That’s all for today.

Hope you have a lovely festive break, and that Santa pays his traditional visit (although he didn’t linger long in the London stock market today!).

Here are today’s stories:

Merry Christmas! GW

Last-minute shopper numbers are sharply down on their pre-pandemic levels today, although retailers are busier than last year.

Data analysts Springboard report that retail footfall this morning was 21% lower than on Christmas Eve 2019, just before the pandemic, showing the impact of the omicron variant on retailers.

But it’s 30% busier than Christmas Eve 2020 when non-essential shops in parts of the country had been forced to close, and vaccines hadn’t yet been rolled out.

Retail footfall up to noon was 13.9% higher than a week ago. But struggling high streets have only seen a 6.7% weekly jump, while retail parks are 23.6% busier and shopping centres have nearly 20% more customers.

Footfall in Central London has plunged by 30% week-on-week, reflecting that many more office workers are at home, perhaps cutting their social contact ahead of Christmas Day meet-ups.

In city centres outside London, footfall was 10% lower than last week.

Springboard says:

The increased activity in retail parks today will in part be due to trips for food and grocery products as the majority of retail parks have a food store. However, since the start of Covid, retail parks has consistently been more resilient in retaining shoppers as they are large open spaces, with large stores which make shoppers feel safer and less nervous.

Their shopper numbers throughout this period have been boosted by the presence of food stores, as despite the growth of online food shopping, it only peaked at 11% of total retail spend and is now at around 10%.

The UK’s benchmark stock market index hit a 22-month high on Friday, coming within touching distance of the levels seen in February 2020 just before stock markets around the world were sent into a tailspin by the first European lockdown, my colleague Jasper Jolly reports.

The FTSE 100 hit an intra-day high of 7,403.65 points – surpassing the previous post-lockdown high that it hit last month – before slipping back one point to close at a Christmas Eve loss.

Traders on the London Stock Exchange downed tools at 12:30pm on Friday to mark Christmas Eve, while exchanges across much of Europe were closed.

Markets have been boosted in recent days by data suggesting that the latest variant of concern, Omicron, is not as severe as previously thought. British Airways owner International Airlines Group was among the biggest gainers, up 1.9%, while hotels group Intercontinental also edged up by 1.2% – both are particularly sensitive to pandemic restrictions.

The cautious optimism around Omicron has helped the FTSE 100 to gain 4.4% so far during December. That would be its best month since November 2020, when news of Pfizer’s first successful vaccine prompted a global rally.

The morning rally left the FTSE just shy of its closing point on Friday 21 February 2020 of 7,403.92 – the day Italy imposed a lockdown in the regions of Lombardy and Padua, sending markets around the world plummeting when they reopened the next Monday. The value of the FTSE 100 companies dropped by £62bn that day.

Investors look out for a “Santa rally” on markets at the end of the year, as the low volumes combine with other factors that may include end-of-year portfolio adjustments. The S&P 500, Wall Street’s benchmark, appeared to catch that mood with a fresh record high on Thursday, although the positive sentiment faded on the FTSE 100 on Friday.

The government is planning to send out a UK-wide mobile alert urging the public to get a Covid booster, a move mobile operators fear could spark a backlash from customers opposed to vaccinations, my colleague Mark Sweney reports.

The UK’s biggest mobile operators – EE, O2, Vodafone and Three UK – have been asked by the government to send a message on Boxing Day.

The campaign, in which mobile operators would send a message on behalf of the government to their tens of millions of customers, is understood to have not yet been given final signoff.

The message is likely to be on behalf of the NHS, with the text encouraging all adults to get an additional vaccination.

The proposed copy of the text message will say:

“Get boosted now. Every adult needs a Covid-19 booster vaccine to protect against Omicron. Get your Covid-19 vaccine or booster. See NHS website for details.”

It is understood that the mobile operators will all enable the message to be sent, but some are agreeing with reluctance given the highly politicised nature of the vaccination programme.

“Operators feel a little nervous about angering some customers because it is such a heated issue,” a telecoms industry source said. “We will make it happen, but don’t want those who don’t agree with the message to blame us.”

Here’s the full story:

We’re into the closing stock market auction.... and the rally has rather fizzled out.

The FTSE 100 index has dropped back from this morning’s 22-month high, to close 1 point lower at 7372 points.

That’s a bit of an anticlimax, after the blue-chip index was on the brink of recovering all its losses since the crash that began on 24th February 2020.

More companies rose than fell today (55 vs 42, with three unchanged), but heavyweight stocks such as miners Antofagasta and BHP Group lost ground in a quiet session.

But, travel and hospitality stocks did still strengthen, amid speculation that further pandemic restrictions may be avoided if Omicron proves to be milder than Delta.

Airline group IAG rose 1.86%, and Premier Inns owner Whitbread gained 1.2%.

Among smaller companies on the FTSE 250 index, holiday firm TUI jumped over 4%, easyJet gained 1.9%, and cruise group Carnival picked up 2.3%.

The FTSE 100 has now hit its highest level since the markets began to crash in late February 2020.

The blue-chip index has touched 7403.65 points, a new 22-month high. That’s just over the previous pandemic high set in November 2021, in today’s thin pre-Christmas trading.

It’s a broad rally, with 75 of the hundred companies on the index up today.

Travel and hospitality companies are still doing well, with InterContinental Hotels (+2%) now the top riser.

Stocks are creeping higher in London, lifting the FTSE 100 nearer to its pandemic high.

The blue-chip index is now up 21 points, or 0.3%, at 7394 - putting November’s 20-month high of 7402.68 points in sight.

The Footsie, which contains the hundred largest companies listed in London, has rallied by over 14% this year, helped by hopes of economic recovery from the pandemic.

But it’s still below its pre-Covid levels, unlike US and other European indices, as the FTSE 100 suffers from a lack of major tech companies listed in the City.

Pharmaceuticals group Hikma (+1.8%) is now the top riser, followed by BA parent company IAG (+1.7%), online grocery business Ocado (+1.5%), and Premier Inns owner Whitbread.

The Selfridges deal is the latest instalment of a rollercoaster history for the brand founded by a retail legend, our retail correspondent Sarah Butler writes:

After more than 20 years rising through the ranks of the Marshall Field’s store in Chicago, in 1906 the US entrepreneur Harry Gordon Selfridge arrived in the UK with one intention: to found a great department store.

By some accounts, he was tempted to the UK by Liverpudlian Samuel J Waring Jr, who had built up a string of furnishings stores in London and wanted someone to run a neighbouring shop to his new Waring and Gillow outlet on Oxford Street.

It was initially intended to be called Selfridge-Waring store, but Selfridge took control when his partner hit financial difficulties and the new store opened in March 1909 under his name alone.

From the start, Selfridge embraced retail theatre and was determined his store would be “a civic centre, where friends can meet and buying is only a secondary consideration”. On the opening day, which drew enormous crowds, the store dazzled shoppers with live music, abundant floral displays and copious lighting in its airy halls.

The store sold a huge range of goods but, out of respect for his early business partner, not food or furnishings. It housed a library, a rest room for ladies, a picture gallery and a restaurant linked to a roof garden.

Selfridges set a new benchmark for UK department stores, ditching the tradition of housing staff above the shop and opting for large modern window displays more akin to advertising than the practice of piling up as many goods as possible.

When the store was awarded one of English Heritage’s blue plaques in 2003, the charity said: “It is largely thanks to Selfridge that Oxford Street remains the commercial heart of the West End.”.

More here:

The big news of the morning is that Selfridges, the UK-based department store chain, has been acquired in a £4bn deal by Thai conglomerate Central Group and Signa, an Austrian real estate group.

The deal will see the return of the luxury department store’s former boss Vittorio Radice.

The firms have bought the group from Canada’s Weston family, and are thought to have beaten off rival bids from the Qatar Investment Authority, which owns Harrods, and Lane Crawford, a Hong Kong-based department store owner.

The Thai group, which began with one store in Bangkok run by Tiang Chirathivat in the 1950s, last year listed part of the business on the Thai stock exchange, and has other interests in convenience stores, shopping centres and hotels. Signa is owned and run by René Benko, one of Austria’s richest men.

The deal with the Westons includes Selfridges’ four UK stores – in London, Birmingham and two in Manchester – as well as Brown Thomas and Arnotts in Ireland and De Bijenkorf in the Netherlands. It also covers about £2bn of the chain’s prime property assets, including the freehold of its listed Oxford Street flagship store in London.

Here’s the full story:

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

Just one trading day in the City until Christmas, and investors are straining to see signs of the fabled Santa Rally.

US stocks rallied last night, as traders took heart from mounting evidence that the Omicron variant of coronavirus is milder. The S&P 500 closed at a record high - it’s 68th this year - and European markets staged their own rally on Thursday.

As Kent Engelke, chief economic strategist at Capitol Securities Management, told Morningstar:

“Today, it is about economic optimism that this variant is not going to be as bad as delta and original virus.”

Last night, a UK government study showed that the risk of being admitted to hospital is up to 70% less for people with Omicron compared to those infected with Delta.

Australia’s share market has joined the festive cheer, with the ASX index rising 0.4% in the Christmas Eve session, with financial stocks, mining and gas companies and tech among the gainers.

The markets have a habit of rallying around Christmas time (news depending...), and Jeffrey Halley of OANDA says it has arrived:

Thankfully, reporters have stopped asking me if we will get a Santa Claus rally in stock markets, as it has well and truly arrived.

Wall Street rose again overnight after a strong procession on US data and markets convincing themselves even more, that omicron is a mildly symptomatic storm in a teacup.

But in the UK, concerns about rising financial distress on the high street and at hospitality firms is hitting the mood.

My colleague Sarah Butler explains:

More than 35,000 British retailers and 20,000 bars and restaurants are facing significant financial distress, according to new data, while shoppers are forecast to spend almost a quarter less in physical stores this Boxing Day than before the pandemic.

If fashion and footwear shops, furniture businesses and other “non-essential” retailers are allowed to remain open from 26 December, £3.94bn is expected to be spent in stores and online that day, 10% less than before the pandemic and 1% lower than last year.

Spending in physical stores alone is expected to fall by 23% compared with 2019 as many shoppers avoid high streets, shopping centres and retail parks amid fears over the Omicron variant of coronavirus.

Yesterday, the FTSE 100 hit a six-week closing high, near to its highest since the pandemic crash in March.

But it could be a subdued start today, with the blue-chip index expected to dip a little. It could be a quiet session, with trading finishing early at lunchtime (hurrah).