Ofcom warns broadcasters to remain impartial ahead of election, FTSE 100 hits new record high – business live

Here’s our full story on Ofcom:

GB News can continue to use politicians as presenters, after the media regulator Ofcom concluded the British public does not want to ban the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Lee Anderson from hosting programmes on news channels.

Cristina Nicolotti Squires, the Ofcom executive responsible for broadcast regulation, said that while “many are instinctively uncomfortable” with politicians presenting current affairs programmes, there was “no clear consensus for an outright ban”.

Instead, the media regulator will now explicitly require that GB News ensures serving politicians do not adopt the style and mannerisms of an unbiased newsreader, interviewer, or reporter – such as reading out a list of headlines directly to the audience.

Ofcom also reiterated existing rules banning serving politicians from presenting programmes during an election – meaning GB News will have to fill large gaps in its schedule when Rishi Sunak finally goes to the country.

The media regulator has faced growing criticism over how it applies its rules to GB News and whether the channel is being treated more leniently than traditional broadcasters.

Last month GB News was found to have repeatedly breached impartiality rules by paying Conservative MPs hundreds of thousands of pounds to serve as news presenters and interview the prime minister, Sunak. But rather than impose sanctions on GB News, the regulator instead simply put the channel “on notice” and warned it against further breaches. GB News has broken broadcasting rules on 12 occasions in the last 18 months, with a further eight investigations in progress.

The Australian oil and gas company Woodside Energy has suffered an embarrassing rebuke of its climate credentials after its emissions plan was overwhelmingly rejected by shareholders at its annual general meeting on Wednesday.

Investors lodged a 58% vote against Woodside’s climate report, representing the strongest protest recorded against any of the dozens of listed companies around the world that regularly put climate-related resolutions to shareholders.

The Woodside chair, Richard Goyder, who survived a push against his own re-election at the AGM, said he was disappointed by the result, which was non-binding.

“The board will seriously consider the outcome when reviewing our approach to climate change,” Goyder told shareholders in Perth. “We take the shareholder feedback seriously.”

The well-known businessman, who also chairs Qantas and the AFL, was defiant, telling investors that Woodside’s operations were part of the solution to climate change.

“The world’s going to be a heck of a lot better off if it moves from coal-fired power to gas-fired power as soon as it can,” he said.

The battle over Woodside’s climate plan pitted the country’s biggest oil and gas producer against global and Australian investors increasingly concerned about the energy sector’s contribution to global warming.

Critics believe Woodside’s strategy is overly reliant on offsets, not aligned with Paris climate agreements, and does not seriously consider emissions produced by those using its gas.

Customer service managers on London Underground are to stage a fresh strike in a dispute over terms and conditions.

Members of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA) will walk out on Friday and ban overtime until 5 May.

The union said the action is likely to cause tube stations to close at the last minute, including into Saturday morning. The workers held a previous strike earlier this month.

The TSSA’s general secretary, Maryam Eslamdoust, said:

It’s clear that our customer service managers’ strike on 10 April made a real impact, many stations shut at short notice, and we had overwhelming support from the public.

Because of London Underground’s refusal to get back round the negotiating table, we have been forced to take further strike action this week.

London Underground must now come clean with the public. Their refusal to negotiate seriously and fairly with our union will lead to stations closing at the last minute and other stations being understaffed.

We have made it clear that our union will not accept the continued threats to our members’ roles, locations, terms and conditions to stand unchallenged. We will continue to take sustained action until London Underground is prepared to negotiate with us in good faith.

Heathrow is expecting its busiest ever summer holiday season but faces uncertainty over its long-term future as the proposed £6bn sale of the UK’s biggest airport remains in doubt.

The airport said on Wednesday that the summer getaway this year was expected to be “the busiest on record” and promised to have “robust” plans in place to keep the airport “running smoothly”, even if staff strikes seen last year are repeated.

The number of passengers using the airport this year is expected to hit more than 82.4 million. This would make it the busiest year on record, and above the previous high in 2019, when 80.9 million travelled through the airport.

Heathrow’s future is in the balance amid reports that a proposed deal to buy the airport from the Spanish construction company Ferrovial is on hold after Macquarie ruled out taking a stake.

Dutch and British wholesale gas prices have climbed, as planned and unplanned outages in Norway and Britain weighed on supply, despite a return to milder temperatures.

The benchmark front-month Dutch contract rose 1.7% to €29.01 per megawatt hour, while the British benchmark contract was up 2.5% at 72.75p per therm.

The flow of Norwegian gas to Britain fell 26m cubic metres per day compared with yesterday, while unplanned outages in the UK at Bacton Seal and Bacton Perenco cut 8m cubic metres per day of supply, according to Saku Jussila, gas data analyst at the. London Stock Exchange. More Norwegian maintenance on Thursday will cut supplies further.

Crude oil prices are little changed now following modest rises earlier. Brent crude, the global benchmark, is trading at $88.43 a barrel, while US light crude is at $83.3 a barrel.

However, the wider FTSE 100 index is continuing its rally, and has just hit a new record high of 8090.

The bluechip index is on track for its sixth consecutive session of gains, the first such winning streak since August 2023.

Sophie Lund-Yates, lead equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said:

The UK market has demonstrated yet more stamina, with further gains achieved on what has already been a record-breaking week. A slight cooling of Middle Eastern tensions, coupled with broad based corporate earnings optimism are both helping the FTSE.

In the US, markets have also continued to rally, based on strong earnings figures from high calibre and closely monitored companies. The large volume of company results this week gives investors a lot more to focus on than purely macro events, which is leading to the extra levels of market vitality.

Tesla was one such positive story, after the market responded well to news it’s planning to accelerate the launch of its new models. This will put the brakes on planned cost cutting, but is a way to hopefully boost volumes. In the increasingly competitive space of EVs, Tesla’s must-have status is one element it has above the others.

Shares in Gucci owner Kering tumbled 8.2% after the French luxury group warned of sharply lower profits in the first half of this year, as sales at its top brand Gucci slumped.

Its UK rival Burberry also took a hit, with its shares down 2.2%, as traders worried about the outlook for the luxury sector.

Sales at Gucci, which makes up half of group sales and two thirds of profits, fell 18% on a comparable basis, as demand dried up in its key Chinese market. The new designer Sabato de Sarno’s first collections have recently started arriving in stores and have been well received by customers, Kering said.

Sales at Yves Saint Laurent, its second biggest label, fell 6% on a like-for-like basis in first three months of the year, while smaller brands Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen collectively posted a 6% fall in sales. Only the Italian fashion house Bottega Veneta and Kering’s eyewear business bucked the trend, posting sales growth.

Kering alerted investors to its troubles last month, while LVMH and Hermès have fared better so far. The global luxury market has slowed in the past year following a multi-year pandemic boom.

In Germany, business sentiment has improved more than expected this month.

The Ifo institute in Munich said its business climate index rose to 89.4 from 87.9 in March, beating analysts’ expectations of a 88.8 reading. The economic situation is stabilising, led by service industries, it added.

Here is our full story on Lloyds:

Lloyds Banking Group has posted a 28% drop in profits for the first three months of the year as intense competition in the mortgage and savings market hit its earnings.

The country’s largest mortgage lender, which owns the Halifax brand, said pre-tax profits dropped to £1.6bn between January and March, having fallen from £2.3bn last year when rising interest rates boosted the lender’s profits by almost 50%.

Pressure from politicians and regulators to pass on interest rates to savers at the same rate they had been raising mortgage and loan charges has squeezed income for major mortgage providers such as Lloyds in recent months.

In response, banks have competed harder for customer deposits by offering more substantial returns, particularly on fixed savings products where consumers lock away cash for longer. Customer deposits fell by about £2.2bn to £469.2bn.

Just after the open, the FTSE 100 index hit a fresh record high, rising to 8083.

It is now trading at 8076, up 0.4%. Shares have been lifted by hopes of interest rate cuts and easing geopolitical tensions.

Asian and US stocks have also rallied, cheered by strong corporate results.

Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.

The UK’s media regulator has warned broadcasters to maintain due impartiality ahead of the general election later this year. Ofcom also published new strengthened rules on using politicians as presenters following repeated breaches of its guidance, but stopped short of an outright ban, saying this is not what people want.

Cristina Nicolotti Squires, Ofcom’s broadcasting and media group director, said:

People are clear that they expect broadcasters to maintain the highest standards of due impartiality. It follows that, given politicians’ partial viewpoint, audiences don’t want to see or listen to politicians presenting news – full stop. But while many are instinctively uncomfortable with politicians presenting current affairs, there was no clear consensus for an outright ban.

Lloyds Banking Group, which owns Halifax, has kicked off the UK bank earnings season, reporting a 28% drop in first-quarter pre-tax profits to £1.6bn. Peaking interest rates and growing competition in the mortgage market squeezed margins.

FTSE 100 futures point to the index hitting another all-time high when markets open.

The FTSE 100 index finished Tuesday at a new closing high, for the second day running, up 0.26% at 8044 points. During the day, it hit a new record high of 8076 points, as hopes of interest rate cuts pushed shares higher. However, the Bank of England’s chief economist Huw Pill said later on that inflation must be squeezed out of the economy and cautioned against cutting rates too soon.

Asian stocks have rallied, led by tech stocks after Tesla, the US electric carmaker, surged in after-hours trading following its promise of new models. Japan’s Nikkei gained 2.3%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 2.1% and the Singapore exchange added 0.8%. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 1.6%.

US stocks closed higher after companies such as General Motors reported strong results. The Nasdaq finished 1.6% higher while the S&P 500 rose 1.2%. Tesla kicked off the earnings season for the US tech giants, known as the Magnificent 7, which last week had close to $1 trillion wiped off their combined market value in a boon to short sellers.

Tesla shares surged nearly 10% in after-hours trading, despite a revenue miss for the first quarter of 2024, a steep decline in profits, and a recall of its most recently released car, the $100,000 Cybertruck. However, investors were cheered by previews of a ride-hailing app to be integrated into Tesla products, and the company’s promise to release new vehicle models sooner than previously announced (it referenced a robotaxi network in the works).

The Agenda

• 9am BST: Germany Ifo business climate for April

• 11am BST: UK CBI industrial trends survey

• 1.30pm BST: US Durable goods orders for March