News & Insight • Weekly Newsletters

08 March 2024 | Charlie Todd | William Buckhurst

That Was The Week That Was

MACRO

• The UK Budget came and went and other than some noise on non-doms and a BrISA (British ISA) – both of which will be under review by the time of the next election – there wasn’t much to report on, throwing more weight behind the potential for another fiscal event over the summer…
• US non-farm payrolls were quite extraordinary. February numbers came in at +275,000 v +200,000 expected with the overall unemployment rate hitting 3.9%. However, the change in total non-farm payroll employment numbers for December was revised down by 43,000, from +333,000 to +290,000, and the change for January was revised down by 124,000, from +353,000 to +229,000. With these revisions, employment in December and January combined is 167,000 lower than previously reported
• Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $70,000
• Official EU data released this week showed that the European birth rate hits a record low of 4 million as concerns grow over a demographic crisis

COMPANY NEWS

• The boards of Virgin Money UK and Nationwide Building Society reached an agreement of a cash acquisition of 220p or £2.9bn
• Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company, hit all-time highs (again) as studies showed that its new oral weight loss drug Amycretin can reduce weight by 13% over 12 weeks
• The movement post-market in some US companies shares is getting rather volatile. Take Crowdstrike which had decent results this week, beating expectations across the board, but shares were up 20%, settling 10% higher when the main market opened the next day
• Confirmation of the merger between Mondi and DS Smith – one of the largest deals in the UK for some time
• One of the bastions of the German economy, Bayer, had good results beating the majority of analyst expectations; however, on the investor call management stated that they were keeping an “open mind” on a possible break-up of the company sending shares lower
• Foot Locker are struggling even though their results were solid. They delayed some of their restructuring and postponed their dividend sending shares lower
• A large group of UK companies reported this week with a particular focus on the capital goods sector. including Spirax-Sarco (steam engineers), Ashtead (construction equipment lessors), Rentokil (pest exterminators), Melrose (aerospace engines and structures), Senior (aerospace and vehicle engineers) and Coats (fabric and industrial threads). Overall, they are coping very well in this inflationary environment with a special mention to the aerospace duo

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY

We thought we would highlight the article by City AM showing the leading females in the UK’s largest companies but also the discrepancy between CEO and CFO roles on numbers alone.

Female chief financial officers outnumber the number of female chief execs by more than two to one in the FTSE 100, with only four FTSE 100 companies having both a female CEO and CFO.

Out of the 100 companies in the FTSE, only 10 have a female CEO, compared to 24 CFOs. 14 of the female CFOs have been in their current role for less than two years, data from AJ Bell revealed.

The four companies with both a female CEO and CFO are Aviva, Diageo, GSK and Severn Trent

THIS WEEK IN HISTORY

2009: March 9^th: the Dow Jones closes at 676.53 marking the bottom of the great financial crisis

2020: In the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, again on March 9^th, the S&P 500 triggered level 1 market wide circuit breakers during the opening hour and closed the day down 7.9%.  US oil prices crashed as much as 34% to a four-year low of $27.34.  The sharp selloff, which caused the major averages to be temporarily halted due to volatility, caused the New York Federal Reserve to increase its daily cash injections into the banking system to $150bn from $100bn

MARKET DATA

 As at 8^th March 2024. Source: InFront

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