UK manufacturing lifted by overseas demand

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CIPS said the sector’s recovery had “taken everyone by surprise” but warned
that manufacturers were still vulnerable amid recent turmoil in Europe due
to fears over debt defaults and austerity measures impacting growth.

David Noble, CIPS chief executive, said: “Given the euro countries are
Britain’s biggest trading partners, any double-dip recession there would
undoubtedly damage the UK manufacturing sector.”

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UK general election result: Business pleads for post election pact

By
Sam Fleming
Last updated at 11:04 PM on 7th May 2010

David Cameron will face a race against time to stitch together a political deal if he is to head off a crisis of confidence in Britain’s government debt, business leaders warned.
Markets suffered a renewed sell-off as political fissures in the UK and across Europe raised concerns that leaders will fail to hatch a coherent plan to tackle sovereign debt mountains.
Confederation of British Industry director-general Richard Lambert said businesses need to see ‘a clear decision reached swiftly, which delivers a stable new government’, while Terry Scuoler, of engineering lobby group the EEF, warned ‘the clock is now ticking’ on action to curb Britain’s £890bn public debt pile.
Race against time: The Square Mile has called for urgent action to deal with the government deficit
Economist James Knightley, of ING bank, said: ‘If we come to Monday morning and we haven’t got a clear idea of what’s going on, things could start turning nasty. The UK has a massive fiscal deficit, and something needs to be sorted out quickly.’
The stock market oscillated wildly yesterday, and sterling came under sustained pressure against the dollar, as investors anxiously followed the twisted political machinations that followed the UK’s first hung parliament since 1974.
The FTSE 100 slumped 3.6pc, or 187.07 points, to 5,073.92 in late afternoon trading, while sterling slid to $1.468 against the dollar after hovering around $1.50 the previous day.
Analysts said signs of political vacillation in both Britain and continental Europe were leading to profound anxiety about governments’ readiness to curb debts and quash the Greek sovereign meltdown.

With G7 sovereign debts standing at a 60-year high, one economist warned the IMF might ultimately need in effect to create fresh cash and use it to finance borrowing by a number of developed economies if the firestorm doesn’t abate.
Martin Weale, of the National Institute, of economic and Social Research said: ‘There is concern that we have seen the beginning of the sovereign debt problems with Greece and not the end of them.’
One answer, he argued, would be to ‘essentially create credit internationally. That is not terribly different from the global equivalent of the European Central-Bank financing Greece.’ G7 finance ministers did little to quash the panic yesterday after holding a telephone discussion convened by the Japanese to discuss the sovereign debt woes.
In a terse statement the Treasury said: ‘The conference call covered the ongoing volatility in international financial markets. Ministers agreed to continue to monitor the situation closely.’
It added: ‘The Chancellor underlined it is in everyone’s interest to maintain financial stability.’

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ING bank accepts €10bn Dutch cash injection

ING, the Dutch savings bank which has more than a million savers in the UK, is to get a €10bn capital injection from the Netherlands authorities, the latest bank to be affected by the global credit crisis.

ING is the Netherlands’ largest listed bank, with 85m customers worldwide, and is one of the world’s top 20 financial institutions. It operates under its own name in this country, and recently took control of 180,000 accounts from failed Icelandic banks Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander and Heritable Bank.

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