Key events
Novo Nordisk shares rally after Wegovy pill gets US oral approval
Shares in Novo Nordisk have jumped 7.5% this morning after it won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the first weight-loss drug to be administered orally.
Yesterday, US regulators gave the green light to a pill version of the blockbuster weight-loss drug Wegovy, the first daily oral medication to treat obesity.
The US Food and Drug Administration’s approval handed drugmaker Novo Nordisk an edge over rival Eli Lilly in the race to market an obesity pill. Lilly’s oral drug, orforglipron, is still under review.
That’s a welcome boost to Novo, whose shares have almost halved this year as competition in the weight loss industry has intensified.
Stocks are sneaking up a little in London this morning, but we can’t really call it a Santa Rally yet.
The FTSE 100 share index has gained 14 points, or 0.14% to 9880, back towards last Friday’s near-record closing high of 9,897 points.
Metlen Energy & Metals (+2.5%) are the top riser, followed by JD Sports (+2%).
Ryanair to appeal “legally flawed” ruling and fine
Newsflash: Ryanair says it will “immediately” appeal today’s ruling from Italy’s competition authorities, which it calls “legally flawed” and “bizarre/unsound”, and the and the €256m fine.
The budget airline insists that its model of offering customers the lowest fares through its website benefits customers (rather than letting travel agents scrape details of the fares and then sell them).
Ryanair says this principle had been upheld by the Milan Court:
Ryanair, Europe’s No.1 airline, today (Tues, 23 Dec) instructed its lawyers to immediately appeal both the bizarre/unsound ruling and the €256m fine, unjustly levied by the Italian Competition Authority (AGCM), which seeks to ignore – and overturn – the Jan 2024 Precedent Ruling of the Milan Court, which declared that Ryanair’s direct distribution model “undoubtedly benefits consumers” and leads to “competitive fares”.
EU trade is becoming increasingly difficult for UK exporters, a new survey has found.
The British Chambers of Commerce has reported that 54% of British exporters think the UK-EU trade deal is not helping them grow sales.
This is a 13-percentage point increase in the proportion of firms who are unhappy with the deal compared to last year, the BCC reports. More here:
Bet365 boss receives at least £280m in pay and dividends despite profit slump
Rob Davies
Denise Coates, the billionaire boss of Bet365, a self-described “ultimate gambler” and Britain’s highest-paid woman, took home at least £280m in pay and dividends in 2025 despite a slump in pre-tax profits, my colleague Rob Davies reports.
Coates’s Stoke-based gambling empire recorded turnover of £4bn in the year to March 2025, up from £3.7bn the year before. Pre-tax profits fell to £349m from £627m in the previous year.
Bet365 incurred a £325m increase in expenses as it reshaped its global footprint, expanding its presence in the US and South America, while giving up its sometimes controversial presence in China, where online betting is illegal.
Coates had already extracted more than £2.5bn in pay and dividends from a company that she began building in a car park in her home city.
Accounts posted on Tuesday show that she took a further £104m in salary, while her majority shareholding means she is entitled to at least 50% of a dividend of £353.6m, taking her total income from the group to at least £280m.
The deal is an increase on the £150m she claimed last year but falls some way short of her £469m record payout in 2021.
More here:
Chart: The EU car market
Today’s European car sales data shows that hybrid-electric cars (which have a fossil fuel engine and a rechargable battery) account for 34.6% of the total EU market this year.
Since January, 3,408,907 hybrid-electric cars have been registered in the EU, with growth in the four biggest markets: Spain (+26%), France (+24.2%), Germany (+8.7%), and Italy (+7.9%).
In addition, plug-in hybrids now makes up 9.3% of the market, while pure electric cars are another 16.9%.
Italy antitrust regulator fines Ryanair €256m over dealings with travel agencies
From cars to planes! Ryanair has been fined €255.7m (£222m) by Italy’s competition authority for abusing its dominant position in its dealings with travel agents.
The Italian Competition Authority imposed the penalty after concluding that Ryanair had executed an “elaborate strategy” to block online and traditional travel agencies from purchasing Ryanair flights on ryanair.com, or to make it harder.
This, it says, weakened competition from agencies and reduced the quality and range of tourism services available to consumers, from April 2023 until at least until April 2025.
The ICA says:
The investigation revealed that, at the end of 2022, Ryanair began to explore ways to hinder travel agencies. From mid-April 2023, these plans were implemented through measures that intensified over time. At first, Ryanair rolled out facial recognition procedures on its website aimed at users who purchased their ticket through a travel agency.
Then, at the end of 2023, when the Authority’s investigation was underway, Ryanair totally or intermittently blocked booking attempts by travel agencies on its website (for example, by blocking payment methods and mass-deleting accounts linked to OTA bookings). In a third phase of its strategy, in early 2024, Ryanair imposed partnership agreements on OTAs and, subsequently, Travel Agent Direct accounts on traditional agencies, containing terms that restricted agencies from offering Ryanair flights in combination with other services.
To “persuade” agencies to partner up, Ryanair periodically blocked bookings and launched an aggressive communication campaign against non-signatory OTAs, labelling them “pirate OTAs”. In April 2025, Ryanair made its full white-label iFrame solution available to OTAs. This enabled the integration of IT applications (so-called APIs) which, if properly implemented, make it possible to restore effective competition in the downstream market for tourism services.
New car sales in Europe rise for fifth month in a row
Overall, new car registrations in the EU increased by 1.4% year-on-year in November, the fifth monthly rise in a row.
ACEA reports:
Despite the recent positive momentum, overall volumes remain well below pre-pandemic levels. The battery-electric car market share reached 16.9% YTD, in line with projections for the year, yet a level that still leaves room for growth to stay on track with the transition.
Hybrid-electric vehicles lead as the most popular power type choice among buyers, with plug-in hybrids continuing to gain momentum.
That transition hit a diversion this month, when Brussels scrapped its landmark 2035 ban on combustion engines and brought in new flexibilities to allow carmakers to hit 2030 carbon emission targets.
Tesla’s sales didn’t fall everywhere last month, though.
The Norwegian market was a bright spot – Tesla’s sales in Norway rose 34.6% in November year-to-date, led by the mass market crossover Model Y.
That means Tesla has sold more cars in Norway in 2025 than any other automaker ever did in a full year, beating the country’s annual sales record with one month to spare according to the Norwegian Road Federation.
Introduction: Tesla’s European sales fall again
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.
Sales of Tesla’s electric cars fell across Europe again last month, as the company’s annus horribilis continued.
European auto lobby ACEA is reporting this morning that Tesla registrations tumbled by 34.2% in the European Union year-on-year in November, and fell by 11.8% across the wider EU, Britain and European Free Trade Association area.
Tesla sold 12,130 cars across the EU last month, down from 18,430 in November 2024, shrinking its market share from 2.1% to 1.4%.
Tesla’s sales have fallen across Europe this month, amid a consumer backlash to Elon Musk’s political activism in the Donald Trump White House before the pair fell out.
It has also faced increased competition from rivals including China’s BYD, who had a strong November. BYD grew its sales in the EU, EFTA and UK by 221%, up from 6,568 to 21,133 units.
BYD is one of several Chinese carmakers using the transition to electric cars as an opportunity to dominate the global automotive market, backed by Beijing and regional governments.
And while Tesla struggled, the overall electric car market grew. In the first 11 months of 2025, battery-electric cars accounted for 16.9% of the EU market share, an increase from the low baseline of 13.4% in January-November 2024.
The agenda
-
1.30pm GMT: US Q3 GDP report
-
1.30pm GMT: US durable goods orders for October
-
3pm GMT: US new home sales
-
3pm GMT: US conference board survey of consumer confidence
