Aurelia Butler

It confirmed the opening of a preliminary investigation, which in France does not necessarily imply wrongdoing by those concerned, for whom the presumption of innocence applies.Arnault’s spokesperson declined to comment. Sarkisov could not be immediately reached for comment.The Paris public prosecutor’s office said in an emailed statement to Reuters that a preliminary investigation had been launched in 2022 and confirmed that transactions involving Arnault and Sarkisov had been attached to these. It said it would not make any further comment on the ongoing investigations.Le Monde, citing the French finance ministry’s financial intelligence unit Tracfin, reported on Thursday that Sarkisov had acquired real estate at a luxury Alpine resort via a complex transaction in which Arnault, through one of his companies, had provided a loan. Tracfin last year stepped up its scrutiny of financial operations involving Russian investors following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.The unit declined to comment when contacted by Reuters. An unidentified Tracfin official told Le Monde the transactions involving Arnault and Sarkisov, who both acted through a complex web of legal entities, could have been aimed at concealing the origins of the funds used. The paper also cited a person close to Arnault as saying the deal was carried out in full respect of French law.Le Monde said the probe centred on the purchase of more than a dozen apartments in the ski resort of Courchevel, where Arnault’s luxury-to-real-estate conglomerate LVMH and related holding structures own several major properties. More

(Reuters) – Wall Street’s main indexes were set to open higher on Friday after a softer-than-expected reading on a crucial inflation metric kept alive hopes of a pause in the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes. A Commerce Department report showed the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, considered to be the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, climbed 0.4% in August month-on-month, against estimates of a 0.5% rise.Excluding volatile food and energy components, the core PCE price index rose 0.1% in August month-on-month, compared with estimates of 0.2% advance.”These are very, very good numbers. Even though the drop isn’t spectacular, it’s in the right direction,” said Kim Forrest, chief investment officer at Bokeh Capital Partners.”I’m very optimistic that inflation continues to decline and the Fed will note this in their reasoning about interest rates.”Traders’ bets on the benchmark rate remaining unchanged in November and December stood at 85% and nearly 67%, respectively, according to CME’s FedWatch tool.The yield on two-year and 10-year Treasury notes declined, leading growth stocks including Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) to advance around 1% in premarket trading.Market participants now await U.S. consumer sentiment data for September, due shortly after the opening bell.At 8:46 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 202 points, or 0.6%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 29.75 points, or 0.69%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 140.75 points, or 0.95%.Overnight, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Thomas Barkin backed the central bank’s decision to hold rates steady earlier this month, but said it is unclear if more changes will be needed in the future. Elsewhere, investors gauged the prospects of averting a government shutdown as the Democratic-led Senate forged ahead on Thursday with a bipartisan stopgap, while the House began voting on partisan Republican spending bills.The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq are poised for their worst monthly showing of the year amid uncertainty around interest rates. All the three indexes, including the Dow, are set for their first quarterly decline in 2023.Riding the current of higher crude prices, energy is set to emerge as the only major S&P 500 sector to notch monthly gains. Meanwhile, rate-sensitive information technology and real estate were on track to be the worst hit.Among individual stocks, Nike (NYSE:NKE) jumped 10.1% after the sportswear maker posted a better-than-expected first-quarter profit.Shares of sporting goods retailers Foot Locker (NYSE:FL) and Dick’s Sporting Goods (NYSE:DKS) added 3.2% and 3.1%, respectively. More

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s economic performance since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic has been much stronger than previously thought, with faster growth than Germany or France, according to revisions to official data released on Friday.Britain’s economy in the three months to the end of June 2023 was 1.8% larger than in the final quarter of 2019, the last full quarter before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Office for National Statistics said.This represented a big upward revision from the most recent previous ONS estimate, made on Aug. 11, that the economy was still 0.2% smaller than before the pandemic, which had placed it at the bottom of the table among major advanced economies.An increased estimate of the size of Britain’s economy had been widely expected, after the ONS published preliminary revisions on Sept. 1 suggesting the economy was already 0.6% larger than its pre-pandemic size in the final quarter of 2021.Britain’s relative economic performance since the pandemic and its departure from the European Union has been a focus of political debate, especially with a national election likely next year.”People doubted the strength of the UK economy – today’s data proves them wrong,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on social media as he prepared to head to his Conservative Party’s annual conference.Britain’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 1.8% over the period exceeds growth of 1.7% in France and 0.2% in Germany, but trails far behind the 6.1% expansion seen in the United States and is also weaker than in Japan, Italy or Canada.Recent growth has been lacklustre by historical standards, and many households have been severely affected by the soaring cost of living which accelerated after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. “The data … does not change the big picture that the economy has lagged behind all other G7 countries aside from Germany and France since the pandemic. And that’s before the full drag from higher interest rates has been felt,” said Ruth Gregory, deputy chief UK economist at Capital Economics.The Bank of England has raised interest rates 14 times since December 2021 to tame soaring inflation, before keeping them unchanged last week at a 15-year high of 5.25%.”If the UK economy has been running hotter than we thought, it would help to explain some of the persistence in inflation and the tightness of the labour market,” said Thomas Pugh, an economist at accountancy firm RSM UK. WIDESPREAD REVISIONSFriday’s figures are unlikely to be the final word on the topic with other countries also set to revise their data.The upward revisions were concentrated in 2020 and 2021, during the height of the pandemic and immediate aftermath.Growth in 2021 was revised to 8.7% from 7.6%, while the size of 2020’s historic slump was reduced to 10.4% from 11.0%, in line with preliminary guidance on Sept. 1. Growth in 2022 was revised up to 4.3% from 4.1%.The ONS said the revisions in 2020 and 2021 reflected better estimates of the volume of stocks held by businesses, as well as the margins made by retailers and costs and output in the healthcare sector.Other European countries, including Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, had made similar upward revisions to economic output for 2021, it added.British gross domestic product in the second quarter of 2023 was confirmed at 0.2% higher than the quarter before, in line with a previous estimate, while first-quarter growth was revised up to 0.3% from 0.1%.The household savings ratio in the second quarter rose to 9.1% from 7.9% earlier in the year, which economists said contrasted with the United States, where households saved less.”The economy was a bit more resilient in the first half of this year than we previously thought. But other indicators suggest this is now fading,” Capital’s Gregory said, warning higher interest rates risked tipping the economy into recession. (This story has been refiled to add a dropped word in the headline) Britain’s current account deficit soared unexpectedly to 25.3 billion pounds ($31.0 billion) in the second quarter and the first-quarter deficit was revised up by almost 5 billion pounds to 15.1 billion.The second-quarter deficit was equivalent to 3.7% of GDP, the highest in a year.($1 = 0.8162 pounds) More

(Reuters) – Russia’s annual budget spending on servicing its state debt will more than double to 3.32 trillion roubles ($34.24 billion) between now and 2026 as Moscow ramps up military spending to fund the war in Ukraine, draft budget documents showed. Moscow has been diverting more and more funds to its military as it prosecutes what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine and is counting on a recovery in oil and gas revenues to pre-invasion levels, as well as a sharp increase in state debt to do so. In 2021, Russia allocated 4.4% of all spending to servicing its state debt. By 2026, that share will increase to 9.3%, according to the finance ministry’s budget documents that outline the government’s fiscal plans from 2024-2026. Over that three-year period, Russia plans to borrow 13.3 trillion roubles domestically, with the annual figure rising from 2.5 trillion roubles in 2023 to almost 5 trillion roubles in 2026. Domestic borrowing will be the main source of funding Russia’s budget deficit, which the government expects to remain below 1% of gross domestic product (GDP) in the coming years, down from 1.8% of GDP expected in 2023. The strain from Russia’s budget deficit is gradually easing, narrowing to around $24 billion in January-August. The planned borrowing increase runs at odds with the finance ministry’s mood. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov on Thursday said the government had decided to cut its state borrowing plan by 1 trillion roubles this year, wanting to avoid overpaying as high rates have increased banks’ appetite for premiums.Russia’s 2023 domestic borrowing plan amounts to 2.5 trillion roubles, but the finance ministry has the right to borrow up to 1 trillion roubles to replace spending from the National Wealth Fund that it uses to cover the budget deficit.Western sanctions against Russia have made borrowing in dollars and euros impossible. ($1 = 96.9725 roubles) More

LONDON (Reuters) -World shares rose on Friday and government bonds rallied after encouring euro zone and U.S. inflation data, although equities and fixed income were set for their worst quarter in a year as central banks kept interest rates high. MSCI’s broad index of global stocks gained 0.4% on Friday, while European and U.S. government bond yields dropped as the prices of the fixed interest-paying instruments rose. In a surprise bout of good news for hawkish central banks, data on Friday showed headline inflation in the euro area rose 4.3% in September year-on-year, below economists’ forecasts for a 4.5% rise and its lowest in two years. `Hours later, a U.S. report showing that the annual rate of core personal consumption expenditure, the Federal Reserve’s favoured inflation measure, moderated to 3.9% in August. Elsewhere in markets, futures contracts that track the performance of Wall Street’s S&P 500 share index indicated the blue-chip equity benchmark would open 0.7% higher later on. Europe’s Stoxx 600 share index jumped 1.2% and Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.6%. The positive news on inflation also provided a bright end to a torrid quarter for government bonds. Germany’s 10-year government bond yield fell 12 bps to 2.848%, with the euro area debt benchmark heading for its best trading day in more than a month. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury fell 5 bps to 4.6%. Germany’s 10-year yield has shot up 46 bps this quarter, reflecting the worst three-month sell-off since the third quarter of 2022. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield is up 73 bps since July, also its worst quarterly performance since the same quarter last year. Friday’s debt market relief came as some analysts said bonds had been oversold in recent months. The Fed and the European Central Bank have signalled that the best investors could hope for, following their sharpest monetary tightening cycle in decades, was a long period of interest rates staying where they are. Friday’s inflation data revived hopes that central banks, while still talking tough, were preparing to soften their monetary stance. “Yields are way too high and will move lower but we’re in that gap between now and when that happens,” said James Rossiter, head of global macro strategy at TD Securities in London. Strategists at Barclays in a note to clients cautioned, however, that because stock valuations fall when the income yields on lower-risk bonds rise, “if the bond market were to turn more disorderly, equities are unlikely to be immune”. In currencies, the euro added 0.4% against the dollar. Sterling rose 0.4% after a revision of official data on Friday showed Britain’s economic performance since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic was stronger than previously thought. The dollar index eased 0.4% to 105.75 but hovered near 10-month highs of 106.84 touched earlier this week. In Asia, the Japanese yen was at 149.11 per dollar, staying around levels that have put markets on alert for potential currency intervention. MSCI’s index of Asian stocks outside Japan rose 1.2% on Friday, with Chinese markets closed for a holiday. Oil prices regained ground after a brief pause in a rally as traders weighed expectations of supply increases by Russia and Saudi Arabia versus forecasts of positive demand from China during its Golden Week holiday.U.S. crude rose 1.4% to $92.93 per barrel and Brent was at $96.06, up 0.7% on the day. [O/R] More

Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, gained 0.4% last month, the Commerce Department reported on Friday. Data for July was revised higher to show spending increasing 0.9% instead of the previously reported 0.8%. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast spending would gain 0.4%.Some the rise in spending last month reflected higher prices. Gasoline prices accelerated in August, peaking at $3.984 per gallon in the third week of the month, the highest this year, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That compared to $3.676 per gallon during the same period in July.With gasoline price surging, inflation as measured by the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index rose 0.4% in August after climbing 0.2% in July. In the 12 months through August, the PCE price index advanced 3.5% after rising 3.4% in July. The annual PCE inflation is also being lifted by a lower base of comparison last year. But underlying inflation pressures are subsiding, which will be welcomed by Federal Reserve officials.Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the PCE price index gained 0.1%, after increasing 0.2% in the prior month. The so-called core PCE price index increased 3.9% on a year-on-year basis in August after rising 4.3% in July.The U.S. central bank tracks the PCE price indexes for its 2% inflation target. The Fed held interest rates steady last week but stiffened a hawkish monetary policy stance. Since March 2022, the central bank has raised its policy rate by 525 basis points to the current 5.25%-5.50% range. More