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The FTSE 100 has plunged further this morning as investor fears over the war in Ukraine continue to hammer markets across the globe.
London’s blue-chip index is down 2.2% to 6,835.20pts so far today, taking losses over the past five trading days to more than 8% and down to levels not seen since September.
Travel and banking stocks are tumbling while shares in miners and oil producers such as Anglo American and Shell are on the up amid surging commodity prices, with oil prices at a new 14-year high.
It is also a sea of red for food and drink stocks this morning, with most recording early losses, led by beleaguered THG, which is down 12% to just 73p.
Elsewhere, Marks & Spencer is down 10% to 141.9p, Bakkavor is down 9.6% to 103.9p, Primark owner Associated British Foods has slumped 7% to 1,590p, while tobaccos stocks British American Tobacco and Imperial Brands take further heavy falls of 5.1% and 5.6% respectively.
Eastern European Coke bottler Coca-Cola HBC has also sank another 9.8% to 1,420.5p, taking it down more than 40% in the past month.
There are also big falls for Greggs, Fever-Tree Drinks, Britvic, AG Barr, Greencore, SSP Group, Just Eat Takeaway, Deliveroo and Diageo
Embattled McColl’s Retail Group is one of the only stocks to escape the carnage, climbing 10% to 1.7p following its meltdown last week as rumours around impending administration engulfed the c-store operator.
Morning update
Unilever has bowed to shareholder pressure with a commitment to publish more transparent information on the fat, sugar and salt in its portfolio of food products.
The new benchmark for public reporting about the healthiness of the food it sells follows months of engagement with a coalition of institutional investors co-ordinated by ShareAction, which promotes responsible investment.
ShareAction filed a shareholder proposal in January urging the company to disclose against government-endorsed health models and adopt ambitious targets to increase the share of healthy foods in its sales.
Unilever will now measure the sales of its products against major government-endorsed Nutrient Profile Models, as well as its own internal metric.
The first of these annual assessments of the healthiness of its products will be published in October.
Unilever also agreed to set new stretching targets for growing the proportion of its healthier products by October in advance of its 2023 AGM and to submit these targets to shareholder scrutiny.
“The enhanced disclosures form a new precedent for transparency in reporting for food manufacturing companies,” ShareAction said this morning.
Shares in Unilever have crashed 2.6% to 3,322.5p this morning amid a wider sell-off in London amid the ongoing situation in Ukraine.
This week in the City
There are a handful of big financial updates this week for UK retailers.
Tomorrow kicks off with finals from high-street baker Greggs, alongside the latest monthly Nielsen grocery sales figures and BRC-KPMG retail sales for February. Prepared food manufacturer Bakkavor and Domino’s Pizza also report preliminaries on Tuesday.
Campbell Soup and Jack Daniel’s distiller Brown-Forman update with quarterly figures on Wednesday in the US.
On Thursday, the long-awaited full-year figures from John Lewis Partnership will be released, with media speculation swirling around the return of the staff bonus. There will also be a trading update from packaging firm DS Smith.
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