Amazon pays £1,000 bonus to win new workers

That is all from us today - here are some of our top stories:

• Morrisons pension trustees demand guarantees from new owner
• Hybrid passenger plane makes landmark test flight from Exeter to Newquay
• South Africa suffers world’s highest unemployment rate at 34.4pc
• Ryanair abandons flights from Northern Ireland
• Covid blows €80bn hole in Germany's finances with biggest deficit since 1995

Thank you for following along!

Banking giant Citigroup is considering whether to offer its biggest clients trading in Bitcoin futures.

It is awaiting regulatory approval to begin trading CME Bitcoin futures, reported Bloomberg.

Citigroup said: “Our clients are increasingly interested in this space, and we are monitoring these developments.

“Given the many questions around regulatory frameworks, supervisory expectations and other factors, we are being very thoughtful about our approach. We are presently considering products such as futures for some of our institutional clients, as these operate under strong regulatory frameworks.”

Coindesk reported earlier that Citigroup is awaiting regulatory approval to trade CME Bitcoin futures.

Coffee shop business Grind has raised £22m from investors after its growth plans were accelerated by surging sales of beans directly to customers during lockdowns.

The London-based firm said the cash injection has come from an investment round led by entrepreneur Richard Koch.

Grind said the funding boost will go towards its international expansion plans, with a particular focus on the US where it already has a global partnership with Soho House.

Cash will also be pumped further into its UK direct-to-consumer business, which grew rapidly amid the pandemic as local cafes were forced to shut their doors.

Airbus has secured another order in the US, worth almost $4bn at list prices, from Delta Air Lines.

Delta Air Lines announced a deal for 30 A321 neo narrow-body jets that is the European planemaker’s second-biggest this year. It follows a 25-plane order from the Atlanta-based carrier in April and takes the backlog for that type to 155 aircraft set for delivery from 2022 through to 2027.

The latest contract is worth almost $4 billion at list prices though major carriers like Delta can get hefty discounts. 

Airbus is reaping orders in America after domestic flying rebounds from the pandemic, even as travel curbs limit plane demand in much of the rest of the world. 

Engineering company Wood Group said its pipeline for hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects is now worth more than $1bn (£730m) as the pandemic has turbo-charged the race to net-zero, reports my colleague Julia Bradshaw.

“If you had asked me a year ago, the pipeline for hydrogen and CCS  was not at the billion-dollar level, that has grown exponentially with the pandemic as the pace of the energy transition has accelerated,” said chief executive Robin Watson.  “And these are real tangible projects.”

Mr Watson said the pandemic had made “people and policy-makers look at the world differently. “It cut off demand for energy and I think it meant a lot of people questioned if we were living sustainably. There has been a psychological shift.”

That shift means projects that were just studies 18 months ago have now become large-scale operations coming onto the market. In the last year alone, Wood has won more than 30 hydrogen projects and 20 CCS projects globally.

That partly explains why Wood’s order book, an important gauge of future growth, increased by 18pc to $7.7bn in the six months to the end of June, with Mr Watson highlighting renewable energy projects such as solar, wind, CCS and hydrogen as the driving force behind this increase. 

He also expects the company to return to growth in the second half of the year. That will come as a relief to investors, who have seen the value of their shares slump by nearly half since the start of the pandemic.

Iron ore futures surged as  much as 11pc in Singapore today as concerns over the economic impact from the spreading delta variant start to wane, and prospects for additional stimulus in China sparked a recovery in industrial-metals markets.

Sentiment was lifted by a potential boost to America's vaccination drive after regulators approved Pfizer's jab, while China’s success in stamping out its coronavirus outbreak bolstered the outlook for commodities.

Iron ore had lost about a quarter of its value in the past month, as Beijing pushed to curb steel production hammered demand. But industrial commodities have rebounded this week, after China’s count of daily Covid cases fell back to zero and central bankers vowed to step up support for the real economy.

Coking coal in China hit a record today, while copper has also recovered amid signs that Chinese consumers are on a buying spree. 

Joshua Mahony, senior market analyst at IG, comments on volatility among UK supermarket stocks this month: 

Supermarket stocks have experienced a volatile start to the week, as speculation over prospective US private equity takeover provide bring waves of optimism and disappointment.

Marks & Spencer enjoyed a sharp rise last week as pent up demand saw a sharp spike in sales.

However, much of the recent focus has been geared towards the likes of Morrison’s, which finds itself at the middle of a multi-billion takeover battle between two US private equity firms.

Speculation that US investors could soon target Sainsburys for a takeover bid saw the supermarket’s stock spike 15pc yesterday. However, we are seeing much of that optimism fade today, with to stock losing over 5pc as traders take their profits on a somewhat speculative play. 

British semiconductor designer Imagination Technologies has enjoyed a boost from the global chip drought that has resulted in pent up demand from carmakers for microprocessors, reports my colleague Matthew Field. 

The Hertfordshire-headquartered graphics chip designer reported revenues had increased by 55pc to $76m in the first half of 2021. 

Adjusted earnings swung to $20m from a $3m loss the previous year as Imagination enjoyed surging demand from carmakers, supplying designs for 250 million automotive chips as well as smartphone chip designs to companies including Apple.

Carmakers have been forced to close production lines amid a chip drought that left them back of the queue for new semiconductors as demand picked up again.

Imagination added it had plans to go after Cambridge’s Arm, which is being bought by US rival Nvidia in a $40bn deal, developing its own line of central processing unit (CPU) designs.

These will be based on a rival technology to Arm’s blueprints. This free technology, called Risc-V, is being increasingly sought after as a cheap alternative to Arm’s technology.

Imagination last year faced scrutiny from MPs over its ownership. It is controlled by Canyon Bridge Partners, a fund backed by Chinese state investors.

Ray Bingham, Imagination’s executive chairman and founding partner at Canyon Bridge, said the hope was to “re-invigorate Imagination’s CPU development”.

The euro is trading near a nine-month low against the dollar, as investors bet the single currency bloc will maintain lower interest rates and experience a slower recovery than the US. 

While the European Central Bank has signalled it intends to keep financial conditions loose for the foreseeable future to cushion the eurozone’s recovery, Federal Reserve officials have indicated they are on track to begin reversing their easy-money policies later this year.

The euro fell to $1.1728 against the dollar earlier today, near its 2021 low of $1.1675. It is down 0.5pc on the month. 

S&P Global has warned BHP that its decision to sell its oil and gas business could risk a two notch downgrade that would cause the miner to tumble to its lowest ever credit rating.

The rating agency said the sale of BHP's petroleum business raises the miner’s dependence on its major business of iron ore and result in a "less diversified portfolio". 

BHP announced last week it would sell the division to Australia's Woodside Petroleum in exchange for shares which will go to BHP shareholders, who will own 48pc of the enlarged group.

However despite the warning, BHP shares lifed 1.25pc on Tuesday to £22.35. 

Online retail titan Amazon is offering new warehouse recruits a £1,000 joining bonus as it looks to attracts staff amid a mounting hiring crisis.

PA has the details: 

The group is advertising for "urgently needed" warehouse pickers and packers across the UK to help meet booming online shopping demand.

Job ads on the Indeed website reveal it is offering to pay up to £1,000 as a starting bonus for a raft of roles, on top of an hourly rate of as much as £11.10 an hour, rising to £22.20 an hour for overtime.

It comes as UK firms are struggling to fill roles across a range of industries, with issues caused by Brexit, coronavirus self-isolation rules and with millions still on the furlough workers' support scheme.

The recruitment woes are causing crippling shortages of lorry drivers, while hospitality firms have also struggled to fill roles on reopening after lockdown.

Official data last month showed there were 953,000 vacancies in the three months to the end of June - with vacancies passing one million for the first time ever in July.

The founder of content subscription service OnlyFans has blamed the banking sector for the site's new ban on sexually explicit content. 

In an interview with the Financial Times, Tim Stokely addressed controversy over the UK platform's decision to ban sex acts, even though the website's adult content creators have helped attract a large chunk of its 130m users. 

"We had no choice," said Stokely, who is also chief executive. 

"We pay over on million creators over $300m every month and making sure that these funds get to creators involves using the banking sector," he said, adding Bank of New York Mellon had made it difficult to make these payments because it had "flagged and rejected" every wire connected to the company. 

He continued that JPMorgan Chase is "particularly aggressive in closing accounts of sex workers or.... any business that supports sex workers" and in 2019, Metro Bank also closed Only Fans' corporate account with short notice. 

Wall Street's main indexes opened higher on Tuesday as a full US approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine helped boost shares of energy and travel-related companies, while gains in technology stocks lifted the Nasdaq to a fresh high.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.13pc at the open to 35382.72. The S&P 500 rose 0.11pc to 4484.4​, while the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.24pc to 14978.142 at the opening bell. 

Goldman Sachs economists have said they believe the US Federal Reserve is most likely to announce the start of tapering its bonds purchases in November this year. 

In a note, the bank said: "We see a 45pc chance the formal [FOMC taper] announcement will come in November, a 35pc chance it will come in December, and 20pc chance it will be delayed until 2022. We put high odds on a delay beyond Nov. because of the downside risk posed by the Delta variant."

According to Goldman, a $15bn per meeting total pace of tapering would likely be split between $10bn of US Treasuries and $5bn of mortgage-backed securities.

“A November announcement coupled with a $15bn per meeting pace would mean that the FOMC would make the final taper at its September 2022 meeting,” the Goldman Sachs analysts added.

South Africa’s unemployment rate surged to a record high of 34.4pc in the second quarter as Covid continued to devastate the economy, reports my colleague Louis Ashworth. 

He writes: 

The jobless rate was the highest since records began in 2008 and the worst out of 82 countries monitored by Bloomberg. 

The figure is even higher – at 44.4pc – if those unemployed and not looking for work are taken into account.

The unemployment rate in both Nigeria and Namibia is about 33pc, and about 15pc in Spain and Greece. 

More than 7.8m South Africans were out of work by the end of June according to Statistics South Africa, an increase of 584,000 on the previous three months.

Read the full story here. 

Sterling edged 0.01pc lower against the dollar on Tuesday, but held most gains made on Monday when a risk rebound helped the British currency bounce nearly 1pc. 

The pound has traded roughly in line with risk sentiment in global markets and a recovery in global stocks yesterday helped it recover after a nearly 2pc loss last week.

Sterling is currently trading at $1.3716 against the dollar. Against the euro, the pound was up 0.08pc at 0.8568 pence. 

Sainsbury's is still leading losses on the FTSE 100, with the supermarket's shares falling 3.4pc. 

The drop follows a 15pc rise for the supermarket yesterday, sparked by speculation that Sainsbury's could be the next UK takeover target for US private equity. 

The FTSE 100 as a whole is now down 0.4pc after erasing earlier gains. 

The £1.2bn upgrade to East Coast rail, which will add 40 more daily services and 20,000 extra seats, could be delayed until at least 2023, reports my colleague Simon Foy. 

He writes: 

The improvements to the London-Edinburgh line, which were expected to come into effect in May 2022, could now be pushed back due to problems with connecting the line to the main power supply and cracks in some Hitachi Azuma trains. 

Network Rail has written to ministers warning them not to go ahead with the planned May 2022 timetable, fearing a repeat of May 2018 when revised timetables led to chaos for commuters. 

LNER, the East Coast rail operator, has said that revising the timetable was "central to its plan" of delivering the benefits of billions of pounds in investment. The upgrade to the line is expected to cut commuting times between London and Edinburgh to less than four hours. 

Read Simon's full story here. 

Oil prices gained for a second session, amid glimmers of optimism that the delta variant’s hit to demand may be passing.

Brent lifted 1.6pc to $69.88 - after briefly reaching $70.11, 

Both Brent and West Texas Intermediate surged by more than 5pc on Monday, following their longest sell-off in years last week. 

The market has been comforted by China's announcement that it had brought local virus cases down to zero and traffic is showing signs of recovery, although the variant continues to impact other regions.

Separately, a fire on a Mexican oil platform wiped out more than 400,000 barrels a day of the nation’s output, which analysts say could curb global supply.

At least five people were killed and six injured in the blaze. 

Futures tracking the Nasdaq 100 index have hit a record high this morning in New York, as Facebook, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Google-owner Alphabet and Tesla all gained between 0.1pc and 0.8pc in premarket trading.

The three major US stock indexes ended the session sharply higher on Monday, with the benchmark S&P 500 hitting an intra-day record peak, driven by a jump in energy and industrial shares after US regulators gave the first full approval for a COVID-19 vaccine.

That momentum continued on Tuesday with oil majors Chevron and ExxonMobil adding 0.8pc and 0.9pc and shares of major Wall Street banks also edging higher.

Cruiseliners rose about 1.1pc, while online travel agency TripAdvisor added between 1.2pc and 2.2pc on hopes that increased vaccination rates in the United States would spark a stronger rebound in travel and leisure activities.

Dow e-minis are up 63 points or 0.18pc, S&P 500 e-minis were up 8.25 points or 0.18pc and Nasdaq 100 e-minis are up 37.75 points or 0.25pc.

Young readers snapping up online subscriptions to newspapers and magazines have helped digital publishing sales jump by nearly a third, reports Ben Woods. 

Digital publishing revenues rose by 32pc to £152m in the first three months of this year, according to data from the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) and Deloitte. 

Most of the sales came from online display advertising, which climbed 5pc higher to £53.6m over the period. 

However, subscription revenues surged by 49pc compared to the first quarter of last year. 

Dan Ison, the lead telecoms, media and entertainment partner at Deloitte, said the level of subscription growth in the first quarter was "staggering", compared to the 4pc rise seen two years ago. 

"New data from Deloitte's Digital Consumer Trends research highlights that consumers aged 18-24 are the most likely age group to have access to a paid news-site or magazine subscription. 

"Galvanising loyalty particularly among this age group should continue to be a key priority for publishers in the year ahead, alongside the development of content formats that appeal to new readers and subscribers.”

Germany’s borrowing ballooned in the first half of the year as its economic recovery remained stuck in the slow lane thanks to supply chain shortages, reports my colleague Russell Lynch. 

He writes: 

Europe’s chief fiscal hawk, which was forced to suspend its balanced budget rule on the eve of the pandemic, posted a deficit of €80.9bn (£69.2bn) for the first six months of the year - the second biggest for a six-month period since reunification in 1991.

Borrowing has surged as a result of the €130bn stimulus package introduced last year to fight the pandemic, which “continue to place a heavy burden on government finance”, the country’s statistical office said. The deficit of 4.7pc is the biggest for 26 years.

Despite the efforts to cushion the impact of the virus, Germany’s recovery has been hampered by supply chain disruptions affecting its export-heavy economy as well as its major car makers.

Read Russell's full story here. 

Retail demand is booming at an unprecedented pace, with new orders surging last month as the economy reopened, reports my colleague Tim Wallace.

The proportion of retailers reporting rising orders outweighed those with falling volumes by a margin of 68pc, the highest reading since the CBI began its distributive trades survey in 1983.

Sales jumped last month with a net balance of 60pc reporting growth, the strongest since the end of 2014.

Companies expect the resurgence to continue, with predictions for the next 12 months at their most buoyant since 1994.

The risk is that supply cannot keep up with demand as shipping problems and a shortage of staff mean stock is running low, said CBI economist Alpesh Paleja.

“There are signs of operational challenges still biting, with stock levels reaching another record low and import penetration falling,” he said.

“Disruption is being exacerbated by continued labour shortages, with many retailers reliant on younger employees currently awaiting their jab.”

Scottish retailers have written to the finance minister, urging the government to reject proposals to close large shops on New Year's Day.

The Government is consulting retail owners and staff after the Usdaw trade union submitted a petition to the Scottish Parliament calling for the change. Today is the final day of the consultation period. 

Currently, the Christmas Day and New Year's Day Trading Act 2007 only bans large shops, with a trading area of more than 280m squared, from opening on Christmas Day. 

But Usdaw argues that shop workers "deserve a decent break over New Year" after keeping the nation fed and delivering essential services.

On Tuesday, 13 retail groups,  including the Scottish Retail Consortium, CBI Scotland, and the Scottish Tourism Alliance, wrote to Public Finance Minister Tom Arthur, asking him to reject the request for a change.

They said: "As restrictions ease, it should be down to stores to determine and assess whether there is sufficient customer demand and availability of staff to open on New Year's Day.

"Curtailing this through legislation would diminish consumer choice and add to the economic pressures facing retailers, their supply chain, and our town and city centre economies."

David Lonsdale, director of the Scottish Retail Consortium, said: "A legislative ban would be putting rocks in the retail industry's rucksack just as it seeks to recover and climb out from the worst trading period in decades."

A fund run by JP Morgan has dropped its shares in two US companies on ESG grounds, as investors come under increasing pressure over climate change.

Today the £1.4bn JP Morgan American Investment Trust announced it had sold its holdings in petrol refiner Marathon Petroleum and defence conglomerate Raytheon Technologies “substantially on poor ESG (environmental, social and governance) grounds”.

Both companies have been labelled by the United Nations as "severe violators" of its corporate sustainability principles. 

We have recently made improvements to our ESG integration process and have incorporated new data points including reviewing the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) severe violators list," said the JP Morgan American Investment Trust.  

Since the start of the year, the blue-chip FTSE 100 index has added 10.3pc however it remains 8pc away from its peak in 2018 and underperforming its developed market peers in the United States and Europe. 

A slowing economy due to easing consumer demand, risks around central banks pulling back monetary support sooner than expected, and labour shortages have all weighed on the FTSE 100 in recent months.

"Market sentiments were largely battered by the record-breaking number of coronavirus cases in the Asian nations, certain domestic challenges including staff shortages, inadequacy of semiconductors and relatively lower consumer spending," Kunal Sawhney, chief executive of Kalkine, told Reuters.

"With the Delta variant cases beginning to subside in the UK, market participants are now looking forward to the penultimate quarter of the present fiscal, with job vacancies remaining near record highs, effectively alleviating the fears of potential employment threat," Sawhney added.

As the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan sparks fears that the West could become flooded with a new surge in heroin, Britain’s textile merchants are preoccupied with concerns over the supply of a legitimate export, reports Sam Hall.

He writes:

Textile fabrics are Afghanistan’s most significant legitimate goods export to the UK, with £2.4m worth of products exported between April 2020 and March 2021. Vegetables and fruit, the next highest, only recorded £670,000.

Uncertainty over the country’s future has taken a toll on trade, with total exports to the UK in the same period amounting to just £33m, slumping by almost three quarters compared to the previous year.

“Everything is at a standstill,” says Dr Mohammad Hotak, chairman of the British Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Read Sam's full story here. 

Property sales in July plummeted after buyers missed the stamp duty deadline and the opportunity to save thousands of pounds in tax, reports my colleague Rachel Mortimer. 

The latest data from HM Revenue & Customs recorded 82,110 residential transactions last month, a drop of more than 61pc on the 213,120 sales in June.

The figure was just 1.8pc higher than July 2020, when the housing market had only recently reopened after the first lockdown.  

HMRC attributed the huge month-on-month fall to the tapering of the stamp duty holiday at the end of June. Up until this point buyers could save a maximum of £15,000 in tax, but in July this dropped dramatically to £2,500.

Anthony Codling, of property website Twindig, said the numbers represented the first of two “stamp duty holiday cliffs”.

“Perhaps the July cliff edge points to those wealthier home buyers being fleet of foot, suggesting this has been a holiday for the cash-rich and those higher up the housing ladder rather than those aspiring to get a foot on the ladder,” he added. 

Here's the daily round-up from The Telegraph's Money team: 

• The 'protected' allowance that blocks Rishi Sunak's pension tax grab: But moving a pension abroad to dodge the lifetime allowance is fraught with risk
• ‘PayPal shut my account because my lottery syndicate sent £45’: Has a company treated you unfairly? Our consumer champion, Sally Hamilton, is here to help

• Consumers demand regulation of online adverts as Covid fraudsters run riot: Online frauds have grown during the pandemic

Deliveroo shares have risen 1.3pc this morning after the company announced a delivery deal with Boots. 

With shares now trading at 393.8p, Deliveroo is close to its all time high of 395p reached on August 18 and above 

The trial with Boots - which will include stores in London, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Nottingham -  marks the takeaway app's attempt to expand beyond restaurant orders and groceries. 

Boots has struck a deal with Deliveroo so its products can be delivered to customers front doors almost instantly, my colleague James Titcomb reports. 

He writes: 

The takeaway app, best known for transporting KFC and Burger King with its fleet of brightly clad moped and bicycle couriers, said customers would be able to order 400 health and beauty products under a pilot programme.

The partnership represents a bet that consumers will transfer the takeaway food habits developed during repeated lockdowns to high street shops hit by falling pedestrian traffic in city and town centres. 

Consumers used food delivery apps in record numbers during the pandemic but the likes of Deliveroo now hope this will extend to areas such as groceries and healthcare with restaurants reopening.

Read the full story here. 

Banking shares are weighing on the FTSE 100, erasing some of the index's gains from earlier this morning. 

HSBC and Lloyds are among the blue-chip stocks leading losses, down 1.2pc and 1pc respectively. 

Natwest, Barclays and Standard Chartered are also falling. 

Milkshakes are off the menu in all of McDonald's UK restaurants, as the fast food giant becomes the latest chain to suffer from supply chain disruption.

The company has also been left without bottled drinks across its 1,250 outlets in England, Scotland and Wales.

A spokesman said the group is suffering supply chain issues, but is "working hard to return these items to the menu".

Last week, Nando's was forced to shut around 50 restaurants amid a chicken shortage. It blamed staffing shortages at suppliers and a reduced number of lorry drivers.

Rival KFC also warned recently that supply chain issues meant it was unable to stock some menu items.

Businesses across different sectors of the UK economy have been wrestling with a supply chain crisis due to a shortage of lorry drivers following post-Brexit EU immigration rules, Covid-19 restrictions and self-isolation rules.

The supply pressures have also been affecting supermarkets in recent weeks, while manufacturers have reported sharp increases in the prices of raw materials.

London's markets are edging higher this morning, with heavyweight miners and travel stocks rising as concerns about the spread of the Delta variant eased. 

The FTSE 100 was up 0.2pc with miners and oil stocks leading the gains. Plane engine maker Rolls Royce lifted 1.3pc and British Airways owner IAG rose 1.2pc. 

On the domestically focused mid-cap index, which added 0.3pc, airline EasyJet rose 2.6pc, Tui added 1.7pc and Wizz Air lifted 1.5pc.

BHP Group rose 1.4pc even after S&P Global said the miner was at risk of a two notch downgrade that would provoke its lowest ever credit rating as the sale of its petroleum business raises the miner's dependence on its major business of iron ore.

Wood Plc dropped 2pc after the engineering and consultancy firm forecast lower annual revenue and reported a 14.1pc fall in first-half profit.

The world’s largest container shipping line is making a $1.4bn (£1bn) in a greener fleet, fuelled by methanol instead of oil-based fuels. 

A.P. Moller - Maersk has ordered eight new ships, costing $175m (£127m) which the company expects to be delivered from 2024.

The ships, which are built by Hyundai Heavy Industries, will represent around 3pc of Maersk’s total container capacity and will save around one million tons of carbon dioxide a year, according to the company. 

“We don’t believe in more fossil fuels,” Morten Bo Christiansen, vice president and head of decarbonisation, said in an interview. “A lot of our customers are very, very supportive of this.”

Shipping, the backbone of global trade, accounts for almost 3pc of man-made carbon dioxide emissions. By 2050, the United Nations body wants shipping’s total greenhouse gas emissions to at least halve relative to 2008. 

Businesses have been given an extra year to adopt the new post-Brexit UKCA product safety marking which is replacing the EU’s CE label, reports my colleague Tim Wallace.

Initially manufacturers had until the end of this year to use the new certification regime, but now it will only be enforced from the start of 2023, the Business Department has announced.

Manufacturers’ group Make UK welcomed the extension to the deadline as “a huge relief”.

“Companies were becoming increasingly nervous as the clock ticked down to the end of the year, caught up in the delays and bureaucracy in getting their products tested,” a spokesperson said.

“The extra year will provide both exporters and importers with valuable breathing space to enable a new testing system to bed in place.”

William Bain, head of trade policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, said it is a “reprieve” but that there are still problems with the new setup.

"Complex supply chains such as those in the automotive industry still face having to duplicate markings on certain components and incurring large costs for testing as a result," he said.

“The Government needs to work now with businesses to ensure full consideration to the impacts are given before any decision to completely pull the plug on CE-marked goods, risking incurring costs to our economy that we may come to regret.”

The FTSE 100 has edged 0.25pc higher to 7.128.23 points on opening. 

The FTSE 250 has also lifted 0.37pc to 23,827.76 points. 

Revenue at energy and consulting group Wood tumbled almost 23pc over the past six months, while operating profit inched just 3pc higher to $68m (£50m). 

The FTSE 250 listed company said the fall in revenue was due to the impact of the coronavirus and a $74m (£54m) reduction in revenue from disposed businesses. 

However bosses stressed the company's order books had swelled to $7.7bn (£5.6bn) over the period, while chief executive Robin Watson said: "Trading momentum and good growth in our order book, which is up c18pc year-to-date, underpin our confidence in delivering a stronger second half which will reflect a return to growth compared to both H1 2021 and H2 2020."

Two power station companies are set to pay £6m into a fund managed by the energy regulator, after Ofgem said they broke market manipulation rules.

Ofgem said that Generation Trading and Carrington Power had admitted to inadvertently breaching rules when they reported how much energy they were able to supply to the grid.

The regulator's regulatory director Cathryn Scott said:

Data accuracy is essential for keeping the costs of running the electricity system as low as possible for consumers.

This case sends a clear signal to all generators that we are closely scrutinising their conduct and will not hesitate to act if they fall short of the standards we expect.

Good morning.

Despite continuing concerns about vaccine durability and a Chinese economic slowdown, the FTSE 100 is expected to open 14 points higher at 7,123 as global stocks continue to rebound from last week.

5 things to start your day 

1) Dire delays and staff shortages hold back economic recovery: Manufacturers are suffering the worst stock shortages on record and many companies are reporting disruption due to absence of workers.

2) Government delays change to post-Brexit safety standards: Businesses have been given an extra year to adopt the new post-Brexit product safety marking, which is replacing the EU's label.

3) Paracetamol and make up to your door in Boots deal with Deliveroo: Takeaway app to offer 400 items from lipstick to hand sanitiser in pilot programme from 14 stores.

4) Chinese Uber rival Didi scraps UK launch amid privacy fears: Taxi app company pulls plans for at least 12 months despite securing licences in several British cities.

5) Why some British firms will keep trading with Afghanistan: While some fear the West could be flooded with heroin, Britain's textile merchants are preoccupied with supply concerns over textile fabrics.

What happened overnight 

Asian stocks rose on Tuesday on an extended bounce on Wall Street as investors drew comfort from full approval granted to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and on easing worries of an imminent tapering of stimulus by the Federal Reserve.

The dollar was licking its wounds after its sharpest one-day fall since May, which spurred a 5pc rally in oil prices on Monday.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 1.2pc, with Japan and South Korean indexes jumping more than one per cent. Australian shares were up 0.2pc and Taiwan stocks rose 0.7pc.

Chinese markets also edged up 0.2pc, with technology stocks extending their recovery after enduring a pummelling in recent weeks on regulatory worries.

Coming up today

• Corporate: PureTech Health, John Wood, Invesco Bond Income Plus (Interim)
• Economics: GDP (Germany); new home sales (US)