US inflation gauge falls more than expected; China stocks post best week since 2008 – as it happened

Time for a recap before we close for today.

News broke in the last hour that the boss of WeightWatchers has stepped down, as the company struggles to compete with new weight loss drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound.

Sima Sistani has quit with immediate effect, and board member Tara Comonte will step in as interim chief executive.

US annual inflation, measured by the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure, has fallen more than expected to the lowest level since February 2021, boosting expectations of further interest rate cuts.

The personal consumption expenditures price index, a measure the Fed focuses on to gauge inflation pressures in the US economy, rose by 0.1% in August from July, taking the 12-month inflation rate to 2.2%, from 2.5% in July, the US Commerce Department said. Economists had expected an annual rate of 2.3%.

However, the core measure, which excludes volatile items food and energy, ticked up to 2.7% last month. Fed officials tend to focus on the core measure as a better gauge of long-run trends.

Chinese stocks have had their best week in 16 years, boosted by various stimulus measures announced this week by the Beijing government and People’s Bank of China.

The Shanghai Composite Index climbed by 2.9%, logging its biggest weekly gain since 2008, up nearly 10% while China’s CSI 300 jumped by 4.5% and had its best week since November 2008, ending 15.7% higher.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose by 3.6% and enjoyed its best week since 1998 with a 13% gain, which was the third-biggest move on record.

The optimism in Asia spilled over into Europe, where the benchmark Stoxx 600 index rose by 0.37% to touch an all-time high.

Rupert Murdoch’s REA Group has made a fourth attempt to buy Rightmove, increasing its offer to £6.2bn as it steps up its pursuit of the UK’s largest online property portal.

The Australian property group, which is controlled by News Corp, raised its cash and shares offer from the £6.1bn offered earlier this week and called on Rightmove’s board to “engage now” after it repeatedly refused to meet the suitor.

Rightmove has rejected three previous non-binding cash and shares approaches from REA this month, calling them “unattractive” and saying the offers “fundamentally undervalue” the company. In a brief statement, the UK firm said it would consider the latest proposal.

Thank you for reading, and have a lovely weekend. Take care – JK

Rightmove has confirmed that it has received a “fourth unsolicited, non-binding and highly conditional proposal” from Rupert Murdoch’s REA Group for a £6.2bn takeover of the UK property portal.

The board will consider the latest proposal together with its financial advisers and, in the meantime, shareholders are urged to take no action.

There can be no certainty that any offer will be made for the company nor as to the terms on which any offer may be made.

Amazon’s $4bn partnership with AI firm Anthropic has been cleared by the UK’s competition regulator.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said the deal does not need further investigation, after carrying out a phase 1 probe into concerns about its impact on competition in the AI sector.

The watchdog has been vocal about its concerns over large tech firms investing heavily in AI start-ups, and earlier this year highlighted a number of what it called an “interconnected web” of more than 90 partnerships and strategic investments between a small handful of the biggest tech and AI firms.

It has since launched a number of investigations into similar partnerships.

Writing on LinkedIn, Joel Bamford, executive director of mergers at the CMA, said:

Reviews like this help us to gain more clarity around whether they could fall under UK merger rules and any subsequent impact they could have on competition, and we hope that this clarity also benefits businesses with an interest in these markets.

Our investigation into Amazon’s partnership with Anthropic found that Amazon’s $4bn investment into Anthropic allowed it to enter multiple non-exclusive arrangements with Anthropic and secure certain rights in connection with its investment.

Having tested these arrangements against the UK merger control jurisdiction thresholds for turnover and share of supply, we have concluded that they are not met. We also considered whether the arrangements allowed Amazon to exercise material influence over Anthropic.

Ultimately, given neither of the required turnover or share of supply tests were met, we did not need to reach a conclusion on material influence.

As a result, we do not believe that a relevant merger situation has been created and will not refer this for further investigation.

An Amazon spokesperson welcomed the regulator’s decision, and added:

By investing in Anthropic, we’re helping to spur entry and competition in generative AI. Customers are very excited about the opportunities this collaboration is providing them.

An Anthrophic spokesperson also welcomed the move.

As we’ve made clear, Anthropic is an independent company and our strategic partnerships and investor relationships do not diminish our corporate governance independence or our freedom to partner with others.

Separate investigations into partnerships between Google and Anthropic and Microsoft and ChatGPT maker OpenAI remain ongoing, the CMA said.

The news came as Manchester launched the first phase of a £1.7bn hub for science and technology companies, a project driven by university and private sector investors.

The ‘Sister’ innovation district on the University of Manchester‘s former city centre North Campus will have 2m square feet (186,000 sq m) of commercial space and 1,500 new homes, and aims to boost the city’s status as a science and technology centre.

University cities like Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester have been creating hubs where investors can be on hand to partner with start-up companies, a trend the new Labour government is keen on to attract more private investment to help upgrade the UK’s public services and infrastructure.

The 15-year project Sister project is a joint venture between the University of Manchester and Bruntwood SciTech, a development company owned by property firm Bruntwood, the pension and investment group Legal and General and the Greater Manchester Pension Fund, and will see a total investment value of £1.7bn on completion.

The first tenant, climate tech investment company Sustainable Ventures, moves into the site’s Renold Building this November.

“This is a significant moment for Manchester,” said Bev Craig, leader of Manchester City Council.

Sister forms part of the government-funded Greater Manchester Investment Zone, which uses £160m of public money to help attract businesses to the city over the next decade.

A brain implant made from graphene was used successfully during brain tumour surgery at Salford Royal Hospital, to help the medical team cut out the tumour without damaging healthy tissue.

It was the first human procedure involving a graphene brain implant, which allows the surgeon to distinguish between healthy and cancerous brain tissue with micrometer-scale precision. The procedure, carried out yesterday, was successful and the device was on the patient’s brain for 79 minutes.

It was the start of a clinical study of the device, made by InBrain Neuroelectronics, a Barcelona-based company which developed the implant with the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and Manchester University.

During the trial, the medical team at Salford Royal hospital places the device with 64 graphene electrodes on the brain of a patient with glioblastoma, a fast-growing brain cancer. It will stimulate and read neural activity with high precision so that other parts of the brain are not damaged when the cancer is cut out. The implant is removed after surgery.

Among other stocks, Bristol Myers Squibb is up 3.5% in pre-market trading, after the US health regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), approved its schizophrenia drug.

That drug was developed by a smaller Boston-based biotech called PureTech Health, which was founded by Daphne Zohar, an American entrepreneur, in 2005 and listed on the London stock market in 2015.

The FTSE 250-listed shares jumped more than 5% on news of the FDA approval, which triggered $29m in milestone payments for PureTech.

The drug was hailed by PureTech as a significant breakthrough for schizophrenia patients, as the first new drug mechanism to be approved in more than 50 years. Currently called KarXT, it will be marketed as Cobenfy by Bristol Myers Squibb, which bought it for $14bn earlier this year.

The medicine was invented at PureTech by combining two biologically active molecules – xanomeline and trospium chloride, to address a tolerability challenge that had held back a potential new class of medicines for neuropsychiatric conditions.

Eric Elenko, co-founder and president of PureTech said:

Our initial hypothesis was that we could overcome the tolerability issues that had hindered the development of an otherwise promising drug, xanomeline, and we were able to test and validate this concept early on.

We are immensely proud that our dedication to this programme has led to the first major innovation in decades for those living with schizophrenia, and I am equally pleased that our unique approach to R&D has delivered yet another novel therapeutic to patients.

US annual inflation, measured by the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure, has fallen more than expected to the lowest level since February 2021, boosting expectations of further interest rate cuts.

The personal consumption expenditures price index, a measure the Fed focuses on to gauge inflation pressures in the US economy, rose by 0.1% in August from July, taking the 12-month inflation rate to 2.2%, from 2.5% in July, the US Commerce Department said. Economists had expected an annual rate of 2.3%.

However, the core measure, which excludes volatile items food and energy, ticked up to 2.7% last month. Fed officials tend to focus on the core measure as a better gauge of long-run trends.

Jesse Cohen, global markets economist at Investing.com, said:

None of the UK’s large supermarket chains are ensuring their suppliers use antibiotics in the most responsible way, an assessment by campaigners has found, despite heightened concerns about their overuse in farm animals.

Supermarkets play an important role in the fight against superbugs, because most of the world’s antibiotics are used on livestock and retailers can enforce strict standards on the farm suppliers they use. Resistant bacteria known as superbugs are rapidly developing, posing an increasing risk to human health.

But livestock farmers have an incentive to use more antibiotics on their herds, because intensive farming conditions can lead to an increased risk of disease. In some countries, antibiotics are used routinely, to promote growth as well as treat diseases that otherwise run rife in intensive systems.

In the UK, new regulations were introduced this year to restrict the use of antibiotics in farming, as British farmers are no longer covered by strict EU rules. The law stipulates that antibiotics must not be used to compensate for poor hygiene or inadequate animal husbandry.

It was May 1991 and Mohamed Al Fayed was in a foul mood: “I told you, no sex with anybody else, no relationship with anybody else.”

The target of the then 62-year-old billionaire’s ire was Jen, 20, who had worked in his personal office at Harrods since the age of 16.

“I said: ‘What do you mean?’ He proceeded to list a whole bunch of times, places, dates, where I’d been seen with my boyfriend from the food hall, and these weren’t necessarily during the week. They were at weekends. They weren’t necessarily in London. They were in Surrey.

“The dates were very, very specific, the locations and everything was 100% accurate. Mohamed said to me: ‘You do know that John Macnamara [Fayed’s head of security] worked for the Met police. He was very senior in the Met police.’”

Over her four and a half years at Harrods, having joined the luxury store in Knightsbridge as a management trainee in 1986, Jen claims to have been repeatedly groped and sexually assaulted – and at one point strangled – by Fayed.

It started with him “teasing” her with a dildo he kept on his desk and built up to an alleged attempted rape in Fayed’s Park Lane apartment, she said.

Ministers have been urged to intervene to stop football clubs from setting their own rules on curbing gambling advertising, after research showed Premier League fans were bombarded with nearly 30,000 gambling messages on a single weekend.

Clubs in the top flight have so far avoided compulsory restrictions on gambling sponsorship, instead addressing public concern through voluntary measures such as a ban on front-of-shirt logos, starting in 2026.

But politicians, researchers and England’s most capped men’s player, Peter Shilton, called on the government to act after a new study found a surge in gambling ads which they said exposed the “woeful inadequacies” of allowing clubs and gambling operators to set their own rules.

Fans keeping track of the opening weekend of the Premier League season last month were flooded with 29,145 gambling messages on TV, radio and social media during six live games, according to analysis by researchers at the University of Bristol.

Rachel Reeves is rethinking parts of Labour’s crackdown on non-dom tax status over concerns that the plans will not raise any money.

The chancellor is reassessing the government’s manifesto promise to close loopholes in the non-domiciled tax regime.

The Guardian revealed this week that Treasury officials feared the spending watchdog was due to conclude the policy would fail to raise any money, because of the impact of super-rich non-domiciles leaving the UK.

Reeves is now reconsidering the plans, according to reports. A government official told the Financial Times: “We are looking at the details of our proposals. We will be pragmatic, not ideological. We won’t press on regardless, but we are not going to abandon this completely.”

After the Conservatives unexpectedly announced plans to phase out the non-dom regime, Labour said it hoped to raise a further £2.6bn over the course of a parliament by clamping down on loopholes.

The party later predicted that closing these loopholes could raise an initial £1bn in the first year, which would be put towards funding universal school breakfast clubs and more hospital and dental appointments.

Campaign groups have urged the government to cancel major road building schemes including the Lower Thames Crossing, amid growing speculation that ministers could divert money earmarked for new roads into rail and other public transport.

The transport secretary, Louise Haigh, is due to decide in a week whether to sign off a development consent order [DCO] for the £9bn road crossing linking Essex and Kent.

Labour has already made clear that it is looking to fill what the chancellor has described as a “£22bn black hole” in the nation’s finances.

While Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has said she backs building infrastructure, the road schemes are poor value for money according to Treasury calculations, and could free up funding for rail projects.

The boss of a Tesla factory in Germany has defended the decision to send managers to the homes of workers on long-term sick leave.

In recent weeks, a director of Tesla’s electric car plant in east Germany sent managers to check up on about two dozen employees who have continued to be paid while being on sick leave over the past nine months.

André Thierig, the plant’s manufacturing director, said the home visits were common practice in the industry and that the company simply wanted to “appeal to the employees’ work ethic”.

The move by Elon Musk’s US-headquartered carmaker has sparked outrage at the trade union IG Metall, which represents a proportion of the 12,000 workers at the Berlin-Brandenburg gigafactory.

The union has campaigned against what it has alleged are harsh working conditions with “unreasonably” long hours and a poor health and safety record.

“Employees from almost all areas of the factory have reported an extremely high workload,” said Dirk Schulze, a regional director at the union. “When there are staff shortages, the ill workers are put under pressure and those who remain healthy are overburdened with additional work.

“If the factory’s overseers really want to reduce the level of sickness, they should break this vicious circle.”

Sick leave rates at the factory on the outskirts of Berlin, which the union says operates with a “culture of fear”, have commonly hit 15% or higher.

The union has said that there is a “culture of fear” that has caused stress and sick leave among workers.

On the subject of next month’s budget, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is considering changes to the government’s so-called fiscal rules, which govern how much it can spend.

The changes are aimed at paving the way for billions of pounds more investment in the UK economy, to help decarbonise the economy and reboot growth.

Reeves signalled the change in direction in her speech to the Labour party conference on Monday, saying “it is time that the Treasury moved on from just counting the costs of investments to recognising the benefits too”.

But with government debt running at 100% of GDP, and a total debt pile of £2.5tn, there are questions over how far Reeves could go.

British retailers reported the fastest growth in sales since May this month, and expect a further improvement in October, according to the Confederation of British Industry’s latest survey – which contrasts with other, more downbeat surveys of consumer sentiment.

The CBI said its monthly retail sales balance, which deducts retailers who said their sales rose from those reporting a decline, improved to +4% in September from -27% in August. Retailers’ expectations for the month ahead improved to +5% from -17%, and were the strongest since April 2023.

Internet sales volumes bounced back at the fastest rate since June 2023 (+18% from -15% in August). Online sales are expected to grow at an even faster pace in October (+35%).

However, sales are still likely to remain below normal for the time of year, retailers indicated.

Martin Sartorius, the CBI’s principal economist, said:

After a challenging summer, retailers will welcome the modest growth in annual sales volumes this month. While some firms within the retail sector are beginning to see tailwinds from rising household incomes, others report that consumer spending habits are still being affected by the increase in prices over the last few years.

In contrast to the recovery seen in the retail sector, wholesalers and motor traders continue to see a decline in sales volumes, with businesses reporting concerns about a slow and uncertain market.

Ahead of the budget at the end of this month, he said

Retailers, alongside a host of other important sectors, are keen to see the government take long overdue action to address an antiquated business rates system that has become too complex, too unpredictable and is, ultimately, unfair on many firms.

UK defence chiefs have taken over a semiconductor factory near Darlington after fears its closure could leave projects in the lurch.

Defence Secretary John Healey visited the site today, which the Ministry of Defence says is the only secure facility with the capability to produce gallium arsenide chips, used in electronic devices, including to boost fighter jet capabilities.

The factory, at Newton Aycliffe in County Durham, has been acquired from its previous parent company Coherent, and will be called Octric Semiconductors UK, and the acquisition will secure up to 100 jobs, the MoD said.

More than a trillion semiconductors are manufactured each year, with the global semiconductor market forecast to reach a total market size of $1 trillion by 2030.

The Telegraph reported in August that Italian aerospace company Leonardo was among Coherent’s customers, alongside Apple, which had ceased orders with the business and left the plant’s future in doubt. Coherent was not thought to have any outstanding orders with Leonardo, but sources suggested the plant may still be needed for future, unspecified programmes.

Healey said:

Semiconductors are at the forefront of the technology we rely upon today, and will be crucial in securing our military’s capabilities for tomorrow.

This acquisition is a clear signal that our ggovernment will back British defence production. We’ll protect and grow our UK Defence supply chain, supporting north east jobs, safeguarding crucial tech for our armed forces and boosting our national security.