John Thornhill

Jamie Frost, with his doctorate in machine learning, had a job devising algorithmic bond trading strategies for Morgan Stanley in New York.

He is now a secondary school maths teacher in the UK and is helping to reinvent education in the pandemic, offering free resources for teachers and students on his website.

Over the past year, 6,946 schools in 118 countries have logged in to DrFrostMaths. Students have answered more than 110m questions on the platform, providing insights into what they get right and where they go wrong.

“We can massively enhance students’ learning with technology,” Mr Frost says. “It is really important that this is accessible to everyone.”

The Covid-19 crisis has opened up opportunities for teachers to experiment with blended learning, combining classroom skills and digital tools.

With 1.4bn students in 138 countries temporarily excluded from schools and universities this year, teachers have been forced to become more inventive in delivering lessons online.

Read more here.

Harriet Clarfelt

Hospital waiting times in England have increased dramatically during the coronavirus pandemic, with the latest data showing queues not seen in 12 years.
In September there were 139,445 patients waiting for more than a year to have treatment, up from 111,026 in August.

At the end of September, nearly two-thirds of patients waiting to start treatment – known as “incomplete pathways” – were waiting up to 18 weeks. The total number of patients waiting to start treatment stood at 4.4m.

The NHS also revealed on Thursday that the number of England-wide accident & emergency visits in October had fallen by more than a quarter year on year, to 1.6m. It said that these much lower figures were “likely to be a result of the Covid-19 response”.

Earlier this year, governments around the world redirected medical resources to the front line of the pandemic to support Covid-19 patients. There are now mounting concerns that many have missed crucial diagnoses and treatments for non-virus-related illnesses. In September, Breast Cancer Now warned that nearly 1m women in the UK have missed potentially lifesaving screening due to Covid-19.

Sam Agini in London

The Football Association, English football’s governing body, has asked the UK government to grant the Icelandic national team a travel exemption to play against England in their final Nations League group game at Wembley next Wednesday.

Iceland’s match against Denmark on Sunday would bar the team from entering the UK under rules designed to prevent the spread of a new strain of coronavirus linked to Danish mink farms.

The FA set out plans to ensure that Iceland’s national team will be subject to strict safety procedures, under which they would take a privately chartered flight to a private terminal. Once in the UK, they would only have access to the team hotel and Wembley stadium.

The FA pledged to carry out more tests than usually required to check for the virus. An alternative would be to hold the match in Germany, an outcome the FA wants to avoid.

“We believe it’s in the better interests of the England team and support staff to play at Wembley Stadium rather than have international travel at this time – and then play the match under the same UEFA [European football’s governing body] protocols against the same opposition, but in a different country,” the FA said.

Naomi Rovnick in London and Hudson Lockett in Hong Kong

European equities drifted lower and investors headed for the safety of US government bonds, after a surge in Covid-19 cases damped exuberance about the prospect of a vaccine becoming available by the end of the year.

US futures markets indicated that the price of technology stocks would rise when New York opens for trading, as money headed back into businesses that benefit from the pandemic crisis.

The regional benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 index dropped 0.3 per cent early Thursday while the UK’s FTSE 100 and Germany’s Xetra Dax both lost about 0.4 per cent.

The Stoxx was still up more than 5 per cent this week after a rally triggered by Monday’s announcement from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech that their experimental Covid-19 vaccine was found to be more than 90 per cent effective in a late-stage trial.

Ahead of the Wall Street open, futures contracts on the Nasdaq 100 index, which is dominated by names such as Apple, Amazon and Facebook, gained 0.5 per cent. Those on the more broad-based S&P 500 fell 0.2 per cent.

Thursday’s shift in market sentiment comes as the caseload for coronavirus worsens. New York’s governor announced late on Wednesday a move to limit social gatherings to contain rising infections heading into the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

Valerie Hopkins in Budapest and Henry Foy in Warsaw

Hungary has said it will receive a sample of the Russian-made Covid-19 vaccine within a week and a half, making it the first EU member state to announce plans to procure the Kremlin-backed jab.

Speaking from quarantine via video link after getting infected with Covid-19, Peter Szijjarto, the Hungarian minister of foreign affairs and trade, said on Wednesday evening his country was in “advanced negotiations” to acquire full doses from Moscow. “This is good news for Hungary,” he said.

An acquisition by Budapest and entry into the EU market would represent a major victory for Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, which has been criticised by some experts for its rapid pace of approval and limited publicly available information on its efficacy.

Read the full story here

Anjli Raval in London

A Covid-19 vaccine is unlikely to ride to the oil market’s rescue until late next year at the earliest, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday.

The cautious tone from the Paris-based body comes a day after Opec said demand for the cartel’s barrels next year would be less than it had anticipated a month ago. The weaker demand outlook, combined with rising supply, is putting pressure on global producers to hold back output to support prices, analysts say.

“It is far too early to know how and when vaccines will allow normal life to resume. For now, our forecasts do not anticipate a significant impact in the first half of 2021,” the IEA said.

In its monthly report, the energy body said demand for 2020 would come in lower than initially forecast as the number of coronavirus cases surged again across Europe and the US, and governments reimposed measures to halt the spread of the virus.

The IEA now expects demand to fall by 8.8m barrels a day in 2020 to 91.3m b/d, compared with the 8.4m b/d drop predicted in last month’s report.

“Vaccines are unlikely to significantly boost demand until well into next year,” the IEA added.

Read the full story here

Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul

Turkey has banned smoking in some public places in an effort to stamp on a surge in coronavirus cases as doctors call for a nationwide lockdown to control an outbreak that is spinning “out of control”.

Turkey stopped adhering to World Health Organization guidelines at the start of a second peak in the pandemic and only shares the number of patients receiving treatment, the health minister revealed in September. The latest official data showed more than 402,000 people have been infected and 11,145 people have died but the the true scale of infections remains a mystery.

The interior ministry issued a decree late on Wednesday announcing the smoking ban on busy streets, at bus stops and in public squares after determining “citizens were incorrectly using their masks by lowering them below their chins to smoke cigarettes”.

About 32 per cent of Turks use tobacco, WHO data show.

Authorities this week ordered people aged 65 and older in its two biggest cities of Istanbul and Ankara to stay at home, except between the hours of 10am and 4pm Curfews may be expanded to other provinces as governors see fit, the latest decree said.

Medical professionals say such steps are piecemeal and delegate the fight against coronavirus to individuals, rather than the government. The Turkish Thoracic Society said in a statement this week a nationwide lockdown of two weeks to a month was required.

“The outbreak at this time is out of control, especially in Istanbul,” it said. Turkish doctors were dying every day of Covid-19 and infections among children between 5 and 14 years old are recording a large increase after schools were partially opened last month, it said.

“Based on observations in the field, we are concerned about the scale of the cases and believe that if the health ministry were to disclose the total number of cases in a transparent manner, it would incentivise society to comply with measures,” it said.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Turkey cannot afford restrictions that would shut down businesses after the economy shrunk about 10 per cent in the second quarter at the height of the pandemic. He has sparred with medical groups that have criticised his handling of the pandemic.

Guy Chazan in Berlin

Coronavirus infections in Germany are “very high” but signs indicate it is “flattening the curve” as the rate of new infections slows, according to officials.

The Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s main public health authority, reported 21,866 new cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total number of Covid-19 cases to 727,553. That brings the total Covid-19 death tally to 11,982 in Germany.

“The curve is going up a little less steeply, it’s flattening,” said Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute. He said he didn’t know if it was a “stable development”, but “it shows that we are not completely at the mercy of this virus”.

German authorities have imposed a “lockdown-light” for November, closing restaurants, bars and theatres in a bid to contain a sudden upsurge in virus cases that has alarmed the government.

Mr Wieler said that despite the containment measures, the number of cases was still “very high”.

“That leads to a situation where many people are no longer able to work, that a lot of people are falling badly ill and possibly suffering long-term effects or are even dying,” he said.

“We must get used to the idea that the situation could get much worse in the coming weeks,” he said. “Many hospitals could reach their limits. It is possible that patients will no longer be able to receive the best treatment.”

Harriet Clarfelt

Demand for new homes and renovating property has spurred buoyant updates from housebuilder Vistry, DIY retailer Grafton and paving and concrete maker Marshalls. Homeowners this year have redirected some of the money they would normally use for travel and leisure into home improvements while the housing, construction and manufacturing industries have benefited from remaining open during England’s second lockdown.

Grafton, which sells building materials and leads Ireland’s DIY retail market, benefited from “pent-up demand” following the first lockdown as many households have invested savings gleaned from lower spending on travel and leisure back into their homes. The group achieved better-than-expected revenues of £1bn for the four months to October, up 5.1 per cent year on year. It has raised its second-half adjusted operating profit guidance to £130m-£140m. Grafton’s shares advanced 6.5 per cent in early trading on Thursday.

Vistry, formerly known as Bovis Homes, expects full-year pre-tax profits to hit the upper end of its £130-£140m guidance range, rising to £310m in 2021 “assuming stable market conditions”. Becoming the latest housebuilder to benefit from a boom sparked by stamp-duty cuts, the FTSE 250 group expects net debt in 2020 to be lower than anticipated. It intends to resume dividend payments next year. Shares in Vistry were up 3 per cent. They are down by two-fifths over the year to date.

Construction supplier Hill & Smith reported an “encouraging recovery” in recent months and expects operating profits to be “slightly ahead” of analysts’ current forecasts of £61.6m-£64.7m. The group cautioned that medium-term guidance remains complex while Covid-19 rages on. Shares in Hill & Smith gained roughly 2 per cent.

Sales by paving manufacturer Marshalls climbed by a tenth on a like-for-like basis for the four months ending October. Marshalls said it was “improving its expectations for 2021”, helping its shares edge up by just under 1 per cent.

Meanwhile, coach and rail operator National Express noted that revenues had continued to improve. October saw the highest monthly earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation in 2020 so far. But the second wave of virus infections and associated lockdowns have damped the pace of the group’s recovery. Reinstated guidance puts adjusted earnings at £170-£190m for this year.

National Express said that it would still pass December 2020 covenant tests at the bottom of this range. Its shares dipped by 0.6 per cent on Thursday morning. They have fallen by a half since early January.

Harry Dempsey

Burberry warned of the hit to revenues in the second half of its financial year as the luxury brand unwinds discounts on unsold stock to protect its long-term future, even as lockdowns force European stores to close.

Strong trading in China, South Korea and the US however helped the brand’s comparable store sales improve and return to growth in October, after sagging as much as 45 per cent in the first quarter.

That helped lift shares in Burberry by 3.4 per cent on Thursday. Shares have declined about 24 per cent over 2020 but Thursday’s pick-up boosted its November uptick.

Revenue dropped 31 per cent to £878m and a sharp fall in adjusted profit to £51m, down from £203m, in the six months ending September 26, as Covid-19 restrictions forced retail store closures and hit global travel.

With the China-led recovery powering a pick-up in sales, the brand plans to reduce markdowns, even as lockdowns across Europe have shut the doors at 10 per cent of its stores.

“With the brand resonating and attracting new and younger consumers, we have taken the decision to reduce markdowns,” the company said. “This will be a revenue headwind in the second half of financial year 2021 with the main impact in Q3 of financial year 2021, but will serve the long-term interest of the brand.”

The group said it plans to review dividends at the end of the financial year.

Delphine Strauss in London

The recent advance in the development of a coronavirus vaccine does not change the Bank of England’s outlook for the UK economy, the central bank’s governor said on Thursday.

Andrew Bailey said the BoE’s latest forecasts — under which UK output does not regain pre-pandemic levels until the first half of 2022 — assumed that from next spring, there would be “a gradual and progressive improvement in [economic] conditions that would reflect a gradual advance of treatments”.

The latest news on the vaccine being developed by Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech was “encouraging”, and would help to lessen uncertainty over the path out of the crisis, but it was still broadly consistent with this assumption, Mr Bailey said.

However, he argued that the long-term damage to the UK economy should not be as great as that seen after the last big recessions of the 1980s and 1990s.

Then, a “very pronounced and sharp shift” between sectors, with heavy industry giving way to the service sector, had led to a bigger degree of capital scrapping and structural unemployment, he said.

This time, the shift should be more within the service sector, he said, with scope to redeploy capital and retrain workers. “The earlier a vaccine comes in, the more positive that is,” he added.

Listen in to Mr Bailey in conversation with the FT’s economics editor here.

Peggy Hollinger in London

BAE Systems has won a £1.3bn contract to help build 38 Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft for the German Air Force, even as defence spending comes under pressure from the coronavirus pandemic.

The contract will help to keep BAE’s UK production lines in the north of England beyond 2025, maintaining critical resources until work starts on its next generation fighter Tempest.

The German parliament voted last week to acquire the extra Eurofighter aircraft, produced by a consortium of BAE, Franco-German Airbus and Leonardo of Italy.
BAE, the largest defence contractor in Europe, will produce the front fuselages and tails at its Warton plant in Lancashire.

Germany’s decision to choose the Typhoon over the newer generation fighter F-35 made by Lockheed Martin – and for which BAE is a major supplier – “reinforces the aircraft’s position as one of the world’s most successful combat military aircraft”, said Charles Woodburn, BAE chief executive.

Typhoon was a major contributor to the UK economy, he said. More than 5,000 BAE Systems employees work on the Typhoon programme in the UK, with a further 10,000 jobs indirectly supported by the contract across the UK economy.

“These critical jobs are a key element of securing the UK’s sovereign skills and capabilities which are central to realising the Government’s future combat air ambitions,” he added.

Work will start in 2021 at BAE Systems’ sites in Lancashire.

BAE Systems will deliver more than a third of the components for each of the new Typhoons ordered by the German Air Force including the aircraft’s front fuselage and tail. Final assembly will be undertaken by Airbus in Manching, Germany.

Nathalie Thomas in Edinburgh

Higher costs resulting from the coronavirus crisis has pushed underlying profit at National Grid down 12 per cent in the first half of the year.

Underlying operating profit — which strips out factors such as exceptional items — fell to £1.1bn for the six months to September 30 from £1.3bn a year earlier as the company had to account for factors such as higher bad debts from US customers struggling to pay their bills as a result of lockdown measures.

The group had already warned in June that its underlying operating profit would take a £400m hit from the pandemic over the full year, although it believes it can recover much of the impact in future years. It also had to pay to house critical teams during lockdowns in isolation away from their families so they could continue to carry out their roles.

National Grid owns utilities in the US, which now makes up half of its business, and energy infrastructure in the UK. It is also in charge of managing the UK’s electricity system, although that role is under review.

On a statutory basis, National Grid’s operating profit improved 13 per cent to £1.1bn as it benefitted from a number of one-off gains, including from remeasurements of commodity contracts.

John Pettigrew, chief executive, said: “Looking ahead, the group is well positioned to manage the ongoing Covid-19 uncertainty, and our full-year financial guidance is unchanged.”

Simeon Kerr in Dubai

Dubai’s Emirates reported a first-half loss of $3.4bn, its first in more than 30 years as the airline’s revenues slumped 75 per cent on coronavirus travel restrictions.

The loss compares with the government-owned carrier making a profit of $235m in the first-half of last financial year.

Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Emirates’ chief executive, described the situation as “unprecedented” for the aviation and travel industries.

“We began our current financial year amid a global lockdown when air passenger traffic was at a literal standstill,” he said in a statement on Thursday.

Emirates Group, which also includes ground handling, saw revenues decline 74 per cent to $3.7bn in the first half of its 2020-2021 financial year, reporting a half-year loss of $3.8bn.

The group, which has implemented widespread redundancies in response to the pandemic, said headcount had been reduced by 24 per cent to around 81,000 as of September 30.

Emirates tapped cash reserves and shareholder and bank funding to sustain the business, including a $2bn injection from Dubai’s government.

The group’s cash position declined by $1.4bn to reach $5.6bn in the first half.

Jonathan Eley

WHSmith said it had seen a “steady recovery” in its UK high street business, as the retailer reported a smaller-than-expected annual loss.

For the year to end-August, it made a pre-tax loss of £69m against the £70-£75m predicted three months ago, when it announced it would cut 1,500 jobs to reduce costs.

Chief executive Carl Cowling, whose first year in the job has been completely dominated by the worldwide response to Covid-19, said that while airport passenger numbers continue to be significantly impacted by the pandemic in the UK, North America was “beginning to see some encouraging signs of recovery”.

The US aviation market, where last year WHSmith acquired travel retail group Marshalls for $400m, is dominated by domestic rather than international flights and so subject to fewer travel restrictions.

Mr Cowling added that there had been “a steady recovery” in its UK high street business, where stores are largely run to generate cash rather than grow sales.

The company’s travel division, which has stores at more than 100 airports worldwide and generates three-fifths of group profit, has been hard hit by the collapse in air travel due to the pandemic. At Heathrow, the UK’s largest airport, passenger numbers have recovered a little but in October were still 82 per cent below the same month in 2019.

Alex Barker in London

ITV has pointed to a brighter end to a grim year for television advertising, with “encouraging signs” that the fourth quarter will be higher than last year in spite of the latest lockdown restrictions.

The UK’s biggest commercial free-to-air broadcaster beat market expectations with total external revenue of £1,862, down 16 per cent in the year to date, but noted an upward trend in the crucial final months of the year.

While total advertising spend in the three months to the end of September fell by 7 per cent, the group said spending in November was up about 6 per cent, giving it confidence it could end the fourth quarter “slightly up year on year”.

Fourth quarter advertising is particularly important for ITV, accounting for 29 per cent of the broadcaster’s full year ad revenue in 2019.

The lockdown earlier this year hit ITV hard, representing the worst quarter for advertising in its broadcasting history. ITV scrapped its interim dividend and said that while trading conditions were improving it was unable to set more precise expectations for the rest of the year.

Carolyn McCall, ITV chief executive, said on Thursday she saw “encouraging signs” for both the studio and broadcasting sides of the business, with about 85 per cent of productions completed or in progress.

“However, Covid restrictions and further national lockdowns have added production costs and are making it challenging to bring ITV Studios productions back to full capacity,” she said.

Nathalie Thomas in Edinburgh

Premier Oil, the North Sea energy company, has been forced to cut its full-year production guidance ahead of a reverse takeover by its bigger rival Chrysaor.

The group warned on Thursday that its full-year production was likely to average 61,000-64,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, down from a previous forecast of 65,000-70,000 bpd following problems at its flagship Catcher field in the North Sea.

Analysts at Jefferies said the cut highlighted the importance of the deal with private equity-backed Chrysaor, which announced the reverse takeover plan in October to form the largest listed oil and gas producer in the UK. The deal came after heavily indebted Premier had been battling to refinance.

Catcher is Premier Oil’s biggest asset but production was constrained at the field from late September to early November as the company removed a build-up of calcium naphthenate and the work took longer than expected.

Mark Wilson at Jefferies said the issues at Catcher “only emphasise the underlying reasons for Premier Oil’s deal with larger scale Chrysaor”.

“An over-sized balance sheet versus smaller scale assets requires perfect operations & price support and [Premier Oil] has had neither this year,” he said.

Adam Samson in London

The pound added to its losses against the dollar on Thursday after data highlighted how the UK economy has recovered less ground than peers such as the US and eurozone.

Sterling was down 0.3 per cent at $1.3182, having hit the weakest level of the trading session just after the 7am London time release of the gross domestic product report from the Office for National Statistics.

Despite Thursday’s dip, the UK currency is up 1.9 per cent for the month.

A weaker dollar and hopes a Brexit deal will be struck before the transition period concludes at the end of the year have helped support the currency. It rose on Wednesday to $1.33 for the first time since September.

Jonathan Eley

Discount retailer B&M said it would pay a special dividend of 25p a share alongside its regular interim payout in a move that will reignite the controversy over taxpayer support for retailers.

The payout will be the second such one-off return this year; the company paid 15p a share to its investors after completing a sale-and-leaseback deal on its distribution warehouse in April.

The company said it had repaid monies borrowed under the UK government’s furlough scheme, it did not intend to use the scheme again and that additional costs relating to the pandemic had “substantially offset” the £35m benefit of a year-long exemption from business rates.

Half-year results showed adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of £295m, above the £285m forecast by the company in September and almost double last year’s £151m.

Sales were £2.25bn, up 25 per cent from last year with same-store sales in the UK, its most important market, rising 23 per cent.

The group was a relative winner during the UK’s national lockdown earlier in the year as its 656 UK stores, which sell a mix of food, toys, stationery, toiletries and household goods at knockdown prices, remained open while many DIY sheds and garden centres were shut.

Valentina Romei in London

The UK economy grew at its fastest pace on record in the third quarter but output remains below pre-pandemic levels while a nascent recovery is at risk for the final three months with national lockdown measures in place.

UK output expanded 15.5 per cent in the three months to September, the fastest pace since records began in 1955, the Office for National Statistics said on Thursday. The UK has recovered less than its peer economies.

The pound slipped to its lowest level of the day against the dollar after the release of the GDP data. It was recently down 0.3 per cent at $1.318. Sterling had on Wednesday exceeded $1.33 for the first time since early September.

“Today’s figures show that our economy was recovering over the summer, but started to slow going into autumn,” said chancellor Rishi Sunak. “The steps we’ve had to take since to halt the spread of the virus mean growth has likely slowed further since then.”

The expansion was marginally lower than the 15.8 per cent increase forecast by economists polled by Reuters and it reflected the reopening of the economy after the pandemic-induced record contraction in the second quarter.

The quarterly output was 9.7 per cent lower than the level in the final quarter of 2019.

This is a lower level than for the US or the eurozone, where output was down 3.5 per cent and 4.3 per cent over the same period. 

Matthew Vincent in London

UK household debt attributable to the economic disruption from coronavirus has risen to £10.3bn — an increase of 66 per cent since May, according to the latest research.

Data from the charity Step Change, released on Thursday, also show that the number of Britons in “problem debt” due to Covid-19 — defined as falling behind on essential bills and repaying debt with other credit — has almost doubled to 1.2 million.

Nearly 15 million people — 29 per cent of the UK adult population — now say they have experienced an adverse change to their financial circumstances due to the pandemic, through unemployment, furlough or lower pay.

Of these, 7.1 million are behind on their payments or have borrowed to supplement their income, with the average debt standing at £1,577 and average arrears at £1,365.

Step Change, which calculated these figures from a national YouGov poll of 3,300 people, warned that state benefit safety nets “are not proving effective”.

It found that 24 per cent of the individuals who had applied for Universal Credit since March are now in “severe” problem debt and 28 per cent are showing signs of financial difficulty.

Phil Andrew, chief executive of the charity, said: “This report paints a picture of a nation sleep-walking into a debt crisis… we need to see the government provide targeted funding that can enable households to exit safely from coronavirus debt.”

Singapore’s Tourism Board is hoping to catch ‘em all by teaming up with Pokémon GO to promote tourist sites in the city state.

The collaboration with Niantic, the company behind Pokémon GO, will introduce up to 300 new PokeStops and Gyms — locations that provide bonuses and allow Pokémon to fight — at hotels, attractions and restaurants around Singapore.

Players will be able to see promotions through the game and the Tourism Board hopes the scheme will encourage gamers to support local businesses.

Singapore has restricted tourist arrivals to the country and enforces quarantine on any returning residents, limiting the allure of overseas travels for locals.

Singapore and Hong Kong will launch a travel bubble between the two cities from November 23 that allows travellers to avoid quarantine requirements.

Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong

Boeing has raised its outlook for the China market, saying it expects to see a “robust recovery” from the pandemic in the country.

The company estimates that China will buy 8,600 aircraft valued at $1.4tn over the next 20 years, according to its 2020 Commercial Market Outlook. That was up 6.3 per cent from its forecast last year of 8,090 deliveries in the 2019-2038 period.

Boeing expects that China’s rapidly growing middle class and urbanisation mean it will “lead passenger travel globally in the next few years”. A quarter of global aviation growth has come from China over the past decade, Boeing said.

“Not only has China’s recovery from Covid-19 outpaced the rest of the world, but also continued government investments toward improving and expanding its transportation infrastructure, large regional traffic flows, and a flourishing domestic market mean this region of the world will thrive,” said Richard Wynne, managing director, China Marketing, Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

China, which locked down the country in January to halt the spread of the virus outside Wuhan, has since reopened. Domestic flights have resumed, but outbound travel remains on pause as the rest of the world continues to battle the pandemic.

The bulk of demand is expected to be focused on single-aisle planes, with operators expected to need more than 6,450 of such aircraft in the next 20 years, the company said.

Boeing forecasts China’s annual passenger growth will come in at 5.5 per cent over the next 20 years. Demand from Chinese online shoppers also presents “an opportunity for robust freighter demand”.

Joe Rennison in London

New York’s hotel industry is in crisis, with four out of five properties underpinning commercial mortgage bonds now showing strain under the weight of coronavirus and investors worrying whether hoteliers will be able to make good on their loans.

The coronavirus pandemic has left business travel and tourism deeply depressed and ravaged the finances of hotels and resorts around the world. The effects have ricocheted into financial markets and hit the nearly $4bn of hotel mortgages in New York that are bundled into commercial mortgage-backed securities particularly hard.

Analysts say the effects of the virus have compounded years of overbuilding and created a glut of vacant hotel rooms. The prospect of a coronavirus vaccine, following this week’s breakthrough by Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, offers a glimmer of hope. But it is unlikely to be enough to avert a bleak winter for hotel owners and the investors that lent them money.

Read more here

Richard Milne, Nordic and Baltic Correspondent

Do not judge Sweden until the autumn. That was the message from its state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell in May and through the summer as he argued that Sweden’s initial high death toll from Covid-19 would be followed in the second wave by “a high level of immunity and the number of cases will probably be quite low”.

Now the autumn is here, and hospitalisations from Covid-19 are currently rising faster in Sweden than in any other country in Europe, while in Stockholm — the epicentre for both the first and second waves in the country — one in every five tests is positive, suggesting the virus is even more widespread than official figures suggest.

“So far Sweden’s strategy has proven to be a dramatic failure,” said Lena Einhorn, a Swedish virologist and prominent critic of its strategy. “Four days ago we had eight times higher cases per capita than Finland and three and a half times more than Norway. They were supposed to have it worse off than us in the autumn because we were going to have immunity.”

Read more here

Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong

The pandemic and resulting economic blow to India’s economy provide an opportunity to bring in reforms and reinvigorate growth, according to a former governor of the country’s central bank.

Raghuram Rajan, professor of finance at University of Chicago Booth School of Business, said reforms could be a “silver lining” of the crisis, with India’s already slowing economy being hit hard by the pandemic.

“My hope is that this becomes the point at which Indians turn around and say, ‘look we haven’t done much on reforms for the last 15-20 years. We’ve had a splendid growth pace until the slowdown recently, about 7 per cent a year for 25 years. That’s fantastic but we need to continue that and to continue that, we need serious reforms,’” Mr Rajan told the FT Global Boardroom conference on Thursday.

“India, certainly didn’t have the fiscal space to protect its economy, and perhaps even believed it had less fiscal space than it actually had. So the amount of spending to protect households, to protect small and medium enterprises has been very limited,” he said.

The Reserve Bank of India said it expects gross domestic product to contract by 9.5 per cent during the current April to March financial year. The country’s government announced plans to inject $10bn into the economy last month.

India has the second-highest global tally of coronavirus infections behind the US, with more than 8.6m cases.

Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong

Chinese companies are the most upbeat about a recovery from the pandemic, followed closely by the US, according to a private survey, as the impact of the virus continues to weigh on output.

The IHS Markit Covid-19 recovery survey, which included responses from 12 countries, found Chinese companies were the most positive about their recovery prospects, an improvement on the negative outlook recorded in June.

“Companies in China have not only reported the greatest success so far in recouping output lost to Covid-19, but also anticipate making the fastest full recovery, though US companies come a close second,” said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at IHS Markit. “Given that the outbreak and associated lockdown occurred earlier in China, this represents very encouraging progress for the US.”

Chinese companies were the first to go offline following the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, but strict government measures to stem the spread of infection have allowed the country’s economy to restart.

IHS Markit surveyed more than 6,500 companies in mid-October and compared the results to a survey taken in June.

India reported the slowest recovery, while Spain and Italy were among the European countries that had seen a poor return to confidence. Recovery in these countries has been hit by a resurgence in infections.

More than half the companies surveyed said output was below its pre-pandemic peak, however that had improved from the June survey. Just 14 per cent of companies said output was above pre-pandemic levels in mid-October.

Vehicle makers reported the biggest improvement since June, followed by clothing manufacturers. But hotels and restaurants remained weak, with this sector also expecting the slowest recovery, estimating it will take 12 months for conditions to improve.

Amy Kazmin in New Delhi

The South Extension market in New Delhi is typically jammed at this time of year with shoppers splurging on gold jewellery and new clothes ahead of Diwali, the annual Hindu festival of lights. But with celebrations curbed by the coronavirus pandemic, many shops are deserted.

At the Ushnak Mal Madan Lall bridal shop, where glittering outfits range from $200 to $2,000, festival season sales are 30 per cent of normal levels. “International flights are cancelled, people are not coming from nearby cities — no one wants to take a risk,” said Ashok Tandon, the shop’s fifth-generation owner.

“We’ve never seen anything like this.” But at nearby Croma, a Tata-owned retailer selling electronics and home appliances, business is brisk. Suhel Khan, 18, bought a $550 laptop — his family’s first — on monthly instalments for his online college classes. “I always wanted to buy a laptop.

Now it’s an absolute necessity,” he said. The uneven footfall in South Extension reflects the Indian economy’s patchy recovery from the pandemic. The economy was already in the doldrums before a stringent nationwide lockdown pushed gross domestic product to contract almost 24 per cent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2020.

Read more here

Gary Jones in Hong Kong

Singtel posted net profit of S$466m ($345m) for the six months ended September 30, its performance reflecting weakness in its Australia fixed line business amid structural challenges in the industry, the impact from the pandemic and soft economic conditions.

The telecommunications conglomerate’s operating revenue was S$7.43bn, down 10 per cent on a year ago on lower equipment sales, roaming and prepaid mobile revenue, while underlying net profit fell 36 per cent to S$837m due mainly to market weakness in Australia and the coronavirus.

“The impact of Covid-19 was felt across the group with significant reductions in roaming and prepaid revenues and weaker customer spend,” said Chua Sock Koong, Singtel Group chief executive. “The weak performance was further compounded by the structural challenges of the fixed line business in Australia, with the low margin NBN resale.”

However, Ms Chua reported strong growth from Singtel’s cloud and cybersecurity services in Asia-Pacific as more enterprises adopted and accelerated digitalisation.

“While the challenging operating environment is expected to continue as uncertainties from the pandemic persist, we are seeing encouraging signs of modest recovery across our businesses with sequential quarter revenue growth of 10 per cent in the second quarter, as lockdown measures ease and customer spending returns,” she said.

Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong

New Zealand reported a local coronavirus infection that is not thought to be linked to existing clusters in the country, quarantine facilities or its ports, underscoring the challenge of controlling the spread of the virus.

The country reported a total of three new cases on Thursday, one of which was in a person who had arrived in New Zealand from overseas.

The unlinked case is a student who also works in a clothing shop in Auckland and developed symptoms on November 9, Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s director general of health, said.

The student lives alone and had not attended classes on campus since mid-October.

Dr Bloomfield asked people who have visited the shop or live in the same apartment building as the student to get tested and self-isolate until they receive the results.

New Zealand has received praise for its swift measures to stem the spread of the virus. Its run of more than three months with no local cases broke in August with a cluster in Auckland.

The second community infection was found in a person linked to a previous cluster.

Gary Jones in Hong Kong

A UN rights committee has called on social media platforms to use artificial intelligence to combat trafficking in women and girls, amid an increase in online traps designed to recruit victims during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The global pandemic has revealed the urgent need to address the use of digital technology in and against trafficking,” said Dalia Leinarte of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, and who led the drafting of the panel’s recommendations.

The Geneva-based committee said there had been a global rise in “trafficking in cyberspace” in recent months, with demand channelled “through social media, dark web and messaging platforms” that provide easy access to potential victims but hide the identity of perpetrators.

In an appeal to social media companies, Cedaw urged the online platforms to use their “big data, artificial intelligence and analytics to identify any pattern that could lead to trafficking and identification of the involved parties” taking part in illegal operations.

Matthew Rocco in New York

The US tallied a record number of new coronavirus cases and active hospitalisations for the second day running.

States reported a combined 144,270 infections on Wednesday, higher than the 130,989 cases added a day earlier and a one-week average of 125,057, according to a Financial Times analysis of Covid Tracking Project data.

The data included more than 1.38m tests, compared with 1.24m in the previous day.

There were 65,368 Covid-19 patients in hospital, up from 61,964.

The number of deaths in the US attributed to Covid-19 rose by 1,421 to 233,080.

The US has registered 10.2m coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, with infections accelerating in the autumn across most regions.

New York and New Jersey, which were hit hard early in the pandemic, have recently reported elevated levels of cases and hospitalisations.

In the Midwest, Illinois reported a record number of daily cases on Wednesday, and Ohio had its second-highest figure on record.

California and Texas — the two most populous states in the country — are both nearing 1m cases in total, based on official data from their respective health departments.

Texas posted 10,097 new infections, and including cases from a backlog, the state has tallied 985,380 in total. The number of Covid-19 patients in hospital jumped by more than 600 to 6,779, the highest level since mid-August.

In California, the number of cases rose to 984,682 overall, and the state’s seven-day average of new infections was at its highest mark since August. Current hospitalisations climbed to 3,224 from 3,083, with the metric climbing to levels last seen in September.

Alice Woodhouse in Hong Kong

Asia-Pacific equities took a breather on Thursday following recent gains sparked by positive news over a breakthrough in the hunt for a Covid-19 vaccine.

Japan’s Topix and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 were both flat, while the Kospi in South Korea dipped 0.3 per cent.

A breakthrough in the development of a Covid-19 vaccine sparked a rally for equities earlier in the week amid hopes that it would allow economies to reopen safely.

The Nasdaq Composite closed up 2 per cent as technology stocks rebounded with home working looking set to stay, despite the potential for the vaccine. The S&P 500 rose 0.8 per cent.

S&P 500 futures were up 0.1 per cent.

Matthew Rocco in New York

Ohio governor Mike DeWine warned that the state may impose stricter measures aimed at slowing the spread of coronavirus, as new infections and hospital admission continued to trend higher in the Midwest.

Mr DeWine, in an address on Wednesday evening, urged residents to stay home as much as possible and avoid hosting parties, saying current data trends could lead officials to close restaurants, bars and gyms.

“We will look at this one week from tomorrow,” Mr DeWine said.

The governor plans to tighten rules related to wearing masks by forming a compliance unit to oversee enforcement in retail outlets. A separate measure will require face coverings for patrons in restaurants when they are not eating.

Mr DeWine, who described the current outbreak as a third spike, warned of the strain on hospital resources. “This surge is much more intense, widespread and dangerous,” he said.

There were 5,874 new cases in Ohio, the state’s second-highest figure on record. Over the past week, Ohio has averaged a record 5,307 new cases per day.
Ohio also reported 76 further deaths attributed to the virus, bringing its overall count to 5,623 since the pandemic began.

States across the Midwest — which were largely spared early in the pandemic — and other US regions have faced a surge in new coronavirus cases in the autumn.

While part of the increase can be attributed to expanded testing capacity, hospitalisations and the rate of tests coming back positive have also trended upward.

Illinois added 12,657 new cases to its overall tally, edging past its previous record set on Tuesday, while hospital admissions climbed above 5,000 for the first time since April. The state also reported its highest one-day count for deaths with 153, for a total of 10,798.

“In our current situation, with a rising prevalence of the virus, attending even small gatherings that mix households, or traveling to areas that are experiencing high rates of positivity, is not advised and is potentially dangerous,” the Illinois health department said in its daily report.

In Wisconsin, where governor Tony Evers signed an order on Tuesday asking residents to stay home whenever possible, the number of new infections came in above 7,000 for the third time in five days. The state has 2,457 confirmed deaths attributed to coronavirus, an increase of 62 from a day earlier.

Miles Johnson in Rome

The total number of coronavirus infections in Italy has surpassed 1m diagnosed cases as the country registered 32,961 new infections over the past 24 hours.

The Italian health ministry said that 623 people had died from Covid-19 on Wednesday, while a total of 3,081 people are currently fighting the virus in intensive care, up by 110 from Tuesday.

The total number of diagnosed cases in Italy since the outbreak began now stands at 1,028,424 after the 32,961 increase on Wednesday.

Matthew Rocco

Arizona and California reported an increase in current hospital admissions for Covid-19, as the states grapple with an autumn resurgence of coronavirus.

There were 1,360 patients being treated for Covid-19 in Arizona as of Wednesday, the highest level since August, according to data from the state’s health department. Arizona has registered an average of 2,076 new infections each day over the past week, which is also the highest mark since August, and has tallied 265,000 cases since the start of the pandemic.

In California, the number of active hospital admissions rose to 3,224 from 3,083, with the metric sitting at levels last seen in September. At 6,382, California’s seven-day average of new cases is at its highest mark since August. Its cumulative number of cases has risen to more than 984,000.

Both states have faced a new rise in daily infections since bringing outbreaks under control over the summer, coinciding with the increased spread of coronavirus across other US regions in recent weeks. Part of the increase can be attributed to expanded testing capacity. The US has regularly processed more than 1m tests per day and set records of more than 1.5m early in November. However, hospital admissions and the rate of tests coming back positive have also trended upward.

California’s positivity rate over the past week was 4.3 per cent, up from 2.6 per cent one month ago.

The state reported 69 additional deaths attributed to Covid-19, compared with a seven-day average of 45. That brought its total to 18,070. Arizona, which added 36 new fatalities for an overall tally of 6,228, has averaged 24 deaths per day in the last week.

New York will cap indoor gatherings and impose a curfew on restaurants and bars in a new round of coronavirus-related restrictions just two weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday.

Moderna will begin looking at results from its phase 3 vaccine trials within a week, according to the US’s leading infectious disease expert.

Quick “lateral flow tests” for Covid-19 are accurate and sensitive enough for general use in the community, clinical evaluation by Public Health England and the University of Oxford has shown.

Texas became the first US state to report more than 1m cases on Wednesday as the virus continues its spread across the Lone Star state. A further 12,337 people tested positive on November 10, taking the state’s total to 1,010,364.

Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla sold $5.6m worth of his shares in the company on the same day the drugmaker said the Covid-19 vaccine it is developing with Germany’s BioNTech showed 90 per cent efficacy in interim phase 3 data.

Covid-19 monthly deaths in England have risen 33 times in two months, demonstrating how swiftly the disease has ripped through especially the north of the country.

Brazil’s health regulator has authorised the resumption of late-stage trials of a China-developed vaccine, just two days after suspending them.

The discovery of a potential vaccine means stock markets will power higher in the coming years, Goldman Sachs has predicted.

Ukraine has ordered people to stay at home, closed non-essential stores and banned dining out at weekends as Kyiv seeks to weaken the surge in infections.

Pakistan is considering sending schoolchildren and students home early for the winter break and recommends cinemas and theatres close immediately.

The head of GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccine division said the company would not profit from supplying boosters for a potential Covid-19 drug.

Pressure is mounting on the government of Hassan Rouhani to enforce a lockdown for at least two weeks in Iran.