Category: Economy

The UK economy contracted in the second quarter, with households cutting spending as the cost of living crisis began to bite and health sector output falling as Covid cases and testing declined. Gross domestic product, the measure of the quantity of goods and services produced, fell 0.1 per cent in the second quarter of the […]

UK prime minister Boris Johnson on Friday admitted that the government’s existing £37bn cost of living package may not be enough to support struggling households, as Liz Truss, the frontrunner to replace him, rejected calls for windfall taxes to limit the pain of rising energy bills. Johnson, who will leave office next month, said in […]

Children are feeling the effect of the UK’s cost of living crunch, with almost a third of parents cutting back on pocket money. Halifax’s annual Pocket Money survey reveals that average weekly pocket money has fallen by 23 per cent, from £6.48 last year to £4.99 now. The cost of energy is the biggest worry […]

This article is an on-site version of our Disrupted Times newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter sent straight to your inbox three times a week Good evening from a sweltering London European governments continue to search for ways of weaning themselves off Russian power before huge increases in energy bills hit households over […]

For a guy on holiday with his family, Martin Lewis looked and sounded anything but relaxed. The Money Saving Expert founder (and closest thing Britain has to a patron saint of personal finance) usually adheres to a self-imposed media embargo for two weeks every summer, but broke it following shock predictions that average energy bills […]

When the Razoni left Odesa at the start of this month, the first ship to sail from Ukraine with a cargo of food since Russia’s full-scale invasion was hailed by UN secretary-general António Guterres as carrying two commodities in short supply — “corn, and hope”. But the world’s most closely monitored vessel has since proved […]

Swedish manufacturer Volvo AB surprised investors this week by borrowing €500mn — a rare deal in Europe’s parched corporate bond markets that are pin-drop quiet even by summertime standards. Investors placed €3.2bn worth of orders for the deal, from the financing arm of the truck and bus maker, whose bond deal was one of just […]

This article is an on-site version of our FirstFT newsletter. Sign up to our Asia, Europe/Africa or Americas edition to get it sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning Good morning. Big-name money managers are stampeding into digital assets, discovering ways to monetise investor interest even as trading volumes and prices for bitcoin and […]

Glencore and other global trading groups have stopped supplying Chinese metals merchant Huludao Ruisheng after $500mn worth of copper went missing in a scandal that threatens to squeeze commodity financing in the country. Glencore and Geneva-based IXM have stopped supplying the Hebei-based group, according to people familiar with the matter. Glencore had also transferred some […]

A global pandemic, a major war in Europe — both were risks that seemed almost unimaginable, until they happened. Now the tensions with China provoked by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan last week, coming just months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have forced businesses to confront the possibility that a danger long […]

British households face average annual energy bills surging above £5,000 next year, according to the latest forecast, heaping further pressure on the government to intervene to ease the spiralling cost of living crisis. The warning from consultancy Auxilione follows a steep rise in wholesale British gas prices this week and came as electricity generators met […]

This article is an on-site version of the Free Lunch newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter sent straight to your inbox every Thursday There will be no such thing as a Free Lunch next week, but Martin Sandbu will be back on August 25. The cost of shipping a 40ft steel box across […]

Soaring oil use for power generation in Europe and the Middle East will boost crude consumption for the rest of the year, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday, as it increased its global demand forecast despite signs of a wider economic slowdown. Paris-based IEA, which is primarily funded by OECD members, said record European […]

Liz Truss on Wednesday vowed to do “all that I can” to help households struggling with the cost of living crisis, in a change of tone that her Tory leadership rival Rishi Sunak described as a “major U-turn on the biggest issue facing the country”. The foreign secretary has said she favours tax cuts over […]

The US chip sector is experiencing both feast and famine. This week the US signed $52bn of subsidies into law. It is a transformative level of support designed to help the expansion of domestic chip manufacturing. The timing, however, is unfortunate. Around the world, demand for chips is collapsing. With inflation in the US at […]

Britain’s electricity generators will face pressure from ministers to invest their “extraordinary profits” in new green energy projects, rather than paying out the windfall to shareholders. Some have made huge profits from surging electricity prices that have risen in line with the soaring cost of gas, even if the power they produce comes from renewables […]

The US consumer price index rose by 8.5 per cent year on year in July, a slower annual increase compared with June, as inflationary pressures eased on the back of lower petrol prices. The CPI data released on Wednesday will raise hopes that the pace of price rises in the world’s largest economy has peaked […]

The writer is director of Penumbra Analysis, a consultancy specialising in geopolitical risk and emerging technologies The UK’s move to ban Huawei from its 5G telecoms networks has brought the debate about the security threat from Chinese equipment into the mainstream. There are increasing concerns about western exposure to potentially risky technology: only last month, […]

Investors are on alert for Pakistan to follow Sri Lanka into default as the south Asian country struggles with soaring commodity prices and tighter credit conditions. Pakistan’s foreign bonds due to mature in 2024, 2025 and 2026 are trading firmly in distressed territory, at about 71, 65 and 63 cents on the dollar, respectively, according […]

Asian equity markets fell on Wednesday as investors braced themselves for the latest US inflation data, which are expected to shape the pace of future monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index shed as much as 2.2 per cent, while China’s CSI 300 benchmark of Shanghai- and Shenzhen-listed stocks declined up […]

Taiwanese national security officials want to force Apple supplier Foxconn to unwind an $800mn investment in Chinese chip company Tsinghua Unigroup, as Taipei seeks to align itself more closely with the US in the face of escalating threats from Beijing. The investment by Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer and the biggest private-sector employer […]

Liz Truss, frontrunner in the Conservative leadership contest, has rejected business pleas for her to meet prime minister Boris Johnson and rival Rishi Sunak to “agree a common pledge” on tackling the cost of living crisis. Speaking in Darlington on Tuesday during the latest hustings in front of party members, the foreign secretary pushed back […]

The writer is co-founder of Centerview Partners The US economy is slowing down. The main dispute among economists is whether we are in for a soft landing or a hard one, and the pessimistic perspective has dominated headlines. But while it is clear that we are in for a difficult period ahead, there is also […]