UK Market Breakdown: FTSE 250 Records, Astra Slides, Week of 3 August 2026

London's blue-chip index went almost nowhere in the first three sessions of August, but the calm at headline level hid an unusually busy week underneath it. AstraZeneca fell 9.0% on Monday, its steepest one-day drop since 2020, after the Financial Times reported that Britain's biggest drugmaker had held preliminary talks with America's Bristol Myers Squibb about a combination worth close to $400bn. Neither company confirmed the report, AstraZeneca declined to comment, and Reuters said it could not establish whether the discussions were still live.

The FTSE 100 slipped 10.35 points, or 0.1%, to 10,857.70 on Monday, recovered 21.68 points, or 0.2%, to 10,879.38 on Tuesday, and edged higher again on Wednesday, with Reuters putting the close at 10,888.3. That leaves the index marginally above Friday's 10,868.05 finish and a little under 1% below the record close of 10,972.06 reached on 30 July.

The mid-caps did the real work. The FTSE 250 rose in all three sessions and set consecutive closing records on Tuesday and Wednesday, its first record close since 2021.

The FTSE 100

One theme ran through all three sessions: the oil price. Brent crude fell around 5% on Monday and again on Tuesday, when it dropped 5.34% to $79.30 a barrel, and was still trading below $80 on Wednesday. The trigger was diplomacy rather than demand — reports that the United States, Iran and Oman were closing in on a 60-day interim agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, with Qatar saying a proposal had been drafted and President Trump saying talks were "moving along very nicely".

For an index as heavily weighted towards energy as London's, that cut both ways. Shell and BP fell 1.6% and 2.4% respectively on Monday, and BP dropped a further 27.1p to 525p on Tuesday even as it reported a doubling of quarterly profit. Shell lost 84p to 3,321.50p in the same session.

What the oil fall gave back, it gave to the rate-sensitive end of the market. Cheaper crude eased inflation worries and pulled gilt yields down on Monday, the two-year yield falling nine basis points to 4.33% and the ten-year eight basis points to 4.98%. Housebuilders were the immediate beneficiaries: Vistry gained 7.5%, Bellway 5%, Taylor Wimpey 4.1%, with Persimmon and Barratt Redrow both up around 4%.

Miners then took over. Tuesday's session was driven by copper touching two-month highs on falling inventories, lifting Antofagasta 252p to 3,931.00p and Anglo American 202p to 3,907.00p — gains of 6.9% and 5.5%. Fresnillo added 131p to 2,629.00p. The biggest faller alongside BP that day was Smith & Nephew.

The FTSE 250 and mid caps

The mid-cap index closed up 249.75 points, or 1.0%, at 24,224.77 on Monday, added 0.97% to 24,459.30 on Tuesday — its first record close since 2021, finally clearing the peak set that year — and rose a further 0.7% to 24,632.63 on Wednesday for another record. The AIM All-Share also started the week firmly, closing up 6.06 points, or 0.8%, at 768.61 on Monday.

The mid-cap strength was domestic and earnings-driven rather than a rising tide. Travis Perkins was the standout, jumping roughly 18% to around 680p on Tuesday after half-year figures pointed to early progress in its turnaround. On Wednesday, 4imprint took the top spot with a gain of about 11% on an upgraded full-year outlook.

There was also a change in the index's composition: Halfords joined the FTSE 250 and Bluefield Solar Income Fund left it, effective 4 August.

The week's biggest movers

AstraZeneca was the week's single biggest story. Analysts were openly sceptical of the reported Bristol Myers approach, questioning why a company of AstraZeneca's scale would need a transformative deal at all, and Berenberg suggested the shares were likely to stay depressed while the speculation hung over them.

Prudential was the sharpest faller of Wednesday, closing down 70p at 1,025.00p, a fall of about 6.4%, having been as much as 13% lower during the session — its steepest intraday drop since early 2020. The trigger was a Caixin report that mainland Chinese tax authorities had begun levying 20% personal income tax on dividends and interest earned on offshore insurance policies, with early cases in Beijing and Hangzhou. Prudential has long relied on mainland customers buying policies on trips to Hong Kong. HSBC fell in sympathy, closing down 74p at 1,510.60p, and Standard Chartered also slipped.

Travis Perkins rose furthest. The builders' merchant reported half-year adjusted operating profit up 6.3% at £67m and adjusted earnings per share up 13.5% at 15.1p, even though revenue fell 1.8% to £2.258bn in a subdued construction market. Net cash before leases stood at £55m.

Smith & Nephew was the worst FTSE 100 performer on Tuesday, closing down 75p at 1,122.00p having been as much as 8% lower at 1,103p, after cutting its full-year revenue guidance.

IG Group extended its losses on Monday, falling around 6% to 1,370p as investors continued to digest its agreement, announced on 1 August, to buy the American prediction-markets and daily fantasy operator Underdog for up to $1.3bn.

Company news in focus

SEGRO produced the week's largest completed deal. On Tuesday, America's Prologis and the SEGRO board agreed terms on a recommended offer valuing the warehouse landlord at about £14bn, or roughly $18.8bn. SEGRO shareholders are offered 0.0920 new Prologis shares each, valuing the stock at 1,031.7p — a 39.0% premium to the 742p close on 23 June, the day before the offer period began, and 14.0% above pro-forma adjusted net asset value of 905p at 30 June. A partial cash alternative of up to about £3.5bn is available. SEGRO's directors intend to recommend the deal unanimously; it followed three earlier offers the board had rejected.

Shell continued its retreat from renewables, agreeing on Monday to sell its European onshore renewables business to France's TotalEnergies for an undisclosed sum. The portfolio covers roughly 500MW of operating solar, onshore wind and battery storage in the UK, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, plus a 3.5GW development pipeline. The sale is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to complete by the end of the year.

Glencore said it intends to seek a secondary listing in Australia in October, to broaden its shareholder base and improve liquidity.

London also lost a constituent outright. Flutter Entertainment's delisting from the London Stock Exchange took effect at 8am on Monday 3 August, ending close to 30 years of London trading and leaving the gambling group listed solely in New York. The company had flagged the move on 12 June, citing London trading volumes and the cost of maintaining a second listing.

At BP, new chief executive Meg O'Neill used her first full-quarter update to set out a portfolio reset, guiding to divestment proceeds of $8bn to $9bn including around $6bn from Castrol, alongside the sale of the North Sea business, the marketing of Archaea Energy and an exit from the Bay du Nord project. Full-year capital expenditure is guided at $13.5bn to $14bn.

Earnings and trading updates

Next raised full-year guidance for the third time this year on Wednesday and the shares closed up 850p at 15,660.00p. Full-price sales rose 9.2% in the 13 weeks to 1 August against guidance of 4%, adding about £70m of sales, which the retailer attributed to warm UK weather, a rebound in the Middle East and Northern Europe, and increased spending on profitable marketing. Pre-tax profit guidance went up £25m to £1.243bn, growth of 7.3%.

Glencore beat forecasts with an 86% jump in first-half adjusted EBITDA to $10.11bn from $5.43bn, on revenue 49% higher at $174.4bn. Its marketing arm produced adjusted operating profit of $3.3bn, up 142%, as Middle East disruption fed volatility in energy and freight; industrial earnings rose 72% to $6.5bn. It declared a special cash distribution of 8.5 cents a share, worth about $1bn, and a new $500m buyback running to February 2027.

HSBC reported first-half pre-tax profit up 23% at $19.5bn, with second-quarter profit up 60% at $10.1bn against a $9.51bn consensus, and announced a fresh $1bn buyback. The shares finished Tuesday close to flat, having been as much as 2% lower.

BP's second-quarter underlying replacement cost profit more than doubled from a year earlier to $5.73bn, ahead of the $5.11bn expected and up from $3.2bn in the first quarter, and the dividend was raised 4% to 8.66 cents.

Smith & Nephew cut full-year underlying revenue growth guidance to about 4% to 6% from around 6%. Second-quarter revenue of $1.60bn grew 1.6% underlying against the 4% expected, with US knee implant sales down 7.2%, hips down 1.5% and Advanced Wound Bioactives down 12.7% after changes to US reimbursement rules. Trading profit guidance was held at about $1.3bn.

Legal & General delivered core operating earnings per share growth of 11%, above the top of its 6% to 9% guidance range, lifted the interim dividend 2% to 6.24p and continued a £1.2bn buyback of which roughly £450m is complete. Its Solvency II ratio stood at 201% at 30 June against 217% a year earlier. The shares moved little.

Coca-Cola HBC reported organic revenue growth of 9.6% and volume growth of 7.5%, a thirteenth consecutive quarter of volume expansion, and narrowed full-year organic operating profit growth guidance to 8% to 10% from 7% to 10%. 4imprint guided to full-year revenue slightly above 2025's $1.35bn and adjusted pre-tax profit of about $130m, against consensus of $1.32bn and $117.1m, though first-half adjusted pre-tax profit fell 12% to $64.8m as tariffs raised supplier costs.

Macro and the Bank of England

There was no Monetary Policy Committee meeting this week. The most recent decision, on 30 July, left Bank Rate at 3.75% for a fifth consecutive meeting on a 6-3 vote — with the three dissenters, Megan Greene, Catherine Mann and Huw Pill, voting to raise rates by a quarter point to 4%. Governor Andrew Bailey said inflation had fallen faster than expected, to 2.6%, while warning that Middle East conflict was keeping energy prices high and volatile. The next decision is on 17 September.

That framing matters for how this week's oil move was read. With three MPC members voting for a hike on energy-driven inflation concerns, a sharp fall in crude did more than hurt Shell and BP — it pushed the market to pare its expectations for further tightening, which is what pulled gilt yields lower on Monday and lifted the housebuilders.

The data was mildly encouraging. The final S&P Global UK manufacturing PMI for July, published on Monday, came in at 51.9 — a ninth straight month of expansion but a four-month low, revised down from the 52.8 flash reading and below June's 52.5. Wednesday's final services PMI was stronger at 52.1, up from 48.8 in June and above the 51.8 flash estimate, with the composite index at 52.2 against 49.3 a month earlier. Sterling held around $1.34 through the week.

Still to come

Diageo's figures on Thursday are the notable one for London: they are the first full-year numbers under chief executive Sir Dave Lewis, and the spirits group is being watched closely for evidence its turnaround is taking hold.

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