Bitcoin breaks $81,000 for first time on Trump trades; UK government sells £1bn of NatWest shares – business live

The British biotech sector has received a boost, after London-based Autolus Therapeutics, a UCL spinout, received US regulatory approval for its new treatment for a rare form of leukaemia.

The US Food and Drug Administration has given the UK biotech marketing approval for Aucatzyl, for the treatment of adults with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), a severe form of blood cancer that is fatal without treatment.

Spun out from University College London in 2014, the business develops programmed T-cell therapies: also known as living medicines, they re-engineer patients’ immune systems to recognise and attack cancer.

Elias Jabbour, US lead investigator of the FELIX clinical trial of the drug, and professor of leukaemia at The University of Texas, said:

Adult ALL is an extremely aggressive cancer, and there is a high unmet medical need that exists in the treatment of patients with this disease once they relapse, where historically they suffer from poor outcomes.

This milestone approval, based on the demonstrated clinical benefit of Aucatzyl, brings new hope for adult patients with relapsed/refractory B-ALL.

The drug, a T-cell immunotherapy that is delivered via infusion, will be manufactured at Autolus’ manufacturing site in Stevenage.

Around 8,400 new cases of adult ALL are diagnosed every year in the US and EU.

Christian Itin, chief executive of Autolus, said it was “a proud day” for the firm.

This milestone is the culmination of many years of hard work, the foundational work by our partners at UCL and the unwavering commitment of our internal team, our external partners and shareholders.

The company floated on Nasdaq in 2018, and counts the British life science investment firm Syncona, as well as Blackstone Life Sciences among its backers.

UK and other European stocks have risen at the opening bell, while oil prices edged higher after falling earlier, as the threat of supply disruptions from a US storm faded.

The FTSE 100 index in London has added 58 points, or 0.7%, to 8,129 in early trading. NatWest shares rose by 1.6% to £3.86 at after the Treasury announced that it had sold another large chunk of its shareholding back to the bank for £1bn, at £3.81 each.

Germany’s Dax rose by 0.9% while France’s CAC advanced by 0.8% and Italy’s FTSE Mib rose by 1.1%.

In oil markets, Brent crude rose by 0.2% to $74.02 a barrel while US light crude was little changed at $70.44 a barrel.

Both benchmarks fell by more than 2% on Friday. China’s stimulus plan disappointed investors. The country’s oil consumption has barely grown this year as economic growth has slowed.

Donald Trump’s election promises of raising import tariffs to boost the US economy have clouded the global economic outlook, although expectations that he could tighten sanctions on Opec producers Iran and Venezuela and cut oil supply to global markets helped oil prices to gain more than 1% last week.

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Bitcoin has soared to a new record high of more than $81,000, following Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election last week and the election of some pro-crypto candidates to Congress.

The world’s best-known cryptocurrency has more than doubled since its low of $38,505 in January. It touched a record high of $81,899 and is now trading at $81,024, up 5.9% on the day.

Trump promised to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet” on the campaign trail and to create a strategic stockpile of bitcoin. He also said he would appoint financial regulators that favour digital assets, and sack the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler. Gensler has led the regulator’s crackdown on cryptocurrencies.

Other cryptocurrencies such as ether and dogecoin, promoted by Trump ally Elon Musk, also rose.

Other so-called ‘Trump trades’ – from US stocks to shorting bonds – have lost some steam since the election, but cryptocurrencies are still powering ahead.

However, one analyst told Reuters that while bitcoin’s rise is fuelled on hopes for reduced regulation of cryptocurrencies, Trump’s focus on other issues could mean he does not do much on crypto initially.

Matt Simpson, senior market analyst at City Index, also said:

Bitcoin’s Trump-pump is alive and well… with Republicans on the cusp of taking the house to confirm a red wave in Congress, it seems the crypto crowd are betting on digital-currency deregulation.

In the UK, NatWest has bought back shares worth £1bn from the government, taking a further step towards full private ownership following the bank’s bailout during the financial crisis.

In the summer, the government ditched a plan to sell shares to retail investors.

The government and NatWest said this morning that the Treasury’s shareholding will drop from 14.2% to 11.4%, after selling shares for nearly £3.81, the bank’s closing price on Friday.

The sale means the government has now recouped more than £20bn from the sale of shares held since a 2008 bailout during the financial crisis, when the Treasury stepped in to prevent the bank, then called Royal Bank of Scotland, from going under.

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