Banker Zahid Naseem guilty

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British shares falter as Fed, oil play Scrooge

Business correspondent(wp/Reuters):
UK shares fell to their lowest in more than two years on Thursday, joining a wider market selloff, after the U.S. Federal Reserve bank dampened hopes for a milder policy outlook and oil resumed its slide.

The FTSE 100 .FTSE was down 0.8 percent with the mid-cap index .FTMC 0.9 percent lower, after hitting multi-year lows in early trading.

In result-driven moves, Carnival (CCL.L) tanked 10.8 percent to the bottom of the main index after the world’s largest cruise operator forecast an adjusted profit for the first quarter that missed market expectations.

Oil heavyweights Shell (RDSa.L) and BP (BP.L) were the biggest drags on the main index, as crude prices slipped back into negative territory.

Utilities, often seen as a safe haven, helped the main index recoup some losses. National Grid (NG.L) was up 2.4 percent after a rating upgrade by CFRA, with Severn Trent (SVT.L) and United Utilities (UU.L) also rising.

But the UK indices are on track for their worst year since the 2008 financial crisis, and the Fed’s tone deepened concerns already augmented by Brexit worries.

Despite calls by U.S. President Donald Trump for the Fed to stop raising interest rates, the central bank on Wednesday stuck by a plan to keep repealing support from an economy it views as strong, sending Wall Street spiralling down.

The Fed news and falling greenback hit mining stocks, with Antofagasta (ANTO.L), BHP Group (BHPB.L), Rio Tinto (RIO.L) and Anglo American (AAL.L) all down between 2 percent and 3.7 percent.

“The outlook has changed, for ten years we have been talking about buying the dip. The mentality is different now, it is sell the rally,” said CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson.

“My fear is that the Fed is ignoring the clouds of concern around the global economy and happily putting on sun cream when there is a shower just around the corner.”

Back at home, the Bank of England kept interest rates unchanged on Thursday but trimmed its economic growth forecast for the last quarter of the year, acknowledging that Brexit uncertainty had “intensified considerably” over the last month.

After starting the week with a profit warning from online fashion store ASOS (ASOS.L) that shook retail stocks, the shopping sector saw some good news as British retail sales topped expectations in November thanks to Black Friday promotions.

Among mid-caps, construction firm Kier Group (KIE.L) eked out a 1.6-percent gain, having earlier fallen 13 percent after saying that less than half of its shares were bought by shareholders in a fundraising. Still, its market value has shrunk over 64 percent this year.

Investors have dumped shares in the construction sector amid worries about mounting debts after Carillion’s (CLLN.L) collapse and the impact of Brexit on real estate.

“After Carillion, everyone wants to kill these types of names,” said a trader.

Defying the overall sentiment, sandwich maker Greencore Group (GNC.L) was the top mid-cap gainer with a 7.2 percent surge after announcing plans to buy back 509 million pounds of shares at a double-digit premium.

AIM-listed electricity and gas supplier Yu Group (YU.L) slumped 14.7 percent after it admitted to serious historical failures in an accounting review and said its profit would be hit as a result.

Passengers face days of delays as drones halt London Gatwick flights

Business correspondent(wp/Reuters):
Passengers flying via London Gatwick will face at least another 24 hours of disruption after several drone sightings forced Britain’s second busiest airport to shut its runway, causing delays to thousands of Christmas travellers.

Authorities at Gatwick halted flights at 2200 GMT on Wednesday after two drones were spotted flying near its airfield.

Police said they believed the actions were deliberate and more than 20 units were searching for the drone operators on Thursday, when the airport had expected to handle around 115,000 passengers.

“Public safety is paramount and we will take all available actions to disrupt this deliberate act,” Sussex Police said in a statement. “There are no indications to suggest this is terror related.”

Gatwick’s Chief Operating Officer Chris Woodroofe could not say when flights would resume and warned that the knock-on effects from the airport closure would last for more than 24 hours.

Police and airport reports talk of sightings of more than one drone. Woodroofe described one of the drones as a heavy industrial drone.

“It’s definitely not a standard, off-the-shelf type drone,” he said on BBC radio. “Given what has happened I definitely believe it is a deliberate act, yes.”

The airport and Gatwick’s biggest airline easyJet told passengers to check before travelling to the airport.

“We also have the helicopter up in the air but the police advice is that it would be dangerous to seek to shoot the drone down because of what may happen to the stray bullets,” Woodroofe said.

Under British law it is illegal to fly drones within 1 km (0.62 mile) of an airport boundary. The offence is punishable by up to five years in prison.

SAFETY FIRST

Gatwick apologised on Twitter here to affected passengers, adding that safety was its "foremost priority".

Gatwick said at least 20,000 passengers had already been affected with hundreds of thousands of journeys likely to be disrupted in the coming days.

Gatwick, which lies 50 km (30 miles) south of London and competes with Europe’s busiest airport, Heathrow, west of London, had previously said Sunday would be its busiest day of the festive period.

An increase in near collisions by unmanned aircraft and commercial jets has fuelled safety concerns in the aviation industry in recent years.

The number of near misses between private drones and aircraft in the UK more than tripled between 2015 and 2017, with 92 incidents recorded last year, according to the UK Airprox Board.

There have been multiple reports of drone sightings since the initial report of two drones at 2103 GMT on Wednesday, Gatwick said. The runway briefly appeared to reopen around 0300 GMT before the drones were spotted again.

“These drones have disappeared and then reappeared all night and are, as I speak to you, on our airfield now,” Woodroofe said on BBC radio at 0745 GMT.

Ani Kochiashvili, who had been due to fly to Tbilisi, Georgia on Wednesday, was waiting in Gatwick’s departure lounge on Thursday. She spent six hours overnight sitting on a plane which did not take off.

“I’m very annoyed because I’m with two kids, a three-month-old and three-year-old. They require a lot of space and food and changing and all that, and the airport is crazy busy so it’s challenging. There’s literally zero information being shared,” she told Reuters by phone.

Passengers took to Twitter to share their stories.

One waiting at the airport on Thursday said: “At Gatwick Airport, drone chaos, surprisingly good natured, but complete mayhem.”