FTSE 100 Live: Stocks dip; Reeves give energy update as oil prices jump March 24, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City PM liveblog. Oil is back on the rise this morning following a series of mixed messages on Monday that brought forward a day of whiplash for global markets. The trading session started with nosedives into the red as markets digested President Trump’s 48 hour ultimatum on Iran, [...]
UK must learn lessons from this crisis – starting with energy policy March 24, 2026 Has the US brought Iran to heel? Or has Iran discovered it has the upper hand? These are urgent questions and the world waits with bated breath for clear answers. Trump claims Iran approached the US, seeking a deal to end the war, and while the Iranians deny this it seems likely that contact has [...]
Rugby resists modern marketing but Les Bleus have created a blueprint March 24, 2026 The sport of rugby union can be confusing. I don’t mean the rules – although they are part of the problem – but more how a sport can both thrive and struggle to survive almost simultaneously. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the 2026 men’s Six Nations. It was a tournament many claim [...]
Companies House disciplined over 100 staff for compliance breaches March 24, 2026 Over a hundred members of staff at under-fire Companies House faced disciplinary action for compliance breaches in the last three years. Fresh figures from a Freedom of Information request reveal the UK’s registry body for companies took action against 131 staff since December 2022. The disciplinary measures were a result of breaches relating to the [...]
Revolut eyes trading and wealth push amid hiring spree March 24, 2026 Revolut has laid out its initial blue-print for major expansion in its trading operations after the fintech giant bagged its full-fat UK banking licence earlier this month. The $75bn digital banking juggernaut has kicked off a hiring spree at its Canary Wharf headquarters as well as other financial hubs across the globe. The fintech has [...]
London skyscrapers under pressure as construction costs mount March 24, 2026 The cost of building London skyscrapers has soared by 40 per cent in five years as pressure on the capital’s high-rise property market mounts. The average cost of building a tower in the capital has increased from between £3,800 and £4,300 per square metre in 2020 to between £5,200 and £6,500 last year, according to [...]
UK must ‘urgently’ reopen North Sea drilling amid global volatility March 24, 2026 Households and businesses will be left even more exposed to geopolitical shocks like the one playing out in the Middle East unless the government “urgently” reopens the UK’s North Sea oil fields to new drilling projects, an industry body has warned. In its annual temperature check of Britain’s energy industry, Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) called [...]
Half of AI’s most expensive chips are sitting idle, says tech expert March 23, 2026 The artificial intelligence boom, so far, has been defined by a single instinct: build more. More chips, more data centres, more power. Capital expenditure from the world’s largest tech firms is running into the hundreds of billions as they race to scale AI systems. Analysts expect global data centre investment to continue rising sharply, with [...]
Government borrowing costs set for worst month since Liz Truss March 23, 2026 The government’s short-term borrowing costs were on course to have their worst month since Liz Truss’s ignominious mini-Budget, until the news of United States’ talks with Iran led traders to unwind bets future interest rate hikes. The two-year gilt yield jumped by eight basis points on Monday morning, meaning the interest rate on the government’s [...]
Manic Monday: How Trump rocked global markets March 23, 2026 President Donald Trump sent global markets on a rollercoaster ride as traders were left stunned by mixed messages coming from the US administration and the Iranian regime. The Brent Crude oil price was trading around $114 per barrel before Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he was pausing strikes due to “productive” [...]
