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Jan 12, 2025 | 
thetimes.com | Simon French
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Dec 1, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Simon French
Conventional wisdom has it that the second Trump presidency will be a nightmare for the European economy. Certainly that is how financial markets see it. The euro, the pound, and the Swiss franc are down by six cents against the dollar during the fourth quarter. The S&P 500 share index is up 9 per cent over the past three months, the closest European equivalent, the Stoxx 600, is down 2 per cent over the same period.
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Nov 17, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Simon French
UK economic growth slowed during the third quarter of the year. GDP growth of just 0.1 per cent in the three months to the end of September was a marked slowdown from the average of 0.6 per cent during the first two quarters of the year. Sentiment was affected by looming tax increases, a different approach to labour market regulation, and fears over a crowding-out of private sector activity. This meant that decision-making stalled.
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Nov 3, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Simon French
On Thursday the Bank of England will decide whether to cut UK interest rates for the second time this year. Financial markets see a 0.25 percentage-point cut — to a bank rate of 4.75 per cent — as the most likely outcome. There is a smaller chance that continuing concerns over service sector inflation, and the uncertain impact of last week’s budget, may lead the Bank to sit tight and await more economic data.
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Oct 30, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Simon French
Did Rachel Reeves pass the “Kwarteng test” as she delivered the first Labour budget in 14 years? This is a test of whether investors that have already lent more than £2.8 trillion to the government are prepared to lend more over the coming years without demanding a materially higher interest rate and a weaker British pound. It is a test that Reeves’s short-lived predecessor in 11 Downing Street, Kwasi Kwarteng, failed. It cost him his job after just 38 days in office.
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Oct 20, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Simon French
By almost any measure the UK jobs market has been one of the economic success stories of the last quarter of a century. The unemployment rate has averaged 5.5 per cent since the turn of the century, compared to a rate of 6.4 per cent in the preceding 40 years. The current unemployment rate stands at just 4 per cent. Even the much fretted about inactivity rate — the proportion of working-age Britons not in work, nor seeking work — at 21.8 per cent is well below its 50-year average of 23.1 per cent.
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Oct 6, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Simon French
The UK tax system is a mess and in need of reform. This is perhaps the most uncontroversial sentence I have written since I began writing in these pages. The politics of tax has made even sensible reform nigh on impossible — reform that almost all sides of the political spectrum agree would boost economic growth. There is little doubt that tax complexity, as well as the perverse incentives and distortions of outdated or layered tax structures, is an impediment to UK productivity.
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Aug 11, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Simon French
Fears over the health of America’s economy have rattled financial markets. Last Monday global stock indices suffered their biggest one-day fall in almost two years. Trading floors buzzed with speculation about an emergency interest rate cut by the US Federal Reserve. By the end of the week a semblance of calm had been restored, but confidence remains superficial. Data published in the next few weeks will be pored over for signs of fracturing in the world’s largest economy.
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Jun 30, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Simon French
Sustainable and ethical investing is back in the headlines. After a period during which a European energy crisis and two globally significant wars shifted the dial on investing towards carbon-producing energy capacity and defence companies, activist groups are fighting back. Investors are having to be fleet-footed to keep abreast of shifting societal priorities. This change in mood has had an impact on some of the most well-known companies in British finance.
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Jun 2, 2024 | 
thetimes.co.uk | Simon French
Currencies are like referees. When you don’t notice them, they’re doing a good job. And as it is with officiating at football matches, so it is with the British pound. Sterling has been gradually strengthening in recent times and last week it hit its highest trade-weighted level since the Brexit referendum almost eight years ago. This is not simply a story of happier holidaymakers turning their minds towards the cost of a foreign break.
