Key events
UK accounting watchdog to investigate PwC’s audit of WH Smith
The UK’s accounting regulator has launched an investigation into PricewaterhouseCoopers, over its auditing of travel retailer WH Smith.
The investigation will look into PwC’s auditing of WH Smith’s financial statements for the financial year ended 31 August 2024.
The Financial Reporting Council says:
The investigation will be conducted by the FRC’s Enforcement Division under the Audit Enforcement Procedure.
WH Smith is already being investigated by the City watchdog over an accounting error that misstated profits at its North American arm.
Surprise interest rate rise in Indonesia
We have a surprise interest rate rise, in Jakarta, triggered by the Iran war.
Indonesia’s central bank has raised interest rates by 25 basis points today, to 5.5%, as it tried to prop up the Indonesian rupiah.
The ‘off-cycle’ decision comes just a few weeks after the bank raised borrowing costs for the first time in two years,
The bank explained:
“This increase is a follow-up measure to strengthen the stabilization of the rupiah exchange rate against the impact of heightened global volatility caused by the war in the Middle East.”
Oil drops as Trump says Iran peace deal in ‘final throes’
The oil price is dropping this morning, after Donald Trump declared that negotiations towards an Iran peace deal are in their ‘final throes’.
The US president made the comments to reporters at JFK airport after attending the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden (where he was roundly booed by the crowd)
Trump insisted that Iran and Israel “were going back and forth and now they both agreed through me to stop and we’re in the final throes of what will be a very, very good deal”.
Asked whether it would be matter of days or weeks, he said it would take “two or three days”, adding that the strait of Hormuz would “open up right away” once the deal was signed.
Brent crude has dropped by 1% this morning, to $93 a barrel – still around $20/barrel above its levels before the conflict began in late February.
The AI trade has continued to bounce back this morning, reports Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid:
The KOSPI (+7.35%) is sharply higher after its 9th worst day in 45 plus years of history yesterday (-8.29%). The Nikkei (+2.19%) is also benefiting from a recovery in technology stocks after a decline of over -3.5% yesterday.
Chinese stocks are up just over half a percent and other markets are broadly flat. S&P 500 (+0.26%) and NASDAQ 100 (+0.54%) futures are also continuing to recover after a decent session yesterday.
Full story: OpenAI confidentially files for initial public offering
OpenAI has filed confidentially to go public on the US stock market, according to a company blogpost published on Monday. The artificial intelligence giant’s debut on Wall Street is expected to be one of the most highly valued listings in market history with a valuation at more than $850bn.
“We recently submitted a confidential S-1. We expect it to leak so we’re just announcing it,” the company’s post reads. “We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company. But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best.”
An S-1 is an investor prospectus submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in advance of an initial public offering (IPO). The confidential filing will give regulators a period to review and discuss the company’s financial disclosures before investors and the public are able to view them.
More here:
Introduction: Chip stocks bounce back ahead of ‘brat summer’ for AI firms
Good morning and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.
For the second day running, circuit breakers have been triggered on the Seoul stock exchange. But this time, it’s because the market is rising unusually quickly, rather than tumbling like it did on Monday.
Shares in South Korea’s chip giants are surging today, as investors pile back into the market after yesterday’s sell-off.
This rally is boosting optimism that the recent drop in tech shares is a blip, rather than the long-feared AI market crash.
Samsung Electronics’s shares are up over 9% today, while memory chipmaker SK Hynix have surged by 15%.
Those two heavyweight stocks have driven South Korea’s KOSPI up by 8.4% in Tuesday’s session, a day after it tumbled by 8%. Today’s market rally triggered successive temporary suspensions of program buy orders, known as “sidecars” in South Korea.
SK Hynix was boosted by a new multiyear partnership with Nvidia to develop next-generation memory for AI systems, whicch saw Nvidia’s Jensen Huang tour Seoul, meeting tech firms and handing out fried chicken to journalists:
Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, points out that the wild swings in the KOSPI are unusual, and worrying.
A day with a rise or fall of less than 5% in the Kospi has become rare – a sign of just how volatile this market has become and, therefore, how much of the move is driven by speculation. Indeed, the Kospi’s volatility index keeps rising to unbelievable levels, suggesting that when the music stops, there will be carnage.
Anyway, today we continue to observe the tech-versus-non-tech narrative play out – technology attracting flows while non-tech pockets of the market lag behind.
That narrative will be tested in the next few weeks, though, as several massive tech firms attempt to float on the stock market.
Last night, OpenAI filed for its initial public offering – which could value the firm behind the ChatGPT chatbot at more than $1tn. That puts OpenAI in a race with fellow artificial intelligence pioneer Anthropic, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX which is due to float on Friday.
Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB:
The OpenAI news means that we will hear more about how much revenue it is generating and how much cash it is burning through in the coming weeks.
2026 is set to be the ‘brat summer’* for these AI names, with their soaring valuations and big promises for how AI will change the world and send their revenues soaring.
[* For the benefit of any high court judges reading, here’s a guide to Charli xcx’s recent album, Brat]
The agenda
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7am BST: German trade data
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9:45am BST: Treasury Comittee hearing on Financial Inclusion Strategy
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11am BST: NFIB’s US Business Optimism Index
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1.30pm BST: US trade data for April
