Tag: Liz Truss

Financial Stability It Ain’t

With the appointment of Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor, we have now had four different Chancellors in a matter of a few months. What will overseas investors who dominate the markets make of this?

It will surely not instil confidence in the stability of the UK and its financial management. Liz Truss has not helped by apparently backing tax cuts and then now back-tracking on those commitments. Corporation tax will now rise as originally planned making the UK a less attractive place to invest. The Truss “high growth” strategy is floundering.

The gilt market is gyrating as the Bank of England planned to halt further QE and then changed its mind to stabilise the market while the FCA has allowed pension funds to pursue risky investment strategies which led them into panic selling of property funds and other assets.

Let us hope Mr Hunt can halt this merry-go-round. But what future is there for Ms Truss as Prime Minister? Not a long one in my view. She has not demonstrated confident leadership and her public statements have been quite dire. In a few months I think she will be gone.

I have decided to join the Conservative Party so I might get some say in who will lead the Party in future. I have supported the Party in the past – for example I helped Boris Johnson become Mayor of London although that turned out to be a questionable decision after London became the cycling capital of the world and the road network was severely damaged. But I never joined as a Member.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson  )

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Truss Victory – But Do We Trust Her to Deliver?

Liz Truss has won the election for Conservative Party Leader and therefore will be our next Prime Minister. She won by the expected large majority although she would not have been my personal choice. Lacks charisma. Her acceptance speech was a lacklustre bunch of pedantic soundbites.

She has promised to cut taxes and tackle the energy crisis. But how is she going to control energy prices? It’s easy to impose price controls or subsidise consumption but who is going to pay for it and where is the money coming from are the key questions. She has promised quick answers to those questions but do we trust her to deliver?

Having a surname that is a homophone of trust should have helped her political career but now she faces real problems in the UK economy and social unrest over the cost of living. This will not be helped by the latest news that Russia has turned off the Nord Stream gas pipeline and has no intention of reopening it while sanctions persist. This will drive gas prices even higher.

It was a good morning to release negative news. Abrdn UK Smaller Companies Growth Trust (AUSC) which I hold announced that long-serving manager Harry Nimmo is to retire at the end of the year. This has long been expected and after 19 years of service is probably overdue. There comes a time when even the most respected managers need to be refreshed.

It’s bad news for staff of the FRC after the FT reported that a decision has been made to locate the new ARGA body which will take over their role in Birmingham. Well at least they might find cheaper housing and shorter commutes so they might view it as a positive move.

The new ARGA body is sorely required as the FT reports yet another “brazen $400mn accounting fraud” in a Chinese biotech company (China Medical Technologies). KPMG is being sued in a Hong Kong court for $830 million. The report says that four audit firm failed to ask “obvious” questions that would have “easily” exposed the fraud. These included not questioning a large related-party transaction by the group in 2006, when it acquired a Chinese diagnostics business worth $155,000 for $176mn, according to the liquidator.

These kinds of events are way too common all over the world including the UK. Implementing ARGA is taking way too long but I suspect that it will not be one of Truss’s priorities.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson  )

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