Wednesday, 13th June: Dixons Carphone are well and truly feeling the effects of hump day after starting the morning at the bottom end of the FTSE 250 having become a victim of cyber crime and realising an unauthorised presence accessed customers payment card data. Although there has been no evidence of any fraudulent activities taking place as a result of the data breach, the extent of which the crime spreads out to is worrying and consists of an attempt to compromise 5.9 million cards, of which 105,000 non-EU issues payment cards without chip and pin protection had been compromised. The relevant card companies, Information Commissioners Office and Financial Conduct Authority have all been informed of the incident so the group seems to have everything under control, but the timing is incredibly unforgiving as the group have already recently suffered from profit warnings and have announced store closures.
Whilst Dixons Carphone stole the limelight on the FTSE 250, Just Eat was the lagger on the blue-chip index, down more than 8.0% in the morning after rival Deliveroo announced an expansion which would entail signing up 5,000 UK restaurants but giving them the option to use their own drivers instead of Deliveroo drivers.
Stobart Group managed to gain the most from the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 and was trading more than 11.0% higher in the afternoon after revealing a five-year agreement with Ryanair including a $300 million investment to open a new base at London Southend Airport. In addition to this, Ryanair are to operate three planes from Stobart Group’s London Southend Airport starting from mid-2019, which will include six new destinations, and will provide 13 routes to eight European countries.
Day 2 of the Brexit debate began on Wednesday and things didn’t go much smoother than the day before. The Scottish National Party leader was ordered to leave, which prompted lawmakers from the party to follow behind him. Ian Blackford, the leader of the party who was instructed to leave, was told to do so after refusing to take a seat whilst demanding a new debate on Scotland and Brexit to be held, which they party believes is being ignored.
At the end of the day, the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 closed flat and 0.04% lower respectively.