Arcadia on the brink of collapse; record month for stock markets – live trading | Deal

Good morning and welcome to our ongoing coverage of the global economy, financial markets, the eurozone and business.
Arcadia is on the verge of becoming the biggest business victim of the British Covid-19 crisis. Sir Philip Green’s retail group is expected to report to management as soon as today as it failed to reach a bailout deal to keep the company afloat.

The move would put 13,000 employees at risk in Arcadia’s 500 stores, its Topshop, Burton and Dorothy Perkins chains, and likely the end of Green’s career as a retail mogul.

Covid-19 has been a severe blow for Arcadia. By not taking advantage of the online shipping opportunity, it was already struggling to match more agile and faster growing rivals like Asos and Boohoo.com.

The pandemic, which has forced its stores to close twice this year, has compounded their plight.

As a source told the BBC:

Obviously this is a sad day, we tried to save it a year ago when £ 200 million was invested in the business and the pension fund, but now it is impossible to operate.

“You don’t know when it will be open, you don’t know what stocks to buy.”

Arcadia’s current and former staff are also facing uncertainty now, as there is a black hole of up to £ 350 million in their pension fund. If we add up the invoices owed to suppliers, Arcadia’s collapse could cause serious damage to the UK retail sector as a whole.

Markets Round Up Record Month

Arcadia’s plight is the climax of a particularly dramatic November. There has been a lot of bad news this month, with deaths from Covid-19 approaching 1.5 million and cases increasing at a record rate in the United States.

In Europe, the second set of lockdowns threatens to push the eurozone and the UK into double-dip recessions.

But November has also brought encouraging news: encouraging results from vaccine trials and the possibility that President-elect Biden will try to address the pandemic while pushing a new stimulus package.

And for those reasons, this has been an amazingly successful month for stock prices.

The MSCI All Country Stock Index is up more than 13% this month, hitting new all-time highs and on track to its best month since its inception in 1990.

The United Kingdom FTSE 100 It has also had a stellar month, underperforming for most of the year. With one day to go, it gained more than 14% during November, close to the record month, January 1989, when it rose 14.4%.

Pepperstone’s Chris Weston says November has been “an impressive month for stocks and a poor month for the US dollar and gold.”

Why? Because investors anticipate a return to normalcy in 2021 as vaccines are rolled out and, more importantly, as central banks continue to provide unprecedented support (via record low interest rates, quantitative easing and cheap credit).

However, European markets are expected to pull back this morning.

The agenda

• 9.30 a. M. GMT: UK Mortgage Approvals Figures for October
• 13:00 GMT: German inflation figures for November
• 2.30pm GMT: Silvana Tenreyro, Bank of England Legislator, speaks at a Resolution Foundation event
• 15:00 GMT: Pending US Home Sales Figures for October