Oil prices fall as Trump pauses Iran attacks, China restarts fuel exports – business live

After it emerged that China reached an “understanding†with the EU on trade, the Chinese ministry of commerce, led by Wang Wentao, has said the country is: “willing… to continue facilitating the approval of export licenses for rare earths and permanent magnets destined for the EU.â€

While they acknowledged “differences†between them, the two sides were committed to maintaining trade and to hold a further meeting in March.

China said both sides would adhere to “procedures concerning company price undertakings†of hybrid cars, Beijing's commerce ministry said, citing a joint statement, suggesting a deal to find minimum prices for hybrid cars exported to the EU.

The talks follow months of rising tensions between the 27-nation EU and the Asian powerhouse that threatened to escalate into a trade war.

EU trade commissioner MaroÅ¡ Å efÄoviÄ had said it was “crucial†that the talks deliver “tangible outcomesâ€, after he met with Wang on Thursday.

MaroÅ¡ Å efÄoviÄ said earlier in the day that the EU's trade deficit with running at around £1bn a day (€1.18bn) every day, was “unsustainableâ€.

Breaking: China has reached an “understanding†with the EU, to avert deterioration in trade tensions after two days of talks in Beijing, according to a Chinese statement.

EU trade commissioner MaroÅ¡ Å efÄoviÄ is due to hold a press conference around 3pm CET, but China says the two sides of agreed a 16 point agreement allowing for a relaxation of restrictions on rare earth exports from China to the EU in return for concessions on electric vehicle exports.

Diesel prices have gone under £2 a litre, providing some momentary relief from climbing fuel prices.

However, the RAC notes that prices are still significantly higher than they were before the US launched its war on Iran, leaving households paying much more every time they fill up their tanks.

RAC head of policy Simon Williams said:

While it's positive to see the average cost of a litre of diesel dipping back below £2 a litre, we're a long way from being out of the woods when it comes to high fuel prices.

Diesel remains around 57p a litre higher than before the US/Iran conflict, and petrol 42p higher – meaning households are paying £31 and £23 more respectively every time they fill up a family-sized car.

And as things stand, this year is still set to be the second most expensive year on record for drivers.

Williams went on to say that prime minister Andy Burnham's government had the power to take some of the sting out of higher fuel costs, either by extending and increasing the fuel duty cut or reducing VAT, as the government have already done with domestic electricity.

He added:

Without action, 3p a litre in duty will be added on 1 January, and another 2p on 1 March, which will only make prices at the pump even more expensive.

At a time when Treasury VAT takings from fuel remain exceptionally high, drivers will be looking to this month's budget for some much-needed relief.

The UK's Court of Appeal has overturned the conviction of Christian Bittar, the Deutsche Bank trader who was jailed for conspiring to rig benchmark interest rates pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud.

He was the final trader whose case was being appealed in the UK. Five former Barclays traders had their convictions overturned on Wednesday this week. The cases of seven Libor and Euribor defendants have been overturned in total.

The decision on Bittar's case comes despite the former trader having pleaded guilty to the charges eight years ago.

Bittar was sentenced to five years and four months in jail, after pleading guilty in 2018 to rigging Euribor, the Euro interbank offered rate that determined the rates on trillions of dollars of financial contracts and loans across the world.

The ruling on Friday further unravels one of the UK Serious Fraud Office's most high-profile prosecutions.

Jason Williams, head of division at the SFO said in a statement:

We argued for a different outcome but respect the court's decision in relation to Christian Bittar.

The SFO remains committed to tackling the most complex fraud, bribery and corruption.

The European Union is granting temporary trade preferences to Armenia following trade restrictions recently imposed by Russia, our senior correspondent Lisa O'Carroll reports.

In a move which shows how flexible the EU can be, it said the temporary trade preferences “will help alleviate the difficult situation faced by Armenian producers and exporters and support the resilience of Armenia's economy by facilitating access to the EU market.â€

The measures, which will enter into force tomorrow for a period of two years, temporarily allow 80% of Armenian exports to the EU, including almost all exports of fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers affected by the Russian measures, as well as over 91% of exports of beverages and spirits.

Armenia is not an accession state, but has been singled out for support as part of the EU a broader solidarity support package

Data storage firm Snowflake has said hack at Asos was not caused by a vulnerability or flaw with its platform.

It comes after Asos' investigation this week found an “unauthorised party gained access to an Asos employee account by impersonating a trusted contact to obtain log-in credentialsâ€. Asos said the credentials were then used to access information on third-party platforms used by the company.

But on Friday, Snowflake – a US cloud-based AI data storage business – distanced itself from the incident despite being referenced in the message from the hackers.

(The message had read: “Dear ASOS DPO and IT, we have fully compromised the Snowflake instance. Engage with us, or we will leak it,†followed by a Telegram link.)

A Snowflake spokeswoman said:

We are aware of Asos's notification to their customers regarding this incident. We can confirm this issue did not in any way result from a vulnerability, weakness, flaw, or misconfiguration with the Snowflake service, platform, or internal environments, and was not caused by Snowflake.

No remediation is required for Snowflake customers. We continue to encourage adherence to our security best practices.

Asos has stressed that no payment card information or account passwords were accessed. They added the website and app were safe to use:

There is no action you need to take on your account. However, please remain cautious of unexpected messages or calls claiming to be from Asos. We will never ask you to share passwords, security codes or payment details through an unsolicited message or call.

A quick check in on stock markets:

European stock markets are trading higher, with the FTSE 100 up 0.8%, France's CAC 40 up 0.77% and Germany's DAX up 1.07%.

US futures are pointing to a strong start for Wall Street, with Dow futures up 0.17%, S&P futures up 0.4%, Nasdaq up 0.81%.

In London, the FTSE 100 is up despite a 5.4% drop in Airtel Africa shares, which started conditional trading today, as well as a 4.2% drop in Vodafone shares and a 2.3% drop in BT, amid jitters over the prospect that SpaceX could start offering retail telecoms services to US consumers.

Shares in Airtel Money have begun conditional trading on the London Stock Exchange, marking the biggest float in five years.

It is also the fifth biggest company by market value to float on the exchange, excluding those on the international main market.

Shares were priced at £1.96, valuing the company at £5.3bn. (Unconditional trading is expected to start on 14 October.)

Its parent company Airtel Africa – the telecoms provider ultimately controlled by the billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal –had originally targeted a listing in the first six months of 2026 but delayed it to the second half of the year, blaming unfavourable market conditions as a result of the US-Israeli war on Iran. Several other companies have pushed back planned IPOs amid market volatility.

Airtel Africa was already listed on the FTSE 100, but bosses wanted Airtel Money to be listed separately.

Dan Coatsworth, head of markets at AJ Bell, said it has the potential to encourage more companies to list on the UK stock market:

Chief executives sitting on the fence about whether to choose London as a listing destination might be watching Airtel Money's success with great interest and noting the decent show of support from retail investors.

Airtel Africa's success will have certainly played a part in Airtel Money also selecting to list in the UK, but so too will the market's reputation of having a broad range of investors willing to consider companies from any sector and not only being interested in AI-related technology.

The UK stock market might have suffered from low tech representation, yet its more diversified interests have shone in recent times when investors have started to question if there is a new tech bubble, and whether it's about to burst.

Brent crude prices are now down 1.3%, easing further s from where we started – having been down around 1% earlier this morning.

Neil Wilson, an investor strategist at Saxo UK, says Trump's comments regarding a pause in strikes, have “allayed fears†of a fresh flare-up in the war in the Middle East, following reports that the US was going to resume military action.

Fresh strikes would disrupt the flows that have been painstakingly re-established over recent weeks to pre-war levels, and represents a clear material upside risk to crude prices and term structure.

Brent scaled almost $106 before the comments from Trump took it down a couple of bucks to $104 this morning.

OpenAI has revealed that it is making about $20bn less in projected revenue than it had recently indicated to investors, raising questions about the break-neck growth rate in demand for AI.

The ChatGPT-maker company has told investors that its revenues for this year would reach $50bn (£37bn), a projection based on sales up to the end of September.

However, this is significantly less than the $70bn that it had signalled in information provided to investors last month, which was widely reported.

Forecasts of annualised revenues by the leading artificial intelligence players, including by OpenAI's rival Anthropic, the maker of Claude, are closely watched by markets as an indicator of overall demand for a technology that is attracting huge investment.

OpenAI is in early-stage talks to raise $30bn in a funding round that values the business at about $1.4tn.

News of the $20bn gap buffeted US tech stocks on Thursday, with the tech-led Nasdaq closing down by 1.4%. Chip giant Nvidia fell 2.9%, Oracle was down 5.5% and Micron declined 4.8%.

Read more here:

Full story: Donald Trump has promised not to attack Iran before November's US midterm elections, outlining a pause on the protracted war he has struggled to end after almost eight months.

In a Truth Social post on Thursday, the US president said Washington was “having productive discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iranâ€, which he claimed was “in very bad condition, both Economically and Militarilyâ€.

The strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas passed through before the war, was all but closed after the US and Israel struck Iran in late February.

On Thursday, however, Trump suggested that oil was moving through the strait in record volumes: “22 Million Barrels, last night aloneâ€, he claimed, “with not one barrel coming from, or going to, Iranâ€. The figure could not be independently verified.

“We will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd,†Trump wrote. “IRAN WILL NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!â€

Read more here:

It's worth remembering that this morning's pullback in oil prices comes after Brent crude posted its biggest daily jump in two weeks, rising more than 4% to $104.28 per barrel.

That was driven by mounting fears of further escalation of the US war on Iran, which this past week was punctuated by Houthi attacks on two attacks in Saudi Arabia, and new attacks on ships in the strait of Hormuz.

US magazine The Atlantic also reported overnight that the White House had asked the Pentagon to develop strike options that could be used before the midterms.

As Deutsche Bank analysts note, “that that ran counter to assumptions that there wouldn't be an escalation before the midterms.â€

UK and US telecom stocks have tumbled after Elon Musk's SpaceX took a major step towards launching a Starlink mobile service for American consumers.

The company announced it had bought a nationwide low-band spectrum license portfolio that it said would help it launch a full mobile business in the US.

This would be done by providing what it claimed was the world's “most advanced broadband network from spaceâ€:

This prime low-band spectrum addresses one of the key remaining technical gaps that will pave the way for Starlink Mobile to become a major mobile carrier in the US.

The potential competition has spooked investors in some of the US' biggest mobile carriers. Verizon Communications tumbled 7%, AT&T dropped 7.5% and T-Mobile US fell 6.7%.

Trump's pledge to pause attacks on Iran, and China's resumption of fuel exports, are offsetting concerns about potential disruptions to oil supplies in the US Gulf coast as a result of Hurricane Isaias.

The hurricane, which intensified from a tropical storm into the first hurricane of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season on Wednesday night, has prompted state of emergency declarations in Florida, Alabama and Georgia.

Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.

We're seeing a dip in oil prices this morning, with Brent crude down about 1% at $103 per barrel, following another momentary pause in US attacks on Iran.

Prices eased overnight on news that US president Donald Trump had pledged not to attack Iran ahead of the US midterm elections, which take place on 3 November.

It comes as public support for his war in the Middle East is waning and ultimately weighing on Republican election campaigns.

In a Truth Social post, Trump said:

We are having productive discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran. I want to make it clear to everybody that, while Iran is in very bad condition, both Economically and Militarily, and while the Blockade will remain in full force and effect, with Oil flowing in Record Numbers of Barrels through the Hormuz Strait (22 Million Barrels, last night alone, with not one barrel coming from, or going to, Iran!), we will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd. IRAN WILL NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!

An Reuters/Ipsos survey from late September show thats only a third of Americans approve of strikes on Iran, while approval for Trump among Republicans had fallen from 82% to 73% in a week.

Polling averages now show Democrats leading Republicans by roughly nine points on the generic congressional ballot, according to forecaster Nate Silver, the widest margin of this election cycle.

Oil prices have also eased on news that China is set â to resume fuel exports, after a pause in deliveries during the country's Golden Week holiday. The resumption of exports are expected to boost tight global supplies of diesel, gas, and jet fuel.

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