Tuesday, 19th December: If anyone is going to be glad to see the back of 2017, it’s going to be Ryanair, or maybe not because they probably still wouldn’t have resolved anything by the sounds of it. The Irish Independent newspaper reported today that the groups’ pilots have lost trust in the company, and have been told that it just grew too fast. It was only a few weeks ago that several co-pilots handed in resignations after the chaos in September which led to Ryanair having to cancel 20,000 flights. The relationship between the pilots and airline has continued to deteriorate, and the pilots have demanded an overhaul of Ryanairs’ system of contracts and collective bargaining.
After years of resistance, Ryanair have now finally agreed to recognise pilot unions which was announced on Friday, and had a negative impact on the share price, which was down 8.6% by the end of Friday at €14.99, but is doing slightly better today, trading around 4.0% higher in the morning at €15.24. Chief Exec Michael O’Leary said in an interview on Tuesday that the recognition of unions will not have any sort of financial impact on the groups’ profit forecast, regardless of staff costs increasing by £88.45m as a result of pay increases, we’ll just have to see how this pans out in the results.
Today is an important day for President Trump, as the fate of his first potential major legislative win is decided by Congress. Any remaining doubts over the bill were removed yesterday, as two of the remaining Senate Republican holdouts eventually agreed to support the bill. The argument against the bill comes from the Democrats, who are stressing that the cut only benefits the wealthy and those at the peak of the spectrum of corporations, which will consequently further widen the income gap between the rich and poor in the US.
On the FTSE, Carnival had a particularly good day. The cruise ship connoisseur reported higher profit and sales than expected, which boosted the share price instantly, regardless of the impact of hurricanes which took place earlier this year across Florida and the Caribbean. After releasing the fourth quarter and full year report, the groups’ share price was up around 3.6% at £50.25.
By the end of the day, the FTSE 100 was trading almost flat after trading higher for most of the day. The index closed 0.09% higher at 7544.
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