandemic to £5bn.
Read the full story here.
09:18 AM
UK M&A bounces back to pre-pandemic highs
There were 153 completed mergers and acquisitions in March 2021, the highest level seen since the 196 deals completed in March 2020, the Office of National Statistics said today.
M&A activity was impacted by the pandemic, where the total number of completed monthly domestic and cross-border deals fell from 196 in March 2020 to a low of 58 in May 2020.
Since then, M&A activity has been on an upward trajectory, with a slight blip in January.
In the first three months of 2021, the total value of foreign takeovers was £6.1bn – a £0.1bn increase compared to the previous 12 months.
By comparison, the value of UK companies acquiring other UK companies (£3.8bn) and UK companies acquiring foreign companies (£2.5bn) both decreased – falling £5.3bn and £1.9bn respectively.
09:05 AM
London Metal Exchange to reopen trading floor after backlash
The London Metal Exchange has shelved plans to replace its iconic open-outcry trading ring with digital trading and instead will reopen “The Ring” in September.
The trading ring, where around $50bn of metal trades are made everyday, closed in March 2020 for the first time since the Second World War due to the pandemic and switched to an electronic system to establish daily benchmark prices.
The LME had proposed to make those changes permanent from January but was met with heavy resistance from brokers and users, who said the closing of the floor has hurt trading volumes and made pricing less robust.
The LME today announced a compromise – the Ring will establish so-called official prices, which are heavily relied on in the physical industry. The end-of-day closing prices, which financial institutions use to value their positions, will be set using an electronic process.
The Ring, with its distinctive red circular sofa, is Europe’s last open-outcry trading floor and traces its origins back to the early 1800s. Its supporters say the daily shouting match between floor traders remains the best way to establish global benchmark prices.
My colleague Simon Foy has more on this story here.
08:46 AM
German industrial output drops on supply chain disruptions
German industrial production dropped more than expected in April, with the economy ministry blaming “a shortage of producer goods, especially semiconductors and lumber”.
The federal statistics agency Destatis said industrial output fell 1pc, double the 0.5pc predicted and 5.6pc lower than February 2020, the month before the first coronavirus restrictions were imposed.
08:41 AM
BOE unveils sweeping new climate test of banks and insurers
The Bank of England started a major new stress test of the country’s biggest banks and insurers to judge how resilient they are to climate change.
Bloomberg has more details:
The assessment, delayed last year because of the pandemic, requires HSBC Holdings Plc, Barclays Plc and other lenders to scrutinise the impact of global warming on everything from real estate to corporate loans. Aviva Plc and Phoenix Group Holdings Plc are among insurers also covered by the test.
The test will be based on three scenarios that assume early, late and no policy action on the climate over 30 years, as designed for central banks globally by the Network for Greening the Financial System. It’s meant as an “exploratory exercise” and won’t be used to set capital requirements, the BOE said.
“Though fiendishly complicated, climate scenario analysis is a critical part of our toolkit to address future uncertainty about what might happen to our planet, our economy and our financial system,” Sarah Breeden, the BOE’s executive sponsor for climate change, said today.
The test is a significant milestone in the U.K.’s efforts to reckon with global warming and comes ahead of Britain hosting the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow later this year. The BOE said it will publish results in May 2022 on how the broader industry fared but won’t release results for individual firms.
08:24 AM
Activist Cevian reveals Aviva stake and pushes for £5bn of capital return
Aviva shares rose more than 3pc this morning after activist investor Cevian Capital said the insurer should return £5bn of excess capital in 2022, after revealing it had built up a near 5pc stake in the British insurer.
“Aviva has been poorly managed for many years, and its high-quality core businesses have been held back by high costs and a series of bad strategic decisions,” Christer Gardell, managing partner and co-founder of Cevian said, adding Aviva should have a value of more than £8 per share within three years, and more than double its dividend to 45p.
The statement puts the new chief executive Amanda Blanc, who joined in July, under pressure to accelerate the pace of disposals.
Aviva has sold eight businesses since Blanc’s appointment and said last month it had raised £7.5bn from disposals and planned to return money to shareholders, without sharing speicifics.
My colleague Simon Foy has more on this story here.
08:11 AM
Trump calls Bitcoin ‘a scam’ threatening the dollar’s dominance
Donald Trump has called Bitcoin a “scam” that is “competing against the dollar”, following news that El Salvador planned to make the world’s biggest cryptocurrency legal tender.
Speaking to Fox Business, the former President said he wanted the dollar to be the “currency of the world”.
Some countries, including Iran, have in the past tried to use cryptocurrencies as a way to evade sanctions and circumvent a financial system dominated by the dollar.
However experts are divided about whether Bitcoin really does pose a threat to America’s influence.
In May, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said at its current level of mining, Iran’s bitcoin production would amount to revenues close $1bn a year – allowing the country to buy imports and lessen the impact of US sanctions.
08:01 AM
Easyjet share price tries to regain losses
Easyjet’s share price was trying to claw back losses this morning (up 1.6pc) after the government removed Portugal from the quarantine-free travel ‘green list’ – a decision described by EasyJet chief executive Johan Lundgren as a “huge blow” that hurts both the business and travellers.
Despite gains this morning, the airline’s share price remains almost 5pc lower than the beginning of May when the travel industry was more optimistic and hoped the vaccine roll-out would bring more consistency with rules around overseas travel.
07:27 AM
Strong earning reports push up the FTSE
The FTSE 100 is edging higher, after opening flat this morning – boosted by earnings updates from alternative asset manager Intermediate Capital Group (up 4.3pc) and British American Tobacco (up 1.9pc).
Intermediate Capital Group posted a 19pc jump in its annual third-party assets under management (AUM) as coronavirus vaccines and government support measures boosts investor sentiment.
Meanwhile British American Tobacco raised its annual revenue growth forecast to more than 5pc as the cigarette maker reaps the rewards of pivoting to newer products like e-cigarettes and tobacco-heating devices.
However, gains on the blue chip index were limited on the FTSE 100 by a fall in heavyweight oil majors BP (down 0.5pc) and Royal Dutch Shell (down 0.8pc) following slipping crude prices.
The domestically focused mid-cap FTSE 250 index advanced 0.2pc, as mortgage provider Paragon Banking Group lifted 4.6pc after reporting new mortgage loans jumper 45pc in the half year to March. The group unveiled a £40m share buy scheme as its profits surged.
07:10 AM
FTSE opens flat
The FTSE 100 has opened flat at around 7,081 points while the FTSE 250 is up 0.1pc at 22,940 points.
Following a mixed session on Wall Street, markets in London are set for another uneventful day. Instead, drama is coming from cryptocurrencies – which are are falling around 10pc this morning.
Memestocks AMC Entertainment and GameStop were also both rallying yesterday as investors attempted to bump them up into the large-cap Russell 1000 index.
The annual re-ordering is based on information available on rank day – this year, May 7 – Catherine Yoshimoto, FTSE Russell’s director of product management told Bloomberg.
An existing Russell 2000 index member would have had to have a total market cap exceeding $7.3bn in order to move into the Russell 1000 index which tracks the highest-ranking stocks in the Russell 3000 Index, she said.
Going by that, AMC – with a market cap of $4.28bn on May 7 – would fall short of inclusion, while GameStop and its $11.97 billion market cap would make it.
06:35 AM
Bitcoin ransom recovered
Bitcoin has fallen more than 2pc and tumbled almost 6pc at one point in Asian trading. The cause of the latest slide is unclear but could be related to the recovery of a high-profile Bitcoin ransom in the US.
The US Justice Department on Monday said it had recovered some $2.3m in cryptocurrency ransom paid by Colonial Pipeline, cracking down on hackers who launched the most disruptive US cyberattack on record.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said investigators had seized 63.7 Bitcoins paid by Colonial after last month’s hack of its systems that led to massive shortages at US East Coast gas stations.
The fact that investigators “could trace the untraceable and seize it might be undermining the libertarian, free-of-government-control case,” Jeffrey Halley, a senior market analyst at Oanda, told Bloomberg. The implications of that may have provoked the selling, he said.
06:30 AM
Cryptocurrencies fall
Good morning. Bitcoin has resumed sliding while the FTSE is tipped to open flat.
5 things to start your day
1) Johnson’s low-carbon agenda at risk as French shut nuclear plant: Concerns UK’s net zero target could be missed as technical problems force EDF to bring forward closure of Kent power plant by seven years.
2) Sadiq Khan to axe Tube and bus services in brutal cost cuts: London mayor must save £900m a year under terms of TfL’s latest bailout from Westminster after business model was wrecked by Covid.
3) Amazon transforms home hubs and door bells into stealthy wireless network: Tens of millions of Amazon smart home devices across the US will become transmitters for a new wireless network.
4) Corporation tax plan targets Amazon’s cloud computing business: The OECD, which is at the centre of the plans, is considering treating Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing division, as a separate entity.
5) Sunak vows to protect the City in face of Brussels bid to steal its crown: The Chancellor told bank bosses in a private call that the City will remain “competitive and dynamic” despite Brussels bid to steal its crown.
What happened overnight
Asian stocks opened higher on Tuesday, cruising in the slipstream of a record high overnight gauge of global equity markets, with investors hoping for inflation and monetary policy clues later in a week full of key central bank meetings and data points.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.32pc at 0130GMT, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 edged up 0.35pc, as the country revised first-quarter data showing the economy shrank at a slower pace than initially reported.
MSCI’s gauge of Asia Pacific stocks outside Japan rose 0.11pc, following the path taken by its All-Country World Index, which advanced 0.1pc on Monday, hitting its sixth record close in seven days.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index opened up 0.4pc while China’s benchmark CSI300 Index opened flat.
Coming up today
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Corporate: British American Tobacco, Paragon Banking, RWS Holdings (Interim); Card Factory, Intermediate Capital, Oxford Instruments, Palace Capital, Vp (Full year)
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Economics: BRC retail sales monitor (UK), GDP Q1 final (Japan, eurozone), industrial production, ZEW surveys (Germany)
