Hammond’s risking it all

FOR a politician under sustained fire for his unenthusiastic approach to Brexit, Philip Hammond is surprisingly unmoved. There would be no resignation, despite the call from his illustrious predecessor Nigel Lawson.

The clamour for money to smooth the Brexit process, whatever the outcome of the negotiations, has caused the Chancellor to shift his stance.

He claims to already have spent £500m, will be announcing extra funding in the Budget and, if necessary, he stands ready to reach into the contingency reserve.

The Treasury keeps £2bn in its back pocket to deal with emergencies.

There has been great concern in the City and among bankers here at the International Monetary Fund that the Chancellor is weak in protecting the financial community. Jobs gradually have been sliding away, with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange among those to close and return home.

Hammond insists that he and the Treasury understand the concerns and suggested the most significant number of jobs in financial services are domestic and should be unaffected. But he is promising a ‘bespoke’ deal for the European and global financial institutions based in London.

The Chancellor cannot afford not to. As much as banks may be despised for excessive pay and the havoc wreaked during the financial crisis, they remain a huge source of tax revenues.

If the Chancellor doesn’t move rapidly to give the financial community the assurances it needs he may risk losing the goose which laid the golden egg.

Nuclear option

THERE was a time when the president of the US would pop into the IMF meetings.

Ronald Reagan famously came up with the notion that it was up to the Fund and World Bank to enable people in the developing world to ‘pull themselves up by their bootstraps’. Right across Asia, most notably China, that has happened.

A Republican successor, Donald Trump, had something more frightening on his mind on Friday the 13th. As if his rhetoric on North Korea’s erratic nuclear programme is not scary enough, the president is following up on his electoral pledge to undo the Iran nuclear accord, which he has described as ‘one of the worst deals ever’.

Allies including Britain are watching closely, as parties to the deal with Iran which is seen as having constrained its development of nuclear weapons.

The White House says Iran has failed to keep to the deal and is using Revolutionary Guards to spread terror across the Middle East and beyond. Under the terms of the plan, the US President must review the accord every 90 days and can ‘decertify’ Iran should it be seen to be in breach.

That does not mean an immediate return to the sanctions regime which brought Tehran to the table. Instead, Trump is throwing the problem back to Congress.

Capitol Hill was never fully on board for the deal after lobbying against it by Israel. But it was former President Obama’s biggest foreign policy achievement.

Nuclear peace, obviously, is the big prize for citizens and people around the world. Planes to Iran have been packed with sales executives taking advantage of a reopened marketplace. Airbus concluded one of the biggest deals, signing up to the supply of 100 civilian aircraft.

The direct impact on the UK has been on energy prices. Distribution of Iranian crude was limited by sanctions. When restrictions were lifted, crude prices fell and oil has been trading at or below $50 a barrel.

The White House stance will sound scary (because Trump always does) but is not decisive enough to undermine the era of low crude price or those Airbus wing manufacturing jobs.

Shooting the Fox

REMEMBER Rod Eddington? He was the Aussie parachuted into British Airways, before Willie Walsh, to turn the airline around after disastrous union disputes.

Now he is back in the headlines. Activist shareholder group CtW Investment, which represents trade unions, wants him removed as a director and chairman of the audit committee at Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, holding him responsible for an alleged cover-up of payments to meet sexual harassment claims at Fox News.

That can’t be helpful in Fox’s battle to acquire the 61pc of Sky it doesn’t own.