Taking Stock on Wednesday 11th October 2023
Taking Stock: Is a look at today's top business news & investment views plus we cover the winners, losers, the most read company news & the most followed. Today this includes:
How to avoid a profit warning
TOP BUSINESS STORIES
UK vacancies fall but jobs market slowdown may be ending
British employers cut their job vacancies for the first time in more than two-and-a-half years in September and reduced their hiring again, a recruiters' industry body said on Wednesday, adding to signs of a cooling in the labour market.
In a set of data that the Bank of England will use as it judges whether it should resume raising interest rates or keep them on hold in November, the contraction in vacancies represented the first fall in demand for staff since February 2021, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) said.
Samuel Tombs, an economist with consultancy Pantheon Macroeconomics, said the survey suggested month-to-month growth in wages would slow later this year, reducing the chance of more BoE rate hikes in the near term.
REC, which publishes the data along with KPMG, said starting salaries rose by the least in two-and-a-half years and there were reports of strains on company budgets.
The BoE said last month that the REC figures to August might herald a decrease in pay growth as it kept interest rates on hold after 14 back-to-back increases.
Heathrow says passenger numbers above pre-pandemic levels for first time
So far this year 59.3 million passengers have travelled through Heathrow Airport.
The number of passengers travelling through Heathrow has returned to pre-pandemic levels for the first time since virus lockdowns began, the airport has said.
In September this year 7.1 million people travelled through the UK's largest airport, a high not seen since February 2020, before COVID-19 restrictions were implemented.
The traffic numbers are ahead of the 2019 pre-pandemic year and up 22% on last year, Heathrow said in a trading update on Wednesday morning.
The airport had struggled to recoup traffic levels as business and long haul travel were slower to recover than passenger numbers from European countries.
Most recent figures, for September and the year up to last month, show the majority of people coming through Heathrow were from Europe.
Birkenstock: Once-uncool sandal maker now worth billions
German sandal maker Birkenstock has spent decades convincing shoppers that what might appear, at first glance, unattractive is actually desirable.
The extent of that power will now be put to the test on Wall Street, as its shares are set to start trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
The initial public offering priced the shares at $46 per share, valuing the company at roughly $8.6bn (£7.08bn).
That is double what it was worth less than three years ago.
But is there more room to grow?
The company, which traces its roots to an 18th Century cobbler, found its first fans among hippie types in the 1960s, who were won over by the company's emphasis on flexible, but sturdy support.