Rolls-Royce shares hit new high as FTSE 100 rallies to record February 18, 2026 Rolls-Royce was among a whole host of City heavyweights storming higher on Wednesday helping the FTSE 100 seal another record. The aerospace giant jumped 2.2 per cent to 1,325.50p taking it to a new all-time high ahead of January’s previous peak of 1,305.00p. The move came as defence titan BAE System jumped near four per [...]
BAE Systems rides defence wave to dividend boost and record results February 18, 2026 BAE Systems shareholders are set for a pay bump as the London-listed group has benefited from the wave of increased global defence spending. Sales at Europe’s largest defence contractor rose 10 per cent to a record £30.7bn, while underlying profit grew 12 per cent to £3.3bn. The group saw its total order backlog reach a [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Inflation falls to near year-low; BAE leads stock rally February 18, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City PM liveblog. Inflation has fallen to a near year-low this morning hitting its slowest pace since March and fuelling hopes that the Bank of England will take the chop to interest rates next month. New data from the Official for National Statistics showed rose the Consumer Price [...]
Hamilton Lane’s Erik Hirsch: We’re seeing a private credit witch hunt February 17, 2026 Depending on which central banking chief you talk to, the burgeoning private credit industry is either a cause of insomnia, a “dark corner” of finance or an arcane lending practice whose participants are behaving like bankers in the run-up to the global financial crisis. To Hamilton Lane boss Erik Hirsch, though, it is simply an [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Unemployment rises; Debenhams’ £35m raise February 17, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City PM liveblog. The UK unemployment rate has risen again this morning, with fresh data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showing the rate had surged to 5.2 per cent in the three months to December 2025. This was up from 5.1 per cent in the latest [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Zurich and Beazley £8bn deal gets time; Defence and bank stocks rally February 16, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City PM liveblog. The first round of 2026 tech wobbles kicked into action last week and revived fears of an AI bubble. When Anthropic released a new AI tool designed to help in-house legal teams triage agreements and draft routine responses, the reaction trickled down through law firms straight into [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Natwest bumper dividend, stocks tick up February 13, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City PM liveblog. The City was left stunned yesterday after Schroders entered into a surprise £10bn deal with Nuveen, which holds $1.4tn in assets, after speculation of a sale was rebuffed in July. Schroders Group chief Richard Oldfield had previously squashed rumours that the Schroder family, who control [...]
M&S is now worth more than Snapchat February 12, 2026 Here’s an interesting stock chart comparison that caught my eye this week. For the first time, the market cap of Snapchat owner Snap is now less than supermarket M&S, in a sharp reversal of the tech firm’s fortunes. If you’d spent £1,000 on shares in the social media platform five years ago, you’d be left [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Schroders in £10bn deal; UK economic growth lags February 12, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City PM liveblog. It was another record day for the FTSE 100 on Wednesday, which secured its highest close of all time. On a strong day for commodity-related stocks in London, London’s blue-chip index closed 1.14 per cent higher at 10,472p. But it wasn’t all cheery in the [...]
Barratt Redrow and MJ Gleeson join house builder call for help: What is going on? February 11, 2026 Over the past few months, a number of house builders have called for help, after positive results were offset by the expectation that the state of the housing market would impact further growth. The builders have chorused the same warning to the government and wider property sector that further buyer recovery and support is needed [...]
