As reported earlier, the UK’s long-term borrowing costs have risen to the highest level since 1998, as the government gears up for a number of bond sales this year.The yield, or interest rate, on 30-year gilts, as UK government bonds are known, climbed by four basis points to 5.22% after a bond auction.The rise in borrowing costs is increasing pressure on the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to keep the market on side ahead of a raft of bond sales.The Labour government plans to sell £297bn of bonds this fiscal year — the second-highest on record, Bloomberg News reported.

This is keeping gilts under pressure, as investors worry about the outlook for the nation’s ballooning debt.Sam Hill, head of market insights at Lloyds Banking Group, said:Following a busy January, the burden of gilt issuance volume is unlikely to ease significantly, if at all, in cash or duration terms, for at least the remainder of the quarter.The UK’s Debt Management Office sold £2.25bn of 30-year bonds today paying a yield of 5.198%.

The bid-to-cover ratio was 2.75, the lowest demand since December 2023.However, the difference between the average and lowest yield accepted — known as tail — was just 0.3 basis points, indicating robust appetite for the notes.There is another auction tomorrow, of £4.

25bn of new five-year bonds,The UK’s long-term borrowing costs have risen to the highest level since 1998,The yield, or interest rate, on 30-year gilts, as UK government bonds are known, climbed by four basis points to 5,22% after a bond auction,The rise in borrowing costs has piled pressure on the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to keep the market on side ahead of a raft of bond sales.

The government plans to sell £297bn of bonds this fiscal year — the second-highest on record.This is keeping gilts under pressure, as investors worry about the outlook for the nation’s ballooning debt.The UK’s Debt Management Office sold £2.25bn of 30-year bonds today paying a yield of 5.198%.

The bid-to-cover ratio was 2.75, the lowest demand since December 2023.However, the difference between the average and lowest yield accepted was just 0.3 basis points, indicating robust appetite for the notes.There is another auction tomorrow, of £4.

25bn of new five-year bonds.Our other main stories:Thank you for reading.Take care – JKWall Street has opened higher at the start of trading:S&P 500 is up 0.4% at 5,999 pointsDow is up 0.39% at 42,875 pointsNasdaq is up 0.

36% at 19,936 pointsThere’s been a fresh blow to green ambitions after JP Morgan confirmed it was leaving the net-zero banking alliance (NZBA) on Tuesday.JP Morgan is the largest among a growing list of Wall Street lenders to ditch the group, which is dedicated to helping lenders reduce their carbon footprints.Other banks including Citi, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs jumped ship late last year.It comes amid growing backlash against ESG goals by US politicians, particularly those on the right wing of the Republican party.A spokesperson for JP Morgan said:We will continue to work independently to advance the interests of our firm, our shareholders and our clients and remain focused on pragmatic solutions to help further low-carbon technologies while advancing energy security.

We will also continue to support the banking and investment needs of our clients who are engaged in energy transition and in decarbonising different sectors of the economy,More than 700 junior McDonald’s workers have joined legal action against the fast-food chain after allegations of widespread discrimination, homophobia and sexual harassment at its restaurants across the UK,Hundreds of current and former crew members – some as young as 19 – have instructed the law firm Leigh Day to take action on their behalf, in a move that has implicated more than 450 of its outlets in Britain,Complainants have been coming forward after an investigation a year ago by the BBC, which on Tuesday claimed that workers at the chain were still facing sexual abuse and harassment despite a promise from McDonald’s to address the concerns after they were first raised,The fresh allegations and legal claim are likely to be front and centre when the UK boss of McDonald’s, Alistair Macrow, faces MPs on the business and trade committee on Tuesday afternoon.

McDonald’s is one of the UK’s largest private sector employers, with 168,000 people working at more than 1,400 restaurants,The former Bank of England governor Mark Carney, a climate-focused economist who became the first non-Briton to run the UK central bank, is considering entering the race to replace Justin Trudeau as Canada’s prime minister,Carney spent seven years in the UK as Bank of England governor, having been headhunted by then chancellor George Osborne in 2013, after serving as governor of the Bank of Canada, and was known at the time by the unlikely epithet, “rock star central banker”,He remains an influential figure on the global economic stage, as UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, and Rachel Reeves hailed his endorsement at the 2023 Labour confidence – delivered by video message - as the party sought to present itself as economically credible,Carney called Reeves a “serious economist,” who “understands the economics of work, of place and family”.

Carney arrived in London determined to bring change to the stuffy Bank,He introduced plastic banknotes, and a new approach to communication known as “forward guidance,” which was meant to give investors a clearer idea of which way interest rates were heading,The former innovation proved more immediately successful than the latter,After the Bank was seen as sending out mixed signals on rates, Carney was memorably accused of being an “unreliable boyfriend,” by Labour MP Pat McFadden – then a member of the treasury select committee, now a powerful cabinet office minister,Carney also waded into the fractious debate over Brexit, repeatedly warning about the risks to the economy of leaving the EU – leading to accusations that he had politicised the independent Bank.

In the event, the economy avoided recession in the aftermath of the unexpected vote for Brexit in June 2016 – helped in part by the Bank’s response, which included cutting interest rates and boosting its bond-buying programme, known as quantitative easing.Since leaving the Bank, Carney has continued to write and work on an area he emphasised as governor: the need for financial markets to catch up with the risks of the climate crisis.In a much-quoted speech from 2015, he warned that efforts to tackle global heating were compromised by, “the tragedy of the horizon” – politicians’ and markets’ inability to look beyond the next few years.In a 2021 book, Value(s), subtitled “An Economists Guide to Everything that Matters,” Carney enlarged on the idea, and attacked finance-driven capitalism more broadly, for losing sight of society’s needs.Now 59, Carney is chair of Canadian investment firm Brookfield Asset Management, which has $1trn under management.

Since 2023 he has also been chair of Bloomberg’s board.People have been using more cash for the third year in a row since the pandemic, as many use it to budget at a time the cost of living remains high.Cash withdrawals rose by 10% in 2024 from 2023, according to Nationwide, Britain’s biggest building society.It recorded 32.8m withdrawals from the 1,260 ATMs at its 605 branches last year.

The average amount of cash taken out each time was £ £112 last year.The busiest time of the year for cash withdrawals was the week before Christmas when £97.9mwas withdrawn – the highest amount dispensed in a week since pre-Covid, and up 1.8% on the previous year.The week leading up to Black Friday in November saw £85.

3m withdrawn – the second highest weekly dispense since pre-Covid, and up 12% year on year,Prior to 2022, the number of cash withdrawals at Nationwide had been steadily declining from its 2014 peak,This fall was most pronounced when the pandemic struck, when withdrawals dropped by more than 40% in a year, to 26,4m in 2020,Otto Benz, director of payments at Nationwide, said:The rising cost of living continues to impact people and many are opting to budget with physical money to avoid getting into debt.

The resurgence of cash shows why we need to continue having a physical presence on the high street, enabling customers to access their money on their terms, whether digitally or in branch.ATM usage has also risen due to bank branch closures, which has seen vital free services being removed from high streets up and down the country.This has led to a 16% increase in withdrawals from non-Nationwide customers and a 4% increase from Nationwide customers looking to access cash, as unlike the major banks, it hasn’t closed large numbers of branches in recent years.Nationwide stuck to its “branch promise” meaning everywhere it has a branch, it will remain until at least 2028.The biggest increase in cash withdrawals was recorded in Chiswick in west London (up 140%), Shotton in Flintshire (up 115%) and Fakenham in Norfolk (up 96%).

However, many areas where Nationwide is now the last branch in town have also seen sizable increases, including Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire (95%), Cupar, Fife (66%) and Bromborough, Merseyside (61%).Nearly half (43%) of all transactions at cash machines are for other services – from printing mini-statements and paying bills and changing PINs to paying in cash and cheques.In Italy, headline inflation stayed at 1.3% in December, slightly weaker than expected.Slowing price rises for fresh food, durable goods and recreational services countered higher prices for energy.

Core inflation, which strips out food and energy, slipped to 1.8% from 1.9% in November.ING economist Paolo Pizzoli said:We see the December inflation stabilisation as a temporary stop along a very gradual upward path throughout 2025.The favourable base effect on energy goods is phasing out, and the recent acceleration in gas prices points to a continuation of this trend over the first quarter of the year as price pressures feed through to heating and electricity bills.

However, given soft demand conditions in the economy, we do not believe that other goods and services will add to the inflation push for the time being.In particular, the ongoing deceleration in services inflation (at 2.6% in December) suggests that demand in the sector remains unspectacular and that firms are not yet daring to pass through rising wage costs (wage growth was 3.8% year-on-year in November).Labour market data for November, also released earlier today by Istat, shows a small contraction in employment, providing fresh evidence that labour market resilience cannot ultimately disconnect from economic activity.

Should this continue over the next few months, pressure on wages looks set to gradually ease over the second half of 2025…For the time being, we still believe that the soft demand conditions will help contain price pressures,We are currently projecting a gradual increase in Italian headline inflation towards the 2% area by the end of the year, with average inflation over 2025 at 1,7%,As reported earlier, the UK’s long-term borrowing costs have risen to the highest level since 1998, as the government gears up for a number of bond sales this year,The yield, or interest rate, on 30-year gilts, as UK government bonds are known, climbed by four basis points to 5.

22% after a bond auction,The rise in borrowing costs is increasing pressure on the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to keep the market on side ahead of a raft of bond sales,The Labour government plans to sell £297bn of bonds this fiscal year — the second-highest on record, Bloomberg News reported,This is keeping gilts under pressure, as investors worry about the outlook for the nation’s ballooning debt,Sam Hill, head of market insights at Lloyds Banking Group, said:Following a busy January, the burden of gilt issuance volume is unlikely to ease significantly, if at all, in cash or duration terms, for at least the remainder of the quarter.

The UK’s Debt Management Office sold £2,25bn of 30-year bonds today paying a yield of 5,198%,The bid-to-cover ratio was 2,75, the lowest demand since December 2023.

However, the difference between the average and lowest yield accepted — known as tail — was just 0.3 basis points, indicating robust appetite for the notes.There is another auction tomorrow, of £4.25bn of new five-year bonds.The global biopharma market is expected to remain in recovery mode throughout the year, with more dealmaking, and obesity drugs making up nearly half of the expected top 10 bestselling drugs this year, according to data firm Evaluate Pharma.

Overall, the sector is expected to see more than 70 approvals of new drugs, and an $82bn increase in pharmaceutical product sales.This growth is manly driven by advancements in the obesity and oncology spaces, while there are also new treatments for cystic fibrosis and immunology therapies.In oncology, Merck’s Keytruda, which is used to treat a variety of cancers, will retain the top spot in 2025 – possibly for the final time - with sales of over $30bn.However, it is the incretin class that will lead the market overall this year (incretins are hormones that help regulate blood glucose levels and are released after eating).Out of the 10 projected bestselling drugs of 2025, four are GLP-1s