Economy

London’s capital market needs a kick in the pants, as I write every week, and ‘activist investors’ are no bad thing if they provoke sharper corporate performance. The assault by the New York hedge funder Boaz Weinstein on seven UK investment trusts – demanding shareholder votes to replace directors with his own people and take the management of the trusts into his own firm, Saba Capital – looks like the kind of intervention that might bring positive change to the UK’s historic investment trust sector, which accounts for a third of FTSE 250 companies but according to critics offers lacklustre returns, with share prices too often stuck at discounts to

The news just seems to get worse for Rachel Reeves. After the slight relief of last week’s inflation and GDP figures, this morning brings headlines that are even grimmer than economists expected. The government was forced to borrow £17.8 billion in December, more than twice the £6.7 billion which Rishi Sunak’s government borrowed in December 2023. In just one month, taxpayers had to spend £8.3 billion to service the government’s debt. Interest payments are now consuming over 8 per cent of government expenditure – more than is spent on education or defence – and very nearly as much as the welfare bill, which is itself ballooning. The Chancellor’s immediate problem is that

Rachel Reeve’s £25 billion National Insurance rise is beginning to bite. According to the latest data on our labour market, released this morning by the Office for National Statistics, payrolled employment fell by 47,000 last month — the sharpest fall since the pandemic. Meanwhile, the number of vacancies in the economy fell for the 30th consecutive period, unemployment rose to 4.4 per cent and there have been 21,000 more redundancies than in the same period a year ago. In a boost to those British workers still in jobs, pay is on the up. The ONS’s figures show that once inflation is removed the average worker experienced a 2.4 per cent pay rise

‘The golden age begins right now’ said the 47th President of the United States as he began his inauguration speech in the Capitol Rotunda. What followed was a 30-minute speech, during which Donald Trump stayed both on script and on message, reiterating his promise to declare a border crisis, deport foreign criminals, return America’s title of energy independence and to ramp on tariffs on foreign countries to ‘protect American workers and families’.  Trump aides had promised that, eight years on, the President’s second swearing-in speech would be different. Gone were the days of promoting ‘American carnage’. Today, the message was to be one of unity.  Here, the President took baby

The great virtue of markets is that they are coldly actuarial and politically indifferent. Win them over and you can get a lot done. Just ask Javier Milei, President of Argentina. Milei has defied his left-wing critics and the distrust engendered by a lengthy history of defaults to slash public spending, rebuild reserves and tackle inflation. Fall out of favour and it is a different story. Bond markets are no longer buying Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ proclamations that she is ‘going for growth’ with her plans for a tax-financed state expansion and debt-financed investment splurge which she laid out in her first Budget. Markets fear her plans will add to

Drill, baby drill. The mood on Net Zero is changing in the Scottish parliament where a majority of MSPs have signed a petition calling for a reversal on the ban on new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea. This sea change in attitudes to the black stuff, if you’ll excuse the pun, could portend a dramatic reversal of the Scottish government’s opposition to fossil fuels in SNP leader John Swinney’s long-delayed energy strategy. The “presumption against offshore drilling” has been the centrepiece of SNP energy policy since Cop26 in 2021, when Nicola Sturgeon posed for selfies with Greta Thunberg. Sturgeon is gone, of course – and her clean

Perhaps you could gather a group of traffic wardens and ask them how to build a racetrack. Or get the leaders of the Salvation Army over to suggest some cool ideas for a cocktail bar. Think up any improbable brainstorming sessions, and it will still be hard to imagine anything more awkward than the gathering of regulators Chancellor Rachel Reeves summoned to Downing Street today to give her some ideas on growth. After all, that is her job, not theirs.  Just the concept of frog-marching regulators into the Chancellor’s office and demanding ‘growth ideas’ is ridiculous It hardly sounds like fun. The chief executives of such august sounding bodies as

Rachel Reeves has found brief respite this morning, with the Office for National Statistics confirming that inflation dipped to 2.5 per cent in the 12 months to December, down from 2.6 per cent the month before. This is a smaller rise than had been expected (the consensus was 2.6 per cent) and roughly in line with the Bank of England’s forecast from November, which had predicted a 2.4 per cent increase. It’s welcome news for a Chancellor who is under pressure. Core inflation slowed too, from 3.5 per cent in the year to November, to 3.2 per cent in December. This competes for the best news in the update, as core

Rachel Reeves did her best to keep today’s China visit statement on topic. The Chancellor wanted to talk about ‘cooperation’, ‘competing where our interests differ,’ her efforts to break down market barriers and the £600 million she secured in investment. But other MPs had other ideas.  ‘I know the Chancellor has been away,’ said the Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride. ‘So let me update her on the mess she left behind.’ So began the battle between the Chancellor – to stay on topic – and her opposition to bring up the long list of economic woes that have come to the forefront this week: not just the substantial rise in borrowing