Transport secretary to meet under fire air traffic control boss after UK flight disruption – business live

British transport secretary Heidi Alexander will meet the boss of the UK’s airspace controller today to discuss the 20-minute failure of computer systems that led to widespread disruption yesterday.

Martin Rolfe, the chief executive of NATS, formerly the National Air Traffic Service, is under pressure over the issue, the second to cause major disruption over the last two years.

Ryanair’s chief operating officer, Neal McMahon, called for Rolfe to resign yesterday after disruption at airports including London’s Heathrow and Stansted – although the Irish airline has had a vendetta against NATS for years, and calls for the boss’s resignation at every opportunity.

Alexander said that she would meet NATS today to try to “prevent reoccurrence” of the glitches. She posted on the X social network:

Departures at all airports resumed yesterday and @NATS are working closely with airlines and airports to clear the backlog safely and look after passengers. I will be meeting the NATS Chief Executive today to understand what happened and how we can prevent reoccurrence.

Rolls-Royce’s share price has soared by 10.5% in early trading this morning, to a new record high – with the company’s valuation breaking the £90bn mark for the first time.

The jet engine manufacturer was valued at £83bn yesterday evening, so another 10% gain puts its valuation at more than £92bn. Its market value has almost doubled over the course of 2025 – an astonishing run for a company that faced an existential threat during the coronavirus pandemic.

The company’s turnaround has so far been a triumph for chief executive Tufan Erginbilgic, who ruffled feathers on taking over the business in 2023 by saying it was on a “burning platform”.

Since then Erginbilgic has cut costs, and pushed customers to pay more for its products through renegotiating contracts for maintaining jet engines that go on widebody planes such as the Airbus A350 and Boeing’s 787.

The company also received a recent boost from the UK government’s decision to choose it to deliver the first small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) – factory-produced nuclear power stations that aim to cut costs.

Rolls-Royce said the SMR business – which it hopes could eventually be bigger than the existing revenues – should be “profitable and free cash flow positive by 2030” – ahead of delivery of the first SMRs a couple of years later.

Next has reported bumper sales between May and July, as sunnier UK weather and a disruptive hack at rival M&S sent customers flocking to the clothes and homewares retailer.

Full price sales at Next in the thirteen weeks to 26 July surged by 10.5%, which was £49m ahead of its guidance for the period for a 6.5% rise in takings.

Next said, referring to the devastating cyber-attack that hit retailer M&S:

In the UK, we believe that the over-performance was largely due to better than expected weather and trading disruption at a major competitor.

The hack forced M&S to pause customer orders through its website for almost seven weeks, before resuming them in June, and let to some shortages in stores.

But Next said its own international sales also grew faster than expected, which it chalked up to a digital marketing strategy that “proved more effective than anticipated”.

Good morning, and welcome to our live coverage of business, economics and financial markets.

It is a bit of a barrage of company earnings today, led by FTSE 100 oil company Shell.

Shell reported adjusted earnings of $4.3bn (£3.2bn) for the second quarter of 2025, better than the $3.7bn expected by analysts – albeit lower than the $6.3bn it reported the same time a year ago.

Nevertheless, it was the 15th consecutive quarter that the oil company has returned more than $3bn to shareholders via buybacks – with another $3.5bn added today, plus dividends of $2.1bn.

The almost four-year shareholder bonanza was a period that included the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which sparked a global energy crisis that was damaging to household finances – but hugely profitable for oil companies.

Shell’s profits sparked anger among environmental campaigners, after the company last year rolled back decarbonisation targets.

Robin Wells, director of Fossil Free London, a campaign group that protested outside Shell’s headquarters last night, said:

We are now in a new normal of record-breaking heat, created by corporations like Shell. This will mean devastation and mass loss of human life. Climate scientists have warned us that this new normal will spell the end of human civilization by 2100. It’s time for destruction to stop raising billions in profit.

Rolls-Royce raises profits forecasts by £400m

Rolls-Royce is another company that has delivered huge returns to shareholders with a turnaround plan that has been helped by the recovery of air travel since the coronavirus pandemic.

The jet engine manufacturer said underlying operating profit rose by 50% to £1.7bn for the first half of 2025, with a profit margin of 19.1%.

The manufacturer, whose main operations are in Derby, raised its profit forecast for the year from a range of £2.7bn-£2.9bn to £3.1bn-£3.2bn. It has also been helped by the huge boom in weapons spending since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; Rolls-Royce makes jet engines for fighter jets.

The agenda

• 10am BST: Eurozone unemployment rate (June; previous: 6.3%; consensus: 6.3%)

• 10am BST: Italy inflation rate (July; previous: 1.7%; consensus: 1.5%)

• 1pm BST: Germany inflation rate (July; previous: 2%; consensus: 1.9%)

• 1:30pm BST: US core personal consumption expenditures inflation rate (June; previous: 0.2%; consensus: 0.3%)