US consumer inflation highest since 2008, as initial jobless claims hit pandemic low – business live

By Financial24 Last updated Jun 10, 2021

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

Latest: US initial jobless claims lowest since March 2020
US CPI jumped to 5.0% in May
Consumer prices rose 0.6% month-on-month
Core inflation rose 3.8% y/y, fastest since 1992
Energy and used car prices have jumped over last year

Earlier:

ECB presses on with bond-buying programme
Bank regulators say bitcoin should face toughest bank capital rules
Plan would mean banks holding enough capital to cover losses in full

6.25pm BST

After a busy day, Europe’s stock markets have ended the session roughly where they started it!

The FTSE 100 index has closed just 0.1% higher at 7088, up 7 points.

5.56pm BST

Back in the UK, supermarket chain Morrisons has suffered a serious shareholder revolt over pay.

Morrisons shareholders have voted overwhelmingly against the award of millions of pounds in bonuses to executives who missed profit targets during the pandemic, in one of the biggest shareholder rebellions of recent years.

The vote is not binding so the chief executive, David Potts, and his two most senior managers will still be able to receive the £9m in pay and bonuses they were awarded, despite a year in which the company fell out of the FTSE 100 and profits halved because of extra pandemic costs.

Nobody doubts that the big supermarket chains, including Morrisons, did an excellent job of keeping the shelves stocked in tricky conditions. But a bonus is not meant to be a semi-guaranteed entitlement. If profits have been clobbered, and half the bonus relates to profits, applying “discretion” to imagine what might have been is a nonsense.

Modern bonuses structures grant huge upsides to executives in good years. The system has to be seen to work in reverse in leaner times, whatever the cause.