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It seems one of our own correspondents has been affected by the Equifax data breach.

Earlier this year the company has said personal information of more than 145 million people in the US and the UK may have been exposed.

Image source, Reuters

Shares in financial companies rose strongly on Wall Street on Wednesday, following comments by Jerome Powell that some banking regulations could be eased. The sector was also boosted by the prospect of further interest rate rises.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 104 points or 0.44% at 23,940.68.

The S&P 500 ended the day virtually unchanged - down by 0.04% at 2,626.07

And the Nasdaq was 1.27% or 88 points lower at 6,824.34

The tech-heavy index lost out to investors moving money into banking and other financial stocks.

Image source, PA

Budget airline Wizz Air has secured some take off and landing slots from failed carrier Monarch. It follows the sale of some Monarch slots at Gatwick Airport to British Airways.

The Wizz slots are at Luton. Wizz, listed in London but with the majority of its operations focused on Europe, said it would increase its fleet at Luton by two aircraft to total seven and pushing up its capacity at the airport by 18%.

EasyJet, Wizz and Norwegian had expressed their interest in acquiring Monarch's slots at Gatwick airport.

American Airlines has issued a slightly longer comment on news that a scheduling glitch in its computer system means it might be short of pilots over the Christmas period.

"We are working diligently to address the issue and expect to avoid cancellations this holiday season," the carrier says.

"We have reserve pilots to help cover flying in December, and we are paying pilots who pick up certain open trips 150% of their hourly rate – as much as we are allowed to pay them per the contract.

"We will work with the APA [union] to take care of our pilots and ensure we get our customers to where they need to go over the holidays."

Russian gas giant Gazprom has said its third-quarter net profit was 200.5 billion roubles ($3.4bn), almost doubling from 102.2 billion roubles in the same period last year.

Gazprom said third quarter revenue came in at 1.43 trillion roubles, up from 1.257 trillion roubles last year.

Bitcoin is back below $10,000, after hitting a record high on Wednesday of almost $11,400. The digital currency broke through $10,000 for the first time on Tuesday.

But don't worry, it'll probably be back in record territory soon (or may be crash to $100).

Image source, Getty Images

December is one of the busiest months for airlines, and so you'd want to have enough pilots. But American Airlines may have given a few too many time off.

Thousands of December flights on the carrier do not yet have pilots scheduled to work because of a system scheduling error, the carrier's pilots union says.

The Allied Pilots Association union estimates that more than 15,000 flights from 17-31 December are affected.

"Basically there's a crisis at American for manning the cockpits," said Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association.

Says the airline: "We are working through this to make sure we take care of our pilots and get our customers where they need to go over the holiday."

Image source, Getty Images

Uber's former chief executive and some board members knew of a letter a US judge has said was withheld from a high-stakes lawsuit, an attorney for the company testified on Wednesday.

But Uber's lawyer said she did not disclose the letter to other attorneys defending the company in the trade secrets lawsuit by Alphabet self-driving car unit Waymo, Reuters reports from the hearing.

US District Judge William Alsup called that decision "inexplicable." The letter alleges Uber trained employees to steal trade secrets and hide their activities. "On the surface it looks like you covered this up," he told Uber in court.

Alphabet's Waymo has accused Uber of stealing confidential information about its self-driving car designs, the highest-stakes legal challenge on a list of litigation that Uber's new chief Dara Khosrowshahi inherited when he joined the company in August.

Image source, Reuters

The tech-heavy Nasdaq index slipped further in early afternoon trading on Wednesday as investors shifted to financials that have been bolstered by strong economic data.

The S&P technology index, the best performing sector this year, dropped as much as 3.3%, its worst single-day decline since June 2016.

The so-called FAANG stocks - Facebook, Amazon , Apple, Netflix and Google parent Alphabet - fell between 2.8% and 5.3%.

In contrast, JPMorgan and Bank of America climbed about 2%, putting the S&P financial index on track for its best two-day gain in nearly a year.

The S&P was down 0.15% at 2,623 points, the Dow Jones was up 0.21% at 23,886.98, and the Nasdaq was down 1.34% at 6,820.

Chipotle Mexican Grill gained 3% after the restaurant chain said it would seek a turnaround expert to replace founder Steve Ells as chief executive.

Just Eat's promotion to the FTSE 100 is another bright spot for the firm after seeing its £240m takeover of rival Hungryhouse given the green light by the Competition and Markets Authority earlier this month.

Russ Mould, AJ Bell investment director, said: "Online food order and delivery service Just Eat's arrival in the UK's corporate elite is all the more remarkable as it was only floated in April 2014.

"The shares have stormed from a flotation price of 260p to north of 800p since then, to give the firm a market cap of £5.6bn, bigger than each of Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's and Morrisons.

"This shows how the internet places a focus not just on price but on service and Just Eat's success is testimony to its ability to harness the power of both technology and consumer satisfaction."

Image source, Getty Images

Apple says it has found a fix to a serious security flaw within its Mac operating system.

The Silicon Valley giant has just issued this statement:

"Security is a top priority for every Apple product, and regrettably we stumbled with this release of macOS. When our security engineers became aware of the issue Tuesday afternoon, we immediately began working on an update that closes the security hole.

"This morning, as of 8am, the update is available for download, and starting later today it will be automatically installed on all systems running the latest version (10.13.1) of macOS High Sierra.

"We greatly regret this error and we apologize to all Mac users, both for releasing with this vulnerability and for the concern it has caused. Our customers deserve better. We are auditing our development processes to help prevent this from happening again."

Food delivery firm Just Eat is joining the list of Britain's biggest companies. The firm's elevation to the FTSE 100 was confirmed in the latest reshuffle of the index.

Paper packaging group DS Smith and health and safety tech firm Halma also join the FTSE 100.

The firms replace Convatec, Merlin Entertainments, and Babcock.

Just Eat's shares have soared 43% this year on the back of revenue growth and acquisitions.

Analyst Nicholas Hyett, of Hargreaves Lansdown, said Just Eat is the first straight consumer tech stock to reach the FTSE 100.

He said: "Obviously many of the FTSE 100 retailers are increasingly focussed on online service delivery. The UK isn’t totally bereft of large technology businesses though.

"Sage and Micro Focus are both software businesses and comfortably in the FTSE 100, while it wouldn’t be surprising to see Sophos knocking on the door in the near future given their recent rate of growth."

The FTSE 100 sank further into the red in late afternoon trading, ending 0.9% down at 7,393.5 points. Gold producer Randgold was the biggest faller, 6% lower as the price of the metal fell.

Retailers and bank stocks were the main risers. Next and Marks & Spencer were up 4.3% and 3.8% respectively, while RBS and Barclays rose 3.8% and 3.6%.

Image source, AFP

The proportion of UK company shares owned by foreign investors has reached another record high. Some 53.9% of shares on the UK stock markets belonged to the rest of the world at the end of last year.

This is a small rise on the previous high of 53.7% recorded in 2014. By contrast just 12.3% of shares in 2016 were owned by UK individuals.

The figures, from the Office for National Statistics, put the value of UK domiciled company shares at £2.04 trillion, making the foreign-owned shares worth around £1.09 trillion.

The latest rise reflects the steady increase in foreign investment in the UK since the early 1990s, which saw the proportion of UK shares owned by the rest of the world pass 25% by 1997 and 50% by 2012.

North America accounted for the largest proportion of foreign shareholders, holding 48.1% of the total value of all foreign-owned shares. European investors were the next largest foreign group (25.7%), followed by Asia (15.5%), Africa (4.1%) and the Middle East (2.9%).

Offshore UK investors accounted for the smallest proportion of any group based outside the UK, with 0.6% of all foreign-owned shares by value.

First secretary Damian Green says he hopes to reach an agreement so that UK cities remain eligible.

Image source, Getty Images

Amid the bruising boardroom row that sees London Stock Exchange chief Xavier Rolet leave, observers have been waiting to see if hedge fund TCI would comment.

TCI had accused LSE chairman Donald Brydon of pushing Rolet out and called a shareholder meeting to try to reverse the decision and oust Brydon.

Well, it looks like TCI founder Chris Hohn will be commenting - but not until tomorrow.

Says Hohn in reply to a letter from the LSE: "Thank you for your letter of today. We intend to respond to your letter tomorrow."

Key will be whether Hohn regards the matter closed, or if the dispute is set to run.

It was also announced on Wednesday that Brydon will step down in 2019.

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said on Tuesday that the situation needed to be cleared up as soon as possible.