Rolls-Royce: FTSE 100 giant set to splash £1bn on shareholders February 23, 2026 City darling Rolls-Royce is gearing up plans to dish out bumper returns to investors this week as the firm delivers its annual results. The FTSE 100 giant is set to launch a buyback worth as much as £1.5bn, which will come on top of the company’s final dividend as the aircraft engineer looks to reinforce [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Stocks jittery after Trump tariffs; Job vacancies fall February 23, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the Morning Wire liveblog. Tariffs are once more redefining market sentiment. Last Friday, a number of FTSE 100 stocks popped on the news President Donald Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ levies had been struck down by the US Supreme Court. It marked a major boost to global markets after the top [...]
Money Supermarket integrates with ChatGPT in battle to fend off AI threat February 20, 2026 Money Supermarket has launched its own ChatGPT app as the comparison service seeks to quell investor fears over the threat to its business from AI. The new ChatGPT app allows users to access Money Supermarket services directly within the ChatGPT interface, creating a conversational way to search, compare and find deals, without leaving the chat [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Retail sales inch up; Segro ups dividend February 20, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the Morning Wire liveblog. The FTSE 100 took a breather from its blistering record run on Thursday after a major stock tumble at British Gas owner Centrica led the index into the red. Centrica shed over five per cent after telling markets it would hit pause on its share [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Centrica profit falls; Stocks dip after record rally February 19, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the Morning Wire liveblog. It’s been quite the week for the “old and unexciting” FTSE 100. The blue-chip index closed 1.2 per cent higher on Tuesday led by a rally in the mining sector. Antofagasta led the pack up over 10 per cent, which came a day after its [...]
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 [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Inflation falls to near year-low; BAE leads stock rally February 18, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the Morning Wire 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 [...]
Lloyds offloads Scottish Widows Europe in £100m deal February 17, 2026 Lloyds Banking Group has offloaded its European life insurance business to FTSE 250 firm Chesnara in the latter’s second major deal with a UK bank. The FTSE 100 banking giant – which posted a hefty profit jump last month for the 2025 financial year – has inked a €110m (£96m) deal with Chesnara for Luxembourg-based [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Unemployment rises; Debenhams’ £35m raise February 17, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the Morning Wire 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 Morning Wire 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 [...]