Seven days in the Square Mile

The US Federal Reserve was expected to announce plans to start unwinding its quantitative easing programme after nearly a decade, and to begin reducing the size of its $4.5trn balance sheet. US markets took the prospect of the landmark move in their stride: the S&P 500, Dow Jones and Nasdaq indices all rose to new highs this week; Fed chair Janet Yellen has promised to make the process as uneventful “as watching paint dry”. In Britain, the pound shot to a post-brexit high of $1.36 following heavy hints from Threadneedle Street that BOE policymakers are minded to raise interest rates this year. Pundits think there’s a 42% chance of a rise in November, and at least a 50% chance in December. Germany’s Thyssenkrupp and India’s Tata Steel agreed to merge their European operations to create the continent’s No. 2 steel producer after Arcelormittal. Tata has agreed with UK regulators to hive off its UK pension scheme – a key stumbling block for Thyssen. The John Lewis Partnership reported that half-year profits had fallen by more than 50% to £26.6m, mostly owing to restructuring and redundancy costs. MPS called for a public inquiry into UK household debt, which now stands at £200bn. Snap, which owns Snapchat, was criticised for blocking users in Saudi Arabia from accessing Al Jazeera’s news content. John Chambers, who built tech group Cisco into the world’s most valuable company in the 1990s, announced his retirement.