Business news live: UK inflation update, plus bitcoin and FTSE 100 hits new record highs

ITV and Disney will show each others’ programmes on their respective streaming platforms, under the terms of a new deal to attract new audiences.

The likes of Love Island and Spy Among Friends will now show on Disney+, while The Bear and Only Murders In The Building will be streamed on ITV X for no cost on a rotating basis.

No financial details were given on what ITV called a “first-of-its-kind initiative”.

The firm which makes Kellogg’s cereals, WK Kellogg, has seen its shares rocket almost 55 per cent after reports that Ferrero are to make a bid for it.

Neither firm have confirmed the bid but the Wall Street Journal reported a $3bn deal is close to being struck.

Brent Crude Oil prices have been slowly sticking closer and closer to the $70 mark of late, but they are down 1.01 per cent today back to $69.48.

Gold on the other hand is up 0.4 per cent to $3,334 – while bitcoin has dropped very slightly from earlier but is still up 1.8 per cent for the day, above $111,000.

Worth noting the FTSE 100 is still up 1.18 per cent too, its best day in a while.

The FTSE 100 is still on the rise today, now up 1.1 per cent approaching midday.

That’s despite fresh tariff threats from the US over various sectors, including a potential 200 per cent tariff on pharmaceuticals.

AstraZeneca, the biggest company on the index in the UK, rose more than two per cent this morning.

In the US, however, the S&P 500 is projected to fall by 0.15 per cent according to futures markets, with the Nasdaq set to drop 0.1 per cent.

In Europe, the German DAX is up 0.3 per cent with France’s CAC 40 up 0.68 per cent.

A water company has agreed to pay £24 million after the water regulator found a “range of failures” in how the water company managed its wastewater treatment works and sewer network.

A lack of adequate management systems, including oversight from its senior leaders and board, meant it did not meet its legal obligations.

South West Water proposed the £24 million enforcement package, to be paid by the company and its shareholders, to invest in its systems and address the failures.

Until now, just under 10 per cent of new mortgages issued are for valuations exceeding 4.5 times the income of a borrower.

That is now set to rise to 15 per cent across the industry, with some building societies and banks now able to offer an even higher number of new mortgages at that level.

BoE estimates suggest 36,000 extra mortgages with higher loan-to-income ratios could be handed out each year as a result of the change.

Barclays have made another round of cuts to mortgage rates, following one earlier this week – the battle is really ramping up between lenders with hundreds of thousands of fixed deals expiring across the rest of the year.

There are several sub-4 per cent products on offer across the industry now and Barclays have added another few – in particular what they claim is the joint-lowest rate on the remortgage market.

That’s a 3.83% EMC Reward 2 Year Fixed deal, for a £999 product fee at 60% loan to value.

Barclays analysts expect next week’s official inflation data to show the headline CPI rate to hold unchanged for June.

In May it was 3.4 per cent, unchanged from April once an original error was factored in, so this would represent a third straight month of steady inflation rate.

Within the figures, Barclays expect services to decrease but food price inflation to continue increasing.

Notably, they do not expect the data to push the Bank of England away from an expected interest rate cut next month.

It’s not just the FTSE 100 at a new high.

Some time shortly after 3am today, bitcoin pushed above the $110,000 glass ceiling it had been testing for quite a while, setting a new all-time record.

It briefly hit around $111,450 before pulling back a little – but daytime trading is fairly solid so far and the leading cryptocurrency is sat just above $111,300 now.