Starmer Rivals Bide Time, BP Halts Buybacks, More
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News when you want it with Bloomberg News Now. I'm Anna Edwards. And I'm Stephen Carroll. The UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer appears to have won a reprieve from a potential leadership challenge with all members of his cabinet backing him to stay on. The public endorsement of Starmer comes after a second top advisor resigned and the leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, Anna Sarwar, called for the Prime Minister to go.
The situation in Downing Street is not good enough. There have been too many mistakes. They promised they were going to be different, but too much has happened.
However, Sarwar's push for Starmer's removal was met with a wall of support for the Prime Minister as Labour politicians came to his defence. And perhaps most notably, key potential leadership challengers, including the likes of former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Health Secretary Wes Streeting, opted to back Starmer.
Let's give Keir, like, just give Keir that chance. Let him set out how he's going to lead us forward.
The near-unanimous public support from Streeting and others gives Starmer more time in the top job. But his record low polling and upcoming local elections are adding to a growing sense of crisis in Downing Street.
Shares in BP are down 5.7% after it announced it's halting share buybacks and raising its target for cost cuts. This is pressure mounts on the UK energy giant to deliver on its turnaround efforts. The company says it's now planning to make $1.5 billion worth of savings by the end of next year. The news comes as the oil major reported a just-at-net income of $1.54 billion for the fourth quarter. In line with estimates, Woodside Energy CEO Meg O'Neill will take over at the top of BP in April, with shareholders expecting her to accelerate a shift away from clean energy projects.
Barclays has announced a £1 billion share buyback as it reported investment banking revenue ahead of expectations. The UK-based bank reported investment bank revenue of £2.79 billion in the final three months of 2025, boosted by strong performances for both its equities and fixed income franchises. The CEO, C.S. Venkatakrishnan, says the bank is firing on all cylinders.
So I'm very happy. They're all doing well. And, you know, each of the businesses produced double-digit ROTEs in the last year, and we're expecting them to continue. The strongest performing parts have been the ones that have come from the furthest behind, which is our U.S. Consumer Bank, which has gone from 7% to 11%, and our investment bank, which has also gone up.
Venkata Krishnan also talked up AI in the interview on Bloomberg Television earlier, saying that the bank plans to use the new technology to personalise services. Last year, Barclays shares rose by 77%, its biggest annual gain on record. It was a good year broadly for banks, of course, and Barclays share price this morning up by 1.8%.
AstraZeneca says it expects profits to grow further this year, boosted by sales of its cancer drugs. The UK drugmaker says earnings per share are expected to rise by a low double-digit percentage in 2026, similar to the 8% increase reported last year. Astra has become a cancer drug powerhouse under CEO Pascal Sorio and is the second largest company listed on the LSE. While some drug makers have seen US drug pricing deals impact their forecasts for this year, the British pharma giant has previously said it believes it can absorb the changes. Shares on AstraZeneca up 1.1% this morning.
Bloomberg has learned that the European Union is preparing options to embed Ukraine's future EU membership into any peace deal with Russia. Formal negotiations on EU membership began in 2024, but the process has been stalled by objections from Hungary.
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