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The outlook for the UK housing market is “more positive” as prices improved at their strongest rate in a year, according to Nationwide.
The building society’s index found that the average house price had increased by 0.7% in January on the previous month – a significant turnaround from the December figures, which showed a 1.8% decline in prices.
The average UK house price was £257,656 in January, and was down 0.2% on a year earlier.
Robert Gardner, Nationwide’s chief economist, said: “While a rapid rebound in activity or house prices in 2024 appears unlikely, the outlook is looking a little more positive.”
There is more misery for rail commuters as strikes continue.
Rail passengers in the north of England face major disruption on Wednesday as strikes by train drivers stop all Northern and TransPennine Express (TPE) services.
The 24-hour strike is the second in a series of rolling stoppages over a week by members of Aslef, the drivers’ union, in the long-running pay dispute.
It follows strikes that wiped out the biggest national rail commuter services in southeast England yesterday. Passenger numbers on the tube were down 10% from last Tuesday with many rail commuters unable to reach the capital, according to figures from Transport for London.
Both Northern and TPE have warned customers not to attempt to travel on Wednesday as no services will run, including on TPE’s routes into Scotland. An overtime ban that started on Monday across all the operators in England is also expected to bring more short-notice cancellations to services and potential disruption until next Tuesday.
In the US, a Delaware judge ruled in favour of the investors who challenged billionaire Elon Musk’s $56bn Tesla pay package as excessive, a court filing showed.
The judge found that Musk’s compensation was inappropriately set by the electric-vehicle maker’s board and struck down the package. If the decision survives any potential appeal, the Tesla board will have to come up with a new compensation package for Musk.
“Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware,” Musk responded on Twitter/X.
Britain’s second-biggest drugmaker GSK has beaten analyst expectations with fourth-quarter profits and sales thanks to a strong launch of its new RSV vaccine coupled with steady demand for its shingles shot and HIV medicines.
In the first annual results since the company spun off its consumer healthcare business Haleon (in July 2022), GSK reported a pretax profit of £6.1bn, up 14% at constant exchange rates. Turnover rose 5% to £30.3bn. It made sales of £8.05bn in the final quarter of the year.
Emma Walmsley’s strategy is focused on vaccines, infectious diseases and HIV drugs, with further acquisitions likely to boost the firm’s pipeline of new medicines. GSK has 71 vaccines and specialty medicines in clinical development, including 18 in late stage trials.
Its Arexvy vaccine for RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), a common respiratory virus that usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms but can be serious for children and elderly people, was the first approved RSV vaccine for older adults in May when the US regulator approved it.
The jab has become a blockbuster (with more than $1bn annual sales) and has outshone US rival Pfizer’s shot Abrysvo. More than a fifth of adults over 60 in the US have been vaccinated with either jab so far.
GSK is attempting to lower the age threshold from 60 to 50. The RSV vaccine was launched in the US last autumn and has an estimated two-thirds market share, with sales of more than £1.2bn so far.
It brought in sales of £529m between October and December, while GSK’s shingles vaccine Shingrix generated £908m.
Walmsley said clear highlights in 2023 were the “exceptional launch of Arexvy and continued progress in our pipeline”.
We are now planning for at least 12 major launches from 2025, with new vaccines and specialty medicines for infectious diseases, HIV, respiratory and oncology. As a result of this progress and momentum, we expect to deliver another year of meaningful sales and earnings growth in 2024, and we are upgrading our growth outlooks for 2026 and 2031. We remain focused on delivering this potential - and more - to prevent and change the course of disease for millions of people.
Richard Hunter, head of markets at interactive investor, said:
GSK has delivered a reminder that it remains a serious player on the global stage, with successful product launches being followed by a strong pipeline of potential new drugs.
The long-term potential of the sector is not in question, as moves towards personalised medicine and growing middle classes in emerging markets provide possibilities for endless demand. Meanwhile, the move away from the “white pills and Western markets” model , a phrase which Glaxo coined some years ago, is translating into a more specialised business, which was confirmed by the spin-off of its consumer healthcare unit Haleon in 2022.
Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, has said that Labour will not reinstate a cap on bankers’ bonuses that was scrapped lat year by the Conservative government.
In a big shift from previous Labour policies, she set out Labour’s plans to boost economic growth through financial services, which she described as one of the UK’s greatest assets that the party will “unashamedly champion”.
Bankers’ bonuses were capped at 200% of their regular pay across the EU to deter the excessive risk taking that many say caused the financial crisis.
The short-lived Liz Truss government abandoned the bonus cap. Reeves, a former Bank of England economist, told the BBC that she has no plans to reinstate it, despite criticism from the umbrella body for the UK’s trade unions at the time.
The cap on bankers’ bonuses was brought in in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and that was the right thing to do to rebuild the public finances.
But that has gone now and we don’t have any intention of bringing that back. And as chancellor of the exchequer, I would want to be a champion of a successful and thriving financial services industry in the UK.
Reeves said Labour’s policies will also include closer ties with the EU, expanding finance centres outside London, streamlining regulation and boosting pension investment in UK companies and green technologies.
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.
House prices across the UK rose this month, as buyers took advantage of mortgage rates trending down, according to a survey.
The average price of a home increased by 0.7% to £257,656 in January, following no monthly change in December, according to Nationwide building society. Compared with January last year, prices were down just 0.2%, following an annual decline of 1.8% in December. It was the smallest annual drop in a year.
Robert Gardner, Nationwide’s chief economist, said:
There have been some encouraging signs for potential buyers recently with mortgage rates continuing to trend down. This follows a shift in view amongst investors around the future path of Bank rate, with investors becoming more optimistic that the Bank of England will lower rates in the years ahead.
These shifts are important as this led to a decline in the longer-term interest rates (swap rates) that underpin mortgage pricing around the turn of the year. However, the partial reversal in recent weeks in response to stronger than expected inflation and activity data cautions that the interest rate outlook remains highly uncertain.
While a rapid rebound in activity or house prices in 2024 appears unlikely, the outlook is looking a little more positive. The most recent RICS survey suggests the decline in new buyer enquiries has halted, while there are tentative signs of a pickup in the number of properties coming onto the market.
The Bank of England is expected to keep its base rate at 5.25% on Thursday but may lower some of its inflation forecasts, which could give it room to start cutting rates from the summer.
Denmark’s Novo Nordisk has reported strong revenue growth, with sales of its obesity and diabetes drugs soaring. Obesity drug sales alone jumped 154% at constant exchange rates to 41.6bn Danish kroner (£4.8bn) last year, fuelled by demand for Ozempic. Sales of diabetes drugs such as Wegovy and Saxenda grew by 52%. Obesity and diabetes sales together totalled 215bn kroner (nearly £25bn).
Overall sales rose 36% to 232bn kroner, while profit before tax jumped 52% to 104.7bn kroner.
The company has struggled to keep up with demand and is building more factories.
For 2024, sales growth is expected to be 18-26% at constant exchange rates, and operating profit growth is expected to be 21-29%.
Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, president and chief executive, said:
We are very pleased with the strong performance in 2023 reflecting that more than 40 million people are now benefiting from our innovative diabetes and obesity treatments.
Our focus in 2024 will be on reaching more patients, progressing and expanding our pipeline as well as the continued significant expansion of our production capacity.
Blockbuster anti-obesity drugs such as Ozempic appear to dampen inflammation — raising hope that they could be used to treat diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, that are characterised by brain inflammation, according to the journal Nature.
The Agenda
7.45am GMT: France inflation for January (previous: 3.7%)
8.55am GMT: Germany unemployment for January (forecast: 11,000)
1pm GMT: Germany inflation for January (forecast: 3%, previous: 3.7%)
7pm GMT: US Federal Reserve interest rate decision (forecast: no change)
7.30pm GMT: Fed press conference
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2024-01-31 07:51:36Z
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