FTSE 100 LIVE: Stocks rise as China trade surplus hits record high

Restaurant chain TGI Fridays has shut 16 restaurants with the loss of 456 jobs after tumbling into administration. The brand said it will keep most of its sites open after securing a rescue deal.

Liberty Bar and Restaurant Group, the company running TGI Fridays’ UK restaurants, hired administrators from Interpath Advisory on Tuesday.

Immediately, they sold the business and its assets to a subsidiary company of Sugarloaf, the firm behind the global TGI Friday brand.

Sugarloaf had two months earlier bought the UK business from private equity firm Calveton UK and Breal Capital.

Administrators confirmed the pre-pack administration deal would safeguard 33 restaurants and transfer 1,384 workers to the new vehicle.

However, 16 TGI Fridays sites were not included and immediately shut for good.

The company confirmed the move resulted in 456 redundancies for staff across the restaurants.

Phil Broad, global president of TGI Fridays, said:

Here are the top FTSE risers and fallers this morning:

The government has announced its intention to build a new railway line between Birmingham and Manchester.

A previous plan to extend HS2 between the cities was scrapped by Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government in October 2023 to save money.

The Treasury said it wants a new Birmingham-Manchester rail line but that it would not be “a reinstatement of HS2”.

No timescale was provided on when it would be built.

HS2 is currently tens of billions of pounds over budget and around a decade behind schedule.

Reports state that the now-shortened line between Birmingham and London could cost £81bn.

Shadow Rail Minister Jerome Mayhew said:

China reported strong trade numbers for 2025, with its surplus rising to a record high despite a slump in exports to the US after president Donald Trump hiked tariffs.

Beijing revealed the world’s largest-ever trade surplus, the value of goods and services sold overseas compared to its imports, at $1.19tn (£890bn) year-on-year. It is the first time China’s full-year trade surplus has passed $1tn, beating 2024’s record figure of $993bn.

The trade war between the US and China, which at one point saw reciprocal tariffs in triple digits, led to a 20% plunge in exports, with imports falling 14.6%.

However, other trade partners more than filled the gap, increasing Chinese exports overall by 5.5% in 2025, while imports stayed flat in dollar terms. Exports to the European Union were also up 8.4%, but imports from the bloc dipped.

Wang Jun, the deputy director of China’s customs, said during a press conference on Wednesday that the figures are “extraordinary and hard-won” given the “profound changes” and challenges in global trade.

He added:

Stocks in Asia were mostly higher overnight, with the Nikkei (^N225) rising 1.5% on the day in Japan, hitting new highs amid increasing optimism regarding additional fiscal stimulus from Tokyo, with an election still potentially imminent.

Meanwhile the Hang Seng (^HSI) advanced 0.6% in Hong Kong and the Shanghai Composite (000001.SS) was 0.3% down by the end of the session.

In South Korea, the Kospi (^KS11) added 0.7% on the day.

Across the pond on Wall Street, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) slipped 0.2%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq (^IXIC) was 0.1% lower. The Dow Jones (^DJI) also lost 0.8% as investors focused on the US CPI print for December, which was softer than expected.

In particular, core CPI was up 0.24% on a monthly basis (compared to the 0.3% expected), while headline inflation rose 0.31% versus the 0.3% expected. So that meant the year-on-year rates were unchanged at 2.7% for headline and 2.6% for core.

The downside for core inflation was driven by goods, including a monthly 1.1% decline in used cars and trucks as well as a 2.2% fall for IT commodities (computers, smartphones etc.).

However, the more negative interpretation was that the weakness was driven by a few outlier categories, and actually the Cleveland Fed’s trimmed mean (which excludes the outliers) was still up +0.31% for the month, the highest reading since June.

Good morning, and welcome back to our markets live blog. As usual we will be taking a deep dive into what’s moving markets and what’s happening across the global economy.

Looking at the day ahead, we have data releases including US November PPI, retail sales, and December’s existing home sales. Central Bank events include the release of the Fed’s Beige book, along with remarks from the Fed’s Paulson, Miran, Kashkari, Bostic and Williams, the ECB’s de Guindos, and the BoE’s Taylor and Ramsden. Earnings releases will include Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.

Here’s a snapshot of what’s on the agenda:

• 7am: Trading updates: Hays, Frontier Developments, Vestry, Liontrust Asset Management, Nichols, Pearson

• 8:00am: Bank of England’s Alan Taylors speech at the National University of Singapore

• 9:00am: Launch of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026

• 11:00am: Wells Fargo full year results

• 11:45am: Bank of America full year results

• 1:00pm: Citigroup full year results