Business live blog, Thursday July 10 — as it happened

Britain plans to invest €163.3 million in the satellite operator Eutelsat alongside France, which is making a much bigger cash injection.

Eutelsat owns and manages 34 geostationary satellites and more than 600 low Earth orbit satellites, the world’s second biggest satellite constellation after Elon Musk’s Starlink. President Trump’s America First policies have prompted European countries to seek to boost their own space technologies.

The UK’s investment will allow it to maintain its 10.89 per cent stake in Eutelsat, which would otherwise have been diluted by the French investment. This will result in the French government becoming the largest shareholder in the company later this year, after it injects €750 million to bring its stake to 29.65 per cent.

The UK will also retain its golden share in OneWeb, Eutelsat’s London-based subsidiary, which gives it certain veto powers.

The luxury goods group Mulberry has raised £20 million from its leading investors Challice and Frasers Group.

The company is also undertaking a separate, smaller retail offer to existing shareholders, expected to raise £1.2 million.

The funds will be used to “accelerate its growth strategy”, said the company.

Mulberry also released its results for the year to March 29, in which it reported a 21 per cent decline in group revenue to £120.4 million compared with £152.8 million previously. It said this reflected “challenging macro-economic conditions”.

UK retail and digital revenue was down 20 per cent in the face of inflationary pressures and uncertain economic conditions, while North America was 1 per cent below the previous period. Underlying pre-tax loss was £23.7 million compared with £22.6 million previously.

Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia, former boss of Virgin Money, is joining the energy firm Ovo as chair, replacing Justin King, a former Sainsbury’s boss, who is stepping down as group chairman.

The move, first reported by Sky News, is part of a boardroom shake-up at the company in which Miguel Gaspar Silva and Andy Cox will be appointed to the board of Kaluza, Ovo Group’s technology arm.

Gadhia’s appointment comes as the company, Britain’s fourth biggest home energy supplier, is reported to be in the early stages of merger talks with Scottish Power. It is also seeking an additional £300 million of financial backing from investors.

Ovo’s shareholders include the private equity firm Mayfair Equity Partners, Morgan Stanley Investment Management and Japan’s Mitsubishi Corporation.

The Italian competition authority the AGCM has opened an investigation into some units of the UK-based online banking firm Revolut for alleged unfair commercial practices.

Revolut allegedly misled users in promoting investments in shares by emphasising the absence of commissions and failing to flag additional costs and limitations, the AGCM said.

Revolut said it was fully co-operating with the AGCM and would continue to do so but it could not comment on specific details because the investigation was under way.

According to the AGCM, Revolut did not make clear that its so-called zero-fee products included fractional shares, which are significantly different from whole stocks in terms of voting and transfer rights.

It also said that Revolut had adopted an aggressive approach in suspending and blocking financial accounts without providing customers with sufficient notice or adequate assistance.

Three teenagers and a woman have been arrested in the UK as part of an investigation into cyberattacks targeting Marks & Spencer, Co-op and Harrods.

The National Crime Agency said the individuals were arrested early on Thursday morning on suspicion of blackmail, money laundering, offences linked to the Computer Misuse Act and participating in the activities of an organised crime group.

The arrests included a 17-year-old British man from the West Midlands, a 19-year-old Latvian man from the West Midlands, a 19-year-old British man from London and a 20-year-old British woman from Staffordshire.

M&S said: “We welcome this development and thank the NCA for its diligent work on this incident.”

A move to zonal electricity pricing around Britain has been rejected by the government, in a decision welcomed by the majority of energy industry bosses.

Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, said: “A reformed system of national pricing is the best way to deliver an electricity system that is fairer, more affordable, and more secure.” Zonal pricing, he said, would have jeopardised “vital investment in clean energy”.

ScottishPower and SSE, which own and develop wind farms and power networks, said this would end the uncertainty that had been clouding investment.

The decision was also welcomed by the manufacturing groups Make UK and UK Steel, which feared that zonal pricing would have led to a “postcode lottery” for industry.

Octopus Energy, which has championed the proposals, said consumers now faced “seemingly inevitable price rises” unless the government produced a credible alternative.

Opec has cut its oil demand forecasts for the next four years as Chinese growth slows but said there was no evidence that demand had reached its peak.

World demand will average 105 million barrels per day (bpd) this year, the oil cartel said in its 2025 World Oil Outlook published today. It expects demand to grow to an average 106.3 million bpd in 2026 and then climb to 111.6 million bpd in 2029.

The forecasts for demand in 2026 through to 2029 are all lower than last year: demand in 2026 had been forecast at 108 million bpd and the 2029 forecast is down 700,000 bpd from last year’s figure.

“Oil underpins the global economy and is central to our daily lives,” Haitham al-Ghais, the Opec secretary-general, said. “There is no peak oil demand on the horizon.”

Abu Dhabi’s state-owned renewable energy company Masdar and Iberdrola will jointly invest €5.2 billion in an offshore wind farm in Britain, the companies said.

Under the agreement, Masdar and Iberdrola, the Spanish company that owns Scottish Power, will each hold a 50 per cent stake in the 1.4 gigawatt project, East Anglia THREE. The companies called it one of the largest offshore wind transactions of the decade and also said they were looking at other opportunities in the clean energy sector.

East Anglia THREE is located off the Suffolk coast and is expected to start operations in the final quarter of 2026, helping to power 1.3 million homes.

Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi, Masdar’s chief executive, said the project showed how cross-border partnerships could deliver “transformative impact at scale”.

WK Kellogg’s shares have jumped sharply in pre-market trading on reports that Italian chocolate maker Ferrero Rocher is nearing a deal to buy the firm for $3 billion.

The family-owned Ferrero, the company behind the famous chocolate clusters and Nutella spread, could finalise a deal for the cereal firm as soon as this week, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Ferrero has been targeting the US to expand internationally.

WK Kellogg, maker of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies and a host of other breakfast cereals, has a market capitalisation of $1.5 billion along with about $500 million in debt.

It was created when Kellogg spun off its North American cereal business into a separate publicly traded company two years ago. The remaining snack business, called Kellanova, was bought by Mars for more than $30 billion last year.

ITV and the Walt Disney Company have agreed to share programmes across their streaming platforms in a first of a kind deal that underscores the shift in television viewing habits towards on-demand.

Under the deal, Disney+ subscribers will be able to view ITV shows such as Mr Bates vs The Post Office, Love Island and Vera; ITVX will have access to Disney series such as The Bear and The Kardashians, from July 16.

Karl Holmes, general manager, Disney+ in EMEA said that between 70 and 100 hours of Disney content would be available on ITVX at a time, on a rotating basis.

ITV’s studios business already makes television for Disney’s streaming platform, including Rivals and the remake of Blind Date.

The German DAX index has also risen to a new high this morning on hopes for a trade deal between the United States and the European Union.

The index rose 0.26 per cent to 24,619,16.

The DAX is made of mostly export-heavy German companies that make most of their revenue internationally and are therefore insulated a little from a sluggish domestic economy.

It has been buoyed this year by Berlin’s announcement of large-scale infrastructure and defence spending, which lifted shares in defence and industrial companies.

The fund manager Jupiter is to buy the churches and charities asset manager CCLA.

Jupiter is pay £100 million for the asset manager, which is part owned by the Church of England.

CCLA has spoken about corporate controversies. In May it threatened to sell its shares in the fast-food chain McDonald’s unless it engaged more with church concerns about modern-day slavery.

Shares in Jupiter rose 12 per cent to 121p and they are on track for their biggest daily increase since March 2020.

The water regulator has proposed a £24 million enforcement package on South West Water for “a range of failures in managing its wastewater treatment works and network”.

Pennon, which owns the South West Water utility, said in a separate statement that it would work on reducing spills and address environmental pollution by 2030 under the enforcement package, which was in lieu of a penalty of £19 million.

The commodities trader Trafigura is preparing to shut down one of Britain’s four remaining biodiesel plants, blaming weak government policies and cheap American imports.

Trafigura owns Greenergy, which operates the biodiesel production facility at Immingham in Lincolnshire.

Greenergy said it was beginning a consultation on plans to cease production at the site, which employs about sixty people and accounts for about a quarter of the UK’s domestic biodiesel production.

Emily Gosden has more here.

The FTSE 100 has hit a new intraday high this morning as heavily weighted miners rallied across the board.

The index has risen 0.7 per cent, or 67 points, to 8,931. This is above the previous record of 8,908.82 on March 3. If it closes at this level it would beat its record closing high of 8,884.92 on June 12.

Rio Tinto, Glencore and Anglo American are the leading risers, along with the gold miners Endeavour and Fresnillo.

Iron ore, copper and gold prices are all up.

PageGroup: Gross profit at the recruitment group fell 13 per cent to £194.8 million in the second quarter, 13 per cent lower than the same period last year. Nicholas Kirk, chief executive, said: “We delivered a resilient performance despite ongoing market- and tariff-related uncertainty.”

Vistry: The troubled FTSE 250 housebuilder said it expected to announce adjusted interim operating profit of about £125 million, down from £161.8 million over the same period last year, when it posts interim results in September. It built 6,800 houses in the first half of the year, down from 7,792 last year.

Deloitte: The Financial Reporting Council is investigating the audits by Azets and Deloitte of the London-based financial start-up Stenn, which collapsed last year leaving creditors more than £100 million out of pocket.

Britain’s leading advertising group has appointed a new chief executive a day after a profits warning that led its shares to drop nearly 19 per cent.

Cindy Rose, a senior executive at Microsoft and a WPP non-executive since 2019, will take over from Mark Read on September 1.

Read, who was parachuted into the top job after the abrupt resignation of Sir Martin Sorrell, announced he was leaving earlier in the year. During his seven-year stint as boss, WPP’s share price has halved in the face of new technologies, increased competition and difficulties in key markets.

Rose has spent the past nine years in senior leadership positions at Microsoft, where she rose to chief operating officer, global enterprise, after formerly being head of its UK business. Before that she worked at Vodafone and Virgin Media.

Philip Jansen, the WPP chairman, said she had supported the digital transformation of large enterprises around the world, including embracing artificial intelligence to create new business models and revenue streams.

“Her expertise in this landscape will be hugely valuable to WPP as the industry navigates fundamental changes and macroeconomic uncertainty,” he said.

Ofcom has removed Royal Mail’s obligation to deliver second-class letters six days a week, in what it said was an attempt to improve reliability and support a sustainable service.

The ending of Saturday deliveries for second-class post and the switch to an alternate weekday service instead will start from July 28.

The regulator believes that switching to alternate delivery days could realise annual net cost savings of between £250 million and £425 million.

Natalie Black, Ofcom’s group director for networks and communications, said: “These changes are in the best interests of consumers and businesses, as urgent reform of the postal service is necessary to give it the best chance of survival.”

Ofcom also announced that it was reducing Royal Mail’s existing delivery targets, 90 per cent of first class mail will need to be delivered next day, down from 93 per cent, and 95 per cent of second-class mail delivered within three days, down from 98.5 per cent.

Bitcoin rose above $112,000 for the first time to a fresh high with markets showing a greater appetite for risk assets.

The dollar weakened from a two-week high against a basket of currencies as markets held their nerve after President Trump’s latest tariff salvos, although the threat of a 50 per cent levy on Brazil hit the real. The price of gold rose 0.2 per cent to $3,320.81 an ounce.

There was some impetus from the minutes of the US Federal Reserve’s last meeting in which a majority of officials warned that trade tariffs would have “persistent effects” and few saw any reason to cut interest rates at the central bank’s next meeting later this month.

The bitcoin price fell back below $112,000 in later trading.

Asian stocks rose slightly this morning, buoyed by Nvidia’s brief rise to a record $4 trillion valuation but giving little reaction to President Trump’s latest tariff announcements.

US copper futures widened their premium to the London benchmark overnight after Trump announced plans to impose a 50 per cent tariff on copper from August 1.

The deadline shuts the door on a profitable arbitrage trade that began when Trump first hinted at copper tariffs in February. Traders have been shipping copper from around the world to the US in anticipation of higher prices.

Trump also threatened Brazil with a 50 per cent tariff on exports to the US and issued tariff notices to seven minor trading partners.

Stock markets in China, South Korea, Australia and Taiwan made slight gains. The Japanese Nikkei share index was one of the fallers, down 0.6 per cent, as trade frictions and an upcoming election weighed on sentiment. In India the Sensex was also lower.