Business information stay: FTSE 100 rises and Tesla poised to realize $25bn

Grants to support affordable housing to the tune of £39bn have been announced too.

The stated aims of 1.5m homes across the term of parliament have been suggested to be out of reach without further help.

The FTSE 100 housebuilders including Barratt Redrow, Persimmon and Taylor Wimpey have all been up between 1.4 and 1.9 per cent today in anticipation of this boost.

Defence remains high on the spending agenda.

Ms Reeves has pledged to make “make Britain a defence industrial superpower”, with spending to rise to 2.6 per cent of GDP by 2027.

Defence stocks have been on the rise this year, with Babcock International up 109% in 2025, BAE Systems up 62% and Rolls Royce up 56%.

The Independent’s Political Correspondent Millie Cooke said:

The uplift to Britain’s defence spending “could not come at a more crucial moment”, a TNT manufacturer has said, warning that the UK and Europe are “lagging dangerously far behind Russia, and access to munitions is deciding the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine”.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves is currently laying out her plan from the spending review.

Highlights and key points regarding business and the economy to follow next here, but for the full focus of Ms Reeves’ plan follow our political live blog here.

A female entrepreneur was left feeling “absolutely humiliated” after she was refused entry to London Tech Week because she was with her 18-month-old daughter.

Davina Schonle had travelled for three hours to get to the event at Olympia, where she planned to meet potential suppliers for her new start-up AI company.

But on arrival on Monday, she said officials prevented her from entering with her daughter, Isabella, who was in a pram.

Full story here:

The pound had slipped about 0.1% earlier today against the dollar, ahead of the chancellor’s spending review.

Over the last hour or so it has regained that ground though and remains effectively flat for the day now – £1 to $1.3499.

It continues to lose a little ground against the Euro however, 0.1% down at £1 to €1.18.

Gold is holding steady today, up just about a third of a percent, at $3354.

The price is tipped above $3400 a couple of times this year already, so we’re not quite at all time high territory, but after a 45% rise over the last year a little consolidation is no surprise.

Most analysts still expect it to rise higher towards $3800 later this year.

Meanwhile, silver is down 0.4% today, and crude oil is 1.4% up – continuing gains over the last month which now stand at 8%, having dropped as low as $57 in early May.

The FTSE 100 and the FTSE 250 are not the UK’s only markets of course – the AIM has long been a key arena for growing companies to thrive in, and for investors to seek outsized gains in by way of carrying more risk.

It is getting smaller though, but as as AJ Bell’s Dan Coatsworth points out, that isn’t necessarily all a bad thing.

“AIM turns 30 on 19 June and its celebrations have been overshadowed by the shrinking number of companies on the market. While it is natural to see the tail end disappear as tiny companies cannot justify the cost of being listed, and takeovers across the market continue with pace, there is an underappreciated trend elsewhere.

“The number of AIM companies shifting their listing to London’s Main Market so far in 2025 is near a three-year high and we’re not even halfway through the year.

“If all the intended companies complete their transfer in the coming months, it would be the same number of transfers so far this year as the total number of stocks moving from AIM to the Main Market across 2023 and 2024 combined.

“Importantly, this trend is not necessarily a negative factor. One could argue AIM was designed to act as a stepping stone to the Main Market and it’s a positive that companies feel they’ve reached a level of maturity to move to the premier league.

“Since 2004, AJ Bell calculates that 130 companies have moved from AIM to the Main Market. Many are now in the top tier indices and others have been taken over at a big premium to the market price.”

Rachel Reeves will vow to “invest in Britain’s renewal” as she reveals her spending plans for the coming years on Wednesday.

The Chancellor is expected to announce big increases in spending on the NHS, defence and schools as part of a spending review set to include £113 billion of investment thanks to looser borrowing rules.

She will also reveal changes to the Treasury’s “green book” rules that govern which projects receive investment in an effort to boost spending outside London and the South East.

Arguing that this investment is “possible only because of the stability I have introduced” after the October budget, Ms Reeves is expected to say her spending review will “ensure that renewal is felt in people’s everyday lives, their jobs, their communities”.

Related to Mr Musk’s latest social media posts or not, Tesla are set for an uplift this afternoon when US markets open.

Having surged more than 5% higher yesterday, the EV maker is set to open another 2.5% higher this afternoon – equivalent to around $24bn (£17.8bn) in market capitalisation for the trillion-dollar company.

Perhaps of more relevance to that uplift is Elon Musk revealing that Tesla’s self-driving robotaxis will be offered to the public from 22 June.

“The date could shift” due to safety matters still, he added – and later this month new Teslas will also self-drive themselves from factory to customer home for the first time.

Tesla owner Elon Musk has taken to his social media platform X to say he “regret[s] some of my posts about” President Trump.

Last week the pair got into what amounted to a petty slanging match worth billions of dollars.

Tesla shares are up 2.5% in pre-trading but remain down almost 20% in 2025.