News & Insight • Weekly Newsletters

27 February 2026 | William Buckhurst

That Was The Week That Was

MACRO NEWS

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in his office on Saturday morning during US-Israeli air strikes, with other senior officials of Iran also dying. Tensions around the country had been rising all week with a notable US armed presence. Iran did respond with missile attacks against US air bases in the region such as Bahrain and Oman.

After Trump announced he was increasing his new amended global tariff to 15% it was reported that the European Union had frozen the ratification process of its trade agreement. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer had to do some backpedalling and stated that the decision by the Supreme Court would not unravel the deals negotiated with US partners and that these deals would remain in place. Trump warned against countries taking advantage of the ruling, stating that “any country that wants to ‘play games’ with the ridiculous supreme court decision, especially those that have ‘Ripped Off’ the USA for years, and even decades, will be met with a much higher Tariff, and worse, than that which they just recently agreed to.”

Trump’s State of the Union speech was largely an anti-climate change rant, with perhaps more relevance for oil prices.

In UK politics, the Green Party won the Gorton by-election beating the incumbent Labour Party, who slipped to third place behind Reform in second, putting more pressure on Sir Kier Starmer. Retail sales figures also fell sharply with the figures being blamed on the consistently wet (British) weather.

COMPANY NEWS

An analysis piece written by Cintrini Research (hypothetically written in 2028) discussed potential AI-driven economic disruption, predicting 10% unemployment in the US and massive job displacement across sectors, with impact on payment companies and gig economy workers potentially earning half their current wages. This led those sectors lower again.

Netflix rose 8% after it withdrew from the bidding race for Warner Bros, leaving Paramount in pole position.

Senior have got their results very soon, but they announced they had received several takeover bids.

Berkshire Hathaway’s new leader Greg Abel wrote his first annual letter suggesting the cash pile ($373bn) will be used in due course.

Melrose shares fell 12% which we felt was unfair but at least the buyback can be done at a cheaper price. Free cash flow was healthy, but the guidance missed.

Diageo fell 12.7%, its largest one-day decline on record, after results which confirmed fears about the demand for alcoholic drinks with sales and profits both falling below estimates which led to a dividend cut.

HSBC rose 7.9% on good guidance and future dividends.

Novo Nordisk released data on another Cagrisema trial, sending the shares down 16.5%, showing 20% weight loss against Eli Lilly’s Zepbound (24%).

Honeywell announced it has cut the price it would pay for Johnson Matthey’s Catalyst Technologies business.

Rolls Royce continue to motor higher as it rose 3.2% after reporting that operating profit rose 41% to £3.46bn. Guidance was also excellent with the free cash flow being deployed in a £8bn buyback.

Synopsys finished 5.16% lower even after beating expectations for revenue and earnings but sales for the Design IP division disappointingly declined by 6.5% following the acquisition of Ansys for $35bn last year.

Schneider Electric had good results and guided to organic growth of 7-10%, due to market demand.

LATEST NVIDIA REPORT

Nvidia reported their latest quarterly results that beat expectations, but the shares fell 10% in reaction to them, taking the market capitalisation of the company down $450bn. Annual sales of $215bn was up 65% from a year ago primarily led by data centre sales growth of 75% over the quarter. Both margins and therefore earnings were well above analysts’ expectations. The company also guided to revenue in the next quarter that was well above consensus estimates while stating that it had been granted a license by the US to ship H200 chips to Chinese based clients.

‘Computing demand is growing exponentially-the agentic AI inflection point has arrived’ stated Jensen Huang who added that 'enterprise adoption of agents is skyrocketing'. As is becoming customary, he also name checked several companies that will also be part of his plans.

STOCK EXCHANGE BAFTAS

Although the BAFTAs and the BRITs bookended last week, there was a more important awards ceremony in the world of stocks and shares in the UK, and we congratulate the following on their victory:

Company of the Year: IMI

CEO of the Year: Bill Hocking (Galliford Try)

Outstanding Achievement: Halma

New Company of the Year: The Beauty Tech Group (which was brought to market by Berenberg)

Breakthrough of the Year: Genus

Fund Manager of The Year: Alessandro Dicorrado (NinetyOne)

Board of the Year: M&S

Transformation of the Year: Saga

Tech Business of the Year: Alfa

Growth Company of the Year: Volution

Transaction of the Year: Chesnara

Best Investor Communication: Kier Group

THE WEEK AHEAD

Although it is trying to be watered down as a non-event the Chancellor will release the Spring Statement on Tuesday. Elsewhere we have European inflation data in the middle of the week and US employment data at the end.

As mentioned, Senior report this week, but so do Greggs, Vistry, Hunting, Coats, Reckitt Benckiser, Elementis, and the company of last year, IMI.

Over the pond we have Broadcom, Marvell and Costco.

THE WEEK IN HISTORY

1900: The Trades Union Congress and the Independent Labour Party (formed in 1893) meet in London, resulting in a Labour Representative Committee and eventually the modern UK Labour Party in 1906

1953: Francis Crick and James Watson discover the chemical structure of the DNA molecule (double-helix polymer) using X-ray diffraction studies developed by Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins