Markets & Finance

Kingfisher posted adjusted pre-tax profit of £404 million for the first half of fiscal 2026/27, a 9.9% increase driven by 70 basis points of gross-margin expansion and 42% marketplace GMV growth, though a £14 million one-off UK business-rates refund accounts for part of that gain. Stripping out the refund, underlying profit growth was 6.1%. The company has raised its full-year adjusted pre-tax profit guidance to £595 million–£635 million and its free-cash-flow guidance to £480 million–£520 million, with Screwfix delivering 5.6% like-for-like growth while B&Q declined 2.9%.

Aimia Inc. has set September 29, 2026 as its revised AIM admission date, listing all 88,121,585 existing common shares with no new capital raise attached. The move is structured as an introduction, leaving the company's issued share capital unchanged while aiming to improve liquidity and narrow the discount between its share price and the intrinsic value of its holdings. Key figures including market capitalisation and issue price remain undisclosed ahead of admission.

Volkswagen's September 18 ad-hoc disclosure reduced its 2026 operating return-on-sales forecast from a range of 4.0–5.5% to a maximum of 1%, driven by approximately €10 billion in special charges including a €6 billion non-cash goodwill impairment tied to the Porsche business segment and additional asset write-downs at Chinese operations. Adjusted for these special items, Volkswagen expects its underlying operating margin to remain near 4%, but the headline figure marks a sharp deterioration in reported profitability. The revision also triggered a guidance cut at Porsche Automobil Holding SE, whose adjusted group result forecast shifted from a range of €1.5–3.5 billion to minus €0.5 billion to plus €1.5 billion, reflecting its equity-accounted exposure to Volkswagen's results.

A bankruptcy court approved Genesis Healthcare's settlement on September 15, 2026, structured as $150 million in aggregate consideration and more than $430 million in cancelled debt held by Landau-affiliated entities, while requiring roughly $233 million in Welltower and Omega secured obligations to be paid in full. Court filings do not support the $640 million or $581 million headline figures that appeared in external reporting, and the asset sale to 101 W State Street Holdings LLC remains pending with a contractual outside closing date of November 1, 2026. Readers tracking the Genesis wind-down will find a precise breakdown of what the court actually approved versus what circulated in trade coverage, and what financial and regulatory steps must still occur before the case closes.

IEX Options has tentatively scheduled its first symbol tranche for October 2, 2026, following the SEC's immediate effectiveness of SR-IEX-2026-31, which removed an inapplicable market-order conversion provision and added Post Only orders to the Drill-Through Protection exclusion list. OCC has confirmed it intends to begin clearing for IEX Options on that date, with five additional rollout tranches planned through October 30. The launch remains conditional: IEX labels the date tentative, and whether the September 19 industry test passed has not been confirmed in available sources.

The SEC has granted accelerated approval to OCC rule change SR-OCC-2026-007, requiring OCC to pay Clearing Members monthly interest on eligible margin cash at the Federal Reserve's IORB rate less a 10-basis-point administrative fee, covering balances that averaged approximately $2.5 billion in the year before filing. The rule also permits securities-customer cash margin to be deposited in OCC's Federal Reserve Bank account, which the SEC found reduces custody risk by adding a sovereign custodian alongside existing commercial banks and reverse-repo investments. OCC anticipates moving roughly $1.8 billion of the remaining margin cash into the Federal Reserve account, pending completion of a separate subaccount for securities-customer margin.