After a busy week where the sterling-to-euro rate has swung by 1%, it reaches Friday close to where it started the week. A very different story against the US dollar, however, with a 1.3% loss since last Friday taking it to 2% worse off over the month.
Yesterday’s data included eurozone Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at just 0.1% in the April to June quarter, but better news on US jobs.
From the UK, yesterday we heard that house prices fell close to 2% just last month, taking them to 4.6% lower than this time last year, just before the start of the Truss-Kwarteng “mini-Budget” debacle that saw mortgage rates shoot up. (They are now at their highest for 23 years, according to the BBA Mortgage rate). However, as the Halifax pointed out, despite this being the largest fall since 2009 house prices remain 17% higher than pre-pandemic.
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There was good news for UK-EU relations, with Britain rejoining the Horizon Europe research programme, which doles out grants of £85bn.
UK PM Rishi Sunak said: “We have worked with our EU partners to make sure that this is the right deal for the UK, unlocking unparalleled research opportunities, and also the right deal for British taxpayers.”
Less positively for UK business, in an auction for offshore wind projects in UK waters, no bids were received, as the firms argued that electricity prices are too low to make a profit.
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