Special topics in The Monday Briefing
O worker, where art thou?
A New Winter of Discontent? Join us for a Deloitte Academy webinar where I’ll be discussing with Deloitte specialists, Raoul Ruparel and Jurga McCluskey, and Jaguar Land Rover’s finance director, Chris Tye, whether rising inflation, supply bottlenecks and labour shortages presage a new Winter of Discontent – and what organisations can do about it.
Timing: Wednesday, 24 November 2021, 08:30-10:00 GMT
Register at: https://deloitte.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_oJT4MeihSA6gSlgBFHVAKw
From neo-liberalism to neo-statism
Last week’s UK Budget was one of the most consequential of recent decades. The small state, low tax approach of successive Conservative chancellors has gone into reverse. This is a policy choice, not something forced on the government by the demands of the pandemic. The government has made a decision to opt for a bigger state funded by raising taxes’ share of GDP to the highest levels since the post-war Atlee government.
The ripple effects of electric vehicles
Mass adoption of new technologies creates ripple effects across economies and societies, often in unexpected ways. British time had to be standardised across the country in the early nineteenth century to create national timetables. The car paved the way for America’s population to shift from cities to the new suburbs. Standardised shipping containers collapsed freight costs and helped spur the globalisation of the last half century.
Investment is the focus
Deloitte’s latest survey of UK Chief Financial Officers, released overnight, shines light on the plans of Britain’s largest corporates. The full report is available at:
https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/finance/articles/deloitte-cfo-survey.html
Liquidity and change drive M&A
The return of risk appetite to the boardroom, boosted by vaccine rollouts and strong growth over the summer, has led to a surge in global mergers and acquisitions activity. Around $4tn of deals have been announced since the start of the year, putting 2021 on track to break the previous record set shortly before the financial crisis (strong though these numbers are, the volume of activity, if adjusted for growth in equity values, is below the previous peak).
Pandemic update
COVID-19 may temporarily have vanished from the headlines, but the pandemic is far from over. Global case rates and deaths have trended down since late August, but numbers remain at high levels.
Significant gaps in vaccine coverage among high-risk groups mean the US is recording around 2,000 deaths a day, by far the highest rate among advanced economies and around 60% of its peak in January.
Gas crunch – higher prices, lower growth
The economic dislocations caused by the pandemic show no sign of abating. After a summer of eye-watering used car prices, milkshake and chicken shortages, now come soaring gas and electricity costs.
Inflation: Please, not back to the 1970s
In the wake of a blisteringly fast economic recovery have come bottlenecks, supply shortages and inflation. Over the summer the US Federal Reserve’s favoured measure of inflation hit the highest levels in almost 30 years. Unexpected though it is, today’s inflation surge is widely seen as temporary.
Where next for the recovery?
Please join me and Deloitte’s CEO, Richard Houston, for our annual ‘Back to school’ webinar on the global economic outlook on Tuesday, 14 September, 13:00–14:00 BST. To register please visit: https://event.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1488656&tp_key=c8a8828cba
Semiconductors to milkshake shortages: What to do about supply chains
The dislocation between supply and demand created by the pandemic is starting to weigh on the recovery. Growth is being held back by supply problems, labour shortages and rising prices. Along with the effects of the Delta variant, such supply issues led to a sharp drop in China’s Caixin index of service activity in August, leaving the sector contracting for the first time since COVID-19 hit early last year. In the US Friday’s payroll data, one of the most important economic releases of the month, came in far below market expectations. Respondents to the UK manufacturing PMI index blamed shortages of materials, shipping capacity and staff for decelerating output growth in August.