Live news: US fintech FIS to spin off Worldpay payments business
Striking paramedics stand on a picket line at London’s Waterloo Ambulance Station last Friday. The strike only affects non-life-threatening calls © Carl Court/Getty Images
It’s another week of British industrial unrest. Officials at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency will also strike on Monday, followed on Wednesday by university staff – although they no longer teach in Wales – and then ambulance workers in Northern Ireland on Friday.
At least the UK government will be working hard and negotiations with the EU on the post-Brexit settlement for Northern Ireland are fast approaching. The matter is not on the formal agenda for the meeting of EU member state leaders in Brussels on Thursday, but London hopes it can make progress in discussions with these European leaders in the coming days.
NATO defense chiefs will also meet this week in Brussels to discuss the next steps in the border zone with Russia. Invitees include Ukraine’s defense minister and his colleagues from Finland and Sweden.
And the good news? Kosovo will celebrate 15 years of independence on Friday, and in Rio the annual carnival starts on Saturday.
Economic data
Inflation and gross domestic product are this week’s main economic themes with data on the former from the UK, US, India and France and the latter from the EU and Japan. The UK also provides updates on the labor market with a new unemployment figure.
There are no monetary policy committee meetings from the major economies, but on Tuesday Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is expected to nominate as the next central bank chief the respected expert and supporter of the country’s ultra-loose monetary policy, Kazuo Ueda.
That will ensure a smooth transition from incumbent Haruhiko Kuroda, who is due to step down in April after overseeing a decade of policies designed to keep interest rates at ultra-low levels by buying huge amounts of government bonds.
Companies
A Krispy Kreme branch in Tokyo. The donut seller is among consumer goods companies reporting earnings this week © Toshiyuki Aizawa/Reuters
We’re over the hump of the current earnings season, especially in the US, but there’s a lot in the diary for the next seven days.
Consumer goods brands loom large this week with figures from Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Krispy Kreme and Kraft Heinz. These companies’ products may not be the healthiest items on the supermarket shelf, but neither is inflation, which – if Unilever’s earnings report last week is anything to go by – is at least likely to benefit their top line. the companies’ accounts. But people are cutting back, which means the potential for a drop in sales volume.
The rate hikes to tame inflation have been good news for retail banks with rising net interest margins for lenders such as NatWest, which reports full-year figures on Friday. This is good for shareholders because it will push up capital levels to much more than regulatory minimums and open the door to some pretty lucrative dividend increases and share buybacks. Also, NatWest is still 44.98 per cent owned by the UK government, so the current income bonanza is good for UK taxpayers, but as my colleague Helen Thomas notes, it won’t last.
Barclays, which reports on Wednesday, is a bit of a different story. Its UK business should benefit from interest rate rises, but it is much more of a credit card business, so people will be focused on default rates and provisions in the UK and US. The decline in earnings in the investment bank, especially the advisory and capital markets unit, will also be in sharp focus. You can get a fuller picture by reading this Inside Business report from FT deputy editor Patrick Jenkins.
Read the entire weekly calendar here.
