Finance, in brief

The cost of borrowing

Germany's ten-year government borrowing rate hit 3.515%, its highest in 15 years. [10] India's central bank sold only 40% of a planned three-year bond rather than pay more. [30] Thirty-year US borrowing reached almost 5.4% on Thursday. [18]

Fuel prices climbing

US diesel passed $6 a gallon on Friday, a record. [22] Brent crude, the main international oil price, ended the week 8.7% higher at $104.61 a barrel. [24] Kroger, one of America's largest grocery chains, said higher transport costs cut its margin. [40]

Money leaving shares for bonds

Investors pulled $32.27 billion out of US share funds in a week. [29] US bond funds took money in for a 21st week running. [29] Foreign investors put $11.2 billion into emerging-market debt in August and $0.1 billion into emerging-market shares. [51]

Weak companies for sale

America's Car-Mart, a US used-car seller, won a seven-day extension on a loan default waiver. [44] BFF Bank, an Italian lender, is weighing an offer from Cerberus after the Bank of Italy told it to strengthen its capital. [43] SThree, a British recruiter, rejected a takeover bid after its half-year profit fell by three-quarters. [36]

One pressure seen across the day runs through Finance too.

• Oil routes closing one by oneHigh ↑ · seen in 4 beats→

1. 1US inflation held at 3.4% in August. The odds on a rate rise next Wednesday jumped to 87%, and shares rose anyway.
2. 2Diesel passes $6 a gallon in the US
3. 3Oil falls on Friday, up 8.7% on the week
4. 4Government borrowing costs near multi-year highs
5. 5$32bn pulled out of US share funds

Watch whether the US central bank raises rates on Wednesday, and whether anything in its statement points to October: a former vice-chair and a bond strategist both said publicly that one rise would not be the last. [7][20]

The price of US diesel rose above $6 a gallon on Friday, a record. [22]

It followed a statement from Saudi Arabia's energy ministry that a pipeline carrying oil from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea had been targeted several times and shut as a precaution. [22]

Diesel is the fuel in lorries, trains, ships and farm machinery, so its price works its way into almost everything that is delivered. [23]

The International Energy Agency cut its forecast for world oil demand this year, now expecting a fall of 2.5 million barrels a day. [22]

Higher fuel prices reach food and delivery charges later, and diesel is one reason August's US inflation figure did not fall. [1]

Also seen in World, Climate and Food.

Brent crude settled down 2.8% at $104.61 a barrel on Friday, snapping five straight days of gains. [24]

The fall came after Iranian state media said Iran will meet Gulf states in Oman to discuss the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel most Gulf oil is shipped through. [24]

Even so, Brent ended the week 8.7% higher and US crude 9.4% higher. [24]

Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid pointed to Houthi fighters capturing Yemen's port city of Mokha and to Saudi oil output falling to its lowest since 1990. [24]

Oil above $100 is the main reason inflation stopped falling, and the energy spike pushed up government borrowing costs across rich countries. [11][59]

The interest rate on ten-year US government bonds traded at 4.941% on Friday, having passed 4.9% on Thursday for the first time in three years. [10][11]

It came within about five basis points of 5%, a level it has touched only once since 2007, briefly in 2023. [12]

Germany's ten-year rate hit 3.515%, its highest in 15 years, before slipping back. [10]

Japan's ten-year rate rose six basis points, near the high it last touched in 1996, and Australia's rose twelve. [11] Thirty-year US borrowing reached almost 5.4% on Thursday. [18]

These rates set what governments, companies and homebuyers eventually pay, so almost everybody is touched by a move here as investor, borrower or taxpayer. [19]

Investors took a net $32.27 billion out of US share funds in the week to 9 September, the biggest weekly withdrawal since December 2025, according to LSEG Lipper data. [29]

Funds holding large US companies lost a record $40.44 billion. [29] US bond funds, by contrast, took money in for a 21st week running, $6.56 billion of it. [29]

Short-term government and Treasury funds drew $2.78 billion, their largest weekly inflow in nine weeks. [29]

This is the week's plainest picture of money moving out of company shares and into lending, which is what happens when safe lending starts paying close to 5%. [12]

Gold pays nothing while you hold it, a ten-year US government bond now pays almost 5%, and this week the money moved towards the bond.

the step is the last one in the chain — bonds started paying more, so money left the thing that pays nothing

the same week those withdrawals happened, US bond funds took money in for a 21st time running

$11.2bn of it went into debt and $0.1bn into shares, the same move made in a different set of markets

a cash shell hunting for a target parks the money in US Treasury bills, and that parking now pays real interest

So is anyone whose retirement money sits in a fund somebody else manages. None of them knows what the others will do on Monday.

Gold has lost more than 2% this week and is on course for a third weekly decline in a row. [25]

It fell almost 2% on Thursday as traders raised the odds of a US rate rise. [25]

Gold pays no interest while you hold it, so it becomes less attractive when government bonds pay more. [25][26]

Silver slipped too, trading at $64.75 an ounce on Friday morning, down 1.29% in a day, though still 56% above where it was a year ago. [28]

Gold normally rises when inflation news is bad, and this week it did the opposite. [25]

The Reserve Bank of India, the country's central bank, accepted bids worth only 45.06 billion rupees, about $471 million, for a three-year government bond. [30]

That is just over 40% of the 110 billion rupees it had planned to raise. [30] It is the first time in a year the bank has partially cancelled an auction. [30]

The bond's yield had risen 25 basis points in the four weeks since it was issued, and one state-bank trader said a full sale could have pushed it to 6.50%. [30]

A government that does not like the price being asked can simply sell less, and India chose that over borrowing at a rate it did not want to pay. [30]

Hours after the cancelled auction, India's central bank announced it would sell bonds maturing between 2029 and 2032 worth 1 trillion rupees, about $10.47 billion. [31]

Selling bonds into the market takes cash out of the banking system, and it is one of the strongest tightening tools a central bank has. [31]

It is the bank's first net sale of bonds in two years. [31] Its governor had said in an interview hours earlier that all options remained on the table. [31]

India refused to borrow at a higher rate in the morning and took money out of its banks in the afternoon, which lands on Indian borrowers either way. [30][31]

Brazil's consumer prices fell in August, led by a 1.87% drop in housing costs after a one-off electricity discount linked to the Itaipu hydroelectric dam. [32]

Transport prices fell 0.86% as airfares and fuel got cheaper, and food and drink fell 0.34%. [32]

Andres Abadia, chief Latin America economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said the figures strengthen the case for another quarter-point rate cut next week. [32]

He added that much of the monthly weakness was temporary. [32]

Brazil is expected to cut in the same week the United States is expected to raise, so the two largest economies of the Americas move apart. [32][1]

Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, was asked at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas about criticism of his policies. [33]

He said that if some of the Bloomberg Terminal bros are unhappy with what he is doing, that is too bad. [33]

Bessent has been buying back long-dated US government bonds to hold down what his government pays to borrow, a move even his former mentor Stan Druckenmiller has objected to. [33]

He said the United States has the best-performing bond market in the world and that this is a supply shock the country will get past. [33]

The buybacks pulled borrowing costs down briefly and then stopped working, and the ten- and thirty-year rates are now higher than before he started. [33]

The US federal budget deficit for the eleven months to August stood at $1.97 trillion, already larger than the $1.775 trillion gap for the whole of the previous financial year. [34]

August's monthly deficit of $167 billion looked 52% smaller than a year earlier, but only because 1 August fell on a Saturday and pension and health payments went out in July instead. [34]

Adjusted for that, the month's gap was $248 billion, $7 billion worse than a year before. [34]

Interest paid on the US debt is already up $143 billion, or 13%, this financial year, and every rise in borrowing costs adds to that bill. [34]

Copart, an American company that auctions damaged and salvaged vehicles online, agreed to buy ACV Auctions in an all-cash deal worth about $1.9 billion. [35]

It is paying $10.50 for each ACV share. [35] ACV's stock rose 44% on the announcement. [35]

It was the largest takeover announced in finance on Friday, and it lands in the same American used-vehicle market where America's Car-Mart is negotiating weekly with its lenders. [35][44]

SThree, a British firm that recruits people into science, engineering and technology jobs, rejected a takeover approach from Circle8, a US technology and workforce company listed on Nasdaq. [36]

Circle8 said on Thursday that a deal would create a business with nearly $3 billion of revenue. [36][37]

Under Britain's takeover rules, Circle8 must either make a firm offer or walk away by 7 October. [36]

SThree's half-year pre-tax profit fell by three-quarters in July, which it blamed on an AI-driven hiring slowdown and the Iran war. [36]

British recruiters have been cutting costs as AI takes over parts of hiring, and a profit down three-quarters is what makes one cheap enough to bid for. [36]

Kenya's competition regulator approved Asahi's purchase of East African Breweries, the region's biggest brewer, with a condition attached: EABL must open part of its refrigerated display space to rival drinks. [38]

Fridge space in small shops, bars and restaurants decides which drinks a customer can see and buy on the spot. [38]

Diageo, the British drinks group, agreed in December 2025 to sell its 65% stake to Japan's Asahi, valuing EABL at about $4.8 billion and leaving Diageo around $2.3 billion after tax and costs. [38]

The regulator also told EABL to set aside money for outstanding liabilities. [38]

A regulator that will not block a takeover can still change what the new owner is allowed to do with what it has bought. [38]

Novartis, the Swiss drugmaker, lost about $30 billion of stock market value this week after three setbacks in a row. [39]

It paused eight trials of an experimental cell therapy called rap-cel after three patients died, then said its cholesterol drug pelacarsen had failed to cut heart problems. [39]

On Tuesday a muscle-wasting drug it had acquired in a $12 billion takeover of the US firm Avidity failed a late-stage study, sending its shares down 10%. [39]

A large shareholder has called for a shake-up of the board. [39]

About 90% of drugs fail somewhere between the laboratory and approval, which is why big drugmakers buy later-stage medicines rather than wait ten years for their own. [39]

Kroger, one of America's largest grocery chains, said sales at stores open at least a year rose 0.2% in its second quarter, against 3.4% a year earlier. [40]

Total sales were $34.6 billion and earnings were $1.05 a share. [40] The company lowered its full-year forecast for those same-store sales while keeping its profit forecast unchanged. [40]

Its gross margin slipped to 22.4% from 22.5%, which it blamed partly on higher transport costs and on more theft and waste. [40]

Transport costs are largely diesel costs, so a grocer's margin is one of the first places a $6 gallon turns up. [40][22]

Four US regulators proposed new guidance on how banks and credit unions manage the outside firms they depend on. [41][42]

They are the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the National Credit Union Administration. [41]

The proposal is principles-based and, like all supervisory guidance, is not binding. [41]

When it is finalised it will replace the existing rules, and comments are due 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. [41]

Banks now run much of their technology through outside providers, and these rules decide how closely a supervisor looks at those contracts. [41]

BFF Bank, an Italian lender, is considering a non-binding offer from Cerberus, a US investment firm. [43]

Under the proposal BFF would raise about 300 million euros of new capital, with Cerberus taking a share deliberately kept below 30%, the level that would force it to bid for the whole bank. [43]

BPER Banca has offered to buy BFF's payments and custody business, and the state-backed asset manager AMCO has bid for its factoring arm. [43]

The Bank of Italy told BFF this year to reassess its loan book and put two representatives on its board. [43]

BFF faces a capital shortfall in 2028 unless it acts, and the whole bank was worth under 600 million euros on Friday. [43]

America's Car-Mart, a US used-car retailer that lends to its own buyers, agreed with its lenders to extend a waiver on loan defaults from 11 September to 18 September. [44]

It is the second one-week extension in a fortnight. [44]

The shares trade at $1.59, down 96% from their twelve-month high of $35.49 and down 34% in a week, leaving the company worth about $13 million. [44]

A board committee is looking at options including new financing. [44]

This is what dearer borrowing looks like at the bottom of the market: a week at a time, announced in public filings. [44]

UBS is buying back $7.9 billion of old Credit Suisse bonds. [45]

It is the Swiss bank's biggest move yet to shrink the debt it inherited when it took over its collapsed rival. [45]

UBS is paying off borrowing in the same week borrowing got dearer almost everywhere else. [45][11]

There have been 143 listings of special-purpose acquisition companies in the United States this year, cash shells that raise money first and find something to buy later. [46]

They now account for 62% of all new US listings and have raised about $28 billion, more than all new listings in Europe, Hong Kong or Shanghai. [46]

Recent targets include robotics, rockets, quantum computing and nuclear power firms. [46]

Of roughly 700 such shells that merged since 2012, about 10% trade above their $10 guide price and more than a third sit below $1. [46]

While a shell hunts for a target it parks the cash in US Treasury bills and collects interest, which is worth more the higher rates go. [46]

The number of companies listed on the London Stock Exchange has fallen from 2,429 in 2015 to 1,534 in May 2026, a decade low. [47]

More than 30 have left or plan to leave this year, including the asset manager Schroders and the airline easyJet, both of which agreed to US takeovers. [47]

Britain rewrote its listing rules in 2024 so companies no longer need a shareholder vote for most acquisitions. [47]

Total UK takeover activity more than doubled to 124.2 billion pounds in the first half of 2026, though the number of deals fell. [47]

Years of weak share prices are what make a London company cheap to a foreign buyer, and each takeover removes another name from the exchange. [47]

Finance ministers and central bank governors of the BRICS group issued a joint statement on Friday raising serious concerns about countries acting alone on trade and finance, including higher tariffs and other barriers. [48][49]

They said such measures distort trade and are inconsistent with World Trade Organisation rules. [49]

India hosts the group's leaders' summit in New Delhi this weekend, with leaders from Russia, China and Iran due to attend. [49]

Iran, a member since 2024, has been at war with the United States and Israel for more than six months. [49]

The oil price driven up by that war is landing on the same emerging economies that are already absorbing American tariffs. [49]

India's commerce minister, Piyush Goyal, told the BRICS Business Forum in New Delhi that the group's exports have grown from about $900 billion in 2003 to $6 trillion in 2024. [50]

Their share of world exports has nearly doubled to about 24%. [50] The forum was attended by India's prime minister Narendra Modi and Russia's president Vladimir Putin. [50]

Goyal urged members to open their markets to each other and ease trade barriers between them. [50]

A group carrying a quarter of world exports is asking for the trade rules to be respected at the same meeting where it objects to tariffs. [50][48]

Foreign investors put a net $11.3 billion into emerging markets in August. [51]

Almost all of it, $11.2 billion, went into debt rather than shares, and that happened without any new government bond issues to absorb it. [51]

Money going into emerging-market shares was almost flat at $0.1 billion. [51]

Investors sent the money to emerging-market lending and almost none to emerging-market shares, the same split that showed up in US funds this week. [51][29]

CVC, a buyout firm, is in final talks to buy Ginko, a contact-lens maker, from the Swedish investment group EQT. [52]

Ginko was founded in Taiwan, makes conventional and disposable lenses and lens-care products, and sells most of them in mainland China. [52]

EQT agreed last year to sell the business to the US buyout firm Advent International, but that deal fell through. [52]

The investment was originally made in 2022 by Baring Private Equity Asia, which later merged with EQT. [52]

A second buyer stepping in after a failed sale is how investment firms get their money out when stock market listings are hard to arrange. [52][47]

JD.com, a large Chinese online retailer, is preparing improved concessions to win European Union approval for its 2.2 billion euro takeover of Ceconomy, the bloc's biggest electronics retailer. [53]

The deal is being examined under the EU's Foreign Subsidies Regulation, a rule that checks whether help from another government gives a buyer an unfair advantage. [53]

The changes are aimed at keeping JD.com's logistics and technology arm competitive with rivals. [53] Meetings with the regulators vetting the deal are under way. [53]

The rule decides whether a Chinese buyer's state backing counts against it, and what is being bought is the largest electronics retailer in the European Union. [53]

China's housing authorities and financial regulators announced a package on 28 August to change how new homes are sold. [54]

It shifts sales towards completed homes, tightens supervision of the escrow accounts that hold buyers' deposits, and extends mortgage terms. [54]

Investors first read it as another round of support for the industry. [54]

When trading resumed, shares in the developers China Jinmao and Greentown China fell more than 10%, and China Resources Land and other big builders also dropped. [54]

Chinese developers have been funded by money paid for homes that had not been built yet, and a rule ending that changes who has to fund construction. [54]

US Senate negotiators are debating a law that would put responsibility on technology companies to design safe AI products, according to two Senate aides. [55]

It would create what is called a duty of care, requiring companies to design against catastrophic risks. [55]

The US government would be able to block the release of models judged unsafe, and companies could challenge that in federal court. [55]

Part of the measure would stop individual US states enforcing their own rules on certain AI risks. [55]

It would let the US government block an AI model's release, and it would take that power away from state governments. [55]

HarbourVest collected $2.4 billion at the first close of a new strategy focused on private credit, which means lending to companies directly rather than through a bank. [56]

The same briefing reported that Brightspeed, a broadband company backed by the investment firm Apollo, is trying to fund its fibre network by bundling assets into a security and selling it. [56]

Money keeps arriving in private lending at the moment lending pays the most it has in years. [56][12]

EL.En, an Italian maker of lasers and medical equipment, said first-half revenue rose 9.1% to more than 246 million euros and net profit rose 45.4% to 26.1 million euros. [57]

The company sold its laser-cutting division, and medical products now make up more than 92% of its sales. [57]

Operating profit before depreciation rose 30% to 48.7 million euros, widening that margin to 19.8% from 16.6%. [57] The shares rose 7.05%. [57]

The profit came from dropping a division rather than buying one, which is the opposite of most of this week's corporate news. [57]