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Burnham warned Iran war could hit UK growth next year

BBC Business8/12/2026

Burnham warned Iran war could hit UK growth next year

Image source, PA MediaByJemma Crew, Business reporter and Joe Pike, Politics investigations correspondentPublished12 August 2026Andy Burnham has been warned that the UK economy could barely grow next year if disruption in the Strait of Hormuz continues until the end of 2026. Treasury sources have confirmed that internal modelling presented to the new prime minister and chancellor suggests UK GDP growth could be as low as 0.3% in 2027, as first reported by Bloomberg. The UK economy saw a strong start to the year, but growth then faltered with the conflict in the Middle East affecting some businesses. The Iran war has pushed up oil and fuel prices, and also disrupted supply chains. On Thursday, official figures will show how much the economy grew between April and June of this year. Burnham and Chancellor John Healey were presented with a reasonable worst-case scenario of the Strait of Hormuz remaining effectively closed for the next five months, and no permanent US-Iran peace deal until the new year. The Treasury modelling for that scenario was that the UK economy would grow by 0.9% over 2026 - slightly under the 1.1% forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in March. The prospect was much dimmer for next year, with just 0.3% growth projected - much lower than the OBR's 1.6% forecast for 2027. Under the modelling, inflation would peak at 4.3% in the first three months of next year. It currently stands at 2.6%, just above the Bank of England's 2% target. The prime minister and chancellor will face pressure to use the upcoming Budget on 28 October to ease the financial burden on households and businesses. Since taking office three weeks ago, Burnham has announced policies including the removal of VAT from domestic electricity bills and bringing forward an already planned end to "subscription traps". But this week he told the BBC's Wake up to Money the announcements, aimed at tackling the cost of living, are not enough on their own, hinting at further support. He has asked Healey to look at what more the government can do on the cost of living in the Budget, with the chancellor saying it will be his "main focus".

US inflation cooled slightly to 3.4% in July but prices still elevated

The Guardian8/12/2026

US inflation cooled slightly to 3.4% in July but prices still elevated

A driver refuels a vehicle in Atlanta, Georgia. Oil prices have risen after a peace deal with Iran collapsed in July. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenA driver refuels a vehicle in Atlanta, Georgia. Oil prices have risen after a peace deal with Iran collapsed in July. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty ImagesUS economyUS inflation cooled slightly to 3.4% in July but prices still elevatedEnergy is cheaper than at its peak in late April, but gas is still nearly $1 a gallon more expensive than before the Iran war US consumer prices cooled slightly in July as the annualized inflation rate dipped down to 3.4%, though prices still remain higher than levels seen before the war with Iran. Though inflation decreased 0.7 percentage points in June during a brief ceasefire between the US and Iran that brought energy prices down, consumer prices have remained elevated. Price increases hit a three-year high in May, with annual inflation reaching 4.2%. Core inflation – a key measure that excludes volatile energy and food prices – increased slightly to 2.5% compared with last year, and increased at a modest 0.2% since last month. The overall index for food and services, including shelter, transportation and medical care, rose 3% each compared with last year, though grocery prices fell slightly. The price of lettuce fell 16% over the last year as it continues to be linked to the cyclosporiasis outbreak. The energy index declined slightly from the previous month, with gasoline falling nearly 3% over the last month, but still sitting about 15% higher than the year before. Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil prices, dipped in June when the US and Iran reached a peace agreement. Prices then rose again when that deal collapsed in July. Energy prices are still far lower than their peak in late April, but remain above prewar levels. Gas at the pump is an average $4 a gallon in the US, according to the AAA, more than $0.85 up from a year ago. Meanwhile, the latest negotiations to end the war in the Middle East and reopen the strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes through, have reached an impasse. Donald Trump has said that Iran must agree to compensate for the past deaths of American soldiers and Iranian civilians in order to reach a deal. Iran’s leaders are unlikely to agree to those demands. Wednesday’s release also follows a disappointing jobs report that showed American employers unexpectedly lost 23,000 jobs in July. Labor market gains for May and June were also revised sharply down by a combined 103,000, painting a weaker-than-expected picture of the state of US employment. Wage gains for hourly employees were erased by inflation, according to the latest data, decreasing by 0.2% after adjusting for inflation. The latest consumer pricing data comes as the US Federal Reserve weighs whether to increase rates to tamp down persistent inflation. Last month, Fed officials voted 9-3 to maintain rates – the first time in a decade that three board members shared dissent over a policy decision. Another round of inflation and employment data will be released before the central bank meets again in September. Despite ongoing economic instability, the latest inflation data is likely to ease pressure on the Fed to raise rates.

GM reaches up to $4.5 billion parts deal designed to avoid supply chain troubles

GM reaches up to $4.5 billion parts deal designed to avoid supply chain troubles

DETROIT — General Motors has reached a unique, multibillion-dollar parts deal as it aims to preserve cash and prevent supply chain disruptions like ones that have hit the global automotive industry this decade. In a public filing Tuesday, GM said the up to $4.5 billion purchasing facility includes a company called Procura Auto Parts that specializes in sourcing rare or critical parts. It will receive funding through a bank syndicate led by JPMorgan Chase and Banco Santander to prepay select suppliers on behalf of GM. In return, GM will issue formal promises called irrevocable payment undertakings, or IPUs, to pay back the company after it uses the parts in production, no later than July 31, 2029. The deal allows GM to keep inventory costs off its books, while better securing future supply. GM pays interest, plus an agreed-upon premium on what's used, as well as a customary annual fee on the unused portion during that year, according to the filing. For accounting purposes, the prepayments show up as an asset and each purchase is booked as unsecured debt, and the cash flows are shown as if GM paid suppliers directly, the filing said. These payments are excluded from adjusted automotive free cash flow until GM actually buys the inventory. The company typically books the capital within 90 days of purchase. GM declined to disclose what parts the company may be targeting. Problematic parts for the automotive industry have included semiconductor chips, including dynamic random access memory, rare earths and wire harnesses. The deal follows years of global automotive supply chain issues and comes after GM and other automakers reevaluated their sourcing or parts following U.S. tariffs and a push to move away from Chinese companies.GM established the deal with Procura and the banks on Friday, according to the filing. Get this delivered to your inbox, and more info about our products and services. Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes. Global Business and Financial News, Stock Quotes, and Market Data and Analysis.

I survived two years as prime minister in a hit new game - then my cabinet deserted me

BBC Business8/15/2026

I survived two years as prime minister in a hit new game - then my cabinet deserted me

A mobile game made by a developer in Manchester has recently beaten the global phenomenon Minecraft to top Apple's paid games chart. Its success is perhaps even more surprising given its subject matter - UK politics. No 10: Full Confidence by Benjamin Brewis sees players take on the role of prime minister, making decisions through a wave of parliamentary scenarios and trying to remain in power for as long as possible. The success of Brewis's app, and the creation of others like it, suggests the dramatic recent ebb and flow of Westminster may have inspired a popular new sub-genre. In No 10: Full Confidence, external, players who take on the precarious position of prime minister must balance the moods of four factions - their cabinet, backbenchers, the media, and the public - to remain in the game. Decisions are made across more than 300 fictional political scenarios, handwritten by Brewis. The storylines range from the mundane - dealing with GP appointment waiting times - to the absurd. "I have a two or three-part storyline where a dog is let loose into the House of Lords by a lobbyist during a vet bill and that spirals out of control," Brewis said. Each scenario asks players to pick one action from three choices on the screen, with each potentially upsetting or pleasing the different factions. Much like in real life, if one side completely turns against you your political career is finished. While some situations may sound farcical, Brewis said he had plenty of real life examples to draw on as inspiration. "I'd remember that MP who had a spider that he'd threaten MPs with, or when Boris Johnson walked into a fridge. I'm frantically writing them all down." My first attempt at playing prime minister in No 10: Full Confidence hasn't left me considering a Westminster career.

Why Jensen Huang’s $500 billion AI financing plan faces a big risk from China

Why Jensen Huang’s $500 billion AI financing plan faces a big risk from China

Jensen Huang built the world's most valuable company by pioneering the specialized computer chips behind the artificial intelligence boom. To keep his vision for the future within reach, the Nvidia founder is now attempting a different kind of engineering: convincing Wall Street investors that those chips are long-term financial assets akin to commercial real estate or toll roads. This week, Nvidia unveiled agreements with six of the world's largest asset managers, BlackRock, Blackstone, Apollo, KKR, Brookfield and Goldman Sachs. The goal was to assemble a $500 billion pipeline to finance the construction of data centers and GPU clusters for companies that lack the credit rating or cash to buy millions of dollars of silicon outright. Key to his plan, which Huang announced during a CNBC segment flanked by the leaders of all six Wall Street firms, is one crucial assumption: that Nvidia's graphics processing units will hold their value over time, behaving more like traditional hard assets than fast-depreciating consumer electronics. "Nvidia's AI factory platform is really an investable asset, an infrastructure asset," Huang said. "The reason for that is because it's productive, it's revenue generating, it is fungible, it's used by just about every cloud service provider, it runs every AI model." In standard asset-backed finance, a bank lends money because if a borrower defaults, the bank can repossess the asset — like a building, a warehouse or a cargo ship — and sell it to get their money back. Those physical assets have established secondary markets and can last decades. While new chips power frontier model training, after a few years they are relegated to lower-margin inference work — a shift that directly impacts their resale and collateral value. "Depreciation is the one key risk here," said Ben Emons, founder of FedWatch Advisors, who structured similar asset-backed loans for IndyMac before joining Pimco as a portfolio manager. Nvidia chips "could depreciate faster than expected," he said. In particular, Emons said he believes the single biggest threat to Nvidia's financing model comes from China, which is rapidly ramping up domestic compute capacity and could choose to flood the market with low-cost silicon in a price war. If Chinese production pushes hardware prices into a freefall, the collateral backing hundreds of billions in private loans could erode far faster than the terms of the debt itself, leaving investors exposed to losses, according to Emons. To compensate at least partly for that risk, Emons estimates investors will treat GPUs as high-depreciation equipment rather than real estate, demanding high-yield returns in the 11% to 17% range depending on where they sit in the capital structure. On top of that, the borrowers are likely to be non-investment grade firms locked out of traditional debt markets, including AI startups and neoclouds, according to a Bank of America Securities note.

Why JPMorgan is investing big in the 2028 LA Olympics

Why JPMorgan is investing big in the 2028 LA Olympics

LOS ANGELES — For years, JPMorgan executives have been talking with Olympics organizers about sponsoring the games. Before the next event, taking place in Los Angeles in 2028, the firm officially opted in — making a massive, nine-figure bet as the Games' first-ever global banking partner. While terms of the agreement were not disclosed, these types of partnerships are estimated to go for upwards of $200 million per four-year cycle. In an interview with CNBC, John Slusher, a former Nike executive and CEO of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Properties, called JPMorgan "as big a partner as we get." JPMorgan is also a vote of confidence for the organization's highest level of sponsorship, called The Olympic Partners, which comes with exclusive marketing rights. The program, which was created in 1985, saw several major companies — including Panasonic, Toyota and Bridgestone — depart at the end of 2024. Slusher has been revamping the business model to attract big-ticket sponsors. He said organizers created a joint venture across the various properties to put all rights in one place for commercialization, so a company can pursue one deal across the LA Olympics, Team USA and the Paralympics, if it chooses. He also said they're trying out new marketing opportunities that extend beyond the games, including a torch relay that will extend for 100 days in all 50 U.S. states, as well as naming rights in a lot of the venues. "We try to balance not overly commercializing the Olympics, which is really important, but also driving revenue, which helps us put on a better games," Slusher said. JPMorgan's partnership includes the LA 2028 Olympic and Paralympic games, as well as the games in the French Alps in 2030. The company also announced last week that it plans to hire more than 100 additional business bankers across Southern California — a 30% increase — pegged to its presence at the LA Games. The firm already has 5 million consumer-banking customers and 589,000 small-business clients in Los Angeles, it said. "We think it's really important for us to bring in the ecosystem that supports these small businesses, so that they can take advantage of what's going on in the business of the Olympics," said Carla Hassan, chief marketing officer of JPMorgan. Hassan called the Olympics partnership a "firm-wide initiative" for JPMorgan. She said the company will evaluate the return on investment through brand strength, client and customer engagement, customer acquisition and employee pride. It's also the latest push for the firm that's heavily invested in the sports industry, including across Madison Square Garden in New York and the Chase Center in San Francisco, home to the NBA's Knicks and Golden State Warriors, respectively. JPMorgan is also a longtime sponsor of the US Open Tennis Championships in New York, and it recently announced a multimillion-dollar deal to sponsor the athletic program at Ohio State University. And, earlier this year, it launched an Athlete Council, composed of all-star athletes including seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady and World Cup champion Alex Morgan, with the aim of improving financial literacy and wealth management for those in the sports industry.

Invitation Homes CEO says ban on institutional homebuying will bring down prices, but not immediately

Invitation Homes CEO says ban on institutional homebuying will bring down prices, but not immediately

The CEO of Invitation Homes, the nation's largest single-family rental landlord, said he believes the recently passed housing bill that bans investors like him from buying existing homes will eventually lower home prices, but not in the short-term. "I believe in the medium- to long-term, it definitely will," said Invitation Homes chief executive Dallas Tanner. "I think 90% of the bill focuses on deregulation. How do we simplify capital coming into housing? Are there ways that we can spur up the supply side challenges that we have? I think overnight in the immediate term, it's a bit trickier because there's more to the story than just what the bill addresses." Tanner pointed to mortgage rate volatility, high construction costs, and zoning and regulatory imbalances. In early January, President Donald Trump called for a ban on large-scale investors buying single-family homes to rent. He posted on social media that, "People live in homes, not corporations." This was part of a larger push to tackle the affordability crisis in housing. Some argued that institutional investors were pushing owner-occupants out of the market and inflating home prices. The ban became law in July, preventing investors who own more than 350 homes from purchasing any more existing units. They can, however, buy new single-family homes specifically built for rent. That is where Invitation Homes is leaning in. "Our focus as an industry and as a company has been, how do we create new supply and bring that into the housing system today? We built or acquired, in our partnerships with builders, over 6,000 new homes in the last five years," said Tanner. In January, just weeks after Trump's post, Invitation Homes purchase a homebuilder, ResiBuilt. It has also purchased homes from large public builders like Pulte Homes and Lennar to use as rentals. "We found through trial and error ... that this new product, this beta product, the product that we do amongst these master planned developments — it works really, really well for our families. And so we were indexing on that, and that is part of our growth strategy," said Tanner, adding that the company has been selling off hundreds of its older rental properties. CNBC's Property Play with Diana Olick covers new and evolving opportunities for the real estate investor, delivered weekly to your inbox. The largest investors, those owning more than 1,000 homes, represent less than 3% of the single-family rental market, according to various sources. They do, however, have an outsized footprint in certain metropolitan markets, like Atlanta (representing 25% of single-family homes there), Jacksonville (21%) and Charlotte (18%), according to the Urban institute. Invitation Homes reported better-than-expected earnings at the end of July, even though rents and demand are not as healthy as they were in the first few years of the pandemic. "We've seen sort of fundamentals reset. We talked about it on our last earnings call. We're starting to see actual pretty positive green shoots in several of our markets," said Tanner. "But we're really focused on — how do we navigate this and what does this mean?"