The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors reports that the UK housing market downturn is easing, though sentiment among surveyors remains "fragile", according to the day's business coverage. The headline development, however, is a heavy fall in AstraZeneca shares, which dropped around 9%, after its heart disease drug Wainua failed a late-stage clinical trial, dragging the FTSE 100 down 0.5% to 10,435. This matters because AstraZeneca is the UK's largest pharmaceutical company and the setback affects a treatment aimed at hundreds of thousands of patients worldwide.

The drug, developed with US biotech Ionis, did not deliver a statistically significant benefit in reducing cardiovascular deaths and recurring heart events, though the firms will present full data in August. Separately, outsourcing group Capita warned that failures on the UK civil service pension contract would cut annual profit by £25m–£40m, sending its shares down 17%; the government has withheld £9.9m over missed deadlines, and chief executive Adolfo Hernandez admitted the work was "not good enough". Meanwhile, renewed US–Iran tensions kept oil markets volatile, with Brent trading near $78 a barrel.