Category: 3. Business

UK consumers saved less money during the third quarter of the year as higher taxes squeezed disposable incomes.

The households’ saving ratio – which estimates the percentage of disposable income Britons save rather than spend – dropped 0.7 percentage points to 9.5%, the Office for National Statistics said. That is the lowest rate for more than a year.

Real household disposable income per capita dropped 0.8% as taxes on income and wealth grew.

Elliott Jordan-Doak, an economist at the consultancy Pantheon Macroeconomics, said the saving rate was still well above its average of 6.5% between 2015 and 2019.

“But pre-budget uncertainty likely led consumers to pull back on spending in the fourth quarter as fiscal worries dominated the headlines for months on end,” he said.

It comes just weeks after the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, announced the government will freeze personal tax thresholds for a further three years, a move that will raise billions of pounds for public finances but will drag more workers into higher tax bands.

The ONS confirmed on Monday that growth slowed to 0.1% in the third quarter, from 0.2% in the second quarter. The second quarter figure was revised down from a previous estimate of 0.3% growth.

Danni Hewson, of the broker AJ Bell, said the revision showed “just how difficult it is for the government to deliver on its pro-growth promises”.

“It’s clear there are huge challenges to overcome if the UK’s growth story is going to become more compelling,” she said.

“Persuading people to spend a bit more and encouraging businesses to dust off any expansion plans they’d set aside will require more than just a period free of destabilising speculation.

“It will require inspirational leadership and a commitment to delivering some of the growth-focused changes that are already in the mix.”

Business groups have blamed Reeves’s £25bn increase in employer national insurance contributions (NICs) – announced in her 2024 budget – alongside the extended period of uncertainty before this year’s budget for putting the brakes on the economy.

Last week, the Bank’s monetary policy committee voted to cut interest rates by a quarter point to 3.75%, the lowest level since early 2023.

The cut was widely expected after official data showed inflation fell last month to an annual rate of 3.2%, from 3.6% in October, helped by weaker food prices. That remained well above the Bank’s 2% target, set by the government, but suggested the Bank believed the worst of the inflation “hump” had passed.

Jordan-Doak said that consumer spending could be stronger going into the new year after the government abandoned plans to increase income tax.

“GDP growth should accelerate in the first quarter, with the budget now in the rear-view mirror,” he said. “That will boost the demand for labour and assuage households’ fears of a labour market slowdown.”

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CMAL/Remontowa Shipbuilding

Where are the ferry routes?

A pair of City & Guilds executives have each been awarded million-pound bonuses and sizeable salary increases after the skills charity’s business was acquired by an international company in October, the Guardian understands.

The payments – which are understood to include a £1.7m award for the chief executive, Kirstie Donnelly, and £1.2m to the finance director, Abid Ismail – have emerged at a sensitive time for the training and qualifications business, as it navigates its first few months in the private sector.

Last week it was revealed how City & Guilds has embarked on a £22m cost-cutting drive and is shrinking its UK workforce after being sold by its charity owner to PeopleCert, an international certification company.

Alongside the bonuses, the Guardian understands that Donnelly has also been granted a £100,000 increase to her salary, which now stands at about £430,000. Ismail’s salary is also believed to have been increased by 30%, rising by about £70,000 to £300,000.

Founded in 1878 by the City of London and a group of 16 livery companies, the original institute developed a national system of technical education, offering qualifications and apprenticeships in fields ranging from manufacturing and mechanical engineering to hairdressing and horticulture. It was awarded a royal charter by Queen Victoria in 1900 and the body says that it helps about 1.1m people a year.

It has enjoyed a storied history with the body’s famous alumni including the chefs Jamie Oliver, Marcus Wareing and Gordon Ramsey, the former England football manager Gareth Southgate, as well as the celebrity gardener Alan Titchmarsh and the fashion designer Karen Millen.

The institute’s business was owned under the umbrella of a charity, City & Guilds London Institute (CGLI), which announced in the autumn that it was selling its training and awards operation, City & Guilds (C&G), to PeopleCert.

The sale gave the charity, which provides grants to people in need of vocational training, a cash windfall of between £180m and £200m, which was presented as ensuring the long-term future of the institution to pursue its charitable objectives, as well as providing increased opportunities and investment for the now-private training business.

These ambitions appear to coincide with plans for a restructuring of the C&G training business. Earlier this month PeopleCert published a presentation aimed at its financial backers in which it said it had identified £22m of savings at C&G, of which £13m were “personnel cost synergies” that would largely be achieved by failing to replace staff leaving the institute with hires from the UK.

The document implied that C&G, which has more than 1,600 staff members and 1,800 “associates” on short-term contracts, has a “churn” rate equivalent to about 300 people leaving a year and outlined how PeopleCert plans to relocate a third of those jobs to Greece “at a cost [of] up to 50% lower”. The same quantity of roles “are due to not be replaced due to overlapping functions”, the presentation added, while the remainder of leavers will be replaced with hires in the UK.

The presentation appears to have been removed from the PeopleCert website after the Guardian published the cost-cutting plans.

Under the terms of the sale, the privatised City & Guilds will continue to use the brand that it shares with its former charity owner.

A spokesperson for City & Guilds said: “[The charity] CGLI will be publishing its accounts in January 2026 and details on pay and remuneration will be reported appropriately in those accounts as always. Bonuses for eligible employees reflecting performance in 2025 are payable in line with CGLI remuneration policy. No payments outside of CGLI’s existing bonus schemes have been made. The CGLI annual accounts will report on the long-term future that is now protected for the charity. At the same time, this transaction unlocks future investment for the commercial awarding and training businesses that continue to operate in a highly competitive marketplace.

“The accounts for City & Guilds Ltd will be published at year end in 2026, as required for private limited companies. Any awards to employees are a matter for City & Guilds Ltd and are guided by standard commercial practice to ensure critical expertise and experience is retained.”

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 22, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Nuvalent, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUVL), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on creating precisely targeted therapies for clinically proven kinase targets in cancer, today announced that James Porter, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer, will present at the 44^th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference on Tuesday, January 13, 2026, at 9:00 a.m. PT in San Francisco. 

A live webcast will be available in the Investors section of the company’s website at www.nuvalent.com, and archived for 30 days following the presentation.

About Nuvalent
Nuvalent, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUVL) is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on creating precisely targeted therapies for patients with cancer, designed to overcome the limitations of existing therapies for clinically proven kinase targets. Leveraging deep expertise in chemistry and structure-based drug design, we develop innovative small molecules that have the potential to overcome resistance, minimize adverse events, address brain metastases, and drive more durable responses. Nuvalent is advancing a robust pipeline with investigational candidates for ROS1-positive, ALK-positive, and HER2-altered non-small cell lung cancer, and multiple discovery-stage research programs.

SOURCE Nuvalent, Inc.

The 2025 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard reveals a slowdown in overall R&D investment growth among EU companies. Against this trend, the European health and energy sectors increased their R&D investments well above global peers. 

Produced since 2004 by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in collaboration with the Directorate General Research & Innovation, the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard provides economic information from the latest financial accounts of the world’s top 2000 R&D investors. It also includes an extended sample of the top 800 R&D investing companies based in the EU. Investments from the companies covered in the Scoreboard account for almost 90% of global private R&D funding. 

EU: Health and energy sectors shine in a year of slowdown

In 2024, EU-headquartered companies reported a total R&D investment of €233.8 billion. This is an investment growth rate of 2.9%, down from 9.3% in 2023.   

Despite this overall slowdown, there were bright spots in specific sectors. EU companies in the health sector increased R&D investments by 13%, outperforming other regions such as the United States (7.1%), Japan (9.1%), and China (0.1%). Similarly, the EU’s energy sector, especially companies focusing on electricity and renewable energy, experienced a 19.8% increase, outpacing global competitors like the United States (6%), Japan (-14.2%), and China (3.8%).

However, performance varied across sectors. The EU ICT sector declined investments by 8.9%. Meanwhile, the automotive industry, the EU’s largest R&D investor at €87 billion, showed stagnation (0.8% growth rate), lagging behind China (11.9%) and Japan (12.3%) growth rates.

ICT, health and automotive industries fuel R&D worldwide

Globally, R&D investment continues to rise. In 2024, the top 2,000 global companies invested €1,442.6 billion in R&D, marking a 6.3% growth rate, slightly above the previous year’s 6.0%. The United States and the rest of the world (ROW) experienced the highest growth rates, with 7.8% and 8.1% respectively, followed by Japan at 7.1%. In contrast, the EU’s growth was more moderate at 2.9%, closely matching China’s 3.9%.

Sector-wise, R&D investments remain heavily concentrated in four key areas: ICT software, ICT hardware, health industries, and automotive. Together, these four sectors account for over 80% of the total Scoreboard R&D investment. US firms continue to dominate in ICT-related sectors and health, while EU companies retain a global lead in automotive R&D. 

Concentration of innovation and profits

Global R&D investment is becoming increasingly concentrated, driven largely by the top 5 investing companies (Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Apple). Over the past decade, these companies doubled their share of global R&D investment, now accounting for approximately 15% of the total R&D investment. This concentration is mirrored in profits, rising from 3% to 15% between 2011 and 2024.  The concentration of such innovation and business capacity in a handful of companies raises questions of market dynamism and broader innovation diffusion within the global economy.

Scoreboard dataset publicly available 

The Scoreboard provides a reliable, up-to-date benchmarking tool for comparisons between companies, sectors, and geographical areas, as well as to monitor and analyse emerging investment trends and patterns. It is based on company data extracted directly from each company’s annual report. 

Its annual publication has become a reference for science, industry and policy actors. It has contributed to numerous publications of European and international institutions, including the Draghi and Heitor Reports, the  Science, Research & Innovation Performance Report and the yearly European Investment Bank Investment Reports.

The Scoreboard emphasises open data practices, making its database publicly available for stakeholders to conduct their benchmarking and monitoring exercises, in accordance with the Commission’s open science practice.   

Related content

Find out the report, the dataset and a visual dashboard on JRC’s economics of industrial research and innovation web page. 

The FCA has published Policy Statement PS25/21 setting out its final rules and options for future changes for simplifying the insurance rules. Firms will welcome the FCA’s aim of a more flexible and proportionate regime for the insurance sector that it has said is designed to reduce regulatory costs. The FCA has gone ahead with many of the proposed rules that it consulted on without many significant amendments. It has also set out some changes to look out for in the future.

Our Financial Services Regulation Partner, Andrzej Wieckowski says…  

“Whilst some in the market wanted the FCA to go further, the more flexible and proportionate regime will be welcome news for firms, in particular those dealing with commercial customers. Firms will now need to focus on maximising the benefits of the changes.”

Ben Player, our Financial Services Regulation Partner, has focused on the impact on insurance intermediaries…

“Whilst some of the rule changes appear initially to focus on insurers, there are a number of benefits for insurance intermediaries in the new rules, which they will need to work with insurers to leverage. As the new rules came into effect immediately on publishing the Policy Statement, there is no time to waste in reviewing the new rules and making the appropriate changes”

The points not to miss…

The maker of Jim Beam bourbon whiskey will halt production at its main site in Kentucky for all of 2026.

The company said in a statement it would close its distillery in Clermont until it took the “opportunity to invest in site enhancements”.

“We are always assessing production levels to best meet consumer demand and recently met with our team to discuss our volumes for 2026,” it said.

It comes as whiskey distillers in the US face uncertainty around Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, as well as declining rates of alcohol consumption.

In October, the Kentucky Distillers’ Association (KDA) trade body said there was a record amount of bourbon in warehouses across the state – more than 16m barrels.

The KDA warned distillers faced a “crushing” $75m (£65m) in taxes on their inventory this year, as the state charges tax on ageing barrels of spirits.

Jim Beam said it was assessing how it would use its workforce while it paused production and was in talks with its workers’ union.

The company’s other operations in Kentucky, including another distillery and its bottling and warehouse plants, would remain open next year. Its visitor centre in Kentucky will also stay open.

Jim Beam is owned by the Japanese drinks group Suntory Global Spirits, which employs more than 6,000 people around the world, with more than 1,000 people across its sites in Kentucky.

Known for its celebrated single malt whiskies, Suntory’s brands also include Haku vodka and Sipsmith gin, as well as soft drinks Orangina and Lucozade. It acquired the US maker of Jim Beam in 2014 for $16bn, securing its status as one of the world’s biggest spirits makers.

In September, its chief executive, Takeshi Niinami, resigned from the company after police raided his home as part of an investigation into suspected illegal supplements.

Niinami, who has denied any wrongdoing, had joined Suntory in 2014, becoming the first executive from outside the founding family, after 12 years as chief executive of the convenience store chain Lawson.

Trump’s tariffs have cast a shadow of uncertainty across the spirits industry this year. In March, some Canadian provinces pulled American spirits from stores as a retaliatory move against US tariffs on Canadian goods. Since then some provinces have resumed buying American alcohol.

In the UK, whisky distillers are subject to a 10% tariff on goods exported to the US. The Scotch Whisky Association has estimated that it costs the sector £4m a week.

Moaaz Manzoor

The Pakistani rupee remained broadly stable during the third week of December, recording only marginal movements against major global currencies as improved foreign exchange inflows and a sharp rise in reserves supported market confidence.

According to the State Bank of Pakistan, the rupee opened the week on Monday at 280.0800 (buying) and 280.5051 (selling) against the US dollar. It edged slightly higher on Tuesday to 280.0768 and 280.5019, before firming further midweek at 280.0236 and 280.4487 on Wednesday. The trend remained largely steady on Thursday at 280.0203 and 280.4454, with the rupee closing the week on Friday at 280.0067 and 280.4318, reflecting a mild appreciation over the period.

In the euro market, the rupee showed limited volatility. It traded at 328.6395 (buying) and 329.1308 (selling) at the start of the week before moving to 329.1235 and 329.6221 on Tuesday. It eased midweek to 328.3466 and 328.8445, then traded at 328.6979 and 329.1938 on Thursday, closing the week slightly lower at 328.1022 and 328.5930.

The British pound recorded comparatively firmer levels. It opened the week at 374.2124 (buying) and 374.8059 (selling), edged up to 374.2894 and 374.8777 on Tuesday, and strengthened further to 374.7434 and 375.3203 midweek. The currency remained elevated on Thursday at 374.3595 and 374.9345, ending the week near 374.4986 and 375.0916.

The Chinese yuan traded in a narrow range throughout the week. The exchange rates were 39.7352 and 39.7861 on Monday, rising slightly to 39.7750 and 39.8260 on Tuesday, and hovering around 39.7814 and 39.8319 midweek. It eased marginally on Thursday to 39.7712 and 39.8217, before closing at 39.7748 and 39.8252.

Similarly, the Saudi riyal remained stable, fluctuating within a tight band from 74.6437 and 74.7513 at the start of the week to 74.6499 and 74.7585 by Friday. The Japanese yen also saw limited movement, trading between 1.8048 and 1.8074 early in the week and closing at 1.7945 and 1.7971, reflecting modest week-long variation.

Brokerage houses attributed the rupee’s stability to a sharp improvement in external buffers. Arif Habib Limited noted that the rupee appreciated 0.023% week-on-week to close at PKR 280.25 per US dollar, while SBP-held reserves rose by USD 1.3 billion to USD 15.9 billion during the week. The brokerage added that commercial bank reserves increased by USD 0.2 billion to USD 5.2 billion, lifting overall liquidity conditions.

Echoing this view, AKD Securities reported that the rupee gained 0.02% week-on-week against the greenback, ending the week at PKR 280.25 per US dollar, while SBP-held foreign exchange reserves climbed USD 1.3 billion following the receipt of IMF disbursements under the EFF and RSF.

Analysts said the rupee’s calm performance reflected strengthened reserve buffers, controlled demand for foreign exchange, and improving external inflows, with expectations that stability may persist in the near term barring any major external shocks.

Credit: INP-WealthPk