By James Davey LONDON (Reuters) - Sainsbury's and Aldi will forgo UK property tax relief during the pandemic, following rivals Tesco (LON:TSCO) and Morrisons and taking the total saved by the government from supermarkets to 1.4 billion pounds. Sainsbury's said on Thursday it would now pay 410 million pounds in so-called...
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By Geoffrey Smith Investing.com -- It costs a lot of money to stay on the right side of the ESG crowd. However, management at Nestle (SIX:NESN) obviously consider that it will cost shareholders more in the long run if it doesn’t. The Swiss-based food giant said on Thursday that it will spend nearly 3 billion euro ($3.6 billion) over the next five years to...
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By Sujata Rao LONDON (Reuters) - Will the U.S. hiring slowdown displayed in Wednesday's ADP (NASDAQ:ADP) data and the lacklustre Beige Book activity index pressure Congress into agreeing additional fiscal stimulus? That's what markets seem to expect. That, alongside progress on coronavirus vaccines and evidence of a Chinese growth bounceback are spurring an epic reflation trade -- world stocks at new all-time...
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LONDON (Reuters) - England's deputy chief medical officer said medicine regulators in other countries, especially those in the United States, were not far behind the decision of Britain's regulators to authorise Pfizer Inc (NYSE:PFE)'s COVID-19 vaccine. "I actually don't expect other regulators, particularly the U.S. regulator, to be very far behind with this vaccine," Jonathan Van-Tam told BBC television. ...
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(Reuters) - London's FTSE 100 was muted on Thursday as Brexit negotiations remained gridlocked with only weeks left for Britain's transition period to expire, while energy stocks slipped on lower oil prices. The blue-chip FTSE 100 was flat by 0803 GMT after gaining more than 3% in the past two sessions, while the mid-cap FTSE 250, considered a barometer of Brexit sentiment,...
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BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's Merck KGaA said on Thursday it has agreed a three-year strategic research deal worth up to $6.8 billion with Artios Pharma Limited to develop up to eight potential drugs for cancer by targeting DNA repair mechanisms inside cells. Under the agreement, Artios will receive $30 million in up-front and near-term payments, plus double-digit option fees and up to...
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LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's insurers should maintain "high levels of prudence" when it comes to paying dividends given high uncertainty due to the pandemic, a senior Bank of England official said on Thursday. "Firm-specific stress testing of affordability is a key input to board's decisions," Charlotte Gerken, the BoE's executive director for insurance supervision, said in a speech. "And we expect...
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By Yoruk Bahceli AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Spain and Portugal are on track to collectively shave at least 17 billion euros ($20 billion) off their debt service costs by end-2022, their crisis-borrowing spree essentially underwritten by the European Central Bank. S&P Global (NYSE:SPGI) Ratings analysis shows the two countries are set to make the saving as their 10-year bond yields teeter on the...
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By Caroline Pailliez PARIS (Reuters) - On the October evening President Emmanuel Macron ordered France back into lockdown, the chief executive of Thales told staff in a memo that anti-COVID measures already in place at the company conformed with the new requirements. At the time, staff were required to wear a face mask at work, stagger arrival and departure times and were...
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ZURICH (Reuters) - Nestle said on Thursday it plans to invest 3.2 billion Swiss francs ($3.58 billion) over the next five years to reduce its climate impact and help it get to net zero emmissions by 2050. The world's biggest food company said it would work with farmers and suppliers to promote regenerative agriculture, plant hundreds of millions of trees, and switch...
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