Wetherspoon shares dive as pub chain warns on profit again July 22, 2026 JD Wetherspoon shares slumped after it issued its fourth profit warning this year, as the pub chain grapples with surging food and energy costs and a rising business rates bill. Tim Martin, founder and chairman of the UK’s best-known pub chain, said: “Profits for the year are likely to be below market expectations, with marginally [...]
What every dealmaker should know about the limits of general-purpose AI tools July 22, 2026 Connecting AI to deal documents is only the first step. The real advantage comes from building intelligence across the deal life cycle. As artificial intelligence (AI) adoption accelerates across mergers and acquisitions (M&A), many firms are mistaking connectivity for intelligence. Connecting a large language model (LLM) to a traditional virtual data room (VDR) through model [...]
As it happened: Stocks rise but oil tops $95; inflation eases July 22, 2026 Welcome back to the City AM FTSE 100 liveblog. It’s Wednesday and new Chancellor John Healey secured an early boost after the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that inflation slowed in June. Headline CPI inflation dipped from 2.8 per cent in May to 2.6 per cent in June. Grant Fitzner, chief economist at the [...]
Layoffs and an executive exit: What’s going on at London’s first listed law firm? July 22, 2026 Gateley, the City’s first listed law firm, is set to lose its chief executive and axe dozens of jobs as it grapples with a swelling cost base and fears of a slowdown in client spending. The group, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM), informed shareholders on Tuesday that chief [...]
Stop peer pressuring young people into the student debt swindle July 22, 2026 One in four graduates will end up worse off than they would have been had they not gone to university, but that’s not just down to imperfect information, it’s down to expectations that need to change, says Paul Ormerod The holiday season is now in full swing. Relaxation for most, but in many households tensions [...]
Let the machines do the grunt work, so that we can do the great work July 22, 2026 AI is spectacular at the boring, mundane, repetitive grunt work, data entry, first-pass research, formatting, scheduling and summarising. It can execute those tasks faster and, frankly, better than most of us. Good. Let it. Because the moment you free a talented person from grunt work, they do what machines cannot: build relationships, exercise judgment, tell [...]
Manchester was Burnham’s rehearsal – now get ready to pay the bill July 22, 2026 Burnham has asked to be judged on Manchester – where his record is more spending, more borrowing and higher taxes, says Gareth Davies Andy Burnham walks into Downing Street with a simple pitch: judge me on Manchester. I am happy to take him up on it. Start with tax. In 2018, Mr Burnham created a [...]
Housebuilders urge Rayner to ‘hit the ground running’ and rip up planning red tape July 22, 2026 Housebuilders have called on Angela Rayner to “hit the ground running” and rip up planning red tape after her surprise comeback as housing secretary. Rayner resigned as housing secretary in September over an investigation into her tax affairs but was cleared of wrongdoing in March this year. Leading housebuilding figures told City AM they welcomed [...]
Prologis pursuit of Segro descends into silver-haired scrap July 22, 2026 Prologis’s attempt to take over Segro has descended into a spat over the age of its chief executives as the US firm looks to convince the FTSE 100 company’s shareholders to accept its offer, City AM can reveal. New York-listed Prologis, the world’s largest listed real estate company, has warned Segro’s investors that 65-year-old boss [...]
Can the City make friends with Healey? July 22, 2026 For the second time in history, the Labour party has recruited a former defence secretary by the name of Healey to become chancellor. The first, Denis Healey, ended up going cap-in-hand to the IMF for a bailout in 1976 after the UK endured rocketing inflation, soaring borrowing and surging unemployment. So the bar has been [...]