Seven days in the Square Mile

The ONS reported that Government borrowing rose to £10.6bn in September – an unexpected increase that puts the Treasury on course to exceed the Office for Budget Responsibility’s £55bn forecast for the year by £14bn. The war of words between the governor of the Bank of England and Tory politicians continued: the former Lord Chancellor, Michael Gove, compared Mark Carney to the Chinese emperor Ming, whose “person was held to be inviolable and without imperfections”. There was better news in the eurozone, where business activity is at its highest level in nearly a year, according to the eurozone flash Purchasing Managers’ Index. The Government’s long-awaited decision to award Heathrow a third runway left airline shares largely unmoved. The biggest gainer was the warehouse-owner Segro, which stands to reap an increase in freight traffic following the airport’s expansion. Apple posted an 8% drop in sales for 2016 – the first since the launch of the ipod 15 years ago – but revenues from online services, such as the App Store and icloud, rose 24% to a record $6.3bn. Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank Group made “a last ditch” attempt to buy RBS’S Williams & Glyn spin-out, weeks ahead of the EU deadline. Lloyds Bank signalled an end to PPI compensation after earmarking another £1bn, taking its total to £17bn. Australia’s richest woman, Gina Rinehart, invested £245m in a potash mine in North Yorkshire.