Shares in Diageo, which owns the Guinness and Johnnie Walker brands, rose by 3.5% today, making it the top riser on the FTSE 100 index, after its embattled chief executive stepped down.Debra Crew has quit with immediate effect, “by mutual agreement,” the drinks giant said.Her departure comes after investor disquiet about the company’s lacklustre market performance under the former captain in US military intelligence.Until a permanent successor is found, Nik Jhangiani, chief financial officer, will assume the role of chief executive on an interim basis.

Crew took command of the £43bn British company in 2023 after the sudden illness and death of Ivan Menezes – a charming and popular figure who had led Diageo successfully for 10 years,While she had been groomed for the job, Crew’s tenure has been marked by a shock profits warning, adverse global consumer trends and investor disatisfaction,The profits warning came in November 2023, less than six months into Crew’s tenure, the result of a slump in sales in Latin America and the Caribbean,This was a shock to investors after a huge post-pandemic rebound in sales but the slump also appeared to have surprised Diageo’s management,Diageo had continued to plough supply into Latin America, even as drinkers reined in spending, leaving the region massively overstocked.

In the run-up to Christmas last year, Diageo appeared to have misjudged its supply chain again, with UK pubs complaining that their flow of Guinness had been rationed, just as festive demand increased.The company’s share price has also come under pressure as a result of US president Donald Trump’s tariff wars.Diageo, which owns the Guinness and Johnnie Walker brands, is to replace its embattled chief executive, ending her rocky tenure in charge of the British alcoholic drinks firm.In a statement to the stock market, Diageo said it had begun the hunt for a successor to Debra Crew, who the company said had stepped down “by mutual agreement”.Her departure follows a lengthy period of investor disquiet about the company’s lacklustre market performance under the former captain in US military intelligence.

The London-based company’s chief financial officer, Nik Jhangiani, will lead the business on an interim basis.UK inflation unexpectedly rose in June driven by fuel and food prices, according to official figures, underscoring the challenge facing the chancellor, Rachel Reeves.The Office for National Statistics said the consumer prices index rose by 3.6% last month.City economists and the Bank of England had forecast it would remain the same as May’s reading of 3.

4%,The increase was largely caused by by petrol and diesel prices falling only slightly in June compared with a much larger decrease a year earlier, alongside food price inflation rising for a third consecutive month to the highest rate in more than a year,Driving the headline rate further away from the Bank’s 2% target, the rise was announced as Labour faces intense scrutiny over its economic management after two months of negative growth and with speculation mounting over tax rises,Our other main stories:Thank you for reading,We’ll be back tomorrow.

Take care – JKHere’s our full story on Barclays:Barclays has been fined £42m over “poor handling” of financial crime risks linked to two clients, including a gold bullion business run by James Stunt, the former son-in-law of Formula One tycoon Bernie Ecclestone.The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said the bulk of the penalties, about £39.3m, related to Barclays’ failure to properly screen Stunt’s business – Stunt & Co – and its relationship with Fowler Oldfield, a Bradford jeweller now infamously linked to a large money-laundering operation.The failures spanned 2015 to 2021, and Stunt & Co ultimately received £46.8m from Fowler Oldfield.

Barclays was made aware of the fact that Fowler Oldfield was the subject of a criminal investigation involving potential money laundering in August 2016.But the bank only started to review of its exposure to the company four years later, when the FCA fined NatWest more than £264m over its relationship the purported jeweller.Over here, the chief executive of the Co-op has apologised to its customers after admitting that all 6.5 million of the mutual’s members had their data stolen in a recent cyber-attack.Shirine Khoury-Haq told the BBC she was “incredibly sorry” for the attack in which names and addresses and contact information was obtained by hackers.

She said no financial information, such as credit or debit card details, or transaction data was stolen in the hack, which occurred in April.We know a lot of that information is out there anyway, but people will be worried and all members should be concerned.Previously, the company had only said that a “significant number” of its customers’ data had been accessed by the hackers, but did not give a precise figure.There’s more US data: industrial production rose moderately last month after a flat outcome in both April and May, following revisions to official data.Industrial production rose by 0.

3% in June from the previous month, while manufacturing edged up by 0.1%, boosted by a 3.1% gain in primary metals production.“This presumably reflects the boost from the imposition of even higher 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports at the start of the month, although if fabricated metal production is anything to go by, the boost could prove short lived,” said Harry Chambers, assistant economist at Capital Economics.The small rise in both industrial production and manufacturing output in June suggest that reciprocal tariffs are neither providing a boost nor suppressing domestic production.

It is also unclear whether tariffs are bolstering or dampening motor vehicle production, which fell by 2.6% last month, partially reversing a 4.6% rise in May.Otherwise, mining output fell by 0.3% m/m, while, as expected, there was a substantial rise in utilities output, which still appears to be normalising after it dropped sharply in March.

Wall Street has opened higher, with all main indices rising after producer prices stayed flat in June and as investors digested a raft of corporate results.The Dow Jones industrial average rose by more than 150 points at the opening bell, or 0.36%, while the S&P 500 gained 17 points, or 0.3%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq rose by 50 points, or 0.2%.

Liberty Steel is expected to be able to pay its workers for July, after it gained more time today to try to avoid being wound up over unpaid debts.The company said that its subsidiary, Speciality Steel UK, would use the month until the next hearing on 20 August to try to find a sale.Its creditor, Greensill Capital, applied todayto take over a winding up petition, after another creditor had its debt paid.Liberty, part of metals tycooon Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance, operates other steel and aluminium businesses in Hartlepool, Scotland, and Wales, but they are not affected by the insolvency proceedings.A Liberty Steel spokesperson said:Today’s resolutions and adjournment provides additional time to finalise options for SSUK while continuing our broader debt restructuring efforts.

We remain committed to identifying a solution that preserves electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking in the UK—a critical national capability supporting strategic supply chains,SSUK has been engaged in complex debt restructuring since the collapse of Greensill Capital in 2021, which significantly constrained its access to capital,Throughout Liberty’s ownership, the shareholder has consistently supported the business, contributing nearly £200m in loss funding and payroll over the past four years—even during periods when significant portions of the business remained non-operational,US producer prices were flat in June, according to official figures, with some signs of tariff effects,This brings better news for those worried about inflationary pressures, following a 0.

3% gain in May that came after a 0.3% drop in April.US producer prices remained largely unchanged in June.This follows a 0.3% gain in May that offset a 0.

3% decline in April.In June, a 0.3% advance in prices for goods offset a 0.1% decrease in services prices.Half of the rise in goods prices were seen in food and energy prices.

pic,twitter,com/hZFeMVtRe6Bradley Saunders, North America economist at Capital Economics, has crunched the numbers,While prices are rising at slower pace than we had expected earlier in the year, President Trump’s recent aggression on trade suggests the story is far from over,Both final demand PPI and core final demand PPI were flat in June, thanks largely to a 2.

7% drop in airline passenger services prices, as weak demand continued to weigh on prices.Automobile retailing trade services prices fell by 5.4%, indicating that dealers are absorbing some of the 25% tariff hit – although those margins rose by more than 10% cumulatively across March and April, so this is only a partial reversal.These falls helped to offset a 0.3% rise in core goods prices, within which there were some signs of tariff effects – namely in furniture (1.

0%) and home electronics (0.8%) prices.Beyond this, tariff impacts appear limited: while iron and steel scrap prices rose 4.3%, this was a reversal of May’s large fall.Similarly, despite the doubling in tariffs on steel imports to 50%, steel mill product prices fell 5.

5% last month.Taken together, June’s CPI and PPI data point to both the core and headline PCE [personal consumption expenditures] deflator rising by 0.27% m/m last month.This would take the three-month annualised core PCE inflation rate back up to 2.3% which, while a reversal of its recent downward trend, is arguably better than could have been hoped for when President Trump first started threatening large reciprocal tariffs earlier this year.

That said, with firms’ pre-tariff inventory stockpiles likely running low and reciprocal tariffs set to rise markedly on 1 August, we are not out of the woods yet.Here’s our analysis of the surprise rise in UK inflation to 3.6% last month, by our economics editor Heather Stewart:For anyone hoping the Bank of England will pick up the pace of interest rate cuts – including Rachel Reeves – there was little comfort in the inflation data.The consumer prices index increased at a higher than expected rate of 3.6% in June, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed.

That remains in line with the Bank of England’s expectation of an inflation “hump” over the summer; but the upward pressure is not just confined to the regulated prices, such as transport fares and utility bills, that policymakers knew would rise.Motor fuels are the main factor behind the upward shift in CPI from 3.4% in May, according to the ONS.The price of a litre of petrol is not rising – it fell by 0.5p between May and June.

But it was plunging this time last year, so the smaller monthly decline puts upward pressure on inflation.Shares in Diageo, which owns the Guinness and Johnnie Walker brands, rose by 3.5% today, making it the top riser on the FTSE 100 index, after its embattled chief executive stepped down.Debra Crew has quit with immediate effect, “by mutual agreement,” the drinks giant said.Her departure comes after investor disquiet about the company’s lacklustre market performance under the former captain in US military intelligence.

Until a permanent successor is found, Nik Jhangiani, chief financial officer, will assume the role of chief executive on an interim basis.Crew took command of the £43bn British company in 2023 after the sudden illness and death of Ivan Menezes – a charming and popular figure who had led Diageo successfully for 10 years.While she had been groomed for the job, Crew’s tenure has been marked by a shock profits warning, adverse global consumer trends and investor disatisfaction.The profits warning came in November 2023, less than six months into Crew’s tenure, the result of a slump in sales in Latin America and the Caribbean.This was a shock to investors after a huge post-pandemic rebound in sales but the slump also appeared to have surprised Diageo’s management.

Diageo had continued to plough supply into Latin America, even as drinkers reined in spending, leaving the region massively overstocked,In the run-up to Christmas last year, Diageo appeared to have misjudged its supply chain again, with UK pubs complaining that their flow of Guinness had been rationed, just as festive demand increased,The company’s share price has also come under pressure as a result of US president Donald Trump’s tariff wars,Liberty Steel’s key British operations have been granted another month before a potential winding up, amid concern over the future for 1,450 workers in Yorkshire,A creditor to Speciality Steel UK, which runs an electric arc furnace at Rotherham and another plant near Sheffield in South Yorkshire, had sought to wind up the company over unpaid debts, but a representative told London’s high court today that its debt had been satisfied