Just days after Deliveroo made its (conditional, yet disappointing) stock market debut last week, its riders are planning a strike.

“Hundreds” of Deliveroo riders from the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) are expected to hold socially distanced protests in London, York, Sheffield, Reading and Wolverhampton on Wednesday, the union said.

They’re demanding fairer firing policies, better pay, and health and safety protection for riders.

It comes after analysis by the Bureau for Investigative Journalism found that riders were making as little as £2 an hour, and will coincide with the unconditional trading of Deliveroo’s shares on the London Stock Exchange.

Greg Howard, a Deliveroo rider and chair of the Couriers & Logistics Branch of the IWGB has said:

I’m going on strike for my basic rights and those of all the other riders struggling to get by and support families on Deliveroo poverty pay.

I’ve seen conditions decline for years and then working through lockdown I contracted Covid-19 and got very little support from Deliveroo.

After the pandemic more people than ever understand this exploitation is no way to treat anyone, let alone key workers. The turning of the tide is clear. It’s time for rights for riders.

A number of institutional investors refused to take part in Deliveroo’s IPO, with some citing ethical concerns about working conditions for riders who not entitled to earn a minimum wage, holiday or sick pay.

Time for a market round-up.

European stocks are all still in positive territory , and the UK’s FTSE 100 is still leading the pack:

US futures, meanwhile, are pointing to a lower start for indexes that hit record highs on Monday. But futures have pared losses in the past few hours:

• S&P 500 futures are down 0.15%
• Dow future are down 0.14%
• Nasdaq futures are 0.04% lower

Oil prices are solidly in positive territory, with Brent crude prices up 1.6% at $63.15 and WTI up 1.7% at $59.66.

Stephen Innes, chief global markets strategist at Aaxi says the low prospects of an Iranian nuclear deal are helping lift crude prices:

Oil is rebounding from Monday’s selloff despite the front-month WTI contract still below $60/bbl.

Meanwhile, diplomats are gathering in Vienna to discuss resurrecting a nuclear deal but Iranian, and US representatives will not speak directly, which indicates the odds are slim of breakthrough talks, and picking up crude output from Iran in the near team.

Multimillioniare Philip Day has backed a deal to keep his Peacocks fashion chain afloat – saving 2,000 jobs and just under half of the chain’s 423 stores, our retail correspondent Sarah Butler writes.

The deal comes after more than 200 Peacocks stores closed with the loss of more than 2,000 jobs when the chain called in administrators in November last year.

On Tuesday, EWM Group, the private investment firm controlled by the Day family, said it was providing a deferred loan to a management buyout of Peacocks led by Steve Simpson, the chief executive of Edinburgh Woollen Mill and Day’s right-hand man.

The buyout is also being supported by a group of unnamed Middle East investors, understood to be associates of Day, who are providing working capital to help support Peacocks’ return to trading.

The Cardiff-based budget fashion chain, which Albert Peacock founded as a penny bazaar in Warrington, Cheshire, in 1884, was part of Day’s EWM Group, which included Edinburgh Woollen Mill, Jaeger and Ponden Home. The Jaeger brand was bought by Marks & Spencer in January.

BP has cut its debt faster than expected after a “very strong” first quarter, in which it was able to sell off almost $5bn worth of its assets.

BP chief executive Bernard Looney told investors this morning that net debt fell from $38.9bn at the end of 2020 to $35bn, a target BP had hoped to reach by the end of this year or even early next year.

It was able to pay off debt quicker than expected after selling $4.7bn worth of assets in the first quarter and a “very strong business performance”, he explained.

BP’s fast-falling debt could spell a cash windfall for its shareholders after it slashed dividends last year. BP had warned that it would not begin share buybacks until it reached the $35bn debt threshold.

Its share price climbed by 3.5% on Tuesday morning to 299.95p a share.

Shareholders can expect more details on potential share buybacks when it reports its first quarter results on 27 April.

Prime minister Boris Johnson has given some fresh comments about the AstraZeneca vaccine and the rollout of vaccine passports.

According to Reuters, Johnson has said that that the continued advice is to get your shot.

On vaccine passports, he’s said no Covid certificates will be needed once restrictions are eased further on 17 May.

He said the government is looking at the role of Covid passports for overseas travel and the kind of signals you can provide to prove you are not contagious.

Johnson adds that the wants to make things as easy as possible for Covid tests for travel.

However, the prime minister stressed that the government has to be prudent on international travel.

Today marks the launch of the UK government’s Covid Recovery Loan Scheme, which replaces a trio of government-backed business loan programmes including the Coronavirus business interruption loan scheme (CBILS), its larger counterpart CLBILS, and the 100% state-guaranteed bounce back loan scheme (BBLS).

RLS is nowhere near as generous as the other schemes - particularly bounce back loans, which was aimed at the smallest businesses and came with a 2.5% interest rate cap.

But in an apparent effort to wean businesses off of Covid support, the Treasury has set the following terms, that will be managed by participating banks:

• Value: Loans are worth £25,001 to £10m per business, though they can be as low as £1,000 for a portion of the scheme offering invoice financing (a branch of lending that has come under greater scrutiny in light of the Greensill debacle)

• Government guarantee: The taxpayer will cover 80% of the bank’s potential losses if a borrower goes bust and cannot repay the loan. That’s in line with CBILS and CLBILS.

• Pricing: The annual effective rate of interest and upfront and other fees cannot be more than 14.99%. That compares to 2.5% for bounce back loans.

• Personal guarantees: Not permitted on loans less than £250,000, and no business owner can be asked to put their own home up as a guarantee. This cause major controversy last year, when the original CBILs scheme was launched.

Current accredited lenders include: Barclays, Yorkshire Bank, Santander, NatWest, HSBC and Lloyds.

John Lewis is reopening its changing rooms in England for the first time in a year when the high street lockdown ends next week.

The department store is expected to be joined by many other clothing retailers who are taking advantage of a change in government guidelines, which previously urged the closure of fitting rooms during the pandemic.

John Lewis will also be resuming services including children’s shoe fitting, click & collect and beauty packaging recycling at the stores which have been closed since December.

However, only 34 of its shops will reopen after the group announced the permanent closures of eight stores, including Peterborough and York, last month.

Fund manager M&G has announced that its chairman Mike Evans has stepped down to concentrate on his health.

The chairman took a temporary leave of absence at the beginning of the year due to a stress-related illness, but stepped down permanently on 1 April.

He said in a statement:

While I am making good progress on my recovery, I do not feel that I would be able to return to the business before the end of the year.

I have therefore decided, in the best interests of the company and to ensure good governance, that I step down as chair.

The firm, which manages £367.2bn worth of assets and split from Prudential in 2019 , said it would immediately start a search for his replacement.

M&G’s senior independent director Fiona Clutterbuck will become interim chair until a candidate is found.

A weaker pound is helping lift the FTSE 100, since multinational businesses listed on the blue chip index tend to benefit financially when the UK currency is weaker (since it translates into higher revenues).

The pound is down 0.5% against the US dollar at $1.383.

Against the euro, sterling is also 0.5% lower at €1.170.

Profit taking and some new short positions are the culprit, according to Stuart Cole, chief macro strategist at Equiti Capital. The pound has otherwise been rising on the back of Covid restrictions being eased.

Cited by Reuters, Cole said:

It is the reopening of London this morning that is seeing sterling under some initial pressure, as sellers have returned to take advantage of the rally seen over the last 24 hours or so.

There may be some profit taking in the US, where the S&P 500 and Dow both hit record highs last night.

US futures are pointing to a lower open on Wall Street this afternoon:

• S&P 500 futures are down 0.2%
• Nasdaq futures are down 0.2%
• Dow futures are down 0.1%

Speaking to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning, the UK’s vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi confirmed that vaccine passports will not immediately be required as England’s economy re-opens but their use is still on the table.

Zahawi said:

As the Prime Minister, explained yesterday, you’re not going to be required to have a certificate to go to the pub garden on Monday, or inside the pub in May.

But I think it’s only right and responsible to look at all options available to us to be able to reopen the economy in a safe way as possible, as other countries are doing, [otherwise] I’d have to come to our programme explain why we haven’t done this.

However, he acknowledged that the proposal raised “ethical” questions for people who haven’t or perhaps cannot get the vaccine for a variety of reasons.

Domestically, it does raise a number of ethical issues which is why the Prime Minister has asked Michael Gove to look at and review this and Michael has been consulting with parliamentarians with stakeholders on this issue.

And of course we’re gonna run the pilots, the FA Cup Final, the semi final where initially, we will look at testing technology to see whether we can have mass events.

My colleague Jasper Jolly has the full story on Credit Suisse:

Credit Suisse has cancelled the bonuses of its directors, slashed its dividend and announced the departure of two senior executives as the bank revealed £3.4bn in losses from the collapse of the Archegos investment fund.

The Swiss bank is reeling from heavy exposure to Archegos and the business bank Greensill, which suffered successive but unrelated financial blow-ups.

Archegos, a previously almost unknown US hedge fund, was forced to liquidate almost $20bn (£14bn) in assets last week in a fire sale that reverberated around global market. Meanwhile, Greensill, a supply chain lender created by the Australian banker Lex Greensill, is in liquidation and mired in political scandal.

Both caused heavy losses among banks that had backed them.

The Zürich-based bank also announced that its board would not be receiving bonuses for the financial year to 1 April, and cut its dividend by two-thirds, from 0.29 to 0.10 Swiss francs per share.

In a letter to shareholders setting out the measures, Urs Rohner, who has forfeited his fee of 1.5m Swiss francs (£1.2m), particularly emphasised the Archegos losses as the cause of the dividend cut.

Credit Suisse also delayed a shareholder vote to confirm its board of directors.

The bank’s shares have fallen by 19% since 29 March, when the extent of the Archegos chaos became clear.

Credit Suisse shares are down nearly 0.4% but are rapidly recovering as investors digest the news of the dividends cut, the departing executives, bonus cuts and pending Q1 loss linked to Archegos and Greensill.

Back to Credit Suisse, shareholders are also being asked to shoulder some of the pain of the expected Q1 loss, linked to the collapse of Greensill and the fallout of the failed margin calls on Archegos Capital.

Credit Suisse is now proposing a dividend of just 0.10 Swiss francs per share, compared to previous plans for a 0.29 Swiss franc payout that was due to be distributed on 6 May.

As Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst for AvaTrade says the bank has “dark days ahead”:

Pain isn’t over for Credit Suisse, and it seems like that the bank has many dark days ahead. Several high-level staff departures are announced today, and on top of that, the bank also announced that it would be proposing a dividend cut.

All of this is coming at a very wrong time. This is because now is when the banks should be attracting investors by hiking dividends as regulators have eased off some of the restrictions that they put in place since the financial crisis.

But it is the Archegos fallout that has become a significant nightmare for Credit Suisse, and the bank has to take the right steps for its survival as losses are just too big to digest.

Aslam says the decision to axe the two executives may not be welcomed by investors, but someone had to take the fall:

It will be difficult for investors to digest the departure news of two talented high-level staff members, such as the CEO Brian Chin and Chief Risk and Compliance Officer Lara Warner.

But someone had to be held accountable, and a hammer has fallen on these two individuals. Investors certainly do not like to see talent departure, but blunders have been made under the current circumstances, and people need to be held accountable.

We’re waiting for the official print on the SMMT new car registrations for March at 9am BST, but preliminary reports suggest car sales grew 11% last month compared to March 2020.

Around 283,000 new vehicles were registered last month, even though car showrooms stayed shut due to Covid restrictions.

However, that increase is compared to the start of the Covid pandemic, which brought the UK economy to a standstill last year. Reports suggest the increase is still 37% below the average March total.

We’ll bring you official figures once they’re released in about 15min time.

AstraZeneca is one of the worst performers on the FTSE 100 this morning:

It comes after the vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi confirmed reports that the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is considering restricting use of the Oxford/AstrtaZeneca vaccine in people under 30, amid concerns about rare blood clots.

A decision could be made as early as Tuesday.

In the last month, Germany, Italy, France, Spain and the Netherlands have paused the vaccine’s rollout while the EMA investigates.

The vaccine maker is also being hit by news over the weekend that the US has blocked production of the AstraZenaeca/Oxford jab a manufacturing plant in Baltimore, after more than 15 million doses of a separate vaccine produced by Johnson & Johnson were spoiled.

And the belated print from Germany’s DAX shows the index hitting a fresh record after opening 1.1% higher at the start of trading