, Heathrow Airport has reported a record passenger number this morning, with almost 40 million people using the West London hub in the six months to the end of June. The last day of the month was its busiest ever. Almost 270,000 travellers used the airport then.
And it said it expected the looming school holiday getaway to be a “bumper summer”. Staff numbers are at a record 90,000 “Team Heathrow colleagues. But revenue fell, due to tighter controls from regulators on the landing fees it can charge to airlines.
It said: “ Despite record passenger numbers, aeronautical revenue is down by almost 8% as a result of the CAA’s tight H7 settlement” , Losses at Aston Martin widened by more than 50% to £217 million in the first six months of the year, the luxury carmaker has said, as it posted revenues that came in ahead of market expectations. Turnover stood at just over £600 million, a dip of 11%, while second-quarter earnings of £42 million came in well ahead of expectations of £24 million. But wholesale volumes fell by a third which the carmaker said was “reflecting, as expected, our planned transition to new Vantage and upgraded DBX707 models.
”Aston confirmed its guidance for the second half of the year, adding it “remain on track to deliver a strong second half performance. This will be underpinned by a significant ramp up in wholesale volumes including both the new V12 flagship Vanquish and ultra-exclusive Valiant Special.” , US futures are pointing lower, with Tesla shares down 8% and Google parent Alphabet off 2% in the wake of quarterly results last night.
The decline for Alphabet came even though cloud computing and advertising growth helped it beat forecasts for second quarter revenues and earnings. The slide for Tesla in after-hours dealings punctured a recent strong run for shares as it missed earnings expectations for a fourth consecutive quarter. In regular US trading, Spotify shares surged 12% on a record second quarter profit and General Electric also fared well on improved guidance.
Leading US benchmarks last night finished near their opening marks, but with the Nasdaq 100 forecast to open about 0.9% lower this afternoon. The FTSE 100 index lost 0.
4% yesterday and is set to drop another 27 points to 8141. , Good morning from the Standard City desk. Rachel Reeves has said she planned to “level” with the public about the “fiscal mess” the last government has left her with.
The state of the nation’s finances is not great, but the notion that she couldn’t see how things looked before she took office is daft. It’s a political ruse -- she’s hardly the first newly elected politician to try it out. The question for Reeves will be, as an upside-down Osborne, how much spending she can shove through, rather than how many cuts she can get away with.
If she had decided to be truly bold, to reinvent the notion of government spending in the public mind, to say that there is no limit to what it can pay for, if it so chooses, then she’d have some proper options. Instead, in the name of appearing prudent, she will be shackled by financial rules she needn’t have agreed to, but which keep the City (relatively) happy. Which means her infrastructure spending may do less good than Osborne’s austerity did harm.
Chancellors don’t have much wiggle room, which is why they play politics. A whole new debate about what government money is, where it comes from, and what we should spend it on would be better. At this point in the argument, someone will say the government can’t spend money it doesn’t have.
It can, it does, it shall. The only real question is whether it should. Usually, it’s cheaper for the government to spend money it is inevitably going to spend anyway on prevention now rather than treatment later.
~ Here’s a summary of our top headlines from yesterday: Here comes the sun: for the year – to 1.1% - in boost for new government and Chancellor Rachel Reeves. The summer forecast is much hotter than the one made in spring, and it thinks interest rates will be at 4.
75% by the end of the year : The world's biggest contract caterer says current FX levels would hit annual revenue by $106 million at the canteen-to-Centre-Court giant, which alss serves up a 10% revenue rise in the third quarter. Lloyds of London cyber insurer swerves Friday's meltdown: Beazley says Friday's global outage will not change its guidance based on "what is known at this point". Mooted tech mega merger off: for the Israeli cyber security firm in what would have been the biggest deal ever to take out a venture capital backed start up Ofcom launches review of mobile spectrum licence fees it charges ahead of Vodafone merger, following request from BT.
, its margins are recovering as sales rise 5.3% and it pocketed £20 million from selling the Mad Hatter pub in Southwark.
