The UK trade deficit widened to its highest level in eight years in 2018 as the services sector weakened, increasing the country’s vulnerability to sudden economic shocks. The trade deficit hit £37.7bn in 2018 — 1.8 per cent of GDP — from £25bn, or 1.2 per cent, the previous year, according to figures published on Thursday. This drove an increase in the current account deficit — which includes investment and foreign aid as well as trade — to 4.3 per cent of GDP, up 0.8 percentage points year on year. Suren Thiru, head of economics at British Chambers of Commerce, said the widening current account deficit “leaves the UK more exposed to sudden shifts in the economic conditions, including a disorderly departure from the EU”. The UK’s large current account deficit has been financed by substantial foreign capital inflows over recent years which “makes the UK vulnerable to a reduction in foreign investor appetite for UK assets”, the Bank of England warned in the summer. Such a dro...
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Swiss voters have shifted the country’s political direction decisively leftward in elections that delivered a triumph for two environmentally focused parties and reversed decades of gains for the country’s hard right. The Swiss Green party increased its share of the nationwide vote by 6 percentage points in Sunday’s polls, giving it 13.2 per cent overall. The Green-Liberal party meanwhile took 7.8 per cent, up 3.2 percentage points from the last federal election in 2015. The swing — though modest in comparison to recent political ructions elsewhere in Europe — represents the largest parliamentary shift in the alpine state’s ordinarily finely balanced political system. The Greens will gain 17 seats in the 246-seat federal assembly, doubling their existing tally and eclipsing the hard-right Swiss People’s party’s previous record-breaking 15-seat gain in 1999. The Green-Liberals will gain a further nine seats. Together the green bloc will hold at least 44 seats, making it the second-la...
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Flying over Europe in a private jet last year, Rajeev Misra took his shoes off and propped his bare feet on the knee of a top executive of FIFA, soccer’s governing body. The executive froze while Mr. Misra, head of SoftBank Group Corp. 9984 3.71% ’s $100 billion Vision Fund, chatted about ways to make more money off the streaming rights for the organization’s tournaments. The Vision Fund had become, in the span of a year, the world’s most influential technology investor, making Mr. Misra a kingmaker in Silicon Valley. The meeting on the plane was part of his plan to make the Vision Fund a colossus, with up to half a trillion dollars in investments and a seat at the center of the new economy. Today, the Vision Fund is in trouble. Its bets on onetime darlings such as Uber Technologies Inc. and WeWork have fallen in value. Last week, SoftBank had to step in to rescue WeWork in a $10 billion deal that values the office-shar...