Payroll records for almost 1.5 million employees as of July this year showed male workers received average annual bonuses of £5,442 ($7,300) compared with £3,062 for women
International News via Reuters:
Women in Britain continue to receive substantially lower bonus payments than men, according to human resources data firm Brightmine.
Payroll records for almost 1.5 million employees as of July this year showed male workers received average annual bonuses of £5,442 ($7,300) compared with £3,062 for women.
The gap narrowed only slightly from a year earlier.
The data, published on Friday, also showed:
• 14% of male employees received a bonus compared with 9% of females
• The disparity widened with age: at 56, men received average bonuses of £8,817 compared with £3,769 for women
• Some of the biggest gaps were in finance and in professional and business services
• Sheila Attwood, HR insights and data lead at Brightmine, said the findings suggested differences in progression, seniority and access to higher-value incentive schemes
• 13% of employees received a bonus, unchanged from a year earlier
• The study was based on payroll data for almost 1.46 million employees at 1,190 organisations
• Britain’s statistics office has estimated that the gap in overall pay between men and women stood at 6.9% in April last year
Writing by William Schomberg, editing by Andy Bruce
The move will benefit Thyssenkrupp’s steel unit TKSE and Poland’s Stalprodukt SA, among the last European producers of electrical steel, which is used in wind turbines and power grids
International News via Reuters:
The European Union will impose a set of import quotas and minimum prices for electrical steel and downstream products, it said on Friday, in a bid to shield the EU from cheap imports, principally from Asia.
The move will benefit Thyssenkrupp’s steel unit TKSE and Poland’s Stalprodukt SA, among the last European producers of electrical steel, which is used in wind turbines and power grids.
To keep production in Europe going, the EU will establish ‘safeguards’ in the form of quotas for grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES), as well as laminations and transformer cores containing the metal. For the steel itself, the minimum price will be set between €2,800 and €3,400 per metric ton within the quotas and at €3,500 per ton for volumes above them.
“What is particularly significant is that, for the first time, an entire value chain, from electrical steel to the transformer core, is being protected rather than a single product alone,” TKSE CEO Marie Jaroni said.
The European Commission launched an investigation into safeguards for GOES in March. The measures to apply from September 25 are provisional, while the investigation continues. Definitive measures, at the end of the investigation, would require a qualified majority of EU members to be imposed.
Electrical steel was not covered by broader measures imposed earlier this year to protect Europe’s struggling steel sector, which has come under intense pressure from low-cost competition, including from China.
Thyssenkrupp last year announced temporary production stops at its electrical steel sites in Germany and France as a result of rivals selling excess capacity on the European markets at what sources have said are 25% discounts.
Brussels’ move comes as the continent’s industry is increasingly calling for better protection against China, the EU’s second-largest trading partner after the United States, with automotive, chemicals and steel firms all facing pressure.
Imports of electrical steel from China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States have been subject to anti-dumping measures, also in the form of minimum import prices, since 2015. The new minimum prices, while not strictly comparable, are significantly higher than those already in place. They will also apply to downstream products.
China represented more than 50% of EU imports of the steel and its downstream products in 2025.
Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop and Christoph Steitz; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Louise Heavens
The blue-chip FTSE 100 index closed 1.4% lower at 10,659.13 points, logging a small weekly gain
A worker walks near an LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group) branded cube inside the LSEG headquarters in Paternoster Square, London, Britain, September 8, 2026. REUTERS/Toby Melville
International News via Reuters:
London’s FTSE 100 pulled back from a more than one-week high on Friday as financial stocks weighed, ending a week packed with economic data and central bank decisions.
The blue-chip FTSE 100 index closed 1.4% lower at 10,659.13 points, logging a small weekly gain. The midcap FTSE 250 finished 0.6% lower on the day, but still recorded its sharpest weekly rise since early August.
• On Friday, financial stocks were the biggest drags on the index. Banks lost 2.1%, with Lloyds and HSBC falling 2.9% and 1.6% respectively.
• Telecom stocks were the biggest percentage decliners with a 4.8% tumble. Airtel Africa lost 11.3% after a report said its Airtel Money was considering downsizing its London IPO.
• On the flip side, construction and materials stocks rose 1.3%, led by gains in Galliford Try.
• Data showed British consumers unexpectedly increased their shopping in August, although they cut fuel purchases after prices jumped.
• The report comes a day after the Bank of England held interest rates steady but warned that policymakers might have to raise borrowing costs if the Iran war drags on.
• Brokerages changed their rate calls following the decision, with Barclays joining J.P.Morgan in expecting a hike in November.
• The central bank on Thursday also paused UK government bond sales for six months and halted long-dated gilt sales entirely, days after a global bond rout. Gilts steadied on Friday after last session’s rally.
• The US Federal Reserve hiked rates by 25 basis points this week, and the central bank reinforced its fight against inflation, sparking a rally across global markets on Thursday.
• Among individual stocks, Softcat was among the top losers on the FTSE 250 index with a near 4% fall after the IT firm agreed to buy US-based GDT at an enterprise value of $1.05 billion.
• Globally, the mood was also sour as elevated developed market bond yields pressured riskier assets. [MKTS/GLOB]
Reporting by Purvi Agarwal and Johann M Cherian in Bengaluru; Editing by Alex Richardson
EU finance ministers and central bank governors were meeting in Dublin to discuss a European Commission report that called for less political interference in bank mergers and the removal of barriers to cross-border banking within the bloc
International News via Reuters:
European banks need greater scale and deeper capital markets if they are to compete with US rivals, senior European officials said on Friday, as the European Union looks to strengthen its position in an increasingly competitive global economy.
EU finance ministers and central bank governors were meeting in Dublin to discuss a European Commission report that called for less political interference in bank mergers and the removal of barriers to cross-border banking within the bloc.
“If European banks want to compete directly with large US banks in that area, they need to be able to operate on a much larger scale in a deeper capital market,” European Central Bank Vice President Boris Vujcic told Reuters.
Vujcic said EU banks compared well with US peers on liquidity, capitalisation, profitability and efficiency, but lagged in trading and post-trading activities rather than traditional lending and deposit-taking.
“That is an area where scale really matters,” he said.
One of the most high-profile cases of political interference in bank mergers in Europe happened in June when Germany rejected an offer from Italy’s UniCredit to take over Commerzbank. UniCredit began its pursuit of Commerzbank in September 2024, but it has faced strong opposition — highlighting how hard it is to pull off cross-border banking deals in Europe.
“Greater integration and further cross-border consolidation would give European banks the scale to invest, innovate and compete,” euro zone finance ministers’ chair Kyriakos Pierrakakis said. “We need European banking champions capable of competing globally.”
Pierrakakis said the largest US banks invest more than two-and-a-half times as much in information technology relative to their assets as European lenders, a gap that matters in areas such as artificial intelligence, digital payments and cybersecurity.
Vujcic pushed back against calls from some bankers for lower capital requirements, saying this would not necessarily boost lending and could instead fuel share buybacks.
Instead, he said the EU should complete its banking union and savings and investments union to create a truly integrated financial market.
“The European financial market remains highly fragmented in many ways,” Vujcic said, citing differing tax regimes, rules and legal systems that raise costs and reduce efficiency.
Reporting by Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Hugh Lawson
The Black Sea is a vital route for shipments of grain, crude oil and refined products
International News via Reuters:
London’s marine insurance market has widened the area in the Black Sea it deems as high risk as the Ukraine-Russia conflict escalates, according to an advisory issued this week.
The Black Sea is a vital route for shipments of grain, crude oil and refined products. Its waters are shared by Russia and Ukraine as well as Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania and Turkey.
Russia and Ukraine have stepped up attacks on each other’s commercial shipping in the past two months, in an escalation of their war, now in its fifth year.
The Joint War Committee (JWC) comprises syndicate members from the Lloyd’s Market Association and representatives from the London insurance company market and its guidance influences underwriters’ considerations over insurance premiums.
“This week, the JWC has expanded the Black Sea reporting requirements to the whole of the Black Sea area. The coastal waters of Russia and Ukraine were already listed,” Neil Roberts, head of marine and aviation at the LMA and secretary of the Joint War Committee, said on Thursday in a note accompanying the advisory.
“However, voyages within the territorial waters of adjacent countries still do not require notification.”
War risk premiums, which are adding hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional costs for every seven-day voyage, have surged in recent weeks as dozens of ships have been attacked in the Black Sea.
More than 72,000 people surged into the enclave from Morocco at the end of July, although most later left
International News via Reuters:
Images of migrants crossing into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta have fuelled support for far-right parties despite a sharp decline in irregular arrivals in Europe following tougher migration policies, EU Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner said on Friday.
More than 72,000 people surged into the enclave from Morocco at the end of July, although most later left. Spain estimates 12,000 migrants remain in the tiny territory, including minors.
“We have the decreasing numbers, but images from Ceuta, of course, overshadow the actual successes and the actual facts and figures,” Brunner told Reuters in an interview.
He said these images “fuel the far right”, which was why “it is so important to return those people as soon as possible to show that we have control.”
Asked about Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal on Wednesday for an emergency framework to prevent “engineered and weaponised” mass movements of migrants, Brunner said the details would be discussed at the next EU Council meeting of member states. But “first of all, we have to implement the system we already agreed on,” he added.
Anti-immigration sentiment has remained a potent political force across Europe since more than 1 million people, many of them Syrians fleeing war, arrived in the bloc in 2015. The surge has helped boost support for nationalist and far-right parties and pushed many governments towards tougher migration policies focused on deterrence and returns.
Brunner also defended the European Commission’s decision to facilitate talks between EU member states and Taliban officials, as governments seek ways to return Afghans convicted of crimes in Europe. Rights groups criticised the move, saying it lent legitimacy to Afghanistan’s Islamist rulers, put Afghans at risk and undermined core EU values.
“They are murderers; they’re criminals. And I think it’s in the interest of the European Union and the European people, of course, to return them,” Brunner said when asked how the bloc could ensure that deportees sent to Afghanistan would not face persecution or harm.
“I think first and foremost, it’s about European security and the security of the European citizens.”
Reporting by Amina Ismail, additional reporting by Victoria Waldersee in Madrid; Editing by Toby Chopra
The average hedge ratio fell from 57% to 46%, the lowest level since tracking began in the first quarter of 2024, when the survey began
International News via Reuters:
Companies in the United States and Britain cut their hedges against big swings in the currency markets to the lowest in at least two years in the second quarter on the back of growing uncertainty about interest rates and inflation, according to a survey by FX and cash management solutions firm MillTech.
Here are the main findings of MillTech’s quarterly corporate hedging survey released on Friday:
• The average hedge ratio fell from 57% to 46%, the lowest level since tracking began in the first quarter of 2024, when the survey began. Average hedge lengths also declined, falling from 6.62 months to 5.7 months and reaching a new series low.
• Almost half of firms are now hedging between 26% and 50% of their exposures, while the proportion hedging between 51% and 75% fell from 54% to 34%, which suggests companies are adopting a more tactical approach, retaining greater flexibility rather than locking in higher levels of protection for longer periods, MillTech said.
• Having spiked in the first quarter of the year with the start of the war in the Middle East, realised currency volatility – how much currencies actually moved – fell consistently in the second quarter, according to LSEG data.
• “Overall, in Q2, corporates stepped back from the more defensive approach seen at the start of the year. Shorter hedges and lower ratios may provide greater flexibility as firms wait for clearer policy signals, but record-low levels of protection leave less room for error if rate paths diverge further or currency volatility increases,” the survey said.
• The survey showed that monetary policy was the single biggest factor that influenced FX hedging decisions for companies in the UK, while for US companies, it was volatility.
• MillTech surveyed 285 senior finance decision-makers at UK and US corporates between July 24 and August 5.
Reporting by Amanda Cooper; Editing by Toby Chopra
Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei in an online essay urged firms to slow the pace at which they improve AI model capabilities and called for an antitrust waiver allowing leading developers to jointly develop safety measures after researchers warned about the dangers of AI
International News via Reuters:
Europe’s leading AI company Mistral and others have accused US rivals of using safety concerns to entrench their dominance, rejecting Anthropic’s calls for advanced developers to slow down as Europe struggles to catch up.
Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei in an online essay urged firms to slow the pace at which they improve AI model capabilities and called for an antitrust waiver allowing leading developers to jointly develop safety measures after researchers warned about the dangers of AI, including that it could wipe out humanity.
While OpenAI’s chief Sam Altman and xAI’s Elon Musk also warned about the risks posed by increasingly powerful AI systems and agreed on the need to pace development, companies and officials in Europe have taken a more sceptical line.
“Some incumbents are using this moment to consolidate their market position, pushing for regulation designed to favour them over competitors,” said French startup Mistral in a statement, noting that the risks had already been clear for months.
MOVES BY US FIRMS ‘TOTALLY SELF-SERVING’
Europe has produced few frontier AI developers, with 3-year-old Mistral seen as the region’s best hope for developing its own frontier AI model to challenge US and Chinese dominance.
For now, the region relies heavily on models developed by OpenAI, Anthropic or Microsoft, leaving many wary of the ongoing dependence on US tech.
“I think this is totally self-serving,” Raphael Auphan, chief operating officer of Swiss privacy software company Proton, told a tech event in Paris on Wednesday. “They just want to preserve a dimension of dependency on their service.”
Ben Brooks, head of public policy at German AI startup Black Forest Labs, said moves to enforce a gap between big labs and new entrants “on the basis of arbitrary thresholds will chill open innovation at or near the frontier”.
“It’s not time to slow down but to accelerate,” CEO of French-American software company Hugging Face, Clement Delangue, said on X last week. However he endorsed Amodei’s proposal to embed “independent evaluators” inside AI companies.
EUROPE SEES COMPETITIVE RISKS
Leading AI developers have long warned that artificial intelligence poses an existential threat to humanity, and that safeguards are needed to stop powerful systems causing harm.
Amodei argued that AI development is moving faster than governments can regulate. In his essay, he said leading developers should voluntarily coordinate on safety standards and submit to oversight by permanent embedded evaluators that would monitor compliance.
“Unfortunately, passing laws can take time, and AI is advancing very quickly. Therefore, in parallel with the regulatory route, AI companies can and should voluntarily work together to set standards,” he said.
Kristian Kersting, professor of AI at Germany’s Technical University of Darmstadt, said Amodei’s proposals amounted to “regulatory capture”.
“If a handful of large companies decide for themselves what constitutes ‘dangerous’, select the appropriate inspectors and demand an exemption from competition law, that is no longer genuine regulation,” Kersting said.
European policymakers and industry groups voiced similar concerns. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday that the EU’s landmark rules governing AI use put the bloc in a position to shape global efforts to tackle the risks. Britain’s King Charles hosted tech and AI leaders to discuss the issues at a summit in Scotland on Thursday.
“Making everyone behind them slow down so they can stay in first place – I can clearly see their self-interest,” French finance minister Roland Lescure told Reuters.
Germany’s digital affairs ministry said stopping AI development was unrealistic given Europe’s need for digital sovereignty, while Daniel Abbou, head of Germany’s AI industry association, said Europe should focus on closing the technological gap.
“For European firms, this debate is irrelevant. We first need to catch up on our technological backlog,” Abbou said.
Reporting by Florence Loève and Elizabeth Howcroft in Paris and Hakan Ersen in Frankfurt; Editing by Dominique Patton, Adam Jourdan and Elaine Hardcastle
Bermudian harness driver Kiwon Waldron was back in the sulky in Indiana, claiming a fifth-place finish at Harrah’s Hoosier Park.
Competing in Race Six on the card, Waldron lined up in the pace class behind Rockin Pet.
In a brisk contest over the Hoosier oval, Waldron guided the pacer across the line in a time of 1:54.3 to secure fifth spot, continuing his competitive campaign on the North American circuit.
Bermudian tennis coach Jovan Jordan-Whitter oversaw a mixed start to Hampton University’s autumn campaign, with the Lady Pirates recording a win and a defeat at the CNU Duals.
Hampton launched their season in style against hosts Christopher Newport. Despite dropping the doubles point, Jordan-Whitter’s side rallied emphatically in singles play, taking five of six rubbers. Samira Khazieva led the charge at the top spot, with Serena Bryan, Toffee Ghorab, Tanya Midzi, and Melissa Sakiroglu all securing victories to seal a commanding 5-2 triumph.
A quick turnaround against Longwood — prompted by weather disruptions — brought contrasting fortunes.
The Pirates seized early control by sweeping both doubles contests, as Midzi and Ghorab claimed a 6-4 win before Mitic and Khazieva battled through 7-5. However, the Lancers hit back ruthlessly in singles competition, sweeping all five matches to leave Hampton with a split weekend.
The Ministry of Public Works and Environment advises motorists that an emergency lane closure is taking place on North Shore Road near Black Watch Pass, Pembroke, to accommodate BELCO cable repairs.
The lane closure is in effect from Thursday, 17 September through Saturday, 19 September 2026, between 9:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m.
Traffic is being managed by Intelligent Excavation representatives, with stop-and-go signs and possible traffic lights in place.
The Ministry encourages the full cooperation of motorists and apologises for any inconvenience that may arise.
The World Rugby Classic is set to return to Bermuda this November, bringing six international veteran sides together for a week-long tournament at the National Sports Centre North Field.
Running from Saturday, 7 November through Friday, 13 November, the competition features squads representing North America, South America, Europe, and the British Isles.
Opening night sees Classic Canada square off with the Classic Eagles before the Argentina Legends take on Italian Classic XV. Sunday’s traditional Family Day will feature an exhibition match by Bermuda Rugby ahead of the Classic Lions’ opener against Classic France.
Following midweek pool fixtures on Tuesday and Wednesday, the tournament concludes on Friday, 13 November with a three-match finals programme under the lights.
Key Match Schedule (Local Times):
13 Nov (Finals Night): Fixtures kick off from 18:15, culminating in Argentina Legends v Classic Lions at 20:45
7 Nov: Canada v Classic Eagles (19:00) | Argentina Legends v Italian Classic XV (20:30)
8 Nov: Bermuda Rugby (13:30) | Classic Lions v France (15:30)
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