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European defence company shares and gas prices fall after US and Ukraine discuss peace plan
European defence company stocks have dropped at the start of trading, and wholesale gas price are down too, after officials from Washington and Kyiv held weekend talks in Geneva over how to end the Ukraine-Russia war.
Last night, the US and Ukraine said they had created an “updated and refined peace framework” to end the war with Russia, after a row over an original US-backed document that included many of Moscow’s demands.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said he was “very optimistic” about the progress of the talks in Switzerland.
Rubio told reporters:
“I think we made a tremendous amount of progress.
We’ve really moved forward, so I feel very optimistic that we’re going to get there in a very reasonable period of time, very soon.”
Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, also sounded positive, saying the sides had made “very good progress”, and were “moving forward to the just and lasting peace Ukrainian people deserve”.
Ukraine’s European allies published their own Kyiv-friendly plan on Sunday. It says negotiations over territory should take place after a ceasefire is agreed and should start from the line of contact – the existing frontline.
The war continued over the weekend, though, with a Russian drone strike on the major Ukrainian city of Kharkiv killing four people and wounding 17 on Sunday.
Hopes that the Geneva talks could lead to a breakthough to end the talks – leading to fewer weapons sales - knocked German defence firm Rheinmettal down by 3.5% at the start of trading.
Renk, which makes propulsion and drivetrain components for military vehicles, are down over 4%.
In London, defence contractor Babcock’s shares have dropped by 1.4%, while BAE Systems dipped 1% at the open.
Seperately, Bloomberg reports that European natural gas prices have hit an 18 month low today.
They say:
European natural gas dropped below €30 a megawatt-hour for the first time in more than a year amid discussions about a potential end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Benchmark futures hit the lowest levels since May 2024. They had been trading in a narrow band for weeks as traders weighed the region’s ample supplies against frequently shifting weather forecasts, assessing whether there’ll be enough gas to get through winter.
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Metals recycling firm Unimetals files for liquidation
Metals recycling firm Unimetals has filed for compulsory liquidation, putting around 650 jobs at risk, PA Media reports.
The company, which operates 27 sites nationwide, is expected to begin winding down as soon as Tuesday after efforts to find a buyer for the business failed.
It follows several notices of intention to appoint administrators in recent weeks, with advisers from Alvarez & Marsal managing discussions with possible buyers, but they were unable to secure a sale.
A spokesperson for Unimetals said:
“We have worked tirelessly to explore every possible option to secure new financing for Unimetals Recycling (UK) Ltd, with the aim of meeting our financial obligations and safeguarding the future of the business.
“This included an accelerated M&A process, supported by our advisers and undertaken in full collaboration with stakeholders, to identify potential buyers or investors.
“Regretfully, despite substantial interest and attempts at completing a deal, no transaction was concluded.”
The spokesperson added:
“We recognise how distressing this news will be for everyone connected to Unimetals Recycling (UK) Ltd, particularly our employees who have worked tirelessly over the last year since we acquired it from Sims to try and turn this business around.”
The group said it was “working urgently to agree on a clear plan and timeline for what happens next”.
Asda's credit rating cut over price war plans
UK supermarket chain Asda has seen its credit rating cut deeper into junk territory today.
Ratings agency Fitch has downgraded Bellis Finco PLC, the parent company of ASDA Group, to ‘B’ from ‘B+’, with a negative outlook.
Fitch took the decision after concluding that Asda’s strategy of price cuts will hurt profits, and after analysing last week’s plan to sell off 24 stores and a distribution centre and lease them back.
Fitch says:
The downgrade reflects Fitch’s expectation that the pricing and availability strategy introduced to regain market share, combined with disruption from Project Future, will lead to a larger contraction in 2025 EBITDA [earnings] than initially estimated.
We also expect that the just announced £568 million sales and leaseback transaction, accompanied by increased capex, will increase leverage and could bring free cash flow (FCF) generation down towards neutral over 2026-2028. We now anticipate EBITDAR leverage will remain materially above 6x until 2028.
UK life insurers could weather severe downturn
Kalyeena Makortoff
Meanwhile in the UK, the country’s biggest life insurers including Aviva, Legal & General, Scottish and Phoenix, could weather a “severe” market downturn, according to the Bank of England’s latest stress tests.
The tests put the life insurers’ balance sheet through a core scenario of “severe financial market stress” involving a drop in interest rates, tumbling stock prices and property values, and a jump in borrowing costs for companies that led. to credit downgrades and defaults.
New documents released on Monday broke down the aggregate results released by the Bank last week, and showed that the strongest performers were Rothesay, Pension Insurance Corp and Aviva’s subsidiary Aviva International Insurance.
M&G’s Prudential Assurance, Phoenix Group’s Phoenix Life arm, and Just Group’s Partnership Life Assurance Company, had the lowest capital positions after being put through the tests.
While this was the third-ever UK life insurer stress test, it is the first time firm-specific results have been published by the Bank.
However, the regulator explained this was “not a pass-fail exercise”, and unlike the Bank of England’s stress tests for high street lenders, this would not influence capital requirements or buffers for life insurers.
In the aggregate results published last week, the BoE’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) said:
“The PRA continues to expect all firms to maintain robust risk management capabilities, including use of their own stress and scenario testing, to test their resilience to a range of downside scenarios and to inform their capital planning.”
Back in Brussels, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said the European Union needs to change its digital regulations in order to get a deal to lower steel and aluminum tariffs.
“We are talking to them about” rolling back EU tech rules, Lutnick said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “In exchange for that, we will come up with a cool steel and aluminum deal.”
As reported this morning, Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were in Brussels on Monday for their first official visit since reaching a trade deal with the EU in July.
Lutnick made clear any deal on steel or aluminum is contingent on the EU rolling back some of its regulations on major American tech companies. Lutnick and Greer met with EU technology czar Henna Virkkunen on Monday to discuss the issue.
Lutnick says:
“The idea is if they take the foot off this regulatory framework and make it more inviting for our companies, they can get the benefit of hundreds of billions, possibly one trillion of investment.”
Novo Nordisk’s shares have dropped to their lowest level since July 2021, Reuters reporter.
Novo Nordisk shares fall after Alzheimer’s trial result
Newsflash: Shares in Danish pharmaceuticals giant Novo Nordisk have tumbled around 10% after it reported that the latest trials of its Alzheimer’s treatment did not show a “statistically significant” reduction in progression of the disease.
In a disappointing development, Novo says that two trials of its semaglutide drug had failed to show that it slowed cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s patients.
Novo says that treatment with semaglutide did result in improvement of Alzheimer’s disease-related biomarkers in both trials, but this did not translate into a delay of disease progression.
Semaglutide is sold under the brand names Wegovy and Ozempic, as anti-obesity and diabetes drugs, so Alzheimer’s treatment would have been a new use for the drug. A previous study had suggested it could play a role here:
Martin Holst Lange, chief scientific officer and executive vice president of Research and Development at Novo Nordisk, says:
“Based on the significant unmet need in Alzheimer’s disease as well as a number of indicative data points, we felt we had a responsibility to explore semaglutide’s potential, despite a low likelihood of success. We are proud to have conducted two well-controlled phase 3 trials in Alzheimer’s disease that meet the highest standards of research and rigorous methodology,.
“We sincerely thank all participants and their caregivers for their meaningful contributions. While semaglutide did not demonstrate efficacy in slowing the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, the extensive body of evidence supporting semaglutide continues to provide benefits for individuals with type 2 diabetes, obesity, and related comorbidities.”
UK government bonds and the pound are both calm today, as the City awaits the budget in two days time.
But there could be ructions on Wednesday, if investors are disappointed by Rachel Reeves’s fiscal plans.
A key focus will be how much headroom the chancellor creates to keep within the government’s fiscal mandate (for the current budget to be in balance in 2029-30). At the last budget, she was only meeting this goal by £9.9bn, not enough to absorb many shocks.
Neil Wilson, UK investor strategist at Saxo Markets, warns that Reeves could face a ‘tantrum’ in the bond market:
Weekend press reports suggest Rachel Reeves will end the two-child benefit cap. This will raise welfare spending in the short term at least.
She’s promising to crack down on benefit fraud and tackle welfare reform in return, but banking on the market giving her a free pass on that seems risky. Given the government has consistently failed to push through any reforms or cuts, to assume it can impose restraint in 2029/30 is scarcely believable. As someone put it at the weekend, every government meets its fiscal rules yet we are slowly bust.
Buying back some credibility from the market and reducing the premium the UK pays (and so getting some extra headroom without painful tax hikes that squeeze more and more of the most productive elements of the economy), requires tough medicine now and jam tomorrow, not today.
For a Chancellor who has hung her credibility cap on the bond markets, a tantrum could be very dangerous indeed.
An index tracking European defence stocks has fallen to its lowest level since July, down 2.2% today.
Shares in Ferrexpo, a major exporter of iron ore pellets for the steel industry, have jumped by a fifth this morning on hopes of a Ukraine-Russia breakthrough.
Ferrexpo operatees three mines and a production facility in Ukraine, and has been badly disrupted by the war. At the start of the conflict its shipments were disrupted after export facilities at the port of Pivdennyi in the south-west of Ukraine were suspended.
Disruption has continued ever since; earlier this month it suspended operations at two subsidiaries, following an attack on Ukrainian transmission infrastructure.
This morning, following the weekend talke in Geneva, Ferrexpo’s shares are up 21% at 69.78p.
CBI calls for courage over budget tax rises
Over at London’s Queen Elizabeth II Centre, the head of the Confederation of British Industry is urging Rachel Reeves to prove that she is committed to growth in this week’s budget.
CBI CEO Rain Newton-Smith is telling the group’s annual meeting that the government must focus on growth, and avoid becoming locked in “a stop-start economy.”
Newton-Smith says many firms are concerned this year’s Budget will be a repeat of 2024, which included tax rises in businesses. And she is urging Rachel Reeves to show the “courage to take two tough decisions rather than twenty easier ones” when it comes to tax.
She says:
If growth is your priority, prove it – make hard choices for it. Against opposition, against short-term politics. Be it welfare, be it pensions increases – show the markets you mean business. All short-term politics leads to is long-term decline… and this country cannot afford another decade of stagnation.
“That means making hard choices for growth now – before they get harder. Having the courage to take two tough decisions rather than twenty easier ones. Raising the headroom to make promises stick. It means one or two broad tax rises, rather than death by a thousand taxes. Twenty bad choices don’t make a good system. It means stop being defined by the past – own the challenges of today.”
Reeves, though, is thought to have backed away from raising income tax rates, and is instead expected to announce a flurry of smaller tax rises to close a fiscal black hole and create more headroom for the government to hit its fiscal targets.
The CBI will also hear from Peter Kyle, Secretary of State for business and trade, and Kemi Badenoch, Leader of the Opposition, this morning.
Our Politics liveblog is covering all the action:
The oil price is on track for its fourth daily fall in a row.
Brent crude has dipped by 0.7% today to $62.08 a barrel.
Nadir Belbarka, analyst at XMArabia, says the oil market remains caught between expanding global output and heightened geopolitical volatility.
Recent disruptions—such as drone strikes on Russian export hubs, covert U.S. activity in Venezuela, and shipping security concerns—have sporadically driven price spikes of 2–3% in single sessions.
API inventory data showing a 4.4 million-barrel build last week further illustrates that physical fundamentals remain tilted toward surplus, tempering long-term upside unless major production cuts or severe supply shocks occur.
