Welcome to Taking Stock on Friday 22nd September 2023
Taking Stock: Is a look at today's top business news & investment views plus we cover the winners, losers, the most read company news & the most followed. Today this includes:
TOP BUSINESS STORIES
Hope for mortgage rate cuts after Bank of England decision
Mortgage rates should fall following the Bank of England's decision to keep its key interest rate on hold, brokers say.
So far the response has been muted, with the Nationwide the only major lender to reduce mortgage rates since the Bank's announcement was made.
Brokers expect more competition among lenders in the coming weeks.
Harry Potter movie firm set to expand studios in move that could boost economy by '£200m'
The firm behind the Harry Potter film franchise is set to undergo a significant expansion that could boost the UK economy by "more than £200m".
Warner Bros Studios Leavesden (WBSL) will be expanded with the addition of 10 new sound stages and an additional 400,000 sq ft (37,000 sq metres) of production and support space.
Production capacity at the expanded Hertfordshire location will grow by more than 50%, with WBSL becoming a primary production hub for DC Studios.
The project is expected to create 4,000 "direct or indirect" jobs across Britain and grow WBSL's contribution to the UK economy by "more than £200 million", Warner Bros Discovery said.
Microsoft's new Call of Duty deal set for UK approval
The UK's competition watchdog has said Microsoft's revised offer to buy the Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard "opens the door" to the deal being cleared.
The Competition Markets Authority (CMA) said the updated deal appeared to address concerns it had raised.
Under the new proposals, Microsoft will not buy the cloud gaming rights owned by Activision Blizzard.
Its original $69bn (£59bn) deal was blocked by UK regulators.
Earlier this year, the CMA prevented Microsoft from taking on the whole of Activision over concerns that the deal would harm competition in cloud gaming in the UK.
Microsoft then submitted a restructured deal for the competition watchdog to look at last month.
Under the new offer, Microsoft agreed to transfer the rights to stream Activision games from the cloud to the French video games publisher Ubisoft for 15 years.
The sale to Ubisoft of this portion of Activision's business will mean the cloud streaming of games like Call of Duty, Overwatch and World of Warcraft will not come under Microsoft's control.