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Key events
Oil price rises above $101 a barrel
Oil prices are heading higher again, with Brent crude rising above $101 a barrel.
Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, rose as high as $101.94 a barrel this morning, the highest level since 23 July after tensions in the Middle East escalated.
Donald Trump said on Wednesday he expected the war with Iran to end after the US midterm elections in November, and threatened again to attack Pickaxe Mountain, a heavily fortified site, programme.
The two sides launched their biggest wave of attacks on shipping since the start of the six-month-old war – Iran said it had attacked 10 ships near the strait of Hormuz (where daily traffic has dwindled to single digits) on Wednesday after the US sank five Iranian oil tankers.
Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary reiterated the airline’s recent warning that if oil prices stay high, there will be a significant uplift in air fares next year.
Here is our full story on Primark starting to offer home delivery in Britain “in the future” – it’s a bit of a moment.
Independent retail analyst Nick Bubb said:
We flagged last Friday that there has been plenty of speculation about tough trading in the John Lewis department store business and we assumed that overall first-half sales would have been something like 3% down, with ‘big ticket’ products taking a beating, but on an ex-VAT basis the fall was 4% and the biggest fall (-4.8%) was in fashion.
And, despite good work on margin and cost control, that sort of top-line drop hit the bottom line at John Lewis, with the usual H1 operating loss up from £53m to £83m this year (we expected £80m).
The hope might have been that Waitrose could help to make up the JL shortfall, but the business has been investing heavily in store refurbishments etc and although there was 2.8% sales growth at Waitrose in H1, there was a bit of margin pressure and the heatwave brought higher supply chain costs, so Waitrose operating profits in H1 were slightly down, from £110m to £103m (we expected £105m).
Usually the H1 investment programme would be expected to pay off in the seasonally more important H2, but JLP are ‘cautious’ about the outlook, given the uncertainties about the autumn budget etc.
John Lewis losses widen to £124m as shopper confidence dips
In other retail news, losses at the owner of John Lewis and Waitrose widened by more than 40% in the first half of the year as it struggled with higher costs and with shoppers feeling less confident about their money.
The John Lewis Partnership, which operates 36 department stores and more than 300 Waitrose supermarkets, said its pre-tax loss for the six months to 1 August climbed to £124m, compared with £88m in the same period in 2025.
Jason Tarry, the chair, said the drop reflected the company’s “continued investment in our transformation, a more challenging trading environment and the increased costs of doing business”.
Some of the higher costs included greater national insurance contributions, as well as “managing operations through the heatwaves”, JLP said.
The group is in the midst of a turnaround plan, in which 16 department stores and at least 20 Waitrose outlets have been closed and thousands of staff jobs cut.
The drop in profit comes after Peter Ruis, head of the department store arm, said last month he would step down after less than three years in the role. He has been replaced by Will Kernan, former boss of the River Island fashion chain.
In March the company felt confident enough to pay its 69,000 workers, whom it calls partners, a bonus – of 2% of salary – for the first time in four years, following a 6% rise in its underlying profit. Staff shared a bonus pot of £35m, worth about one week’s extra pay each.
However, the retailer has since struggled with weak consumer spending this summer, as successive heatwaves deterred shoppers from heading to the high street, instead using online specialists, and the rising cost of living has hit spending on big-ticket items such as sofas and beds.
First-half sales at Waitrose grew 4% to £4.3bn, while at department stores sales dropped 2% to £2bn.
Introduction: UK flight disruption expected to clear; Primark to start offering home delivery in Great Britain
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of the global economy, the financial markets, the eurozone and business.
Flight chaos in the UK is expected to clear today, after more than 2,000 flights arriving in or departing the UK have been cancelled since an air traffic control system issue on Tuesday.
Flight schedules are expected to return to normal, with no flights cancelled today, according to the aviation analytics company Cirium.
The chief executive of National Air Traffic Services (Nats), Martin Rolfe, has faced calls to resign. The government has given him a week to report back on the reasons for the technical failure.
The problem was fixed on Tuesday but further flights were cancelled or delayed on Wednesday, a total of 2,145 over two days. Cirium said 399 flights were cancelled on Wednesday alone.
British Airways was the worst affected airline, with 88 of its 507 flights scheduled to depart on Wednesday affected. The airline said it was “incredibly sorry” to its customers and that the issue had been “entirely out of our control”.
Michael O’Leary, the outspoken boss of budget airline Ryanair, called Rolfe’s position “untenable” and he is likely to voice more criticism at Ryanair’s annual meeting at its headquarters close to Dublin airport later on Thursday.
Primark will start offering home delivery in Great Britain in the future, according to its parent Associated British Foods, which plans to spin the budget retailer off next year.
While Primark offers a Click + Collect service, it had been resisting a move into home delivery, arguing it did not make economic sense because of its low price points.
But AB Foods said today:
Primark’s digital maturity, including the success of Click + Collect, and online market developments, mean there is now the opportunity for profitable growth through the home delivery channel.
Primark has acquired a highly-automated warehouse in Sheffield, northern England. AB Foods said work on the demerger of Primark from its food businesses is advancing well and is expected to be completed in December 2027.
Crude oil prices have dipped but Brent crude remains above $100 a barrel after fighting in the Middle East escalated. it is currently trading at $100.42, down 79 cents or 0.8%.
Shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz has dwindled to single digits, fuelling concerns over oil supply.
Asian stock markets are a sea of red, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng tumbling 1.4% while Japan’s Nikkei was flat and China’s CSI 300 index lost 0.4%.
Yields on 10-year US Treasury bonds held steady at 4.8406% after rising to their highest levels in three years on Wednesday, when the Treasury Department announced a $6bn buyback of longer-dated bonds that disappointed some investors.
The European Central Bank is widely expected to raise interest rates by a quarter point at lunchtime, to bring inflation under control.
The Agenda
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1.15pm BST: European Central Bank interest rate decision
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1.30pm BST: US Producer prices for August
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1.45pm BST: ECB press conference
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3pm BST: US Home sales for August
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