HSBC profits surge 32%, sparking fresh calls for bank taxes in the budget – business live
Posted on Tuesday October 27, 2026

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

• UK shop price inflation ‘highest since 2024’ as retailers struggle to limit price rises

HSBC was also quizzed about the impact of last week’s Google Cloud outage.

CFO Pam Kaur says:

“We do apologise to the impacted customers for any inconvenience. But the services did return fairly quickly to normal during the same day. This issue also had broader market impact.

“Now we have a robust process in place where we investigate every incident to share any learnings and to do read-across to ensure that similar incidents don’t happen in the future. And we are very much utilising our risk management capabilities and indeed building upon them to identify, report and manage risk across the organisation.

“We know that AI will change how work is done across industries, and of course it will impact some roles. It’ll transform other roles, and it will change them, while creating entirely new roles. So beyond that, there’s nothing specific in a number-term that I want to share or indeed have to share at the moment.

“For the wealth management business, the UK is a home market and we are a leading wealth manager. I’m not going to comment on press speculation on job losses, but what I can tell you is that in terms of customer engagement and serving the needs of our customers, we absolutely focus on the workforce we have, both in terms of skilling it and building on it. And we are also hiring in multiple areas in the UK.”

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UK shop price inflation ‘highest since 2024’ as retailers struggle to limit price rises
Posted on Tuesday October 27, 2026

British Retail Consortium says ‘dam is starting to break on the huge wave of costs’ being kept from consumers

Shop price inflation has risen to the highest level in two and a half years, according to the British Retail Consortium, which warned that “the dam is starting to break” when it comes to retailers trying to limit price rises for customers.

The lobby group said shop price inflation was 2.1% year on year in October, a sharp rise compared with 1.4% in September, and an indication that retailers were beginning to pass on the rising costs of energy and food ingredients since the Middle East conflict broke out.

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iPhone Duo owners report cracks in Apple’s first foldable handset
Posted on Monday October 26, 2026

Company says small number of devices affected by display glitch after posts appear on Reddit and social media

Owners of the new foldable iPhone are reporting cracks in the device’s screen, as Apple confirmed an issue with a “small number” of units.

Reports of cracks have emerged on Reddit and social media platforms since the handset went on general sale globally on Friday. Experts said there had been too few examples to determine whether there was a more serious problem with Apple’s first foldable device, which retails from $1,999 (£1,499).

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‘It’s a better experience’: shoppers praise Oxford Street pedestrianisation
Posted on Tuesday October 27, 2026

Many punters say inconvenience of bus rerouting is small price to pay for more space, but not everyone is happy

To the east of Oxford Circus, there is chaos. A steady stream of red London buses swing round the last junction before the newly pedestrianised Oxford Street begins. The streets are crammed with pedestrians, some squabbling over who poked whom with their umbrella first.

To the west, pedestrians walk freely through the temporary bollards on to a green welcome banner rolled along the tarmac, declaring Oxford Street traffic-free.

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Anthropic’s Claude AI model accessed Georgia voter data in US
Posted on Monday October 26, 2026

Latest example of unauthorised behaviour shows AI model bypassed paywall to access data as part of statistics project

• Anthropic sued for allegedly using 274 Elvis songs to train AI models

Anthropic’s Claude model accessed voter data in the US state of Georgia, the AI company has confirmed, in the latest example of unauthorised behaviour by the technology.

The AI model managed to bypass a paywall to reach data that is publicly available but is typically accessible only after paying a fee. Claude accessed aggregate vote counts as part of a statistics project at Anthropic, which is preparing for a $1.5tn (£1.1tn) flotation.

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Anthropic files for potentially record-breaking stock market valuation in key test for AI industry
Posted on Monday October 26, 2026

Market debut of firm behind Claude chatbot will be one of largest in US history, a test of AI boom’s financial viability

Anthropic has publicly filed for a stock market listing in what is slated to be one of the largest debuts in history. The company’s float on the US market will serve as a test of the financial viability of the multitrillion-dollar AI boom.

Analysts and investors have valued the San Francisco-based company, founded in 2021, at more than $1.5tn. The company, which will will list under the symbol ANT, confidentially filed with US financial regulators for an initial public offering in June.

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Harry Kane claims men’s Ballon d’Or to end England’s 25-year wait for winner
Posted on Monday October 26, 2026

• Alexia Putellas picks up women’s award for third time

• England captain acclaimed in London ceremony

Harry Kane is the Ballon d’Or winner for 2026, the first Englishman to win football’s most prestigious individual trophy in 25 years.

Two hours into a lavishly excitable ceremony at the Palladium Theatre in London, Kane’s name emerged from the final envelope to wild cheers inside the auditorium. The women’s Ballon d’Or, awarded moments earlier, was won by Alexia Putellas of London City Lionesses, a third Ballon, five years on from her first in the colours of Barcelona.

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South Africa v Australia: third men’s cricket Test, day one – live
Posted on Tuesday October 27, 2026

• Updates from the final match of the series at Newlands

• First ball in Cape Town is 10.30am local/7.30pm AEDT/8.30am GMT

• Any thoughts? Get in touch with an email

This was the Australian camp’s attitude yesterday as to whether Smith would be passed fit.

The weather! Always worth checking in this game. Thankfully the forecast suggests that we’ll have less annoyance with rain and light than in the first two Tests, that both got dragged out to five days when better conditions might have had them wrapped up in three or four.

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