Business Live: Oil prices fall

Check out this fancy business from the Bank of England...

You'd never guess it from the lacklustre trading, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a fresh record on Monday.

The US index crawled over the 22,100 level for a time. It now up 1.38 points at 22,094.19.

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Representatives from Opec, the cartel of oil producing nations, and non-Opec members are meeting in Abu Dhabi today and Tuesday to discuss cuts and complying with them.

There is concern that the countries who agreed to reduce oil production by 1.8 million barrels a day until next March have been unable to stick to their targets.

Hans van Cleef, senior energy economist with ABN Amro, said: "The market is looking for comment from Saudi Arabia signalling Opec will meet its agreed target. The possibility for [price] movement seems limited unless Opec comes out with a statement."

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Harrod's banking arm is being sold to digital lender Tandem.

The challenger bank announced on Monday that as well as buying the division, it will also benefit from an additional £80m of capital coming into the business.

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After shaking up the film and television industry, Netflix has stepped into mergers and acquisitions and has bought Millarworld, the comic book publishing house behind Kick-Ass and Kingsman.

Mark Millar is the brains behind Millarworld and the company will work with Netflix to bring films, series and children's programmes to the screen.

Surely now is the time for Hit Girl to have her own show?

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average creaked into action on Monday, rising just 3.96 points to 22,096.77.

The S&P 500 is flat at 2,476.93 and the Nasdaq is 9.14 points ahead at 6,360.71.

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The Federation of Small Businesses is concerned that some companies will not be ready for the introduction of GeneralData Protection Regulation and could, inadvertently leave themselves at risk of paying fines.

Federation chairman Mike Cherry says: "As rules come into force in May 2018, we need to see a commitment from the Government and the Information Commissioner’s Office to provide support and guidance for the 5.5 million-strong small businesses community in good time."

He adds: "Learning the lessons of auto-enrolment, this should be allied to early, focused and clear communications. This is key for a gold standard approach to data protection that the government seeks. FSB took part in the government’s consultation to request this, but there is no sign yet that this has registered. We will be taking this up with ministers."

Oil prices are trading lower.

Brent crude is now down 1.2% at $51.80 a barrel.

West Texas Intermediate is also off 1.2% at $49.01 a barrel.

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Some of the richest football clubs in the country will kick off the new season with a business rates cut, reports PA. And that's while many small business are facing major rates increases.

Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea will all enjoy lower taxes for 2017/18 because the value of their stadiums have fallen under the Government's controversial rates review earlier this year, according to business rates specialists CVS.

Arsenal will benefit the most, seeing its bill drop £58,812 to £3.32million. Manchester United's saving will be £50,519, Liverpool's £31,000 and Chelsea's £25,618.

Meanwhile a raft of small firms saw the amount they pay rise - in some cases by 3,000% - when rateable values were updated on 1 April.

New rateable values determine tax bills for the next five years and are based upon property valuations as of April 1 2015.

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US electric-car-maker Tesla plans to fund production of its first mass market vehicle - the Model 3 - by raising about $1.5bn in a bond offering.

"Tesla intends to use the net proceeds from this offering to further strengthen its balance sheet during this period of rapid scaling with the launch of Model 3, and for general corporate purposes," the company said.

The news comes a week after Tesla intimated that it would use debts to help ramp up production of the Model 3.

The car was launched at the end of last month with a base price of $35,000 and the company said it's received an average of 1,800 advance reservations per day for the model since then.

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by 12.45pm, the FTSE-100 index was up 11.55 points at 7523.26. That's still some way short of its record closing high of 7546.99, which it hit back in June.

"Equities have made a very mixed start to the news week, the UK FTSE essentially flat, holding Friday's breakout," said Mike van Dulken, head of research at Accendo Markets.

The market is being supported by the miners, he reported, while dragging on the index are defensive stocks, such as GlaxoSmithKline, down 0.65%, Imperial Brands, which has slipped 1.27%, and Reckitt Benckiser, down 0.36%.

Here's an interesting chart from Fidelity showing how the FT-SE All-Share has performed compared to cash since the global crisis in 2007.

It shows the total return of the stock market from 30 June 2007 to 30 June 2017 and uses Morningstar UK Savings 2500 data to calculate the cash figures over the same period...

Fidelity International

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Hello, who's this investing in little-known music start-up EVR Holdings? According to The Standard Adele has pumped some of her cash into the AIM-listed firm.

The company's MelodyVR app allows fans to watch gigs on virtual reality headsets and, according to the newspaper report, it has signed deals to develop VR content with Warner, Universal and Sony, the music industry's three biggest players.

However Adele declined to comment and her name doesn't appear on the shareholder register. But that's because she's invested through a nominee account, according to the paper's source.

So it's not clear whether she's made up her mind, or needs to think it over...

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Britons are taking more foreign holidays than they used to but are opting for shorter breaks, according to official figures.

The Office for National Statistics found a "marked decline" in the popularity of two-week holidays since 1996.

It also found that one-day "booze cruises" across the Channel to stock up on alcohol and cigarettes are much less common than they used to be.

The ONS said UK residents went on more than 45 million foreign holidays in 2016 - up from 27 million in 1996.

That represents a 68% rise in foreign holidays over the past 20 years.

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Cairn Energy said its SNE North-1 exploration well off Senegal, has encountered oil and gas. But now's not the time to celebrate: now's the time to undertake more work to establish the potential commerciality of the discovery, the FT-SE 250 company said.

"The SNE North well results are encouraging in terms of further prospectivity and implications for the full block potential offshore Senegal," said Cairn's CEO Simon Thomson.

The well reached a depth of 2,837m and is located in around 900 metres water depth, 90 kilometres offshore.

"We are delighted to have completed a safe and successful drilling programme in Senegal this year with the Stena DrillMAX," Mr Thomson added.

Reuters

The price of oil has slipped as the market waits for news from the latest meeting of producers' cartel Opec.

Officials from a joint Opec and non-Opec committee are holding a two-day meeting in Abu Dhabi to discuss how their efforts to lift the oil price are going.

Late last year, Opec and 11 other oil producers agreed to cut supplies in an attempt to push prices up, but there are doubts over how effective this has been.

On Monday morning, the price of Brent crude was down 1.4% at $51.71 a barrel.

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There are still "huge gaps" in living standards between different ethnicities living in Britain, according to the Resolution Foundation.

Its research suggests a typical Bangladeshi household earns £8,900 less than that of a white British household, while a Pakistani household earns £8,700 less.

Meanwhile a typical black African family also earned £5,600 less than that of a white household.

Depressing stuff, but the think tank said incomes for these ethnic groups were now beginning to grow.

Full story here

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The mining sector has been driving the FTSE higher this morning.

"The mining sector is benefitting from stronger iron ore and steel prices, while a weaker pound helps things along for the UK index," according to Joshua Mahony, market analyst at IG.

The likes of Anglo American, Glencore, BHP Billiton, and Rio Tinto have been at the top of the FTSE 100 leader board so far today.

"New Chinese regulations over capacity curbs in the winter means that buyers are now pushing their demand forward somewhat, driving Chinese steel futures to their highest level in more than four years, while Iron Ore rose 7% overnight," Mr Mahony said.

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The Financial Conduct Authority has reported that £260m was paid out by banks in May 2017 to consumers who complained about the way they were sold payment protection insurance (PPI).

That means the bill for the finance industry's biggest-ever mis-selling scandal has reached £27.4bn since January 2011. (Incidentally you can see the full list of monthly PPI compensation payouts here.)

Last week Lloyds Bank revealed it had set aside a further £1bn to meet its PPI compensation demands. In total the bank's bill for its mis-selling of the insurance has reached £18.1bn.

The City Watchdog has set a deadline for PPI claims of August 2019.

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Australia's biggest mortgage lender Commonwealth Bank has blamed a single line of code for most of its alleged violations of Australia's anti-money laundering laws.

Last week, the government's financial intelligence agency Austrac accused the bank of 53,700 breaches of anti-money laundering laws over its 'intelligent deposit machines', which made many deposits virtually anonymous and international transfers very easy.

It's alleged the bank failed to identify, monitor and report transfers over $10,000, the limit in Australia.

The bank said on Monday that a "coding error" in 2012 meant the machines did not create the required reports for transfers over the limit.

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The Halifax reported this morning that annual house price growth stood at 2.1% in July, with a slight increase (0.4%) on the previous month. Lots of reaction has been coming in and you can find our full story here

The figures indicate that consumer confidence in property is still strong and demand for housing is very much still in evidence.

Lenders remain keen to lend and mortgage rates are staying extremely low as a result. This state of affairs has been supporting the housing market to an extent and is likely to continue to do so with no immediate interest rate rise on the horizon.

As we move away from the previous period of political uncertainty that has plagued the property market of late, we should see a growing degree of stability return for UK homeowners.

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Single use carrier bags will disappear from Tesco stores from 28 August. The supermarket giant is scrapping the 5p bags and will instead offer customers a new 10p Bag for Life.

Sales of the new bag will fund community projects across Britain, Tesco said.

It's been trialing the new bag system over the last 10 weeks in Aberdeen, Dundee and Norwich where the grocer found customers bought "significantly fewer" bags.

The chain has sold 1.5billion fewer single use bags since the introduction of the carrier bag charge in England in 2015, but said it still sells more than 700 million each year. Removing the single use carrier bags will reduce the number of bags sold and "will therefore help reduce litter and bags sent to landfill," Tesco said.

Online customers will still be able to opt for single use carrier bags.

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Investors have not taken kindly to the news that Paddy Power Betfair's chief executive, Breon Corcoran, is standing down.

Shares in the bookmaker have dropped more than 7%, making it the biggest faller in the FTSE 100 index by some way.

In the FTSE 250, shares in QinetiQ are up nearly 5% after Goldman Sachs raised its rating on the defence technology company to "neutral" from "sell".

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Why have markets been so muted today? Because "this week, and the first half especially, is an absolute snooze, tumbleweed drifting across the economic calendar," according to Connor Campbell, financial analyst at Spreadex.

Are there no highlights? We're going to have to wait until Thursday’s UK manufacturing data and Friday’s US inflation reading, reckons Mr Campbell.

He predicts that the pound is unlikely to recover "Last week's chunky losses" any time soon and points out that "against the euro, the pound is continuing to suffer in the shadow of its continental cousin, dipping 0.1% to remain at an effective 10 month nadir."

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House prices have fallen - they're down 0.2% - for the 4th consecutive quarter, says Halifax, the first time this has happened since November 2012.

However prices in the three months to July were 2.1% higher than in the same three months a year earlier, the lowest annual rate since April 2013.

What's going on?Russell Galley, managing director of Halifax Community Bank, pointed out that earnings are rising at a slower rate than consumer prices.

"This squeeze on spending power, together with the impact on property transactions of the stamp duty changes in 2016 now being realised, along with affordability concerns, appear to have contributed to weaker housing demand," he said.

Looking ahead he predicted that the low mortgage rate along with the continuing shortage of property for sale should help "continue to support house prices over the coming months."

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Asian stocks followed Wall Street higher on Monday, with the Nikkei closing above the 20,000 mark after an upbeat earnings outlook from Toyota.

Australian shares snapped a three day losing streak.

Commonwealth Bank reversed losses to close 1.6% higher after its stocks took a beating last week after it was accused of breaching anti-money laundering laws.

The Kospi and the Hang Seng also inched higher, as did the Mainland indexes.

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The FTSE 100 was up 0.3% in the opening minutes of trade at 7,531.06 points.

The pound was little changed against the dollar at $1.30410, and down slightly against the euro at 1.10750 euros.

PA

About three million households are set to benefit from the tightening of the price cap on prepayment energy bills, according to regulator Ofgem.

The regulator has updated the level of the price cap, which it says will cut an average bill for prepayment customers by up to £19 a year.

The change is due to come into effect on 1 October, and is expected to cut the average annual bill for dual fuel prepayment customers to £1,048 from £1,067.

The price cap was introduced in April this year and is updated by Ofgem every six months.

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Paddy Power Betfair boss Breon Corcoran is to step down after 16 years at the helm of the bookies. He will be replaced by WorldPay UK chief Peter Jackson.

Reports in the weekend press that the firm had appointed headhunters to find a successor for Mr Corcoran prompted the bookmaker to make an announcement to the Irish Stock Exchange ahead of stock market trading this morning.

The news comes some 18 months after the £7billion merger of Paddy Power with betting exchange Betfair.

AFP

South Korean prosecutors are seeking a 12-year jail sentence for Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Jay Y Lee.

Prosecutors have accused him and four other executives of bribing a close confidante of then-President Park Guen-hye in an attempt to win government support of a merger of two Samsung subsidiaries.

They said the restructure would help cement the leadership of Mr Lee, who was standing in as chairman for his ill father.

Mr Lee's lawyers said the allegations were unjustified and the defendants never sought anything in return for the donations.

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As we have reported, Dame Helen Alexander, ex president of the CBI has died aged 60.

Jessica Ground, UK equities manager at Schroders, said she "was a real pioneer", and not only for being the first female head of the business group.

She also led the The Economist Group and sat on many boards, including chairing the FTSE-listed events business UBM.

Dame Helen's job was tough at the Economist Group, says Ms Ground, having to please a high-profile readership as well as a range of shareholder interests.

"It is a global institution and has had some governance challenges, but she held the ring."