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7am: Begbies Traynor

Begbies Traynor, the business recovery, financial advisory and property services consultancy, posted double digit revenue and profit growth in both of its divisions.

Profit before tax for the six months ended 31 October came in at £5 million against £2.7m last time on an uplift in revenue to £58.5m from £52.3m. The interim divided rises to 1.2p from 1.1p.

Ric Traynor, executive chair, said: “We remain confident of delivering upon expectations for the full year.

7am: Days lost at ten year high

The number of working days lost to strikes in October – 417,000 – was the highest since November 2011, according to the Office for National Statistics.

New figures, which come as rail workers begin another series of walk-outs, also show the second largest fall in real wages this year.

The ONS data shows the unemployment rate for August to October 2022 increased by 0.1 percentage points on the quarter to 3.7%. 

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Microsoft buys stake in stock exchange

Tech giant Microsoft has bought a 4% stake in London Stock Exchange Group as part of a long-term strategic partnership that will see LSEG leverage Microsoft’s cloud service Azure for its data and tech infrastructure.

Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s executive vice president, cloud and AI group, is also set to be appointed as a non-executive director of LSEG.

The partnership is expected to “meaningfully” increase LSEG’s revenue growth and the pair have agreed to co-invest in the product development roadmap for Workspace and other analytics initiatives.

LSEG has also committed to a minimum cloud-related spend with Microsoft over the life of the agreement, amounting to $2.8 billion (£2.3 billion).

David Schwimmer, CEO of LSEG, says: “Bringing together our leading data sets, analytics and global customer base with Microsoft’s comprehensive and trusted cloud services and global reach creates attractive revenue growth opportunities for both companies.”

Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft, says: “Advances in the cloud and AI will fundamentally transform how financial institutions research, interact, and transact across asset classes, and adapt to changing market conditions.”

Global markets

Strong gains in the US came ahead of key US inflation figures later today.

“Equities in the US rebounded as investors are hanging on to hope of slower inflation and reasonably hawkish Federal Reserve by their fingernails” commented Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote Bank.

“Today and tomorrow will tell whether they are right being optimistic or not.”

At the close on Monday the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 1.58%, higher, the S&P 500 jumped 1.43% and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 1.26%.