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The chancellor has warned the British public he is preparing “for the worst” as he draws up his autumn statement.

Jeremy Hunt told Sky News the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) official economic forecasts would be considerably worse than at the budget – a signal there may be spending cuts or possibly even tax rises ahead.

“I am very much hoping for the best but I do need to prepare for the worst because I think we can see that the world is a very dangerous place right now,” he said.

“The numbers are definitely worse than what I faced in the spring.

“Debt interest is likely to be £20bn to 30bn higher this year than was predicted in spring. So yes, it’s a very challenging environment in the short term.”

The comments, delivered on the fringes of the International Monetary Fund’s annual meetings in Morocco, are particularly significant because the Treasury has now seen the OBR’s projected economic forecasts which will feed into next month’s autumn statement.

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Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is “hoping for the best” but “preparing for the worst” when preparing for the autumn statement.

Referring both to the events in Israel and the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, Mr Hunt said: “from the point of view of the British economy, we have to recognise that the world is an unstable place.

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Gas prices are four times higher than they were before the invasion of Ukraine. And it isn’t just what’s happening in Israel – we have the biggest war in Europe that we’ve seen in our lifetimes. Here in Africa, there is instability just a little bit further south, over the border from Morocco.

“So when we are managing the British economy, we have to be very prudent with our public finances. Be very careful not to overextend with reckless borrowing because we need the economy to be resilient.

I’m very optimistic about our long term future, but in the short term, we have to recognise that there may be shocks.”

The chancellor’s comments come amid speculation the UK may slip into a shallow recession in the coming months, as higher interest rates continue to put pressure on household finances.

However, the IMF conference has been overshadowed by news of the atrocities in Israel and the fightback from Israeli forces.

Mr Hunt said: “This is the most appalling, brutal, murderous terrorism that I think I can remember seeing in my adult lifetime.

“There have been absolutely gruelling pictures. And I think we have to make sure as a world that we are absolutely united in our condemnation because of what has happened.

“And I think it reminds us, unfortunately, that all this horror is not something that humanity’s put behind us.”

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Jaguar Land Rover staff home for another day as company reels from cyber attack

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Jaguar Land Rover staff home for another day as company reels from cyber attack

Staff of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) have been told to stay home for a further day, Sky News understands, as the carmaker struggles to recover from a cyber attack.

Employees of the British company have now been told to remain off work until Wednesday. Previously, workers were directed not to return until Tuesday.

A decision on whether to bring staff back or not is being taken day by day, Sky News understands.

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JLR shut down its systems when it noticed the cyber attack on Tuesday last week, saying it had been “severely disrupted”.

Its retail activities were also impacted, but there was no evidence at the time that “any customer data has been stolen”, though JLR is reported to have flagged the risk of a data breach to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Thousands of production staff at the UK’s largest car manufacturing sites in Halewood, Merseyside, and Solihull and Wolverhampton in the West Midlands are still being paid.

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Jaguar Land Rover is the UK’s latest major company to face a cyber incident, after Marks & Spencer had its operations disrupted for months.

After an attack over Easter, the high street chain only resumed click and collect services in August.

Attacks on the Co-op and Harrods were detected more swiftly, and had less of an impact.

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Jaguar Land Rover paused shipments to the US in April in response to President Trump’s new tariffs. A US-UK deal was subsequently agreed.

Reporting from The Sunday Times said JLR operations could be disrupted for “most of September” or worse.

On Wednesday, a group of English-speaking hackers claimed responsibility for the JLR attack via a Telegram platform called Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters, an amalgamation of the names of hacking groups Scattered Spider, Lapsus$ and ShinyHunters.

Scattered Spider, a loose group of relatively young hackers, were behind the Co-Op, Harrods and M&S attacks.

JLR suppliers Evtec, WHS Plastics, SurTec and OPmobility have had to temporarily lay off staff, impacting roughly 6,000 workers.

A spokesperson for JLR said on Monday: “We continue to work around the clock to restart our global applications in a controlled and safe manner.

“We are working with third-party cybersecurity specialists and alongside law enforcement.

“We are very sorry for the disruption this incident has caused. Our retail partners remain open and we will continue to provide further updates.”

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US tech and finance giants to join Trump on second UK state visit

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US tech and finance giants to join Trump on second UK state visit

The boss of Nvidia, the chipmaker which has become the world’s most valuable public company, is among the corporate chiefs lining up to accompany President Donald Trump on next week’s state visit to the UK.

Sky News has learnt that Jensen Huang, the Nvidia chief executive who has presided over the stratospheric rise in its valuation to more than $4trn, is expected to attend a state banquet at Windsor Castle hosted by King Charles III during the trip.

Sources said on Monday that Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI; Larry Fink, chairman and chief executive of asset management behemoth BlackRock; and Stephen Schwarzman, the boss of private equity giant Blackstone, were also expected to be among the attendees.

Money blog: One thing you should never have on your CV

Tim Cook, the Apple chief executive, has also been invited and may attend the state banquet, the sources added, while Jamie Dimon, the JP Morgan chief, is understood to be unable to make the trip to Britain because of existing diary commitments.

The attendance of figures such as Mr Huang and, potentially, Mr Altman, will fuel expectations that a wave of corporate deals and investments in the UK will be unveiled during President Trump’s unprecedented second state visit.

Closer collaboration between the two countries’ nuclear power industries is expected to be one of the main focal points of trade-related discussions during the three-day trip, as well as artificial intelligence and the broader technology industry.

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President Trump’s visit will, however, come amid tensions over his tariff regime, with continuing uncertainty about the impact on British manufacturing sectors, including steel.

There are also continuing tensions between the UK government and major drugmakers over pricing, with the US administration pressuring pharmaceutical companies to slash the price of prescription medicines in the US.

An Nvidia spokesperson said, “We don’t comment on our executives’ travel schedules.”

BlackRock, Blackstone, Apple and JP Morgan declined to comment, while OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.

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Economic crisis in France goes beyond its overspending problem

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Economic crisis in France goes beyond its overspending problem

Once upon a time if folks wanted to pinpoint the most economically-vulnerable country in Europe – the one most likely to face a crisis – they would invariably point to Greece or to Italy.

They were the nations with the eye-waveringly high bond yields, signalling how reluctant financiers were to lend them money.

Today, however, all of that has changed. The country invariably highlighted as Europe’s problem child is France.

Indeed, look at the interest rates investors charge European nations and France faces even higher interest rates than Greece.

And these economic travails are central to understanding the political difficulties France is facing right now, with one prime minister after another resigning in the face of a parliamentary setback.

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French PM looks set to lose confidence vote

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It mostly comes back to the state of the public finances. France’s deficit is among the highest in the developed world right now.

Everyone spent enormous sums during the pandemic. But France has struggled, more than nearly everyone else, to bring its spending back down and, hence, to reduce its deficit. Successive budget plans have been announced and then shelved in the face of political resistance.

France’s government spends more, as a percentage of gross domestic product, than any other developed economy.

The government’s most recent budget plans called for what most people would see as relatively minor spending cuts – barely more than a couple of percentage points off spending, after which France would still be the third biggest spender in the world.

But even these cuts were too controversial for the French people, or rather their politicians.

Yet another prime minister looks likely to fall victim to an unsuccessful bill. Deja vu all over again, you might say.

A deeper issue is that the latest worsening in France’s public finances isn’t just a sign of political resistance, or indeed of a nation that can’t bear to take the unpalatable fiscal medicine others (for instance Greece or the UK) have long been ingesting.

For years, France could rely on a phenomenon many other developed economies couldn’t: strong productivity growth.

The country’s people might not work as many hours as everyone else, but they sure created a lot of economic output when they were at their desks.

However, in recent years, French productivity has disappointed. Indeed, output per hour growth in France has dropped well below other nations, which in turn means less tax revenue and, lo and behold, the deficit gets bigger and bigger.

All of which is why so many people, including Prime Minister Francois Bayrou himself, have warned that France is at risk of a market meltdown.

In a recent speech, he pointed to the example of Liz Truss and her 2022 mini-Budget. Beware the market, he said. You never know how close you are to a crisis.

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