10 things you need to know in markets October 2

FILE
PHOTO: A flag with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) logo is seen during a meeting of OPEC and
non-OPEC countries in Vienna
Thomson
Reuters

Good morning! Here’s what you need to know in markets on Tuesday.

1. Oil prices edged up on Tuesday, holding near a four-year high
reached the previous day as markets adjust to the prospect of
tighter supply once the U.S. sanctions against Iran kick in next
month. Brent crude oil futures were trading at
$85.10 per barrel at 7.50 a.m. BST (2.50 a.m. ET), up 0.15% from
their last close.

2. With oil prices hitting fresh four-year highs, long-dormant
proposals to allow the United States to sue OPEC nations are
getting a fresh look in Congress, though they were once
considered a longshot to becoming law. A U.S.
Senate subcommittee on Wednesday will hear testimony on the
so-called No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act, or NOPEC,
which would revoke the sovereign immunity that has long shielded
OPEC members from U.S. legal action.

3. Samsung Electronics is set to post a hefty jump in
third-quarter profit to record levels after its chip unit put in
a sterling performance on demand from data centers and improved
production yields. The July-September quarter
is, however, expected to mark a peak in earnings as a two-year
super cycle of tight supply and soaring demand comes to an end,
with prices of some types of chips already sliding sharply.

4. Thomson Reuters said on Monday it had completed the sale of a
majority stake in its Financial & Risk (F&R) unit to
private equity firm Blackstone Group. The news
and information provider agreed in January to sell a 55-percent
stake in the business, which provides data and news primarily to
financial customers, in a deal which values the total F&R
business at about $20 billion.

5. Boris Johnson, Britain’s former foreign minister, has told
senior members of the governing Conservative Party he would delay
Brexit by at least six months if he became prime minister, the
Sun newspaper said on Monday. The Sun reported
that Johnson had been privately setting out his leadership
platform to some ministers in Prime Minister Theresa May’s
government and said he wanted to use a pause to reset the stalled
Brexit negotiations.

6. Facebook-owned Instagram on Monday announced that Adam
Mosseri, the current vice president of product, will take over as
the new head of the photo-sharing app. In a
blog post, Instagram’s co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike
Krieger, who have announced their departure from the company,
said Mosseri will oversee all functions of the business and will
recruit a new executive team.

7. Three companies that provide cross-border payment services
plan to use technology developed by startup Ripple that employs
cryptocurrency XRP to speed transactions, the firms said on
Monday. Ripple, a large holder and promoter of
XRP, said its platform for cross border payments, called xRapid,
is now commercially available and that it had signed up firms
Cuallix, MercuryFX and Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union as
clients.

8. British Prime Minister Theresa May’s plans to leave the
European Union are damaging and inviable, Scotland’s First
Minister Nicola Sturgeon will say on Tuesday. “The
prime minister’s current position – that we must leave the single
market regardless of the consequences – is an act of wilful
economic vandalism,” Sturgeon will tell the Europa Institute in
Edinburgh.

9. American business schools — including elite universities like
Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton — reported a
decline in applications this year, as young professionals are
wary to leave their jobs for
school. Applications for business school
programs in the United States experienced a roughly 7% decline
compared to 2017, according to findings
released by the Graduate Management Admission
Council on Monday.

10. Almost a million public sector jobs, including half a million
jobs in the NHS, could be slashed as part of a plan being pushed
by the prime minister’s former policy
chief. The Conservative MP and former health
minister, George Freeman, told Business Insider that he would
like to see hundreds of thousands of jobs in the NHS and wider
public sector “automated” through greater use of technology.