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MT Newswires -Shutterstock <\/p>\n MT Newswires -Shutterstock <\/p>\n
British equities continued to rally on Tuesday, with the FTSE 100 closing 0.79% higher to a fresh high of 10,556.17 points, as labor market data bolstered expectations of another interest rate cut by the Bank of England. <\/p>\n
The unemployment rate stood at 5.2% in the three months to December 2025, higher than the consensus estimate and prior reading of 5.1% in the three months to November 2025. Data from the Office for National Statistics also showed that Britain’s average weekly pay, including bonuses, rose 4.2% year over year in the quarter to December 2025, slower than the expected and revised previous reading of a 4.6% jump. <\/p>\n
“Today’s data raises the prospect of the Bank of England resuming cutting interest rates in March,” said KPMG. “The [Monetary Policy Committee] will be reassured by further evidence of pay pressures easing, and the labour market continuing to soften. The Bank may also want to minimise downside risks to the labour market and lower rates ahead of the next forecast meeting in April.” <\/p>\n
In corporate news, miner Antofagasta (ANTO.L) dropped 3.44%, the second-steepest fall on the blue-chip index as of closing, after declaring a higher annual dividend and a yearly growth in 2025 profit and revenue.<\/p>\n
“Solid set of results with EBITDA inline with company consensus and 1% below RBCe,” said RBC Capital Markets. “Cashflows were better with net debt 7% below consensus (inline with RBCe), although this was largely driven by tax payments timing issue. Dividend surprised consensus to the upside by 14%, with many expecting a [minimum] payout of 35%, but given the environment Antofagasta chose a 50% payout.” <\/p>\n
In the green, InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG.L) added 1.11% after it disclosed a higher full-year attributable profit, revenue, and dividend, with the launch of an up to $950 million share repurchase program.<\/p>\n
“Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG) reported 4Q global [Revenue per available room] growth of +1.6% (vs. BofAe of +1%), better than Hilton’s +0.5% and not far off Marriott’s +1.9% despite lower chain scale exposure,” said BofA Global Research. “We tweak our estimates and our [price objective] is updated to $160 from $156 (ADR PO to $157 from $156). The stock is still trading at a discount to US peers, we reiterate Buy rating.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MT Newswires -Shutterstock British equities continued to rally on Tuesday, with the FTSE 100 closing 0.79% higher to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":771069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[225639,936,748,110778,393,4884,25547,1144,15165,712,16,16919,15,1764],"class_list":["post-771068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","category-united-kingdom","tag-antofagasta","tag-bank-of-england","tag-britain","tag-consensus-estimate","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-monetary-policy-committee","tag-northern-ireland","tag-office-for-national-statistics","tag-scotland","tag-uk","tag-unemployment-rate","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wales"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116087630471594711","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/771069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}