Hi again. Here’s what we’re talking about heading into the new week. The big gatherings: Rishi Sunak is on the move. He heads first to the Council of Europe meeting in Iceland on Tuesday, then kicks to his first Group of Seven summit as prime minister, which starts on Friday in Hiroshima. At both gatherings Sunak, who’s struck up a strong rapport with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is expected to attempt to bolster support for Ukraine. The big guns: Defense Minister Ben Wallace said
(Bloomberg) — Hi again. Here’s what we’re talking about heading into the new week. The big gatherings: Rishi Sunak is on the move. He heads first to the Council of Europe meeting in Iceland on Tuesday, then kicks to his first Group of Seven summit as prime minister, which starts on Friday in Hiroshima. At both gatherings Sunak, who’s struck up a strong rapport with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is expected to attempt to bolster support for Ukraine. The big guns: Defense Minister Ben Wallace said Thursday that Britain would donate Storm Shadow missiles as part of Kyiv’s efforts to push back the Russian invasion. Those long-range weapons had already been deployed by Friday, hitting targets in Luhansk, according to Russia’s defense ministry. Ukraine’s ability to strike positions 100 kilometers or more behind the front lines could be an inflection point in the almost 15-month-old conflict. Other nations are also ramping up their weapons offers to Kyiv, including Germany with a package worth close to $3 billion. The big stumble: The UK economy shrank unexpectedly in March as households turned more cautious and strikes hit activity across a wide range of sectors. Growth is likely to sputter along for some time to come. The next batch of UK labor market data due on Tuesday is likely to show the jobless rate steady at 3.8%, while total pay growth is set to rise to 6.8% year on year from 6.6%, Bloomberg Economics expects. Sticky inflation continues to dog the Bank of England, and another rate hike in June is the likely result.
The big post-mortem: BOE chief economist Huw Pill takes questions Monday on what the central bank is doing to combat the rising cost of living; on Friday the policy-maker declared inflation at a turning point. At a time the BOE is facing criticism for its initial call that inflation early in the decade was transitory, Governor Andrew Bailey appears before the Treasury Committee on Thursday.The big results: Quarterly earnings season is winding down (whew), and it’s been mostly positive for Europe’s biggest companies. Burberry is one of the last to report, and its earnings may get a boost from the return of voracious Chinese spending. Buyers in China accounted for about 40% of company revenue pre-Covid and that’s now closer to 25%, hinting at plenty of upside for the maker of iconic trench coats and leather goods. The big strikes: A widespread rail stoppage didn’t manage to spoil the fun at the Eurovision finals in Liverpool, but it still created plenty of headaches. Mick Lynch, leader of the biggest rail workers’ union, has called for a special summit of unions, employers and government to hash out a solution for the industry. Perhaps the UK needs to get some advice from Germany.
The big wait: Will the tussle for Manchester United between Qatari banker Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani and UK billionaire Jim Ratcliffe finally end? ManU shares have been whipsawed by competing reports of who’s the front-runner. The Times said Friday that Ratcliffe is close to securing his takeover, backing up an earlier assessment by the Sun. The reports helped knock the club’s shares down to a new low for the year.ICYI our Big Take: Today’s the day of reckoning for Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan as he faces perhaps the biggest challenge after spending two decades molding the NATO military power and nation of 85 million people in his own image. Onur Ant and Selva Bahar Baziki take a look at what’s at stake. Separately, Ben Holland examines the legacy of Erdogan’s radical economic experiment. And finally, Bloomberg reporters Drake Bennett and Jordan Robertson join the Big Take podcast to tell the wild, winding tale of Shannon You, a chemist once employed by Coca-Cola who was also in the business of stealing trade secrets — and attempting to take them to China. Listen to on iHeart, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the Terminal.
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