Drastic Dave goes vague at Diageo | Nils Pratley

Diageo’s once high-flying share price was already back at 2012 levels. Now the dividend is there too. Sir Dave Lewis has cut it in half, chopping as drastically as the market feared he would.But that doesn’t quite explain Wednesday’s 13% fall in the shares. Rather, that was down to two factors

John Lewis scraps £500m deal to build 1,000 rental homes

The John Lewis Partnership is pulling out of a £500m deal to build almost 1,000 residential rental homes for rent in Bromley, Reading and West Ealing amid a “cautious property market”.The retailer, which owns Waitrose supermarkets and John Lewis department stores, blamed a “fundamental shift in the economic conditions”, which it said had made it difficult for its financial partner, Aberdeen, to raise funds for the venture, first launched in 2020.Aberdeen said its difficulties with fundraising “reflect the realities of the environment” and a “challenging UK market” between 2022 and 2025.A spokesperson said the investment firm still planned to increase its presence in UK homes through existing partnerships.“We have high conviction in build-to-rent in the UK and globally,” they said

Diageo slashes dividend and vows to address Guinness shortage in London

Diageo has slashed its dividend and cut its annual sales and profit forecast for the second time in four months, as the maker of Guinness warned of capacity constraints affecting drinkers of “the black stuff” in London pubs.The world’s largest spirits maker – which owns brands including Smirnoff vodka, Johnnie Walker whisky and Don Julio tequila – lost more than £5bn of its market value on Wednesday as it reported weak demand in the US and China in the first results released under the new chief executive, Sir Dave Lewis.The former Tesco chief executive, who earned the nickname “Drastic Dave” as a result of his cost-cutting during almost three decades at the conglomerate Unilever, took the reins at Diageo in January and wasted no time in cutting the company’s shareholder dividend in his attempt to turn around the drinks maker.Describing his first seven weeks in the role as “pretty intense”, Lewis said in a results webcast it had not been a simple choice to reduce the dividend, halving it to 20 cents a share, down from 40.5 cents a year ago

HSBC bankers to share $3.9bn bonus pot, the highest in more than a decade

Bankers at HSBC are to share a bonus pot worth $3.9bn (£2.9bn), the highest in more than a decade, after Europe’s largest lender reported better-than-expected annual results.The bonus pool for staff is 10% higher than a year earlier and the bank said it had determined it “based on a review of our performance against financial and non-financial metrics”, while the bank’s chief executive’s pay also rose.Georges Elhedery, who took over as the CEO in 2024, signalled that his sweeping turnaround of the lender was drawing to a close

Starmer says ‘more to do’ on cost of living despite £117 fall in energy bills from April - as it happened

Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.Energy bills in Great Britain will fall by £117 to a typical annual bill of £1,641 from April, the regulator Ofgem announced this morning.It announced a 7% reduction of the energy price cap for the period covering 1 April to 30 June.This change amounts to a reduction of about £10 a month for the average household using both electricity and gas, Ofgem said. This is more than £200 lower than a year ago

Ineos said to be in talks to sell parts of business to tackle rising debt

The chemicals empire owned by the billionaire Jim Ratcliffe is in talks to sell parts of the business in the hope of raising hundreds of millions of pounds to tackle its rising debts, according to a report.The talks are at an early stage but have focused on selling assets from Ratcliffe’s vinyls business, Ineos Inovyn, the Financial Times said, citing people familiar with the matter.Ineos group is scrambling to cut costs and reduce its debts amid a prolonged downturn in the global chemicals industry. Ratcliffe, who is the UK’s seventh richest person, has described this as “unsurvivable” for chemical plants in Europe owing to “rising carbon costs and weak trade defence”.The two largest companies in his empire, Ineos Group Holdings and Ineos Quattro Holdings, together had more than £18bn of borrowings at the end of last year, an increase of almost £3bn on the year before