Good morning

1) Royal Mail at risk of being broken up after £3.6bn foreign takeover | Fears postal service will be carved up as Czech billionaire nears full ownership

2) Shell and Exxon to sell £390m gas fields in North Sea exit | Oil giants end 60-year long venture in British oil basin

3) Millennial homeownership hits 12-year high as young get richer | Wages among young people have risen faster than the general population since 2015

4) How copying America’s money-printing scheme could save British taxpayers billions | Without change, the Bank of England will be a strain on the Treasury for decades to come

5) BBC cyber attack exposes details of 25,000 current and former staff | Employees told to stay ‘vigilant’ after raid on pension scheme data

What happened overnight 

In America, the S&P 500 closed down 0.7pc, at 5,266.95, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 leading US companies closed down 1.1pc, at 38,441.54, while the Nasdaq Composite index fell 0.6pc, to close at 16,920.58.

Yields on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury bonds hit a four-week high at 4.61pc, up from 4.54pc late on Tuesday.

Hong Kong stocks opened with another loss on Thursday morning following a retreat on Wall Street.

The Hang Seng Index edged down 0.29pc to 18,423.78, the Shanghai Composite Index dropped 0.23pc to 3,103.71, while the Shenzhen Composite Index on China’s second exchange dipped 0.23pc to 1,730.14.

In Tokyo, the benchmark Nikkei 225 index fell 1.15pc to 38,115.19 in early trade, while the broader Topix index lost 1.55pc to 2,699.09.