Seven days in the Square Mile

The rapid spread of the Covid-19 virus in the US, where cases hit an all-time high, and a brutal second wave in Europe prompted jitters on stock markets. Europe’s Stoxx 600 index hit its lowest level since May midweek, in anticipation of tougher new restrictions in France and Germany. The FTSE 100 fell to a sixmonth low. On Wall Street, the S&P 500 was also sharply down as pandemic and election uncertainties collided. The Turkish lira plunged to a record low, prompting concerns of a full-blown currency crisis in the country.

The chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, Kate Bingham, outlined that the roll-out of the earliest Covid-19 vaccines from frontrunners AstraZeneca and Pfizer could start this side of Christmas. Separately, GSK and Sanofi announced that they will supply 200 million doses of their vaccine candidate to a global inoculation scheme.

Ant Group’s forthcoming $34bn share sale was predicted to catapult Shanghai’s bourse to the top of the global rankings this year, in terms of cash raised – taking the total to $52.6bn. The figure is up 200% from a year ago and eclipses the $38bn raised this year on Nasdaq. The US private equity firm Lone Star struck a £630m deal to buy Britain’s biggest builder of retirement homes, McCarthy & Stone. BT signed a 5G deal with Ericsson to upgrade its EE mobile network – allowing it to ditch Huawei without becoming totally dependent on its other supplier, Nokia.