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A G20 declaration on Wednesday said "we will play our part fully in implementing" last year's Glasgow Climate Pact, under which countries pledged to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial times. "As things stand, the Glasgow Climate Pact is broken, but the G20 have the opportunity to fix it." MISSED OPPORTUNITYThe G20 declaration recognised the need to phase down use of unabated coal and phase out "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies. Avinash Persaud, special envoy on climate finance to Prime Minister Mia Motley of Barbados, meanwhile, told Reuters the G20 declaration missed the mark on finance. "Unfunded ambition gets us nowhere fast," Persaud said, adding he wanted G20 countries to unlock more lending from multilateral development banks they control to help climate-vulnerable countries.

☆ UK needs to make politically unpopular reforms to boost growth, business group says
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

LONDON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The British government must be willing to make politically unpopular choices in areas such as immigration and regulation to boost business investment and economic growth, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said on Monday. It also called on the government to streamline "the slow and inconsistent planning system", and speed-up decision-making for major developments. "All of us need to accept now that with fiscal and monetary policy tightening, we need many more pro-growth policies for our economy, if we’re to avoid a decade of no growth," CBI Director-General Tony Danker said in a statement. Danker said that if Hunt's plan for growth was only "warm words and aspirations" it wouldn't stop businesses pulling back from investment. "We need to make the UK an attractive place to invest."

☆ UK must raise taxes and cut spending, Hunt says ahead of budget
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-13 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Jeremy Hunt arrives at his home in London after he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer following the resignation of Kwasi Kwarteng. But he said poorer households should be spared much of the pain and cuts to public services would be balanced. "You don't want to do things that make any recession that you may be in worse," Hunt told Sky News on Sunday. Asked about spending cuts, Hunt said a strong economy needed good public services and cuts would be made in "balanced way". "I'm arguing for two things: both fairer choices on taxes, but also crucially, a plan for growth," she told Sky News.

☆ UK's Hunt says he has to raise taxes to fix economy
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-12 | by ( William Schomberg | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Truss's "mini-budget" in September set off a bond market slump that sent borrowing costs soaring and ultimately forced her to step down. The newspaper said Hunt planned to tackle a 55 billion-pound ($65.1 billion) hole in Britain's budget by freezing thresholds and allowances on income tax, national insurance, inheritance tax and pensions for a further two years. Thursday's budget plan will include forecasts similar to those of the Bank of England (BoE) which earlier this month warned of a long recession ahead. Hunt said he would seek to work in cooperation with the BoE to control inflation and the global rise in interest rates, which is adding to the strains on Britain's economy. But Hunt was also considering a multi-billion-pound package of support to shield pensioners and benefit claimants from higher power bills, the newspaper said.

Investors have called for Lula to restore firm rules for public spending after major outlays by outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro through the pandemic and election campaign. Instead, Lula is pushing to dismantle old budget rules to ramp up social spending. Senator Simone Tebet, of the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement party (MDB), said the economy minister should be his first cabinet pick to make clear what his policies are going to be affecting the economy. "An economy minister is needed to explain the president's political thought," she told reporters. The rout made clear that many investors want to see more clarity over ministerial appointments and how Lula aims to stabilize Brazil's public finances.

☆ Brazil cenbank chief says fiscal prudence central to inflation aims
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( Hernan Nessi | Nidhi Verma | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

BRASILIA, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Brazil's central bank chief Roberto Campos Neto emphatically defended the need for fiscal balance on Friday, following statements by leftist President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that soured the markets by downplaying the issue's importance. In Britain, for example, former Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned after markets shunned her plans for major unfunded tax cuts. "I don't know if there was a Liz Truss moment for Brazil (yesterday), but it was a clear demonstration of the markets' sensitivity to the fiscal issue," said Campos Neto. He said the central bank's autonomy would pass "an important test" but believed in the continuity of that status under Lula's future administration. Campos Neto also stressed that the bank's policymakers are open to participating in the transition government.

☆ Bank of England to start selling emergency gilt purchases from Nov. 29
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( David Milliken | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

In a statement on Thursday, the BoE said it would be open to offers from investors to buy the bonds from Nov. 29 onwards. Unlike the BoE's separate programme of auctions to unwind some of its more than 830 billion pounds of quantitative easing bond purchases, these sales will not take place at a fixed pace. "As a general principle only bids that are deemed attractive relative to prevailing market levels will be accepted," the BoE said. It called the plan "a demand-led approach to unwind recent financial stability gilt purchases in a timely but orderly way". New finance minister Jeremy Hunt is expected to announce around 50 billion pounds of fiscal tightening in a budget statement on Nov. 17.

☆ UK hiring falls as political upheaval adds to employers' worries
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( Suban Abdulla | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

REUTERS/Toby MelvilleLONDON, Nov 10 (Reuters) - British employers cut their hiring of permanent staff via recruitment firms for the first time in nearly two years in October as the country's political upheaval added to concerns about the economy, a survey showed on Thursday. Hiring of temporary workers stagnated and wage growth for permanent new staff was its weakest in a year and a half. But permanent staff availability remained an acute problem for employers with workers less likely to switch roles or seek new jobs, REC said. Starting salaries increased at the slowest pace in 18 months and temporary pay growth was the weakest since May 2021. The REC survey was conducted between Oct. 12 and Oct. 25, a period that included the date of Truss announcing that she would resign as prime minister on Oct. 20.

☆ An investor with 35,000 rental houses is sitting on $3 billion of 'dry powder' as it waits for the perfect time to buy up thousands more homes
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( James Rodriguez | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Tricon Residential is one of the biggest owners of single-family rental homes in the US. Berman said the company expected to buy up 850 homes in the fourth quarter, for a total of 7,300 this year. Berman said the company was "slowing down today" so it could buy larger portfolios at discounted prices in the future. Single-family rental operators may be slowing down in the short term, but the biggest players have been adamant that the fundamentals of their business remain strong. "We also think that a lot of the startups in single-family rental may have trouble getting financing, and so maybe some portfolios shake loose.

For the second time in less than three years, the Bank of England has made an emergency intervention in the market for UK government bonds. Investors rushed to liquidate assets, including money market funds which held UK government bonds. The latest intervention was triggered by excessive leverage in UK pension funds, which had borrowed to boost returns using a strategy known as liability-driven investing (LDI). To prevent future blow-ups, regulators could cap money market funds’ exposure to less liquid assets, reducing the risk of a run by investors. Financial market regulators in European fund centres like Ireland and Luxembourg have stepped up surveillance of LDI strategies used by UK pension funds, the Financial Times reported on Oct. 28.

☆ Analysis: Heavily discounted UK Plc may have further to fall
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-09 | by ( Joice Alves | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

Hani Redha, global multi-asset portfolio manager at U.S. investment firm PineBridge, said that UK valuations do not look cheap when looking at a multi-year timeframe and the "structural issues facing the UK economy". UK stocks (.FTAS) are already trading at a record discount to their global peers (.MIWD00000PUS), Refinitiv data shows, but investors expect new lows next year. UK discountThe domestic-orientated FTSE 250 mid-cap index (.FTMC) has broken three consecutive quarterly declines after new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak dumped most of his predecessor's market-crushing fiscal plan. Half of all borrowing by UK non-financial companies is in dollars, totalling about 350 billion pounds ($399.5 billion), according to S&P Global. "Bearing in mind in what state the UK economy is right now, I would stay clear of UK small-caps," he said.

☆ Wall Street is bracing for a potential game changer, but it's not the midterms
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( Matt Egan | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

New York CNN Business —Wall Street is waiting for the results of Tuesday’s midterm election like the rest of the world, but traders say this week’s inflation report may prove to be far more consequential to markets. Traders typically believe gridlock is good because it means one party can’t push through legislation that messes things up. Andrew Frankel, co-president of Stuart Frankel, agrees that a GOP victory is “baked in” and shouldn’t trigger a major market rally. If anything, Frankel said, it could be a sell-on-the-news event where markets retreat after getting confirmation of a GOP win. Multiple NYSE traders told CNN that the midterm election may be overshadowed by Thursday’s Consumer Price Index, an inflation gauge that has become arguably the most important economic metric of the month.

☆ Crypto's self-appointed savior just reached for a lifeline
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( Allison Morrow | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

He’s an entrepreneur whose name often appears alongside descriptors like “wunderkind,” “savior,” white knight, “digital Warren Buffett,” etc. Then, in a truly unexpected twist, Binance said it had offered to buy FTX to resolve its liquidity crisis. The news prompted a brief recovery in digital assets but wasn’t enough to calm anxious investors. Other digital assets and equities tied to the industry, such as Coinbase, also fell. There’s a lot to figure out still, but we can expect digital assets to remain volatile until more details about the FTX-Binance deal are made public.

LONDON, Nov 7 (Reuters) - British finance minister Jeremy Hunt will seek to fill a 50 billion pound ($57 billion) hole in the country's public finances with around 30 billion pounds of spending cuts and 20 billion in tax rises, two government sources said on Monday. Hunt is due to present a fiscal statement to parliament on Nov. 17. Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Sunday that early drafts of Hunt's statement included up to 35 billion pounds of spending cuts and 25 billion pounds of tax rises, while on Monday the Financial Times gave figures of 33 billion pounds and 21 billion pounds respectively. Last week a finance ministry source said broad-based tax rises were likely to fill a "fiscal black hole". Most of the 45 billion pounds of unfunded tax cuts which Kwarteng announced were rapidly reversed, apart from a 16 billion pound cut in payroll taxes which took effect on Nov. 6.

☆ Analysis: Bank of England's recession warning turns spotlight to UK budget plan
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-04 | by ( William Schomberg | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

That would be a longer and shallower economic contraction than the ones that followed the COVID-19 lockdowns and the global financial crisis of 2007-09. But the backdrop of high inflation this time is limiting the policy options available to the government. Hunt has warned of tough decisions on taxes and spending as he prepares to announce the new government's first budget programme on Nov. 17. "This is not a recession we should be offsetting with lower interest rates and expansionary fiscal policy," Chadha said. Additional reporting by David Milliken;Writing by William Schomberg; Editing by Jon BoyleOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Markets were expecting Bank Rate to peak at around 4.7%, little changed by the BoE's announcement. [1/2] A general view of the Bank of England (BoE) building, the BoE confirmed to raise interest rates to 1.75%, in London, Britain, August 4, 2022. The BoE has faced weeks of political and financial market chaos since its last rate rise on Sept. 22. Markets are now more stable, with British government borrowing costs broadly back to where they were before the turmoil. Under the BoE's forecasts, inflation is due to fall below its 2% target by mid-2024, even if interest rates stay at 3%.

☆ Bank of England readies for biggest rate rise since 1989
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-03 | by ( David Milliken | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

[1/2] A general view of the Bank of England (BoE) building, the BoE confirmed to raise interest rates to 1.75%, in London, Britain, August 4, 2022. Markets are now more stable, with British government borrowing costs broadly back to where they were before the upheaval. Purchasing managers' data slid in October to its weakest since January 2021 when the economy was mired in a COVID-19 lockdown. Forty-six of 53 economists polled by Reuters expected the BoE to raise rates to 3% this month. Investors expect the BoE's Bank Rate to hit 3.5% in December and 4.75% next May - the highest since 2008 though below the peak of around 6% projected during last month's market turmoil.

☆ Bank of England makes historic rate hike despite 'very challenging' outlook
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-03 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

By David Milliken and Andy BruceLONDON, Nov 3 (Reuters) - The Bank of England raised interest rates to 3% on Thursday from 2.25%, its biggest rate rise since 1989 as it warned of a "very challenging" outlook for the economy. "Further increases in Bank Rate may be required for a sustainable return of inflation to target, albeit to a peak lower than priced into financial markets," the BoE said in unusually specific guidance to investors. Just before Thursday's policy decision, markets expected rates to peak at around 4.75%. "The Committee continues to judge that, if the outlook suggests more persistent inflationary pressures, it will respond forcefully, as necessary," the MPC added. (Reporting by David Milliken and Andy Bruce)((uk.economics@reuters.com; +44 20 7513 4034))Keywords: BRITAIN BOE/DECISIONOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Pound tumbles as Bank of England hikes rates, warns of a recession for all of next year
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-03 | by ( Jennifer Sor | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The British pound tumbled after the Bank of England hiked rates and warned the UK would see a recession for all of 2023 and the first half of 2024. The Bank of England raised rates by 75 basis points, its largest single hike since 1989, as the central bank scrambles to get a lid on inflation. The bank predicted UK inflation will hit 11% by year-end, and will stay above 10% over "the near term." Though the Bank of England noted that headline inflation could start to ease as soon as early next year, analysts warned more hikes were still ahead. BNP estimates three more 50-basis-point hikes from the Bank of England, bringing the policy rate to 4.5% next year.

The central bank made its eighth interest rate hike in less than a year, taking its benchmark rate to 3%, the highest it has been since November 2008. The huge hike matches moves made by the US Federal Reserve on Wednesday and the European Central Bank last week. The annual rate of inflation climbed to 10.1% in September, from 9.9% in August, returning to the 40-year high hit in July. Bailey acknowledged the “tough road ahead.”The central bank doesn’t think inflation will start to fall back until next year. In a sign of renewed confidence in the United Kingdom, investors placed about £2.45 billion ($2.8 billion) worth of bids for the bonds, Reuters reported.

☆ Bank of England fights inflation with biggest rate hike in 33 years
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-03 | by ( Hanna Ziady | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

London CNN Business —The Bank of England raised interest rates by three quarters of a percentage point on Thursday, the biggest hike in 33 years, as it tries to contain soaring inflation even as the UK economy slides towards recession. The central bank made its eighth interest rate hike in less than a year, taking its benchmark rate to 3%, the highest it has been since November 2008. The huge hike matches moves made by the US Federal Reserve on Wednesday and the European Central Bank last week. The annual rate of inflation rose to 10.1% in September, from 9.9% in August, returning to the 40-year high hit in July. In a sign of renewed confidence in the United Kingdom, investors placed about £2.45 billion ($2.8 billion) worth of bids for the bonds, Reuters reported.

And economic policy is only gradually being taped back together before the BoE meets again. It's also pulled the implied peak Bank rate next year some 150bp lower to 4.75% over the same period - back below the assumed 'terminal rate' at the U.S. Federal Reserve. "We see the risks skewed towards the BoE sounding dovish this week and ultimately "underdelivering" versus current pricing," the Deutsche analyst wrote. Central bank rate hikes and SterlingReuters Graphics Reuters GraphicsThe opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters. by Mike Dolan, Twitter: @reutersMikeD; Editing by Josie KaoOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Fueled by a post-lockdown buying frenzy, the average UK house price hit a record £275,000 ($315,474) in December, a £27,000 increase on the previous year’s high. UK mortgage rates have been ticking upwards since spring, in line with rising interest rates. UK house prices fell 0.9% between September and October, the first decline in 15 months, according to data from Nationwide. A drop in buying power makes a significant drop in house prices inevitable, according to Andrew Wishart, a senior economist at Capital Economics. When house prices fall, homeowners feel less confident about their personal finances, causing them to cut back on spending and hold off on making additional investments.

☆ UK house prices fall after 'mini-budget' turmoil - Nationwide
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-01 | by ( David Milliken | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/3] An estate agent's board is displayed outside a house on a terraced street in Blackburn, Britain, January 17, 2022. REUTERS/Phil NobleLONDON, Nov 1 (Reuters) - British house prices recorded their first monthly fall since July 2021 last month, mortgage lender Nationwide said on Tuesday, after the market was hit by turmoil during Prime Minister Liz Truss's short-lived premiership. Nationwide Building Society said house prices dropped 0.9% in October after being unchanged in September, while they are 7.2% higher than a year earlier, slowing from September's annual increase of 9.5%. "The market has undoubtedly been impacted by the turmoil following the mini-Budget, which led to a sharp rise in market interest rates," Nationwide chief economist Robert Gardner said. The monthly fall in house prices was the largest since June 2020, when the market was crimped by initial COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, while the annual rise was the weakest since April 2021.

☆ Explainer: Why is the Bank of England selling government bonds?
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-01 | by ( David Milliken | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

Britain's central bank will be the first in the Group of Seven rich nations to actively sell QE bonds to investors. In August, the BoE said it wanted to reduce its total gilt holdings by 80 billion pounds over a 12-month period starting in late September. The BoE says it still intends to reduce total gilt holdings by the 80 billion pounds announced in August. It has not set a long-term target for gilt holdings. The BoE's upcoming 6 billion pounds of sales come alongside 37 billion pounds of gilt issuance by the government over the same period.

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