News & Insight • Weekly Newsletters

27 March 2026 | William Buckhurst | Charlie Todd

That Was The Week That Was

MACRO NEWS

Pakistan delivered the 15-point peace proposal from the US to Iran while Iran reportedly has its own conditions for a ceasefire, which include guarantees that the US and Israel would not resume their attacks, reparations for war damages and recognition of its authority over the Strait of Hormuz.

The business activity in the US private sector continued to expand at a moderate pace in March, with the PMI data coming in at 51.4, down slightly from 51.9 in February. Manufacturing improved to 52.4 from 51.6, while Services declined to 51.1 from 51.7, signalling an unwelcome combination of slower growth and rising inflation.

UK inflation was in line with expectations with 0.4% month on month growth and annual CPI coming in at 3%. The ONS noted that motor fuel costs were among the largest drags on inflation, but this will reverse given the rise in the oil price. Clothing and footwear pushed up inflation, rising 0.6% while cheaper alcohol due to discounting also had a downward effect on inflation.

Results from municipal elections in France and Germany showed that Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party fell short of its target of taking control of several major French cities including Marseille, Toulon and Nimes while a far-right candidate aligned with Le Pen won in Nice. In Germany, the CDU won in the southwestern state of Rhineland-Palatinate, removing the Social Democrats from power in a state they have held for 35 years.

COMPANY NEWS

When the going gets tough, you need good management, just ask Tottenham Hotspur. Next was the top dog yet again as its post-tax profit of £870m beat expectations with total group sales of £7bn in line. Management commented that if the conflict lasted more than three months, they would raise prices. 

Like two drunks at the bar propping each other up? It was reported that Pernod Ricard was looking at a potential acquisition of Brown Forman, which owns Jack Daniels, sending shares 5.7% lower. Brown Forman is valued at $12bn whilst Pernod is at $17bn.

Meta Platforms fell over 10%, and Alphabet slightly less as they lost a trial that claimed its products led to addiction to social media. The verdict resulted in Meta told to pay $4.2m to the plaintiff with Google owing $1.8m. There are two other major cases this year.

Alphabet also announced its researchers had made developments in chip design with its new TurboQuant algorithm reportedly able to cut the amount of memory required to run LLMs by at least a factor of 6. The news hit chip and memory stocks with Micron falling 7%.

Arm launched its own AI chip, with its first chip called AGI CPU, with Meta being its first customer as Arm stated that it expected to generate $15bn annually within five years and TSMC set to produce the chips.

Cabling specialists, Volex’s earnings are now expected to be significantly ahead of current market expectations due to their data centre exposure. In a similar move to Young & Co, Volex is exploring a Main Market move.

Apollo Global Management and Ares both announced that they were gating redemptions at 5% after clients sought to redeem over 11% of their private credit funds.

Estee Lauder fell nearly 20% following reports that it was considering acquiring Spanish beauty company Puig, which owns Rabanne and Jean Paul Gaultier.

Telecom Italia was approached by Poste Italiane in a €10.8bn offer to return to government ownership.

DraftKings and Flutter Entertainment moved higher as US senators were set to ban sports betting on prediction platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket.

HUMAN FEVER FUEL (HUEL)

Danone announced that it had agreed to acquire Huel, which makes fortified protein powders and drinks, and while it did not disclose financial terms of the deal, the FT reported that the price was around €1bn. Reports noted that the business was last valued at $560m during a funding round in 2022 and reported revenues in 2024 of £214m.

A perennial takeover target, Fevertree Drinks bubbled up nicely by 7% after reporting full year results even with the sales in the UK declining by 2% but saw growth in the second half of the year, while Europe and the US increased 2% and 3% respectively with growth in the Rest of the World of 17%. The company noted that its expectations for 2026 remained unchanged when some people were expecting some sort of cut.

DISCOUNT SALES

3I Group is a private equity company, that has performed very well due to its investment in Action, a non-food discounter operating in 15 European countries in which 3i first invested in 2011.

At its capital markets day, it mentioned that net sales were €3.7bn, 14.5% ahead of the same period in 2025 and sales growth in the first 12 weeks of the year was 4.0%, but this was weaker than expected and they blamed the weather. In the words of Shania Twain, ‘that don’t impress the market much’ and cut the shares by 16%.

It is targeting at least 400 new stores in the coming year from the existing 3,302. As they are running out of room in Europe, they also plan to open its first store in the south-east of the US in late 2027/2028. It is targeting like-for-like sales growth between 4% and 5% and a net margin of 14.8%.

THE WEEK AHEAD

Early on we get a repost from Fed Chair Jerome Powell after being called a ‘moron’ by the President, followed by JOLT job openings and then Non-Farm Payrolls at the end of the week. Elsewhere there are CPI numbers from Japan and Europe and GDP figures from the UK.

Nike report quarterly earnings on Tuesday, as well as FactSet Research Systems and Beyond Meat. It is otherwise a quiet week on company results.

THE WEEK IN HISTORY

• 1919: A law regulating “la fabrication du pain” was passed in France, restricting bakers from working from 10 pm to 4 am. This culminated in a quiet cultural shift in which the traditional French boule—which took hours – was replaced by the baguette.
• 1979: An automatic valve mistakenly closed at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, culminating in radioactive leakage. Microsoft are due to reopen the site in 2028.

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