FTSE gained nearly 2% but Dow Jones recovery failed to last with index falling back by close to end more than 19 points downEuropean stock markets have rallied after sharp losses earlier in the week, with London’s leading share index gaining almost 2%.The FTSE 100 index of the most valuable companies listed in London rose 138 points to 7,279 on Wednesday, still well below its all-time closing high of 7,779 on 12 January.Related: Dow recovers from early falls as European shares rebound - as it happened Continue reading...

Leave-voting heartlands of north-east and West Midlands would be worst hit, report findsA no-deal Brexit would blow an £80bn hole in the public finances, with the leave-voting heartlands of north-east England and West Midlands worst affected, according to new detail from the government’s own secret economic analysis.The Guardian has learned that the secret papers, which assess the economic impact of leaving the bloc, predict that if there is no deal, the government will need to borrow £120bn more over the next 15 years. Continue reading...

Hanna Chalmers from Ipsos Mori responds to Liza Featherstone’s article which claimed that focus groups are ineffectiveAs someone who has spent nearly 20 years observing, leading and analysing focus groups, I found Liza Featherstone’s crushing take on the traditional focus group (The long read, 6 February) to be completely at odds with the world I inhabit. She makes it clear she views the “culture of consultation”, or to put it another way, asking how people feel about things, to be a bad thing. But how can that be? Is it better not to ask? Of course, market research is concerned with increasing the bottom line, reshaping brands and launching new ones. But in my experience, clients are highly receptive to understanding flaws in the service or products that audiences alert them to – not resistant, as Featherstone asserts.There remains an important role for the traditional focus group in enabling companies, politicians or service providers to observe and listen to the attitudes of the very people they wish to understand better. But let’s not forget focus groups also sit alongside a wealth of other valuable techniques such as ethnography and passive metering which enable us to understand how people behave. Continue reading...

President reminisces about the good ‘old days’ after Dow Jones industrial average lost 1,175 points on MondayThe stock market is making a “big mistake”, Donald Trump said on Thursday, days after a record-breaking sell-off on the US exchanges.“In the ‘old days,’ when good news was reported, the Stock Market would go up. Today, when good news is reported, the Stock Market goes down. Big mistake, and we have so much good (great) news about the economy!” Trump wrote on Twitter in his first public comment on the sell-off.Why are stock markets falling?Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all finished the day at new RECORD HIGHS! pic.twitter.com/wJyB9d00hh Continue reading...

Forecaster says strength of world economy and weak pound will help offset effect of Brexit vote

The Dow Jones has surged by 567 points as the US stock market roared back from its slump on Monday, but European stocks had a bad day

Analysts are still attempting to explain the mood swing that caused Monday’s dramatic slide. We look at five key factors

Britain’s industrial base has been whittled away because the country has been in ideological hock to the City – whose bankers, lawyers and accountants rake in huge fees in takeover battlesIn 2016 Theresa May launched her campaign to become Conservative party leader and Britain’s prime minister with a speech that promised to do “something radical” about corporate takeovers. She warned that “transient shareholders … are not the only people with an interest when firms are sold or close. Workers have a stake, local communities have a stake, and often the whole country has a stake.” Fast forward 18 months and Mrs May, drained of authority, has no proper industrial strategy.Yet a real test of her words has emerged in the City, where a £7bn hostile battle appears to pit financial engineering against real engineering. Melrose, whose holding company is staffed by about 50 executives skilled in the arts of law and finance, has launched a corporate raid for GKN, a British manufacturing giant employing 56,000 people and a world leader in automotive and aircraft technology. Melrose wants to purchase GKN by borrowing £1.4bn and offering that as a sop to shareholders. If successful, that loan will be added to GKN’s debt, diverting cash away from useful investment and obligations to its 32,000 pensioners. This doesn’t seem to trouble Melrose’s top four bosses. They plan to split up and sell parts of the industrially vital business, no doubt minimising taxes and cutting costs, within five years. If successful, the bosses could share an absurd £285m in bonuses. Continue reading...

Investors fear the era of cheap money is coming to an end, but shares are likely to bounce back

Statistics show that UK economy entered new year on a downbeat noteBritain’s retailers battled through “tough” trading conditions in January as consumers preserved their cash for essential food shopping and shunned big ticket purchases.Non-food sales declined by 1.2% in the three months to the end of January with furniture sellers, shoe shops and high street clothing retailers recording their worst performance since 2009, according to British Retail Consortium (BRC) and KPMG data.Related: UK services sector growth falls to 16-month low Continue reading...

Focus groups make us feel our views matter – but no one with power cares what we think. By Liza FeatherstoneIn the early 1950s, the Betty Crocker company had a problem: American housewives liked the idea of cake mix, but they weren’t actually buying it. And so the company approached Ernest Dichter, a Viennese psychologist who had pioneered a new kind of market research, and asked him to find out why.At the same time, the relatively new processed-food industry was determined to push ready-made food. Frozen foods had enjoyed a boost during the war because of tin rationing, and the first frozen ready meals were launched in 1952. More women were working outside the home, making the convenience of these meals especially appealing. Incomes were rising, too, during this postwar period, which gave families more money to spend on convenience items, and on trying out new dishes. Not all such products were new – cake mix, after all, had been around for decades – but in this postwar climate, the food industry assumed there would be a much larger market for them. And yet, cake mix sales were slow.Related: From inboxing to thought showers: how business bullshit took over Continue reading...

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 4.6% as investors fled amid fears of rising interest rates: ‘This was volatility unleashed’

Fears of interest rate rises in the US aimed at taming inflation are making markets nervous

When it comes to the end of work as we know it, ableism is surely at the core of this flawed perspective, writes Bella Milroy. Plus Patrick O’Sullivan says local communities must become self-reliantWant to radically rethink the concept of work? Start talking to disabled people. As vitally important as the case for a universal basic income is, as Larry Elliott observes (Robots will take our jobs. We’d better plan now, before it’s too late, 1 February), a debate that focuses solely on the concept of paid work will only take us so far, and fails to acknowledge the millions of disabled people, as well as millions of carers, who go unpaid for the work they do every day.When it comes to the end of work as we know it, ableism is surely at the core of this flawed perspective. Disabled people have been redefining the idea of what it means to work, to create, to find purpose and to contribute to society since the dawn of time, the majority of which goes unpaid. Continue reading...

Demand weakens for services such as restaurants and hotels amid ongoing Brexit uncertaintyThe UK services sector grew at its slowest pace in January since the aftermath of the EU referendum as the economy got off to a sluggish start in 2018.The latest health check of a sector that includes hotels, restaurants, transport and the City from IHS Markit and the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS) found that a loss of clients and lingering Brexit uncertainty had led to a dip in activity. Continue reading...

The 30% of Bradfordians under 20 face a perfect storm of problems, from youth unemployment to racial tension. But many of them insist it’s not all doom and gloomWhen it comes to grim urban statistics in Britain, the city of Bradford tops many lists. Police statistics name Bradford as having the highest crime rates in West Yorkshire, while a 2014 YouGov poll named it Britain’s “most dangerous city”. Bradford also has one of the highest levels of youth unemployment in the UK: 26% of young people were out of work in 2015, up from 11.3% in 2004.

Weak dollar, rising inflation, recession memories fading, new hand at the Fed … and meltdown?It is August 1987 and the US economy is humming along. Memories of the deep recession earlier in the decade are fading fast. Tom Wolfe is about to publish The Bonfire of the Vanities, which captures perfectly Wall Street’s greedy bullishness.The financial markets have Paul Volcker to thank for rising share prices. As chairman of America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, Volcker had given the US economy shock treatment to rid it of its inflationary excesses. Record-high interest rates triggered the worst recession in the US since the 1930s, but once inflation started to come down borrowing costs were cut sharply and the economy recovered. Continue reading...

Renewed interest in philosopher fires celebrations of 200 years since his birth on 5 May 1818A spectre is haunting Europe in 2018 – to borrow from one of his catchier one-liners – the spectre of Karl Marx himself.Two hundred years after the philosopher’s birth, a small industry is gathering pace, from plans for major events in Trier, the city on the Moselle where he was born, to a new tour of the Manchester streets that he and Friedrich Engels walked as they discussed the condition of the city’s emerging working class. The bicentenary on 5 May will be marked with exhibitions, lectures, conferences, histories and novels. Continue reading...

Britain’s reluctance to invest in national improvement is just one consequence of this seemingly endless era of austerityThere are measures of how broke the UK has become wherever you look. And it’s not just the public sector that is showing the strain.The vast sums needed to keep up with 21st century developments are also absent from a private sector that has become reluctant to take any big bets without a large slug of government support behind it.The UK is expert at boxing clever to give a show of modernity without spending vast sums of money Continue reading...

If you’re planning to remortgage, do it now – a little-known change could push up ratesThere’s going to be an interest rate rise on 28 February. In just a few weeks you are going to see about 0.25% added to mortgage and savings rates. But you won’t see a press release from the Bank of England that the base rate has gone up. Instead, for the first time in years, banks are going to be scrambling to offer savers better rates – and the losers will be anyone taking out a new mortgage.So what’s happening? On 28 February an extraordinary financial measure, put in place in the days after the Brexit vote, will end. Continue reading...

Worries over rising bond yields and inflationary pressures have hit shares this week.

Apple, Visa and Exxon among biggest fallers as American and European stock markets tumble from record highsWall Street ended its worst week in two years on Friday with another sharp fall as markets in Europe also continued to tumble from the record-high levels reached less than a month ago.Investors headed for the exits amid growing fears over a bond market rout, triggered by early signs of inflation in the US as economic growth accelerates and wages appear to finally be rising after years of stagnation. US government bond yields, which rise as prices fall, hit the highest level since January 2014. Continue reading...

Construction activity falls for first time since immediately after EU referendum following company’s liquidationThe collapse of Carillion has dragged the British construction industry to the brink of stagnation, as housebuilding activity fell last month for the first time since immediately after the EU referendum.The slowdown in home construction is likely to embarrass the chancellor, Philip Hammond, after he unveiled tax cuts for first-time buyers and extra support for housebuilding at the budget in November.Carillion relies on major contracts, some of which have proved much less lucrative than it thought. Continue reading...

Monthly jobs update suggests gains for those in more senior positions were far greater than for those without a college degreeIt’s been a long, slow recovery for US workers but wages finally appear to be growing again, according to the latest jobs report released on Friday. But behind the headline rate the figures show – once more – that inequality is on the rise.On Friday the labor department released its latest monthly jobs update. The US added 200,000 new positions in January, higher than expected, but the real surprise was in wage growth. Hourly earnings rose 0.3% in January, enough to lift the annual rate up to 2.9%.Related: Donald Trump's tariffs on panels will cost US solar industry thousands of jobs Continue reading...

Nouriel Roubini calls cryptocurrency the ‘mother of all bubbles’ as it falls below $8,000The economist credited with predicting the 2008 global financial crisis said a 12% fall in the value of bitcoin on Friday was the latest proof that the cryptocurrency was the biggest bubble in history and destined for a crash.Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University, said bitcoin was “the mother of all bubbles” favoured by “charlatans and swindlers” as it fell below $8,000 (£5,600) early on Friday, marking a 30% drop since the beginning of the week as investors became increasingly twitchy about a clampdown on cryptocurrencies by regulators. Later it rallied, climbing back over $8,600 by 3pm (GMT).Bitcoin is the first, and the biggest, "cryptocurrency" – a decentralised tradable digital asset. Whether it is a bad investment is the big question. Bitcoin can only be used as a medium of exchange and in practice has been far more important for the dark economy than it has for most legitimate uses. The lack of any central authority makes bitcoin remarkably resilient to censorship, corruption – or regulation. That means it has attracted a range of backers, from libertarian monetarists who enjoy the idea of a currency with no inflation and no central bank, to drug dealers who like the fact that it is hard (but not impossible) to trace a bitcoin transaction back to a physical person. Continue reading...

Readers respond to Brexit minister Steve Baker’s assertion that Whitehall economic forecasts are always wrongIn a way Steve Baker is right (Backlash over minister’s claim that government forecasts are never right, 31 January), because it is nigh impossible to predict with precision a particular outcome in a world characterised by lots of unknowns. The Bank of England, among others, has long recognised this and provided a measure of uncertainty around its forecasts. In the case of Brexit, however, economic studies are not attempting to predict a final outcome but what will happen under different assumptions about the form of Brexit. The actual behaviour of the economy will not only reflect these assumptions but also other factors, such as growth in the US and other economies.So it will not be possible to judge the quality of the economic analysis of Brexit from what actually happens in the economy. Actual growth in the future will be a mixture of Brexit- and non-Brexit-related influences. In order to evaluate the analysis of Brexit after the event it would be necessary to isolate the influence of the non-Brexit factors. In that sense, economic forecasts can neither be proved right nor wrong in terms of Brexit since any forecast errors might be put down to non-Brexit reasons. The importance of economic analysis of Brexit is in the assessed contribution of the Brexit effects to any future development of the UK economy. So after Brexit, only time and serious analysis can reveal whether the economic models were right or not.

Orders, goods and jobs growing at record rate since the creation of the single currencyEurozone factories are boosting production at one of the fastest rates recorded since the launch of the single currency as the result of booming global demand and the pro-growth approach adopted by the European Central Bank.The latest snapshot of manufacturing in the 19-nation zone shows that orders, output and employment were all growing strongly last month. Continue reading...

Rising raw material costs dent factory resurgence with output down to seven-month lowBritain’s manufacturers showed signs of a slowdown at the start of the year amid rising costs for raw materials, sending factory output to a seven-month low.The Markit/Cips UK manufacturing PMI index showed activity fell to 55.3 last month from 56.2 in December, missing City forecasts of a further acceleration in growth. However, the PMI remained well above its long-run average of 51.7 and above the 50 mark which separates expansion from contraction.Inflation is when prices rise. Deflation is the opposite – price decreases over time – but inflation is far more common. Continue reading...

All the day’s economic and financial news, including a health check on the world’s manufacturing companies

Data has become the world’s most important resource. Now Silicon Valley giants want to keep government from standing in the way of profitsOne hundred and sixty years ago, the first transatlantic telegram traveled from Britain to the United States along a rickety undersea wire. It consisted of 21 words – and took seventeen hours to arrive.Today, the same trip takes as little as 60 milliseconds. A dense mesh of fiber-optic cables girdles the world, pumping vast quantities of information across the planet. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that 543 terabits of data are flowing across borders every second. That’s the equivalent of roughly 13 million copies of the complete works of Shakespeare.Related: Data will change the world, and we must get its governance rightData is nothing less than the lifeblood of global capitalismRelated: The new cold war: how our focus on Russia obscures social media's real threat Continue reading...

In the first episode of our new mini-series, Aditya Chakrabortty speaks to Preston city councillor Matthew Brown about his alternative approach to keeping wealth in the local economySubscribe and review on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud and Acast, and join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterA new podcast that showcases the people and ideas in Aditya Chakrabortty’s new fortnightly column The Alternatives. Every two weeks, we’ll bring the characters – and the places in which they live – to life as we hear their alternative approaches for making the economy work for everyone. Continue reading...

In a new series looking at how to make the economy work for everyone, Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty finds out how Preston turned its fortunes around by spending locallyThe city of Preston in Lancashire dates back to Roman times. It is listed in the Domesday book as Prestune. It’s where inventor Richard Arkwright kickstarted the cotton trade. Yet ask local people to tell you its history and they jump straight to 2011. That was Preston’s year zero, when the grand schemes for the city fell apart. For more than a decade the council had bet everything on a massive shopping mall. The Tithebarn would sprawl over the city centre, cost £700m and be built by two of the biggest developers on the planet. It was going to have a Marks & Sparks, a multiplex and a huge John Lewis store. It was the lottery ticket, said the council leader. The lifeline, the turnaround, the magic bullet.Related: The Alternatives: how Preston took back control – podcastHas you or your community come up with answers to doing things differently? If so we'd like to hear from you. Share your stories via this form and we'll be in touch.

All the day’s economic and financial news, including new eurozone growth figures

The Fed chair has set the bar high for her successor, a tenure defined by five major achievementsJanet Yellen, the Federal Reserve chair, begins her final rate-setting meeting at the helm of the US central bank on Tuesday, before she is replaced by Donald Trump’s chosen successor, Jerome Powell.The first woman to lead the Fed arrived in February 2014 at a time when the money-printing machine of quantitative easing was whirring at full-tilt under her predecessor, Ben Bernanke. QE, which involved the Fed buying bonds from financial institutions, pumped billions of dollars into the US economy to keep it afloat after the financial crisis. Continue reading...

Readers suggest boosting provincial centres, controlling rents, greater regulation of landlords, and minimum incomesAnn Pettifor (Journal, 27 January) identifies several important strategies for solving London’s crisis of “unreal estate”, but omits one that is vital: developing regional economies. By the standards of most European nations, Britain’s economy is incredibly concentrated in a single conurbation. Today’s online technologies should make it possible for every business with a huge London office to have regional offices all over the country.There are plenty of provincial centres with large enough resident populations – let’s say of 250,000 people – to build a wider commuter belt around. Even counties remote from the other metropolitan areas have such population centres. Along the west coast mainline Milton Keynes and Stoke fill gaps. In the east Midlands most of the counties’ eponymous towns are now big cities. Along the south coast Sussex has Brighton, Hampshire and Dorset Southampton, and Devon and Cornwall Plymouth. Even the gap between London and Bristol now has Swindon. Continue reading...

US currency regains some ground after being hit by fears of trade war, while sterling hit by renewed political uncertainty2.40pm GMTWith the dollar recovering from its recent weakness, and continuing uncertainty over Brexit, the pound has come under pressure today and is currently 0.63% lower at $1.4080.Meanwhile bonds prices are falling and yields rising, as central banks increasingly look to move away from their low interest rate and QE programmes which have supported markets for several years now. German and US yields in particular have move sharply higher.2.36pm GMTWith the recovery in the dollar, a decline in bond prices and a busy week ahead, US markets have slipped back from their record levels.As well as the Federal Reserve’s latest interest rate setting meeting, there is the State of the Union address and a host of results from the likes of Apple, Alphabet, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon.2.20pm GMTHere’s our full report on the EU’s warning to Donald Trump over trade. Daniel Boffey writes:Brussels has warned that it stands ready to retaliate and potentially open up a transatlantic trade war if the US delivers on apparent threats to restrict European imports.The US president, Donald Trump, claimed in an interview with ITV broadcast on Sunday that the EU had been “very unfair” on American exporters, and that it would “morph into something very big” that would “turn out to be very much to [the EU’s] detriment”.Related: Brussels prepared for trade war with US if it restricts EU imports1.58pm GMTSaving down, consumption and sentiment up -- another sign we are approaching the latter stages of the expansion. pic.twitter.com/LQUK10VKBW1.36pm GMTThe latest set of US inflation figures have risen in December in line with forecasts.The personal consumption expenditures price index - it may be a mouthful but it is the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation - climbed from 0.1% in November to 0.2% last month. On an annual basis it rose 1.5%, the same as in November. It is still below the Fed’s 2% target.1.02pm GMTA surge higher in yields on government #bonds is among the notable moves in financial #markets so far this morning.

Northern Europe needs its neighbours to pay back its debts soon … before its baby boomers retireTen years after the Great Recession plumbed economic depths unseen since the Great Depression, it is necessary to step back from quotidian politics to get a glimpse of the bigger picture. Europeans need to ask themselves where they have been, and where they are headed next on their journey.

Donald Trump says the EU has been ‘very unfair’ on US exportersBrussels has warned that it stands ready to retaliate and potentially open up a transatlantic trade war if the US delivers on apparent threats to restrict European imports.The US president, Donald Trump, claimed in an interview with ITV broadcast on Sunday that the EU had been “very unfair” on American exporters, and that it would “morph into something very big” that would “turn out to be very much to [the EU’s] detriment”.Related: Bombardier wins fight against huge tariffs on aircraft imports Continue reading...

High inflation, weak consumer confidence and Brexit are discouraging consumer spendingEconomic growth in the UK is expected to slow in the first few months of 2018 as high inflation, weak consumer confidence and uncertainty surrounding Brexit discourage high street spending and investment.A series of business and consumer surveys pointed to lower growth, ending a strong run that culminated in a rise in GDP growth to 0.5% in the last quarter of 2017.

Workers in Wakefield and Mansfield worst affected as tech advances risk widening north-south divideWorkers in Mansfield, Sunderland and Wakefield are at the highest risk of having their jobs taken by machines, according to a report warning that automation stands to further widen the north-south divide.Outside of the south of England, one in four jobs are at risk of being replaced by advances in technology – much higher than the 18% average for wealthier locations closer to London. Struggling towns and cities in the north and the Midlands are most exposed. A total of 3.6m UK jobs could be replaced by machines.Artificial Intelligence has various definitions, but in general it means a program that uses data to build a model of some aspect of the world. This model is then used to make informed decisions and predictions about future events. The technology is used widely, to provide speech and face recognition, language translation, and personal recommendations on music, film and shopping sites. In the future, it could deliver driverless cars, smart personal assistants, and intelligent energy grids. AI has the potential to make organisations more effective and efficient, but the technology raises serious issues of ethics, governance, privacy and law.Productivity is an economic measure of the efficiency of a workforce. It typically measures the level of output per hour of work, or per worker. Continue reading...

Better-than-expected employment and GDP statistics disguise over-reliance on consumer spending and a lack of investment. Then there’s the problem of an EU transition deal …Taken at face value the latest employment figures and last year’s GDP growth defied the doomsayers. They were better than the City expected and, for those sitting inside the Treasury, supported the view that Britain’s economy remains, in the finance ministry’s parlance, steady and resilient.The number of people in employment hit a record high and the percentage of those aged 16 to 64 in the workforce was at its joint highest since 1971. Job vacancies were at an all-time high and wages growth ticked higher to 2.4%.Davos is a Swiss ski resort now more famous for hosting the annual four-day conference for the World Economic Forum. For participants it is a festival of networking. Getting an invitation is a sign you have made it – and the elaborate system of badges reveals your place in the Davos hierarchy.

Out of Schengen, out of the euro, with a budget rebate and still at the top table: we are already ‘having our cake and eating it’The ghost at the feast during the annual Venice seminar held by the Italian government for British and Italian journalists last weekend was the shadow of Brexit. While Italian officials were scrupulously reticent about voicing opinions on the subject, the undercurrents were obvious – not least because the Italians value the UK as an “outward-looking” ally in some of the more introspective discussions in Brussels.Reports from Davos, too, show bafflement on the part of fellow Europeans and others about the UK referendum and subsequent debate.Staying in the single market and customs unionThe ultimate irony is that, as members of the EU, we have been able to cherry-pick all sorts of concessions Continue reading...

Reforms may threaten recovery and lead to bigger US budget deficit, says Christine LagardeDonald Trump’s huge tax cuts are a threat to the stability of the global economy, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund has warned.Christine Lagarde singled out Trump’s tax reforms as one of three risks that could destabilise the current economic recovery, especially given the boom in stock markets in the past year. Continue reading...

President declares US open for business as he accuses media for being nasty, mean and fakeDonald Trump has taken his battle with the media on to the global stage by using a speech in Davos declaring the US open for business to accuse his press and TV critics of being mean, vicious and purveyors of fake news.Some members of the audience of business leaders, politicians, academics and media representatives at the World Economic Forum responded to the president’s renewed onslaught by hissing.Related: Davos 2018: Trump puts North Korea high on agenda in 'America first' speech - live updates Continue reading...

Personal debt rises to £1.6tn as record number of households turn to ‘bankruptcy deals’The number of people who went brankrupt in 2017 soared to the highest level since the aftermath of the financial crisis, according to official figures that reveal the devastating toll of mounting debts on British households.The Insolvency Service said 99,196 people were declared insolvent in 2017 – a 9.4% rise on the year before and only a shade below the peak figures recorded during the recession.Related: The UK's debt crisis – in figures Continue reading...

UK shadow chancellor to tell business leaders at WEF of ‘avalanche of discontent’The UK shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, has used his debut appearance at the World Economic Forum to warn leaders of global businesses that they are held in contempt by ordinary voters who have struggled through a decade of austerity.Interviewed by the Guardian in Davos, McDonnell said he found the euphoria in Davos about the modest pick-up in world growth shocking, adding that those running big corporations were guilty of complacency.Related: Davos 2018: Donald Trump to give speech at World Economic Forum - live updates Continue reading...

ONS puts quarterly growth at 0.5% but warns annual pace is slowest since 2012The British economy grew at a faster rate than expected in the final three months of 2017, despite pockets of weaker and more uneven growth triggered by the Brexit vote.GDP grew by 0.5% in the fourth quarter after expansion of 0.4% in the previous three months, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). City economists had forecast growth of 0.4%.

Rolling coverage of the third day of the World Economic Forum, as Donald Trump meets Theresa May, and George Soros hosts a dinner