Seven days in the Square Mile

The Bank of England raised interest rates for the first time in a decade to 0.5%, signalling that there would be further rises to come. The oil price hit a twoyear high above $64/barrel amid political turmoil in Saudi Arabia following the Crown Prince’s anti-corruption “purge”, which has ensnared the country’s most prominent investor, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of the Kingdom Holding Company. The affair has also heightened investor anxiety surrounding the forthcoming IPO of the giant Saudi national oil company, Aramco. The US President, Donald Trump, made a public pitch, via Twitter, for Aramco to choose New York over London for the float. The price of Bitcoin hit a new high of $7,600: it has more than doubled in six weeks. Venezuela looked to be sliding towards a messy $89bn default; China and Russia are both big creditors. The Chancellor threw an olive branch to business ahead of the Budget with a reported plan to peg business rates rises to the CPI, rather than RPI, measure of inflation, thereby reducing the forthcoming hike from 3.9% to 3%. Strong iphone X sales saw Apple’s sales jump, with the company’s value touching $900bn, a 50% increase in a year. Tencent, the Chinese social media giant, was revealed to have built a £2bn stake in Snapchat owner, Snap. Several Wall Street banks warned that the slow progress of Brexit may have “reached a point of no return”, forcing them to start moving jobs out of London.