Good morning from London where the main story is fresh data from the ONS that shows the UK economy continuing to avoid recession – growth of 0.2% during the three months to June might look rather anaemic but was still above the analyst consensus of 0.0.
The FTSE meanwhile is down slightly this morning, weighed down by some big falls for several mining giants and gambling behemoth Entain. Entain announced yesterday that it has set aside £585mln to settle a case with HMRC, pertaining to some historic bribery allegations in Turkey.
Elsewhere, lender UBS announced on Friday that its confident it won’t need to use a $10.3bln backstop offered by the Swiss government as part of a hastily-made agreement back in March to rescue Credit Suisse.
Here in London, Heathrow airport has put out its passenger numbers for July and they 7.7 million passengers passing through last month – just 1% down on pre-Covid levels. But the CEO of Watches of Switzerland says luxury airport boutiques like his are currently unable to reap the benefit, with revenues still only half those recorded back in 2019. He’s blaming Rishi Sunak’s decision to axe VAT-free shopping for tourists.
And finally, shares in motor insurers Aviva and Direct Line fell despite a report from the industry showing premiums had risen to record levels – news that won’t surprise anybody who’s had their renewal quote through recently.
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