FTSE 100 Live: Zurich and Beazley £8bn deal gets time; Defence and bank stocks rally February 16, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City AM liveblog. The first round of 2026 tech wobbles kicked into action last week and revived fears of an AI bubble. When Anthropic released a new AI tool designed to help in-house legal teams triage agreements and draft routine responses, the reaction trickled down through law firms straight into [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Starmer unease rattles markets; Big tech sell-off February 6, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City AM liveblog. Speculation over Keir Starmer’s future has unleashed a fresh round of market unease as investors dumped the pound, UK equities and long-dated government bonds amid rising political uncertainty. The gulf in price between the UK’s short- and long-term debt – known as the yield curve – reached [...]
LSEG, Sage, Rightmove shares fall as Anthropic AI rattles markets February 4, 2026 Shares in global software giants tumbled again on Wednesday morning as the latest AI innovation from Anthropic rattled global markets. The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) extended Tuesday’s losses falling near two per cent in early trading to lows of 6,774.00p before clawing back some gains. Meanwhile Rightmove led the index’s fallers, with a slump [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Beazley seals $15bn Zurich deal, Santander in $12bn takeover February 4, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City AM liveblog. Shares in Europe’s biggest data, publishing and legal software groups slumped on Tuesday after AI giant Anthropic unveiled a new tool aimed directly at in-house lawyers. The move rattled investors who had long viewed the sector as an AI winner. In London, Relx fell close [...]
UK financial system exposed to ‘serious harm’ from AI risks January 20, 2026 The Treasury, the financial watchdog and the Bank of England have been handed a stiff warning that the nation’s financial system is not adequately prepared for an AI shock. A group of influential MPs sat on the Treasury Select Committee took aim at the institutions for “not doing enough to manage the risks presented by [...]
Trump official warns UK on ‘Russia-style’ X ban after Grok row January 11, 2026 A key Trump administration official has sent the UK a firm warning following speculation Elon Musk’s X platform may face a ban after a scandal around AI-generated images. Sarah Rogers, under-secretary for public diplomacy at the US State Department, issued a series of messages criticising the UK on the rumoured ban. Rogers said the UK [...]
WPP shares jump as embattled advertiser draws takeover interest November 17, 2025 Shares in advertising giant WPP soared as markets opened on Monday following reports the firm was the subject of takeover interest. The FTSE 100 group is said to be in the centre of deals chatter with interest from French rival Havas, as well as private equity firms Apollo and KKR. WPP soared ten per cent [...]
Youtube bets on AI ads as viewing habits evolve October 5, 2025 Youtube has become a near-ubiquitous presence in UK homes, with 47.9m adults now using the platform across devices. Ipsos data shows the average viewer spends 78 minutes a day watching its content, with the platform leading in so-called ‘connected TV’ viewing ahead of traditional broadcasters and other streaming services. For brands, this scale is attractive: [...]
‘It’s risky to be in the UK’ – Cleo founder on unicorn status and City regulation September 30, 2025 Nine years ago entrepreneur Matt Clifford took a data scientist to a “terrible pub” to convince him to drop his PhD and create his own start-up. “You may as well just take the risk, the biggest risk is not taking the risk,” Clifford told a young Barney Hussey-Yeo. Almost a decade later in 2025, Hussey-Yeo [...]