UK

A suicide bomber has killed at least 22 and injured scores more, in an attack on a Manchester concert of US artist Ariana Grande packed with thousands of young people. The bomb went off at about 10.30pm Monday in the Manchester Arena foyer, just after the end of Grande’s concert.

On Tuesday morning, Manchester police chief constable Ian Hopkins said police believed the attack was conducted by one man who detonated an improvised explosive device. He died at the scene. It was police’s "priority to determine if he was acting alone or part of a network", he said.

According to latest reports, a slowdown in the housing market and a weakness in the construction industry only worsened amid higher costs. In your point of view, should we expect a further decrease in the UK economy? Why?

Our base case scenario is that we are expecting a slowdown in the UK economy in 2017. If we ask what has been propping the UK economy up since Brexit, the answer would be the consumer spending story; we have seen consumption being fairly resilient since Brexit. On the other hand, we have seen investment taper a little bit less, therefore, what has been driving the UK economy is really consumer spending.

Though, at this point, the outlook looks pretty bleak, especially if we take into account the fact that we have got a squeeze in household consumer incomes, coming from higher fuel prices, higher inflation, and a lack of wage inflation. Real incomes are being squeezed, which in theory leads to weaker consumer spending power. Thus, the channel which has been propping up the UK growth is likely to weaken a little bit going into 2017.

For those that invest with the aim of generating an income, the last year provided a unique set of challenges.

More Brits now believe Brexit is a bad idea than a good one for the first time since the shock referendum result, according to a new poll by YouGov. Asked "in hindsight, was Britain right or wrong to vote to leave the EU?", the YouGov poll in The Times newspaper found that 45% said wrong (up two), while 43% said right (down three), meanwhile, 12% said they didn’t know.

More Remainers than Brexiteers believed they’d made the right decision, with 89% of remain voters saying the result was the wrong decision, compared with 85% of leave voters who still backed exiting the EU.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) have placed the chief executive of Barclays, Jes Staley, under investigation after he reportedly tried to discover the identity of a whistleblower, prompting experts to warn that the case could deter employees from reporting bad behaviour. Barclays said it never learned the identity.

Talks on the post-Brexit relationship between Switzerland and the UK are underway, according to the Swiss Federal Council. On March 31, Swiss Federal Councillor Johann N Schneider-Ammann met the UK’s Trade Secretary Liam Fox for a working meeting on Swiss-UK relations after the UK leaves the EU.

As part of the Federal Council’s "Mind the Gap" strategy, it will seek to reach a post-Brexit follow-up agreement with the UK as swiftly as possible. According to the Council, Fox said this was in the UK’s interests and that reaching such an arrangement with Switzerland is a priority. Schneider-Ammann and Fox agreed to meet on a regular basis.

Credit Suisse, surprised by a five-country tax evasion and money laundering investigation, said it has a “zero tolerance policy” on tax evasion in advertisements taken out in the Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph and Observer, U.K. newspapers on Sunday.

The Swiss bank’s two-page ads, which included seven bullet points in response to the probes disclosed last week, also said a 2011 internal compliance review caused it to terminate relationships with clients who didn’t prove they paid their taxes.

“This led to very significant asset outflows as we do not want to do business with clients who are unwilling to provide the required evidence,” said the ads. “Credit Suisse applies a strict zero tolerance policy on tax evasion.”

Nine months after the historic referendum in which the UK population voted to leave the European Union, the UK government has at last served notice to quit.
Theresa May yesterday signed the letter that will formally begin the UK’s departure from the European Union, starting a process which will eventually make clear how the country will trade with the EU and the rest of the world.

Since the Brexit vote last summer, the UK life sciences sector have been seeking answers as how it can trade and collaborate with Europe, and continue to flourish as a centre for science and innovation.