FTSE 100 LIVE: London flat and Europe mixed as AI fears outweigh Federal Reserve rate cut

PZ Cussons has said it will now keep its troubled African business just 18 months after putting it on the sale block. It plans to restructure the business for growth instead.

The Manchester-headquartered firm said while it had received “significant” interest from bidders, the offers failed to recognise the value of the portfolio.

It will now lead an overhaul of the division, including plans to offload further parts of the African arm, worth around £7m, while putting in place financial measures to guard against future currency risks and volatility.

It said:

The group, which also owns brands such as Imperial Leather and Carex, launched a review of its entire African business in April last year.

It had been looking to exit Nigeria after economic woes in the country saw extreme inflation and devaluation of the Nigerian naira, which pushed the firm to a loss of £95.9m in the year to 31 May 2024.

Software giant Oracle (ORCL) missed revenue and profit expectations after the bell last night, also reporting a jump in spending on AI data centres where it has already been spending and borrowing heavily.

Capital expenditure for the 2026 fiscal year is now expected to be $15bn higher than the $35bn Oracle estimated in September.

Oracle also booked a one-off $2.7bn pre-tax gain through the sale of its stake in chip designer Ampere Computing.

For the last quarter, Oracle reported total revenue of $16.06bn, below with analysts’ average estimate of $16.21bn. It added that adjusted profit for the current fiscal third quarter would be $1.64 to $1.68 per share, below analyst estimates of $1.72 per share, according to LSEG data.

Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, said:

Shares are 12% lower pre-market trading

Stocks in Asia headed lower overnight with the Nikkei (^N225) down 0.9% on the day in Japan, while the Hang Seng (^HSI) ended just below the flatline in Hong Kong. Losses have been particularly sharp for tech stocks.

The Shanghai Composite (000001.SS) was 0.7% down by the end of the session and in South Korea, the Kospi (^KS11) lost 0.6% on the day.

Bond yields have also moved lower, which partly reflects the Federal Reserve interest rate cut and the wider risk-off tone this morning, but Japan’s 20-year auction had its strongest demand since 2020.

Moreover, the latest employment data from Australia showed an unexpected contraction of -21.3k in November (compared to the +20.0k expected), which has raised doubts about the likelihood of a near-term rate hike by the RBA.

The news sent yields on 10-year Australian government bonds down 8.9bps, and the Australian dollar is the worst-performing G10 currency, slipping 0.6% against the US dollar.

Across the pond on Wall Street, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose 0.6%, closing just -0.06% below its all-time high, whilst 2-year treasury yields (-7.7bps) saw their best day in two months.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq (^IXIC) was 0.3% higher and the Dow Jones (^DJI) also gained more than 1%.

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 happening across the global economy.

To the day ahead we have data releases including the US weekly initial jobless claims, along with the trade balance for September. Otherwise from central banks, we’ll hear from BoE governor Andrew Bailey.

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

• 7am: RWS Holdings, NCC Group

• 9am: IEA’s monthly oil market report

• 9.50am: Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey speaks at Financial Times Global Boardroom event

• 11am: Turkey’s interest rate decision

• 1.30pm: US trade data for September

• 1.30pm: US initial jobless claims