News & Insight • Weekly Newsletters

10 April 2026 | William Buckhurst

That Was The Week That Was

MACRO NEWS

The week has revolved around tracks from The Prodigy and Pink Floyd. We had the crew of Artemis II return from Out of Space having been to the Far Side of the Moon. Trump, now known as the Firestarter, sent vice-president Vance to Pakistan where he insisted everyone Breathe and to Speak to Me. Sadly, the Iranians were On The Run back to Iran without a deal.

NATO Secretary General Rutte met with Trump in Washington that comes amid Trump’s vocal criticism of NATO allies.

The annual rate of inflation in the US hit its highest level since May 2024, rising to 3.3% in March, up from 2.4% in February. The jump was driven by surging petrol prices caused by the war in Iran. The core rate, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, rose only slightly, suggesting that the impact of the war is yet to spread through the economy.

Peter Magyar, leader of the centre-right party, won the Hungarian election, putting an end to the 16-year rule of Orban.

The Vietnamese market was strong despite Communist Party Leader To Lam being also elected as President and Head of State in an unusual move, but strangely Malaysian stocks declined despite the government unveiling plans to boost domestic participation in local capital markets.

COMPANY NEWS

Sweeter music. On the back of Universal Music Group announcing its first ever share buyback last week, it was approached by Pershing Square Capital Management to acquire all outstanding shares of UMG through a business combination. The transaction would involve UMG merging with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, Ltd., resulting in a new entity, comprising €9.4bn in cash and 0.77 shares in New UMG stock for each UMG share held for a total consideration of €30.40 per share.

The Wall Street Journal reported that privately owned alcoholic beverage player Sazerac has approached Brown Forman about a potential transaction. Elsewhere in liquor land, Remy Cointreau launched its transformation plan to ‘sustainably improve profitability in order to generate additional resources to reinvest in growth’.

Broadcom shares rose slightly after the company announced two significant developments, firstly it signed a 5-year long-term agreement with Alphabet (through 2031) to develop and supply custom processing units and then announced an expansion to their existing partnership with Anthropic to now supply 3.5GW of next-generation compute capacity.

Sodexo, the catering experts, missed expectations as revenue rose 1.7% to €12.0bn but the underlying operating profit was down -26.5% on a like-for-like basis. The group lowers therefore had to lower its guidance by 1.4%.

Costco Wholesale continued to execute brilliantly as core business accelerated despite a negative impact from Easter timing.

Levi Strauss shares dressed up nicely by 8.8% after results beat expectations with earnings at 42c versus estimates at 37c. Revenue grew by 14% while direction to consumer sales through own stores and website jumped 16%, bringing sales to 52% of overall revenue.

Advent, the private equity company, said that it does not plan to make a bid for Senior, after the engineer agreed to be bought by Tinicum and Blackstone in a £1.4bn deal. Senior had agreed to be taken over for 300p per share, this includes 297.85p per share in cash and the FY25 final dividend of 2.15p.

AMAZON ANNUAL DELIVERY

Andy Jassy's latest letter to Amazon's shareholders offered fresh insights into how he's thinking about the company.

Its workforce is 1.5m people globally, but when talking through Amazon Bedrock he mentioned the efficiencies of AI, “Normally, this sort of activity might take a team of 40 people about a year to carefully build. Instead, the Bedrock team spun up a separable group of six very skilled engineers …delivered this new engine in 76 days."

He also mentioned that he’s “followed the public debate on whether this technology is over-hyped, whether we're in 'a bubble,' and if the margins and ROIC (return on invested capital) will be appealing. My strong conviction, at least for Amazon, is that the answers are no, no, and yes”.

INTELLIGENCE AND INTRUSION

Further worries in the software and cyber security sector as Anthropic claimed this week that its newest AI model, Claude Mythos, had found thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities - some reportedly decades old - across every major operating system and web browser. The company judged the model too dangerous for public release, instead giving early access to over 50 organisations including Microsoft, Apple, Google and CrowdStrike to find and patch vulnerabilities in their own systems.

Big organisations with money to spend on compute will benefit first. Provided they can actually patch what they find, they may be better positioned than ever. The scarier story may be what happens to everyone else. In theory, AI should help smaller companies defend, too - but only if they have the money and the inclination to adopt these new models and methods quickly.

THE WEEK AHEAD

Some reports from the Continent about economic and consumer sentiment, with Eurozone CPI on Friday. On Wednesday we get numbers regarding industrial production from over the Pond.

Reporting season is now up and running and therefore we have the US banks up early, with Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs all releasing quarterly results. Companies in other sectors include ASML, Netflix, PepsiCo and Snap.

THE WEEK IN HISTORY

2001: On New Years Day, American Airlines officially completed its acquisition of Trans World Airlines and became the world's largest airline.

1847: The safety pin was patented by Walter Hunt in the United States; he later sold his rights to the fastener for $400.